Hi,
I am creating a new post for this because this post:
Buffering issues on iPad - Release 6.5.3
has been marked as solved, when in fact not all the issues with 6.5.3 have been fixed in 6.5.4.
So the issue relates to buffering issues when playing back higher bit-rate videos from a NAS to an iPad.
I believe the issue only affects videos that have a high enough bitrate, in my case 15 MBytes/sec.
So if anyone is using a NAS and has a fast enough WIFI to play 15 MBytes/sec videos (in principle), I invite them to try my test video here and see if it plays back without issue for them with Infuse.
In 6.5.4 with the above video I am seeing this issue:
- Start playback
- After 6 seconds of buffering, playback begins (which is fine and expected)
- Video plays back for 7 seconds, video stops and buffers again (unexpected, and not good!)
- After 6 further seconds of buffering, playback begins again, and this time video plays to end.
I do have an explanation for why this is happening… if you look at this graph showing data transfer from my NAS (with nothing else using the network)
As you can see, it takes about 30 seconds for the transfer rate to reach that of the video. In prior versions of Infuse, it reached 15 MBytes / sec almost immediately.
But more than that, Infuse simply never uses the full bandwidth that the WIFI connection allows, as you can see in this graph:
As you can see, Infuse is using less than half of the bandwidth that is available.
The “Streaming Cache (auto)” mode needs to be able to transfer data at a rate higher than the video bit rate to actually buffer ahead of the content, and the graph clearly shows that this never happens. So from Infuse with this video, you never see the cache bar fill up (while the video is playing)
The big question here is why does Infuse never transfer data faster than 15 MBytes/sec ??
I’m sure this will affect others over time, as video qualities go up, and file sizes increase.
Thanks in advance for any assistance.
Liz