UMS Unusable - Horrendous Stuttering

[Spiderbreen]

Hi,

I've used UMS for a number of years without issue - streaming all sorts of films (in quality & file type) to devices throughout my home; I've had no issues with stuttering or anything similar at all over the last couple of years using build 2.6.5. However, I've recently reinstalled my PC and now UMS is entirely unusable on any device, with any film type/quality; I've never had this materialise before.

The streaming suffers from stuttering right from the start, despite the buffer appearing to have data in it, and I've even had films outright cease playback shortly in with a 'Server Not Available' or similar error message. I've had issues using a later build than 2.6.5 before (I've tried 5.3.0 previously and encountered stuttering, and no amount of tweaking settings could resolve it, however reverting back to 2.6.5 removed the problems entirely.

Unfortunately, 2.6.5 is now stuttering just the same as 5.3.0 and the latest 6.2.0 releases and I'm at a loss to explain why. My PC installation is sound, my network speed has not changed, nor has my target media renders or files that I'm serving - for example I've tried serving files that I know have been perfectly fine historically.

My specs haven't changed at all and should be more than sufficient - i7 4770k; 16gb Ram, 980TI etc.

I've included a debug log below of me streaming a film stuttering hard (i.e. not even 1 second of unstuttered playing), and any support is appreciated.

[SubJunk]

This is the FFmpeg command that is being used to transcode the video:

Code: Select all

"C:\Program Files (x86)\Universal Media Server\win32\ffmpeg.exe" -y -i F:\[1James.Bond.24.Spectre.2015.1080p.BluRay\James.Bond.24.Spectre.2015.1080p.BluRay.mkv -filter_complex subtitles=F\\:/\[1James.Bond.24.Spectre.2015.1080p.BluRay/James.Bond.24.Spectre.2015.1080p.BluRay.mkv:si=1 -bufsize 1835000 -maxrate 44000000 -g 5 -q:v 1 -qmin 2 -qmax 3 -ab 640k -c:a ac3 -c:v mpeg2video -f vob output-ffmpeg.mpeg

and this is the MEncoder one:

Code: Select all

"C:\Program Files (x86)\Universal Media Server\win32\mencoder.exe" -ss 0 F:\[1James.Bond.24.Spectre.2015.1080p.BluRay\James.Bond.24.Spectre.2015.1080p.BluRay.mkv -oac lavc -of mpeg -mpegopts format=mpeg2:muxrate=500000:vbuf_size=1194:abuf_size=64 -ovc lavc -channels 6 -lavdopts debug=0:threads=4 -lavcopts autoaspect=1:vcodec=mpeg2video:acodec=ac3:abitrate=640:threads=8:keyint=5:vqscale=1:vqmin=2:vqmax=3:vrc_maxrate=44000:vrc_buf_size=1835 -ass -ass-color ffffff00 -ass-border-color 00000000 -ass-font-scale 1.4 -font C:\Windows\Fonts\Arial.ttf -ass-force-style FontName=C:\Windows\Fonts\Arial.ttf,Outline=1,Shadow=1,MarginV=10 -fontconfig -noautosub -sid 1 -ofps 24000/1001 -lavdopts fast -mc 0 -noskip -af lavcresample=48000 -srate 48000 -o output-mencoder.mpeg

If you run those commands in the command prompt you should be able to see the FPS (frames per second) of the transcoding. If that framerate is less than around 30FPS there will be stuttering. Subtitles cause transcoding to be slower, so if the CPU isn't keeping up you can try not using subtitles if you don't need them.

[Spiderbreen]

Thanks for the reply - I'll have a look.

I've switched between version 2.6.5, 5.3.0 and 6.2.0 several times over the course of this stuttering issue, each time performing a clean install. The problem 'appears' to have now resolved itself following my third reinstall of version 2.6.5 - I was able to stream the film with subtitles with zero issues at all (just as before I encountered issues in using a later version).

I've gone through each time and attempted to replicate the same settings in 2.6.5 in the later versions, but they still always provide the stuttering issue. At least I have a workable version now so not too concerned, but would be nice if I could update without losing performance to the point that the application essentially becomes unusable.