Twonky not finding all songs and buffering...I think

Other OS or NAS discussions
Post Reply
ED-209
Posts:2
Joined:Thu Nov 06, 2008 1:27 pm
AV Hardware:TwonkyMedia version 4.4
Operating System - A Linux flavour called BusyBox on an Icy Box NAS4220-B
Client - PS3 firmware 2.52
Twonky not finding all songs and buffering...I think

Post by ED-209 » Thu Nov 06, 2008 6:51 pm

Hi,
I have an Icy Box NAS4220-B
Client - PS3 firmware 2.52
Database has about 6000 songs and 3000 images/small videos
Network type - tested using both wired (100Mb FastEthernet Cat5e) and wireless via a Netgear DG384gt

I am having a lot of problems streaming music and video(not done much video actually, mainly music).
The music stops intermittently, as if it is buffering, it does seem to happen more at higher bitrate encoded music but not all the time.
Also the Twonky isnt showing up all my songs - even from the browser interface? It lists something like 5560 and I have more in the region of 5770. Also The PS3 seems to be slow to pic up all the songs and sometimes doesnt complete the catalogue.

The Twonky is showing on the PS3 as NAS1000-2000
This is not the model I have and I think there is a 4220 version is that correct?
I get dlna errors and Network errors but these stopped when using a switch although the sound stopping fault still occurred.

I've tried lots of different configurations, stop restart, rebuild database, checked the nic's are ok, upgraded router firmware, replaced and tested with a switch. Nothing resolves this major irritation.

Is there anything anyone can suggest?
I am wondering if the server does some encoding/encapsulation before it processes the data and this is slowing down the data transfer?
Could this be causing the issue and therefore the box is not up to spec?
Maybe a more recent version of Twonky would fix this issue? Are there any known issues like mine that were fixed in later versions (and how do I get an upgrade whithout having to delve into the linux shell which I am a complete noob at ;)?
How about an update of the ICYBOX firmware?
Are there any settings in the .ini files I can change?
Is there an optimum MTU? Could changing the amount of memory assigned to the Twonky in the .ini improve performance?
What are the optimum buffer sizes? Can they be overstretched?
Any help would be much appreciated.
Steve

@once
Posts:2
Joined:Sat Jan 17, 2009 1:43 am
AV Hardware:PS3, ICY BOX NAS 4220 B

Re: Twonky not finding all songs and buffering...I think

Post by @once » Sat Jan 17, 2009 2:09 am

I can confirm all of these problems. Further, it appears quite clear that the problem lies mainly with Twonky (for my setup at any rate) than anything else. I have used the contact page to send them the particulars and hopefully they will respond. Briefly this is my setup:

* Twonky server 4.4.9 running on ICY BOX NAS 4220 B (firmware 2.6.3.1, server install obtained from Raidsonic's page) with buffer size set to 128000 under Miscellaneous.
* Client PS3 FW 2.53
* Connecting via wifi, with reported signal strength on PS3 between 92-94%

The symptoms are:
1. Music playback buggy, sometimes media does not appear, those that do, occasionally stutter. Loadup time - regardless of filesize - is more than 1 minute on average.
2. Pictures - Thumbnails take a long time to appear, selecting photos results in delays before pictures are displayed. Avg file size here is around 3-5 Mb.
3. Videos - Stutter every 2 seconds regardless of filesize. I should mention that these are all at SD resolution and vary from 3-4 minute music videos to 2.5 hour length movies.

Tests:
1. In order to test if this was a PS3 problem, I used my MacBook to loadup the web based media manager supplied with Twonky at the same physical location as the PS3. Although music playback was excellent, photos loaded slowly (though much faster than from the PS3) and videos did not play at all (not even with the 2 second stutter shown on the PS3).
2. In order to test the connection, I used the MacBook (again at the same location) to connect to the NAS via SAMBA and loaded up the same media I tested above. All of these work flawlessly including random seeking (i.e. jumping to different points in the movie) in the videos. There was a small (2-3 second) lag to load up the videos but apart from that no problem at all.

Conclusions:
1. The Twonky server is unable to serve the media to either the PS3 or another client (in this case my MacBook).
2. There are some reported issues with PS3 FW 2.5x but this is not possible to verify further.

I hope the fellows at Twonky take note of this and are able to fix the problem.

@once
Posts:2
Joined:Sat Jan 17, 2009 1:43 am
AV Hardware:PS3, ICY BOX NAS 4220 B

Re: Twonky not finding all songs and buffering...I think

Post by @once » Wed Jan 21, 2009 12:11 am

Since Raidsonic's recent update to Twonky 4.4.11, I should report that all the above problems remain the same. Twonly are probably being inundated with support requests as, unlike Raidsonic, I have not heard back from them at all.

Post Reply