Mkv stutter / judder disgusting behaviour!!! [ Edited ]

[julius02]

Just want to say I am totally disgusted with the mkv stutter not being addressed. It was reported back in November 2011 and still no joy. Seriously how long is it going to take.
Is it going to be addressed in next firmware and when is the next release. I think we have a right to know considering we did purchase the product!

[TonyPh12345]

Exactly which issue are you talking about?  (Post a link)

[julius02]

http://community.wdc.com/t5/WD-TV-Live-Streaming-Issue/MKV-Full-HD-Stutter/idi-p/286900

[Leverbrus]

Hi Julius02,

I'm with you on this. I've been complaining on this forum about these MKV 1080p issues for months. The SMP has never been able to handle 1080p mkv's at 24p. I got mine at christmas and gave my old WDTV Live to a friend in need, and I haven't been able to watch 1080p movies since. My friend, who got my old WDTV Live, is watching his 1080p movies without hickups.

WD knows about these issues, of course, but they don't care to fix them. They are more busy implementing all sorts of streaming services, so they can stick their respective logos on the box, for marketing purposes. These streaming service apps are often poorly implemented, so they busy themselves fixing them instead of fixing these basic playback issues. I guess they are under some kind of legal threats from the lawyers of these streaming services, or something, and they choose to serve them before giving their customers what they paid for.

Another thing that's almost amusing. They seem to think that their customers are WD's very own team of beta testers. That's not what I signed up for. I bought this player thinking that it at least performed as well as the former model, and because I was very tired of the former model's inability to auto select framerate. A basic feature they finally introduced in this SMP. I they called it the BMP (Beta Media Player) instead of SMP, I wouldn't have bought it. How dare they expect us to spend our time collecting bug reports for them? They even sent me a mail about this "great deal" where I get to test their faulty products, apparently for nothing.

My guess is that they won't fix any of these issues. The SMP is halfway through its product cycle. They are already busy making the next beta bug box.

Lately I've been thinking that if WD won't listen to their own customers, maybe they would listen to some bad publicity in the gadget press. Maybe an embarrassing headline on engadget.com could motivate them to fix stuff? I don't know.

By the way. Can anyone recommend another product that can actually play 1080p MKV's at 23.98/24fps via smb shares?

[Rob78]

I have only tried  "720P"  MKV with this player and only with extern HDD so far and 95% of them plays flawlessly without hickups and they are 23.976fps files. However 24fps mkv's will have stutter every 41 sec which is quite annoying and i read somewhere that gen 1 or gen 2 could play 24fps if im not mistaken so it would be great if WD could fix this and have better MKV / MP4 support overall.

[TonyPh12345]

---

Leverbrus wrote:

By the way. Can anyone recommend another product that can actually play 1080p MKV's at 23.98/24fps via smb shares?

---

Yeah, any of the WDTV Lives.

After WD fixed the MKV bug I reported (the 2nd-most top-voted issue), I haven't had any problems with full-HD MKVs...

It's possible you've run into a switch performance issue.

Read this analysis of someone over at the AVS forums reporting the same thing -- It quite likely a low-end switch that's causing the problem.

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=22006530#post22006530

Start there and read down through post 1751. --- Started by "WDFan" and verified by "jsinco."

Gig switches with small packet buffers don't work well with the WDTV.   

I have the same switches WDFan refers to (Netgear GS108Tv2) and I have no problems streaming 40-50 mbit/sec 1080p MKVs via Samba...

---

Leverbrus wrote:

WD knows about these issues, of course, but they don't care to fix them. ... My guess is that they won't fix any of these issues. 

---

8 of the top-10 issue reports are fixed.   So that tends to indicate your opinion is wrong.

[Sotje]

---

TonyPh12345 wrote:

Yeah, any of the WDTV Lives.

After WD fixed the MKV bug I reported (the 2nd-most top-voted issue), I haven't had any problems with full-HD MKVs...

It's possible you've run into a switch performance issue.

Read this analysis of someone over at the AVS forums reporting the same thing -- It quite likely a low-end switch that's causing the problem.

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=22006530#post22006530

Start there and read down through post 1751. --- Started by "WDFan" and verified by "jsinco."

Gig switches with small packet buffers don't work well with the WDTV.   

I have the same switches WDFan refers to (Netgear GS108Tv2) and I have no problems streaming 40-50 mbit/sec 1080p MKVs via Samba...

---

Just registered to this forum, because the bug that WayneJJ described in his original post on the "Issues" forum definitely is not solved with the latest firmware. May be that WD solved another studdering that has been caused by a bandwidth problem, but there still is a studder/judder problem with nearly all of my MKVs using the VC-1 codec... and only with the ones encoded in VC-1 and stored in an MKV container... h264/AVC in MKV is working fine and VC-1 in e.g. m2ts is ok as well (I'd remux my MKVs to m2ts to get them working, but unfortunately MKV is the only container that supports chapters).

Some movies show a sporadic studder (in intervals of 2 to 15 seconds) but always at reproduceable frames (e.g. all three titles of the Matrix triology) and the worst MKV is "The Golden Compass", which studders all the way through each and every second... but only on the WD TV Live and (like already written by WayneJJ in the original ) not only when streaming via ethernet but also with a HDD connected directly to the WD TV Live via USB. This bug is not bandwith/network related!

I know that it's hard to focus on the original issue of WayneJJ as long as there are other forum members who will mix up totally different things and either say "I have exactly the same problem, but totally different" or like Leverbrus in this thread, who first redirects this thread into a 1080p24 direction and Rob78 who joins in and states that his 720p 23.976 movies are playing flawlessly... WayneJJ never mentioned a resolution or a frame rate but only the VC-1 in an MKV container as cause of this issue. He also never mentioned network streaming but a HDD, so no change of switch/buffersize/networkcable/WLAN will help to solve (t)his problem.

Is it so hard not to mix up everything and only read and comment what has been written?

Regards

Sotje

[julius02]

Can I ask you to post a mediainfo report of one of the problem files. I'm interested to see how it compares with the files causing problems on my unit.
Just to let u know I was having problems with 4 files... These were encoded using 24fps. I changed my video output to 1080p 60hz and these files played back perfectly.
I have reported the issue as a 24fps bug. I am not convinced it is video/ audio codec related. I have even tried high bitrate files using a different frame rate and they play superbly. When you use these same codec and 24fps and similar bitrate... Problems arise!

[Zwaarpoot]

@sotje

Amen to that my brother. Amen.

You're so absolutely right. It's the VC-1 codec in an MKV container that causes the stutter/judder problem. But as long as WD refuses to see this as the problem it will never be solved.

[Sotje]

---

julius02 wrote:
Can I ask you to post a mediainfo report of one of the problem files. I'm interested to see how it compares with the files causing problems on my unit.
Just to let u know I was having problems with 4 files... These were encoded using 24fps. I changed my video output to 1080p 60hz and these files played back perfectly.
I have reported the issue as a 24fps bug. I am not convinced it is video/ audio codec related. I have even tried high bitrate files using a different frame rate and they play superbly. When you use these same codec and 24fps and similar bitrate... Problems arise!

---

Sure...

General
Unique ID                                : 206221442086853706717763889268428139169
Complete name                            : The Golden Compass.mkv
Format                                   : Matroska
Format version                           : Version 2
File size                                : 22.9 GiB
Duration                                 : 1h 53mn
Overall bit rate mode                    : Variable
Overall bit rate                         : 29.0 Mbps
Movie name                               : Der goldene Kompass
Writing application                      : mkvmerge v5.4.0 ('Piper') built on Mar 10 2012 13:34:39
Writing library                          : libebml v1.2.3 + libmatroska v1.3.0

Video
ID                                       : 1
Format                                   : VC-1
Format profile                           : Advanced@L3
Codec ID                                 : WVC1
Codec ID/Hint                            : Microsoft
Duration                                 : 1h 53mn
Bit rate                                 : 24.8 Mbps
Width                                    : 1 920 pixels
Height                                   : 1 080 pixels
Display aspect ratio                     : 16:9
Frame rate                               : 23.976 fps
Chroma subsampling                       : 4:2:0
Bit depth                                : 8 bits
Scan type                                : Progressive
Compression mode                         : Lossy
Bits/(Pixel*Frame)                       : 0.498
Stream size                              : 19.6 GiB (86%)
Default                                  : Yes
Forced                                   : No

Audio #1
ID                                       : 2
Format                                   : DTS
Format/Info                              : Digital Theater Systems
Format profile                           : MA / Core
Codec ID                                 : A_DTS
Duration                                 : 1h 53mn
Bit rate mode                            : Variable
Bit rate                                 : 1 576 Kbps / 1 510 Kbps
Channel(s)                               : 6 channels
Channel positions                        : Front: L C R, Side: L R, LFE
Sampling rate                            : 48.0 KHz
Bit depth                                : 24 bits
Compression mode                         : Lossless / Lossy
Default                                  : Yes
Forced                                   : No

Audio #2
ID                                       : 3
Format                                   : DTS
Format/Info                              : Digital Theater Systems
Format profile                           : MA / Core
Codec ID                                 : A_DTS
Duration                                 : 1h 53mn
Bit rate mode                            : Variable
Bit rate                                 : 2 029 Kbps / 1 510 Kbps
Channel(s)                               : 8 channels / 6 channels
Channel positions                        : Front: L C R, Side: L R, Back: L R, LFE / Front: L C R, Side: L R, LFE
Sampling rate                            : 48.0 KHz
Bit depth                                : 24 bits
Compression mode                         : Lossless / Lossy
Default                                  : No
Forced                                   : No

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