[Developer Post] - Stuttering + Buffering + Lagging Help Thread!
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If you're seeing your videos stutter or lag out from time to time (or even very often) you've come to the right place!
Buffering can be a tricky one to fix, a couple things below that might help:
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Use the quality selector to lower the quality of your video
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Restart your Router + Chromecast (to restart the chromecast just pull the power out of the back)
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Try moving your laptop closer to your router as you stream (plug the internet directly into your laptop if possible)
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Ensure that videos you download are in .mp4 or .mkv containers for optimal results
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If you want to play other formats or really high quality videos you may need to look at upgrading your router - we know this sucks but from debugging a ton of these sometimes it's the only way.
If you're still having issues after doing the above, please shoot us an email at team@getvideostream.com
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what files size is considered the biggest it can easily handle?
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The easiest to handle are mp4/mkv files that are under about 2GB.
It all depends on your network though. If your computer and chromecast are both close to a good wireless N router then you shouldn't have any issue playing 6GB+ files
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hi there, i have a new laptop and a new router and still have these problems when ever i play avi/video clip files, the one i am watching tonight is only 1gb and played fine for 32 mins, then started to stutter as if it was buffering, please supply a fix for this
cheers
steves -
Have had major problems only being able to play 5-10 consecutive seconds followed by a brief stop (2sec ~). Tried with lower, then lowest settings without any luck.
Managed to fix it (I hope, for now) by rebooting the chromecast (did so on the android app > click the three dots top right > reboot chromecast).
I'll chime in if it doesn't work but for now it has the past 5 minutes.Note; stops occured with and without subtitles, router is an asus rt-ac66u, tried on both 2.4 and 5ghz bands (strangely, atleast to me, playing from a computer on the 5ghz actually works to the chromecast when it's on 2.4ghz), oh - and I rebooted the router for good measure.
Hope it's going to be fine from now on, we'll see!
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Actually scratch that, still acting up every 10-15 seconds.
Also after it stutters and the subtitles are on they go off again. -
Seems the cpu gets heavilly strained. Over 50% usage on average then it's gradually drpped from 60~ to 40 picture
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@Lommelun Thanks for all this info - this is awesome!
Could you send a little info on the file you're trying to play? When you transmit on the 5Ghz band do things improve? (It does make sense that this could help) -
only until a few days ago have i been having such a huge problem with this lag. every 10-15 sec it buffers. i have a netgear n600 db router, and im the only one on it (i use the 5g). the files i am playing are only about 240mb mp4 videos. i have tried rebooting, closing all other programs and quality adjustment, to no success. i have been resorting to ctrl+o in chrome with better playback. Could this have something to do with the recent videostream update?
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@tron4 Is your CPU usage high when this happens? We could be transcoding when we're not supposed to...
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Link to recently tried and buffering/stuttering video info paste
Link to previoulsy tried, also buffering/stuttering every 10-15 seconds ~This may have to do with them being 10bit. Probably. Just read the info myself and they both are 10bit so that might be why cpu usage is very high. I'll test with a 8bit file tomorrow, as it's a little late now.
Another note; Same issue happened when using my desktop computer (over wifi as well).
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@Jason-from-Videostream iv been having problems with stuttering happens every 6-8 seconds. the file is under the 6gb (5.38) iv tried lowering the quality and no one is using the internet other wise. it is an mp4 file. and my laptop has no issues play video and iv got a good signal from my router/modem. so any ideas?
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@zeshi amen zeshi
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Update on 10bit vs 8bit test
Looked around a little and compared various 10bit and 8bit video files and indeed, it seems to be the cause. Very high strain on the computer transcoding it - it works, just not well and it will require a lot of buffering. I do not know exactly how the transcoding work, but for me pausing a little and let it cache/buffer (?*) made it bearable with only slight buffering sometimes.So guys, if the issue is buffering when watching anime then check if it is 10bit and get an 8bit version instead to do without transcoding (this is; if the new file is compatible with the chromecast and doesn't need to be transcoded).
no I'm not a dev I just want it to work flawlessly :)
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@phan30 said:
hi there, i have a new laptop and a new router and still have these problems when ever i play avi/video clip files, the one i am watching tonight is only 1gb and played fine for 32 mins, then started to stutter as if it was buffering, please supply a fix for this
Your totally right this is 100% the 10bit depth that's causing the issue. The Chromecast can't natively play 10bit so we are forced to transcode those 100% of the time.
There's also significantly more data transfer required on transcoded videos (since we have to dial back the compression) so once we have to transcode something it'll be much harder on your network.
Unfortunately without building a native app there isn't much we can do about this, I'd say your best bet is trying to get 8bit files when you can. Really sorry about this
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@tron4 said:
only until a few days ago have i been having such a huge problem with this lag. every 10-15 sec it buffers. i have a netgear n600 db router, and im the only one on it (i use the 5g). the files i am playing are only about 240mb mp4 videos. i have tried rebooting, closing all other programs and quality adjustment, to no success. i have been resorting to ctrl+o in chrome with better playback. Could this have something to do with the recent videostream update?
How long is the video your watching? If it's very short and 235MB I could see there being issues.
If it's not short, could you email me the name of the file so that I can take a look at it? That router is more then good enough so i'm having trouble imagining what the issue is
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@zeshi I'm really sorry about this - what model of router do you have? Also if you could send me some info on the file: (name/where to get it) at jason@getvideostream.com that would be super helpful
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@Jason-from-Videostream the 200mb are some anime shows, only about 24 min each
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@tron4 I had a problem with anime buffering. Figured out it was due to it being encoded with a bit depth of 10 (instead of the 'normal' 8bit in other shows).
Unfortunately the Chromecast doesn't support playing h264 with a bit depth of 10, so what I did was convert the videos from 10 to 8 bit.
To do this I just used a free tool called HandBrake. I had some problems with video needing transcoding (which causes buffering, and also a lot of strain on your computer), even after converting it to 8bit - but after a few trials and errors I found out which settings to use. I'll post some screenshots on how to set it up to do a rather simple 10>8 conversion with little quality loss.
Note; any re-encode or transcoding will reduce quality - similar to encoding lossy music over and over.
Now, here are my settings in handbrake that did the trick for me.
Preferences
Under "tools" open options, here you can make ajustments as you like but noteworthy options are under "Output Files" > Default Path - I set this to a folder on my desktop named Videostream for simplicity. Also check automatically name output files.
Also remember to tick this to automatically pull the subtitles into the new file. The rest of the preferences are optional.Output settings
These are in the main editor, I would highly recommend you import a file (click source > file/folder then import a video) then set up the output settings and save as a preset. (bottom right; click add).Picture - default settings work fine.
Filter - default settings work fine.
Video - the most important ones are H.264 profile settings, apart from the speed preset (set at medium for me)
The h.264 preset slider basically means how fast it will encode versus compression. (faster = bigger file size, slower = smaller file size) for anime medium works fine, I end up with files averaging 3-400mb which play very nice and look super fine on my tv (this size also depends on your Constant Quality sider. 20 is the default but for HD videos you can put it at 24 to get a smaller file size (at the slight loss of quality).Audio - AAC ffmpeg 128kbs works fine for me.
Subtitles - they should import automatically (due to the checkbox in the preferences) if not click add and pick "english" (or what other language you want). (Note; sometimes it says "unknown" or otherwise, and (SSA/ASS) in parentheses - those are usually the ones you want.)
Leave Chapters and Advanced as is if you don't know what you're doing.
Now; click add to queue (if you have 1 file) or click the arrow next to it and add the whole batch if you have multiple. Followed by clicking start to start encoding. For me each file takes about 15minutes in the cooker like this and work with zero effort on the computer playing it on the chromecast and no buffering at all.
Hope this works, good luck and enjoy!
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thanks for looking out lommelun. il try this.
