AirVideo Live Conversion Chokes - PC or WiFi?

[PowerRanger]

So I'm playing around with the AirVideo app (free) on an iPad 2 & iPod Touch 1G. My Internet connection is 15/2.

During "Live Conversion" streaming playback, the movies playback fluidly for about a minute, then stops. After about 10 seconds playback continues smoothly for another minute or so, and stops, etc.

So, is this congestion occurring due to my PC not being to do the live conversion quickly enough? Or is my WiFi not fast enough? Any insight would be greatly appreciated! Thanks in advance.

 

[Emulex]

core2duo 2.0gb = good enough for 480p only
core2duo 3.ghz good for 720p/1080p
core2quad 2.4 good for 720p/1080p - the problem is the decoder isn't really accelerated. so it has to decoder/re-encode which is taxing. watch your cpu rates. if it's maxxing then stuttering bump up the processor speed or recode to lessor bitrate/more efficient codec (some codecs require a ton more cpu to decode!).

but yeah 480p tv-rips are 100% fine but on a weak/overloaded cpu they stutter at 720p and definitely at 1080p.

 

[PowerRanger]

Hi Emulex, thanks for the info. Playback on my end never "stutters" though, just perfectly smooth playback for about a minute, followed by about 10 seconds of the video just stopping in place. FYI the movies I'm trying to play are 720p.

 

[PowerRanger]

OK I think I found my issue. Under the Global Conversion Settings, I guess I set the bitrate to too high a setting for my PC/internet connection - 1536kbit/s. I set it lower, to 512 kbit/s and the buffering issue seems to be gone, the movie is playing without stops now. The image quality takes a hit with the lower bitrate, but oh well...

 

[kamikazekyle]

EDIT: Ninjaed ;P

While Emulex is 1/2 off topic with regards to AirVideo, the other 1/2 is probably spot on. AirVideo streams segments to your device and can adjust bitrates on the fly for each segment. If your connection wasn't up to snuff, then AirVideo would kick down to a lower bitrate on the next segment (unless you turned off the available bitrates within the AirVideo app on your device). In all likelihood, your computer converts a segment, but it can't convert fast enough to keep up. So you'll get a segment(s) that'll play fine, but you'll hit the end of the segment(s) before the next one can get converted.

Of course, if you're telling the app to only use the highest bitrate then it still could be the connection. I'm running under the assumption that you're testing over your local wifi connection to rule out connection speed issues. You also didn't mention the specs on your computer, so all this is just a hypothesis.

For reference, I use an Athlon X4 @ 3GHz as my server with AirVideo and I dont' have any issues streaming 1080p content, assuming the download bandwidth is enough. I also run DNS, Active Directory, file services, and an instance of XBMC on the same box, though the XBMC playback is all GPU accelerated.

For 720p live conversion, I'd recommend a high end Core2Duo or a decent i3/i5 series processor if you're not going to be doing anything else on the box. If you want to live convert while the computer is doing other tasks, up the core count to a quad core. And if you ever do 1080p, make sure it's a decent quad core.

 

[PowerRanger]

kamikazekyle, thank you. Your explanation fits my situation perfectly. I'm currently trying this at my parents' house, the PC in question is WAYYYYYY old, so I think that'd be the main culprit as I am trying this via local wifi. Once I get home, I have a C2D 2.0 laptop and i5 laptop to try out. Again, thank you both for clearing up the situation for me!

 

[Gillbot]

Hi Emulex, thanks for the info. Playback on my end never "stutters" though, just perfectly smooth playback for about a minute, followed by about 10 seconds of the video just stopping in place. FYI the movies I'm trying to play are 720p.

Well, I can say that Air Video on default settings plays 480 video for me 100% fine using a ..... Celeron 450. Yes, that's it. I tried it on a dual core Atom 1.6GHz and it would do what you describe. Play for a short period, pause, play, pause, etc. Once I popped in the celeron, it plays 100% smooth. I also have played 1080p videos but they are cartoons so I can't judge the quality, however, they play back 100% smooth, no stutters or stops. Granted, I'm doing this all over LAN connection except the stream to my ipod/ipad via wifi.

 

[MrX8503]

I was able to transcode to my iPhone4 with a Celeron Wolfdale. 720p smooth and 1080p smooth with lower settings.

Unless you want max settings, I don't think you need a quad core.

 

[Gillbot]

I was able to transcode to my iPhone4 with a Celeron Wolfdale. 720p smooth and 1080p smooth with lower settings.

Unless you want max settings, I don't think you need a quad core.

I don't think you even need a C2D since my celeron single core seems to do fine.