This is sort of an open ended question, so any recommendations will be appreciated
I have a ubuntu box as my main server and I stream video on my mac since I can't carry my server box upstairs
This is my current configuration: My mac connects to my linux box via samba and basically mounts the shared folder as a network drive. I am using VLC player to play videos over this network drive and I find that the quality of the video is not as optimal as I would like it to be – seeking takes a good 10 seconds while I get the occasional stuttering (green screen) playing 540p videos, let alone 1080p.
My current setup permits a 1.8 MB/s bandwidth (tested with SCP), so I don't think network latency is that big an issue here.
I have trouble tweaking VLC because I am not technically streaming videos in the VLC player – VLC has no idea I am playing over a LAN network. Hence, I am unable to set the stream buffer and cache values that are specific only to network streaming on VLC.
Is there anything I can do to improve my current set up? Will using a media streaming server help (like Amahi)? Are there more efficient protocols than SMB for this purpose?
Best Answer
It's entirely possible you simply don't have enough bandwidth to seek quickly. Our local wifi set-up pushes just under 300mbit on a good day, and seeking can be somewhat of an issue - but stuff plugged into the gigabit LAN has absolutely no such issues.
The problem is seeking files takes a little bit more data than you'd actually expect. Streaming servers work differently when you seek than something like VLC when it thinks it's looking at a real local file. A streaming server absolutely may help - though you're probably going to end up with re-encoded video (or a lot of CPU time used on the server), if that is something you're happy with then it's probably worth a shot.
If your issue is more with stuttering video you can change the cache config in preferences. If you change the
Show settingsoption toAlland go toInput/Codecsthere is an option namedFile caching (ms)- but this will probably in fact make your seeking issue worse (it will have to pull more data before it can start playing video).