Streaming Playback of 720p Media to PS3 Stutters or is Jerky

Jun 26, 2008 (Click to Rate!) Loading ...

If you are like me, you probably use your PS3 to stream media from a NAS at home or something; either from the NAS directly or via a computer using TVersity.

If you have begun to dabble with streaming HD content, either 720p or 1080p, you may have noticed that the PS3’s playback of that media gets really jerky and stutters. You might think it’s a network bandwidth issue, but after reading through some support forums that doesn’t seem to be the case.

Laurence Hartje points out there seems to be a change that came in the PS3’s Firmware around versions 2.2 or so (currently 2.36) that caused the jerkiness to begin (Thread 1, Thread 2, Thread 3, Search Results) and since then HD streaming users have just had to complain and live with it.

One hope at this point is that the huge update coming with Firmware 2.4 will improve the streaming situation again for folks, but there are of course no guarantees that it will be fixed and we might have to live with the stuttering.

If you are a big streamer, the only fix at this point seems to be putting the media directly on the PS3 and playing it from there; even playing high-quality 1080p media in that fashion works fine, it’s just the goofiness with the streaming that will hopefully get a kick in the pants.

The behavior seems to indicate bad buffering behavior, but you would have figured that Sony could fix that rather easily if that were the case.

Fingers crossed that it gets fixed; we’ll keep you posted with any findings and if you find out any great tricks, let us know.

NOTE: I am experiencing this right now with 720p/x264/6mbps media when playing it back, I don’t notice it with standard-def material however.

Update #1: A reader, Kulmanister, did some very detailed digging and found the poor streaming performance over WiFi could somehow be connected to the uPnP implementation the PS3 uses (Post 1, 2, 3)

Update #2: Another reader, Lennos, took the healm of investigation using Kulmanister’s tips and did some further investigation and found that during MPEG4 playback, for some reason, the PS3 saturates a 100 mbit wired connection at almost 60% worth of data (with no CPU usage from the streaming PC to account for potential transcoding of the media) — given that level of data saturation, the entire video itself should be transfers to the PS3 in under a minute (800mb DVD rip) — unfortunately there are still occasional stutters experienced and that level of wired network utilization stays that high the entire time during playback. (Post 1, 2, 3)

Oddly enough, this doesn’t seem to occur with DivX media, just MPEG4. Something seems seriously broken with PS3 playback of MPEG4 media.

Share and Enjoy:

720p, buggy, DivX, HD, HDTV, MPEG4, NAS, PS3, ReadyNAS, Sony, streaming media, TVersity, UPnP AV

This post was written by:

Riyad Kalla - who has written 1727 posts on The “Break it Down” Blog.

"Ultimately I just want to provide a resource that folks find useful."

73 Comments For This Post

ericn Says:
June 26th, 2008 at 9:18 pm

I’ve been having this exact same issue… i’ve reencoded movies to smaller width (from 1080p to 720p)… but to no avail.

I’ve been relegated to converting some of my movies to mp4 and then putting them on my apple tv.

it’s quite a pain in the ass as my ps3 is a 40GB model, apple tv = 320GB model.

right now i’m trying to modify the file using quicktime pro and will see how this goes… thanks for the post! hope this is resolved asap!

Riyad Kalla Says:
June 26th, 2008 at 9:55 pm

Ericn, I’m glad it helped atleast let folks know out there that it’s “not their fault” and that something screwy is going on with the PS3.

I’m really surprised you didn’t get it to stop skipping even with SD content… are you *positive* it’s not a bandwidth issue in your case? Did you try hooking the PS3 right to the router and seeing if the stuttering stopped?

I haven’t had any problems with SD content, even decent looking SD (like nice rips of Lost) but I never tried true HD before, and I can’t get it to play smoothly for the life of me.

I can even play at 1.5x speed and it goes OK, which would seem to indicate that the bandwidth issue isn’t it.

Anyway let’s hope that 2.4 fixes it… BTW what are you using to stream to your PS3? Tversity?

tek Says:
August 18th, 2008 at 11:08 am

I’ve tried ps3 streaming via wireless with h264’s WMP11 with appropriate registry edits etc… However.. the movie stutters and lags every second. Isnt bandwidth because I can stream 1080 MGSO4 via the wireless without a glitch or issue, and other files work fine.

Attempting Tversity.. vs WMP now…

Editor Says:
August 18th, 2008 at 2:22 pm

tek,

I’ll be really interested to hear what you find, I tried some 640×480 (not even 480p) video streaming and even *that* stuttered over wireless, forgetting HD at this point I’m down to encoding my videos to 480×320 just to get them to stream without stuttering and now it’s stopped, but that’s ridiculously low.

Let me know what you find.

Turd Furguson Says:
September 13th, 2008 at 8:13 am

The problem could be your encoding methods. If you are using Tversity to stream the files to your PC, you could very well be doing the transcoding. Try some different streaming programs. Twonkymedia is very stable, as is Orb. If you have a Mac use Medialink or Eyeconnect.

If you need help on installing any of them just check out my PS3 tab @ http://blog.hillbillyhardware.net

I have tried to gather and make tutorials available for everyone to help get their streaming working.

Darck1 Says:
November 21st, 2008 at 9:33 am

It’s ridiculous. I *used* to have everything streaming fine – even HD. Now, it doesn’t matter whether it’s lower-rez MP4 or AVI or whatever – stutters all the time. I’m using Mediatomb from my linux server to serve video and it USED to work fine in the past. This is obviously a buffering problem on the PS3. Why is it so broken?

Riyad Kalla Says:
November 21st, 2008 at 9:38 am

Darck1,

I have no idea… I thought Firmware 2.5 would fix it and then the 2.6, but so far no luck. It really sucks. If I play media that is in iPhone-format it doesn’t stutter, but the bitrate is so low that it looks pretty bad (more or less like Hulu).

Out of curiosity are you going over WiFi or wired? I am putting in new Powerline adapters shortly and will compare to see if suddenly it can handle the content better.

Brad Says:
December 11th, 2008 at 8:27 am

Still skipping! Is sony ever going to fix this!

Riyad Kalla Says:
December 12th, 2008 at 5:35 pm

Brad,

That’s a damn good question, I have no idea what’s going on here with the streaming. Either they need to increase the buffer size and tweak the buffering strategy to be more aggressive, or fix whatever bug is causing the stutter because the media I’m trying to stream isn’t that intense at all.

I’d also point out that using PlayOn, I’m able to stream/watch Hulu (low quality) and Netflix (medium quality) just fine… maybe none of it as high as my DVD rips, but those are only done at like 1500 kb/sec anyway, hardly “HD”.

CutterValen Says:
December 13th, 2008 at 11:25 pm

Everything was going great! till someone at playstation got a stupid idea……fucking assholes.

MARTINM Says:
January 1st, 2009 at 12:38 pm

Finally got my movies to stream to my PS3.

I open Windows Media player on my Vista PC then play a movie on my PC ( you can pause it if you like).

Go to my PS3 and open the Windows Media Player Server and select/play any movie faultlessly.

If anyone can explain why , please do.

Chas Says:
February 5th, 2009 at 8:53 pm

This is still a problem regardless of hi or low def even with the latest update. I can stream through iTunes off a 802.11n AP to an HP iTouch PC, no problem-o. Same file to the PS3 off a different, but still 802.11n AP, stutter like a crazed lunatic.

If HP can manage to do make this work fine on a PC via wireless, why can’t Sony with their “media hub” gaming console. What a bunch of crap. I guess I’ll be relegating this thing to just gaming and get another AppleTV.

Riyad Kalla Says:
February 5th, 2009 at 8:57 pm

Chas,

It’s maddening, but I don’t see it with lower bitrate video… just DVD-quality and higher video even when the transfer rate is no where near capping out the connection… it’s maddening because I want to rip my DVD collection to a high quality backup that I can stream when I want, but I can’t because the PS3 doesn’t want to play nice… really really annoying.

Rob Says:
March 2nd, 2009 at 4:23 am

I’ve got this problem with a 1080p movie. What’s the best way to copy it to the PS3’s hard drive? The file is 8GB. Can I copy it over my wireless network to the PS3 somehow? Thanks!

Lennos Says:
March 9th, 2009 at 5:00 am

Just got 80GB PS3 this weekend only to find that streaming MP4’s stutters really bad. Can copy same MP4 to PS3 HD and plays without any problems (no skipping at all).

Can also stream high res DivX AVI files with no problems.

Finally using PS3 Media Server can transcode MP4 file to MPEG2 on the fly and it streams with no issues at all.

How the hell can Sony manage to stuff up the streaming of MP4 files. When streaming AVI’s and transcoding to MPEG2 the network utilisation is really low, but when streaming MP4 (no transcoding) network utilisation goes way (like 10x over my 54g wireless).

Can’t figure this out, have used TVersity, Nero Media Home, and PS3 Media Server all with same results.

I hate having to debug this $^!+ myself.

Kulmanister Says:
March 13th, 2009 at 3:33 am

My 60GB first batch PS3 stutters with every video stream possible with 2.60 firmware in my 54 Mbps WLAN. WLAN modem/router is Zyxel P-660HW-D1 with the latest firmware. It doesn’t matter if the video is transcoded or not, Java PS3 Media Server 1.10.51 shows the stream speed drops to 500-1000 kbit/s after about 10 minutes of video stream.

The PS3 media server author notes on the change log there was a bug with 1.10.1 version but I feel you can’t help the WLAN stream from stuttering with the current PS3 firmware. It doesn’t seem to matter which media server you use, I’ve tried also Fuppes and TVersity with just the same results.

The transcoding buffer on my 3.8 gig E8500 dual core PC is full but the PS3 receiving buffer/cache seems to take ages to be flushed. It also doesn’t matter if I stream camcorder mpeg2 videos, they act just the same.

I don’t know what mechanism the PS3’s streaming buffer uses but it still seems to be flawed in the 2.6 firmware. I’ve read that it used to work mostly great before 2.5 update so it’s sad that they have put up such many firmware updates with the same problems still intact.

Kulmanister Says:
March 13th, 2009 at 4:09 am

Well my latest findings are that after the initial big dip in speed Java PS3 Media Server seems to happily keep up the bandwidth for quite some time until it starts to show steady 16252 kbit/s speed which it really is not because the video stutters like mad. You can help it for a couple of seconds by pausing the video, otherwise the video is just a frame by frame show. I have tried capping the maximum bandwidth to different values, doesn’t matter. I have tried different transcoding quality settings and just about every possible combination with a no go.

I hereby declare PS3 DLNA streaming capabilities totally broken. I don’t know if it would work if I dropped the WPA2-PSK security. Initially when I connect the PS3 with my WLAN modem/router it shows there is gives me no uPNP connection but afterwards it seems to be fine in the WLAN list. MTU is 1500 and the WLAN connection is bridged aka my ISP gives own IP addresses to my PC and PS3.

Kulmanister Says:
March 14th, 2009 at 2:50 am

Today I tried something I thought would be ridiculous trying to get uPNP/DLNA to work: I disabled uPNP from my PS3.. and lo & behold, WLAN streaming from PC to PS3 started working like a charm in an instant. Great bitrate, good image quality, all video types stream. Now I’m a happy chap \O/

So, uPNP is enabled on my WLAN modem/router but isn’t on my PS3 and that resolved my problem. Using Java PS3 Media Server with MEncoder, don’t know if MTU has got anything to do with it but on 1500 it works well.

Kulmanister Says:
March 14th, 2009 at 6:44 am

Oh well, it was too good to last for ages. Stuttering came back after a couple of hours and there always seems to be stuttering involved if I don’t transcode mpeg4 videos. So only mpeg2 streams an sich but I’m happy I can watch stuff for more than a couple of minutes straight on.

I’m still kinda happy with the performance because earlier I couldn’t get it to work at all. Now to forever wait for well performing PS3 firmware.

Riyad Kalla Says:
March 14th, 2009 at 3:55 pm

Kulmanister,

That’s a seriously detailed run-down right there. Really appreciate you posting that here for everyone that’s running into this crap.

I would have never guessed at playing with the uPNP settings to make headway with this.

Lennos Says:
March 16th, 2009 at 2:57 pm

Well tried Kulmanister tips and they did seem to help for DivX streaming but not MPEG4. Interestingly when I set MTU manually I have a lot more problems connecting to media servers. Have to restart TVersity for it to be seen again (Don’t know what was going on there).

Anyway have now setup wired connection and all is working good (obviously with more bandwidth), however something that is still very surprising is the utilisation levels. When play MPEG4 files (Nero Digital Cinema AVC) it uses close to 99% on a 100Mbps link. Compare this with an equivalent quality DivX file which only seems to use around 30-35%. However even the lower DivX utilisation would explain stuttering on a wireless network as I have hardly ever seen a wireless network that can sustain transfer levels of this speed. For readers information MPEG4 and Divx files sizes are roughly the same 750-800MB converted DVD episodes of about 42min playing time, so that should give some idea of the quality of the video being streamed. Dolby Digital 2ch or Dolby Digital 5.1ch.

Another thing of interest is that when videos stutter it is always the audio in MPEG4 that hits 0Kbps first and not video which seems to drop to 1Mbps before still video and stuttering starts.

Anyway wired connection has fixed my immediate problem but will continue to packet trace and see if I can find anything. Previous packet traces showed alot of duplicate ACK’s coming through from the PS3 so not sure what this is all about.

Kulmanister Says:
March 17th, 2009 at 4:28 am

Nice to hear my findings with the PC->PS3 WLAN streaming are appreciated. There are still occasional problems with my PS3 receiving the stream, the performance seems to degrade while the hours passi. I still think there’s some kind of receiving buffer getting full and PS3 is not flushing it early enough so it just stalls for the moment. The 54G WLAN speed is good enough for constant HD streaming, that’s what I’m totally positive of.

Kulmanister Says:
March 17th, 2009 at 4:31 am

OK maybe I exaggerated a bit with the HD streaming but at least my 54mbit WLAN can in my tests handle “almost HD” -bitrates

Riyad Kalla Says:
March 17th, 2009 at 7:24 am

Lennos,

Really interesting data point on the bandwidth utilization even over a Wired connection. I don’t really understand that though, saturating a 100 mbit connection for a 800 mb file — that would imply that the PS3 would have transferred the entire file within seconds/minute but it’s got a 42-min run time… so what is it doing the rest of that time?

Lennos Says:
March 18th, 2009 at 5:11 am

Further analysis of he network utilisation shows an average of around 60% utilisation for MPEG4’s. At least not maxing out the connection but still pretty high considering the size of the file.

The PS3 info on the file shows that the Video Codec is AVC 2.4Mbps, but when playing the video and displaying information on the PS3 it gets up to 8Mbps for Video in the top right of the screen. My assumption is that this is the average bit rate at which the file was encoded (actually 2.38Mbps was chosen in Nero but close enough), so I would have thought that ~2.4Mbps should be the network transfer rate, but obviously up to 8Mbps depending on video action. Still even at this rate I can’t figure out why it is transferring at around 50Mbps over the wired network, and this would be far too high under wireless even with the best signal and no encryption.

Is it possible that video decompression is happening at the streaming server (Vista PC running TVersity) and the resulting larger data volume is then being transferred across the wire. I would have thought that with streaming video the information would be sent in compressed format and decoded and uncompressed at the destination (PS3)? I do not see any additional CPU utilisation on my Vista machine when streaming video (but on a QUAD core Phenom I suppose it has more than enough grunt to mask any issues. However if I transcode the video while streaming into MPEG2 format I definately see a CPU hit (as one would expect), but when transcoding video I do not see the stutter.

Confusing, I do not really see any major issues in Wireshark when capturing the traffic and TCP Windows are being filled.

Will keep testing.

Lennos Says:
March 18th, 2009 at 5:26 am

OK found Nero has Profile Category of Sony with a specific profile of PS3 AVC available. Am re-encoding a DVD episode using this profile with no changes to the default Video Settings or Encoder settings. Will set Video bit rate quality to 2.38Mbps (same as what I have used for other encodings that are stuttering), Maybe this special PS3 AVC profile is optimised for playback on the device. Will post results shortly.

Lennos Says:
March 18th, 2009 at 6:27 am

Nero PS3 profile made no difference to network utilisation.

Riyad Kalla Says:
March 18th, 2009 at 7:56 am

Lennos,

To determine if decompression is occuring on the TVersity side, bring up the process manager on the machine that hosts TVersity and see if it’s pegging the CPU.

TVersity should not be doing any post-processing on the video if it’s already in a format the PS3 understands — it should just pass it through like a download, maybe using 3-5% of CPU to handle the high speed connection. That’s what I have with my NAS and PS3 now. But if you are seeing 20-50+ percent CPU usage, then TVersity is doing something to it.

Lennos Says:
March 18th, 2009 at 2:06 pm

I only see increase CPU when I force trancoding of MPEG4 into another format (MPEG2), meaning it converts on the fly thus the CPU hit. I am not seeing any CPU hit when just streaming MPEG4 direct with no transcoding. I just can’t figure out why it is using so much data on the wire. Your comments about the size of the file being transferred in minutes at this speed I agree with and I see this when copying the file to the PS3, so it has me stumped why this is happening when streaming the content. Everyone should note that I do not see this level of utilisation when streaming DivX movies of roughly the same quality, it is only when streaming MPEG4. PS3 definitely is doing something weird with these files.

Riyad Kalla Says:
March 19th, 2009 at 8:47 am

Lennos,

Damn interesting find — now I’m doubly confused as to what the PS3 is doing with the data or to TVersity… I wonder if the “wire rape” scales with the size of the original media or if for some reason it’s always pegged around the same level — which would be even stranger.

I’ve encoded everything I have as MPEG4 so it plays nice with my iPhone — I really don’t want to re-encode just so the PS3 is happy… any thoughts on how to proceed?

Lennos Says:
March 19th, 2009 at 12:53 pm

At this stage I have no issues playing MPEG4 when copied down to the PS3 so I have tended to copy a couple of videos down and watch them straight off the hard disk. Running over a wired connection also has no probs (despite the high util%), it is only the wireless where the issue is.

Also note it is not just with TVersity as I have also tried PS3 Media player v1.11 and Nero v8 media server. If you really want to stream then I would use either TVersity with forced Transcoding or the PS3 Media Server with Transcoding enabled as it doesn’t seem to have the same problems.

Re-encoding wasn’t an option for me as I have too many files, so I just ran a wired connection given the rest of my home was already cabled (except this one room). It is not like the PS3 can’t play this stuff it just can’t stream it over wireless. One thing I am going to test is whether I can play the material over wireless using a laptop and Nero Showtime. I now need to see if this is just a PS3 problem or whether it is a more generic issue. Will post results. It would be good to see others results if they can do the same also as it may not be a PS3 thing.

Riyad Kalla Says:
March 20th, 2009 at 2:19 pm

Lennos,

Damn-interested to see what you find with playback on a laptop and not the PS3.

derek Says:
March 29th, 2009 at 11:41 am

I am trying to stream 1080p to my ps3 using a wired connection and the ps3 1.10.51 media server. My network runs at 100 mbps. I even tried a crossover cable from the laptop to the ps3, still 100mbps. Anyways no matter what I do when streaming 1080p with this media server it stutters. Is it the buffer on the ps3 or my network. If I pause the movie for awhile the buffer eventually gets full but then when I start watching it the buffer eventually gets drained until it stutters again. This only happens on 1080p, on 720 it works fine. My laptop is a dual core with 3 gigs of ram. (dv9810ca). Any help, or if you know what the issue is, it would be much appreciated.

derek Says:
March 29th, 2009 at 11:43 am

Ive also tried playing with virtually all the settings on the ps3 media server, nothing changed anything.

derek Says:
March 29th, 2009 at 12:05 pm

Now I am thinking maybe it is the processing power. When I do it on my single core it transcodes at a max of 56000 and on the dual core its max was 100401. If I had a quad core then possibly the trancoding buffer could stay ahead of the draw and there would be no stutter correct.

Riyad Kalla Says:
March 30th, 2009 at 5:41 am

Derek,

To figure out if it’s your PC, bring up the task manager while the 1080p media is streaming, and check your Processor load… if it’s maxed out at 100%, I think that’s probably the problem… but if it’s hovering around 50% then it’s probably the stuttering that the rest of us are seeing.

metoo Says:
March 30th, 2009 at 7:41 am

I’ve also go the same issue and have raised a support call which has been escalated to Sony UK head office. I’m seeing around 20Mbps load on my media server for a mp4 file created at an average of 1Mbps. It simply cannot be right. It will work on a direct Ethernet link but will not play via wireless or homeplugs as they just cannot cope with this level of saturation. Mediatomb is not encoding anything.

Starting to get really hacked off now and really want this to work.

Riyad Kalla Says:
March 30th, 2009 at 11:27 am

metoo,

Please keep us posted with what you find — this is the most backward bug I’ve ever seen… non-existent bytes bogging down a broadband connection to cause stuttering… just doesn’t make any sense

metoo Says:
March 30th, 2009 at 12:31 pm

Will do. If anyone has any good concise technical info I can provide to Sony then please post it on here. Any reproducible scenarios with technical explanation to back it up would be great. I have pointed them at this thread, and I have also shown my observations re 1Mb/s file flooding my networks to 20Mb/s. Did someone manage to try streaming to a laptop to compare? Or an xbox 360? I could do with detailed network analysis streaming to other devices that I can throw at them as I dont have anything else to test with.

Tes-- Says:
March 30th, 2009 at 1:26 pm

For me, this happens when starting playback of a HD movie after the 50% mark (So, for a 60 minute movie, starting/seeking after 30 minutes produces heavy stuttering). This happens both when streaming and when playing back from the harddisk. It does not matter what size the files are.
If you disconnect en reconnected your tv/monitor during this stuttering playback, serious graphical corruption will appear even after exiting the movie.

Tes-- Says:
March 30th, 2009 at 1:27 pm

Also, there is no increase in bandwidth usage

metoo Says:
March 31st, 2009 at 1:01 am

Thanks Tes, though I believe your issue is different from the one most are experiencing here

DCOne Says:
April 2nd, 2009 at 2:10 am

Does anyone know if firmware 2.70 addresses this?

Kulmanister Says:
April 2nd, 2009 at 12:48 pm

2.70 fixed all my video stream stuttering issues \O/

Kulmanister Says:
April 2nd, 2009 at 12:50 pm

Haven’t checked MP4/matroska videos yet though but I tend to transcode nearly everything (sans MPEG2 videos )

PS3mediaserver is weight its gold now. And oh man I’m a happy chap now

Kulmanister Says:
April 5th, 2009 at 3:57 am

Well, I was too early with my enthusiasm, once again

Playback is a lot better now but it isn’t perfect. There’s still always some stuttering involved, it only happens a lot, lot later now but its still there.

Still, I can now almost cope with the pauses.

Riyad Kalla Says:
April 6th, 2009 at 9:45 pm

Is the time between delays longer? That was the thing that killed me with the previous stuttering, I couldn’t even get through 10 secs of playback without it stuttering before — if it’s only every 10 mins or something that’s livable.

metoo Says:
April 7th, 2009 at 2:21 pm

I’m not sure this is fixed, but it is definitely better. I reckon performance has doubled i.e. my 200m homeplugs could previously deal with 1000K bitrate at 720 res, now they can cope with 2000K easily. The network still seems to flood higher than 1M (16-20M??), but it appears to cope with it better. Wireless is the same – I can now play back around double what I used to be able to – and can now play back 1000K bitrate as long as I set optimize for streaming flag in handbrake when encoding.

As I said, I don’t think it is quite right, and without the homeplugs I’d be limited to low bitrates with wireless only. Haven’t heard anything from Sony yet – will be interesting to hear their response to my support ticket.

Riyad Kalla Says:
April 8th, 2009 at 7:32 am

metoo,

What HomePlug’s are you using? We have been covering Powerline quite a bit here, ultimately waiting for the first HomePlug AV II spec’ed devices to come out and finally give us HD-capable connection speeds in the house — there are some existing “200mbps” devices on the market that claim “HD”, but as you know, in a typical connection scenario all those 200mbps devices perform at like 40-70mbps… hardly that impressive with Wireless-N sitting around easily accessible.

I’d probably crap my pants in happiness if we could get some 500mbps (200 or so actual) HomePlug devices out on the market this year.

metoo Says:
April 9th, 2009 at 12:56 pm

comtrend powerlines. They reckon I’m getting between 70 and 110M – but I dont believe that. That is from upstairs to downstairs though – they get quicker on the same floor.

Riyad Kalla Says:
April 16th, 2009 at 9:25 am

For the folks streaming off of ReadyNAS devices, NETGEAR has released an update to the ReadyNAS OS that revamps the UPnP A/V streaming implementation — I haven’t tested it yet to see if it improves this streaming situation over Wireless-G but plan to later today.

Bigr2008 Says:
April 21st, 2009 at 8:47 am

I used the new verison of ps3 media server with my whs. The program works and is impressive however, when I play movies mt2s files I am experiencing a lot of choopy video. Any ideas guys?

kulmanister Says:
May 21st, 2009 at 7:27 am

^^ can’t comment on your situation with so little background info. Media streaming experience depends so much on available bandwidth that you must keep in mind you can never get as good bandwidth with WiFi/WLAN as with traditional LAN.

My WLAN streaming problems are now finally solved with the latest firmware upgrade (2.76), it was lot better for me than before with 2.70 but now I haven’t had any hickups with whatever I stream through wireless. You need to keep in mind if you use for instance PS3 Media Server with WLAN you need to cap the upper bandwidth limit.

merlin2049er Says:
July 22nd, 2009 at 11:49 am

Yes, this is really annoying. It seems mp4 files are really troublesome.
I’ve used a combination of media streamers (Tversity/Vuze/Mediatomb) from my desktop and laptop PCs.

I actually streamed a divx file without any interruption using Mediatomb on Ubuntu. So I might try converting files to divx and try it again.

Tim Says:
August 3rd, 2009 at 10:33 pm

This problem is really unacceptable!! I have however had some luck resetting my PS3 to factory defaults. It didn’t stop my studdering problem but it did reduce the occurrences.

Gocsan Says:
August 10th, 2009 at 12:42 pm

I originally had the same problem with everyone else when trying to play the mp4 files until I discovered a *transcode* folder. If you browse through this *transcode* folder, you will find another mp4 file which seems like the same file you originally wanted to play. Playing this new mp4 file you will not experience any stuttering. I hope this helps.

Riyad Kalla Says:
August 10th, 2009 at 8:40 pm

Gocsan,

Weird… where, on the originating device? Are you streaming from a standard UPnP A/V device, some other software?

Gocsan Says:
August 11th, 2009 at 5:43 am

Sorry Riyad I forgot to mention that I am using PS3 Media Server. It is pretty much out of the box and I haven’t experienced any stuttering issues with this software so far.

Riyad Kalla Says:
August 11th, 2009 at 7:58 am

Gocsan,

Thanks for the clarification and that’s excellent news — especially for folks looking for non-stuttering alternatives.

hardwaremonkey Says:
September 11th, 2009 at 6:49 am

Just installed PS3 media server pms-setup-windows-1.10.51.e x e on XP, it’s so much more straight forward to use than media player and Tversity. I stopped using media player because I hate their interface and it messing with my Itunes stuff. Tversity is good but sometimes rebuilding the database can be a chore and sometimes it hangs.

I still get stuttering from MP4’s but can only get around that by copying the file to PS3 instead, my network sits at 10%, CPU and memory hardly register, so it’ just a bug – I can live with that from just MP4’s. Maybe there is a setting for this, it looks like I can tweak the settings – I’ll repost if I find it.

Setup:
The one and only thing I had to do was to force the network port to my GigE interface because I think my VMware interface confused it and also changed the thumbnails to 200seconds from 1second – other than that this is THE most straightforward app for PS3 out there – bar none… Good job to those guys…

http://code.google.com/p/ps3mediaserver/

Riyad Kalla Says:
September 11th, 2009 at 8:43 pm

Thanks for the heads up, last year I heard mixed reviews of ps3 media server but recently I’ve been hearing great things about it. Nice to see it progressing.

kulmanister Says:
September 28th, 2009 at 10:59 am

Hello, long time no see

Only today I understood I would never get wireless streaming to work with public IPs, dunno why. So I resetted my Zyxel altogether (it actually lost my password so it was an easy decision…), changed it from bridged mode to routing, made it to fetch public IP for itself, put up a local lan DHCP server, enabled NAT to my 192.168.1.12 address PS3 with ports 80, 443, 5233, 3478, 3479, and 3658 (dunno why PS3 would need http/s server ports open? but so do the internets say).

Enabled uPnP on Zyxel, personally I don’t understand why do some media server uPNP guides recommend you to put up uPNP service discovery also in XP or Vista although all you need is your WLAN/router/switch/WLAN gadgit to let its uPNP open some ports for you…?

The I was able to fetch DHCP ip for my comp, fired up PS3 media server 1.11.356, tagged the new WLAN IPs to my PS3 (IP 192.168.1.12, gateway/router 192.168.1.1, first DNS same as gateway, other DNS IP I checked with ipconfig /all. Most defaults, enabled uPnP and voila, NAT 2 and uPnP enabled. Finally, after some funny 8 months of constant fighting with the troubles.

Yes I was stupid not to understand to change to routing earlier but c’est la vie. Hope this helps somebody.

And wireless G gives me something like 14-16 Mb speed, kinda far from advertised 54

WLAN streaming stutters less if you gap the PS3 MS bandwidth to such extent. PS3 itself shows rather much less, for me 6-7 Mb.

Ah, now for some movies

Riyad Kalla Says:
October 1st, 2009 at 12:36 pm

kulmanister, very nice! Certainly appreciate you taking the time to type all that up for others. I had a buddy that finally got TVersity to stop stuttering on his PS3 by going to Wireless-N, and then the other guy here had good luck with the ps3streamingserver.

I think we are in the clear with some different configs, but I’m just bummed that my Wireless-G isn’t going to hack it for a standard h.264 DVD-quality rip.

I’m *still* waiting for damn Powerling Gigabit adapters to wire up my house with something more solid if they ever happen.

awdawd Says:
October 13th, 2009 at 3:52 pm

I tried to do video as well as picture streaming, but I just ended up copying the files over to my external harddrive or PS3, since it made playback smoother and faster.

kulmanister Says:
October 18th, 2009 at 10:59 am

Well yeah, WiFi-G isn’t enough bandwidth for HD video but you can always plug in Wireless-N hotspot to your PS3, config it and there you go. Another option for “wireless” transfer is just what Riyad Kalla said, Ethernet over Power but it seems to depend on the quality of the wirings in the house.

And I’m only happy if there’s even one place in the internets where people can find what might be the problem with their particular setup, I know I didn’t although I was looking for the solution to my problem for too long.

Mark Says:
October 19th, 2009 at 7:32 am

I’ve been using the PS3 Media Server to stream stuff to the PS3, odd thing is 1080p stuff streams perfectly where as 720p struggles with just a half an hour TV programme.

Riyad Kalla Says:
October 21st, 2009 at 7:57 am

Mark — that’s *really* odd… what kind of network setup you got, also are the 1080p and 720p file formats different? what about bit rates?

Mark Says:
October 31st, 2009 at 6:55 am

Well fingers crossed looks like it was resolved by installing the latest Beta version of PS3 Media Server. Although it does struggle with some of the intensive stuff in both 720p and 1080p from what I first thought but this is more than likely because of my networking throughput…

For some reason the PS3 will only connect properly at 100 Half duplex and will not attempt to connect in any 1000Gb mode so I can only assume there’s a problem with my ethernet cabling whih is currently using Cat5e cable so will try Cat6 cable eventually.

Mark Says:
November 3rd, 2009 at 7:17 am

Scratch that finished re-installing last week and its doing it again now even with the latest beta version, wonder if its related to the OS as before it had x64 XP installed now it has XP SP3 slipstream installed and I have the same problems when streaming small 720p episodes like The Cleveland Show.

Mark Says:
November 16th, 2009 at 2:10 pm

Finally solved this, for anyone having the same problems seems its related to some CTU MKV releases. Under the ‘Common transcode settings’ you need to tick ‘Remux when audio track is AC3′ this solved it for me anyway.

Riyad Kalla Says:
November 19th, 2009 at 6:05 pm

Mark, I don’t work with MKV’s much — do you mean a setting in a particular piece of conversion software or transcoding software?

Mark Says:
November 20th, 2009 at 3:43 am

Yes, sorry I mean the PS3 Media Server software. Only saw this thread the other day, tried it and it worked:

http://ps3mediaserver.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4025

Ben Says:
November 20th, 2009 at 8:11 am

I use TVersity.

I was having massive problems like this, but after reading around and trying a few different things in this thread I can now stream 720p/1080p with no slowdown during 30+Mbps spikes during the stream (Up (720p) and Dark Knight (1080p) during the Imax sequences as an example) over Wireless G.

Previously MP3’s would stutter.

The only setting I changed was Microsoft MPEG-4 to Windows Media Video 8 in the Transcoder settings.

Tested with Up, Dark Knight, 3hr version of Watchmen and a couple of FLAC encoded albums. All of which previously refused to function correctly or smoothly.

Up and Dark Knight were both orginally encoded in mkv, and re-encoded using mkv2vob (Automatic settings, x264 transcoding codec, PCM instead of AC3) to mpg.

Now Sony just needs to implement mkv support for the PS3…

Hope this helps someone.

ericn Says:
June 26th, 2008 at 9:18 pm
I’ve been having this exact same issue… i’ve reencoded movies to smaller width (from 1080p to 720p)… but to no avail.

I’ve been relegated to converting some of my movies to mp4 and then putting them on my apple tv.

it’s quite a pain in the ass as my ps3 is a 40GB model, apple tv = 320GB model.

right now i’m trying to modify the file using quicktime pro and will see how this goes… thanks for the post! hope this is resolved asap!
Riyad Kalla Says:
June 26th, 2008 at 9:55 pm
Ericn, I’m glad it helped atleast let folks know out there that it’s “not their fault” and that something screwy is going on with the PS3.

I’m really surprised you didn’t get it to stop skipping even with SD content… are you *positive* it’s not a bandwidth issue in your case? Did you try hooking the PS3 right to the router and seeing if the stuttering stopped?

I haven’t had any problems with SD content, even decent looking SD (like nice rips of Lost) but I never tried true HD before, and I can’t get it to play smoothly for the life of me.

I can even play at 1.5x speed and it goes OK, which would seem to indicate that the bandwidth issue isn’t it.

Anyway let’s hope that 2.4 fixes it… BTW what are you using to stream to your PS3? Tversity?
tek Says:
August 18th, 2008 at 11:08 am
I’ve tried ps3 streaming via wireless with h264’s WMP11 with appropriate registry edits etc… However.. the movie stutters and lags every second. Isnt bandwidth because I can stream 1080 MGSO4 via the wireless without a glitch or issue, and other files work fine.

Attempting Tversity.. vs WMP now…
Editor Says:
August 18th, 2008 at 2:22 pm
tek,

I’ll be really interested to hear what you find, I tried some 640×480 (not even 480p) video streaming and even *that* stuttered over wireless, forgetting HD at this point I’m down to encoding my videos to 480×320 just to get them to stream without stuttering and now it’s stopped, but that’s ridiculously low.

Let me know what you find.
Turd Furguson Says:
September 13th, 2008 at 8:13 am
The problem could be your encoding methods. If you are using Tversity to stream the files to your PC, you could very well be doing the transcoding. Try some different streaming programs. Twonkymedia is very stable, as is Orb. If you have a Mac use Medialink or Eyeconnect.

If you need help on installing any of them just check out my PS3 tab @ http://blog.hillbillyhardware.net

I have tried to gather and make tutorials available for everyone to help get their streaming working.
Darck1 Says:
November 21st, 2008 at 9:33 am
It’s ridiculous. I *used* to have everything streaming fine – even HD. Now, it doesn’t matter whether it’s lower-rez MP4 or AVI or whatever – stutters all the time. I’m using Mediatomb from my linux server to serve video and it USED to work fine in the past. This is obviously a buffering problem on the PS3. Why is it so broken?
Riyad Kalla Says:
November 21st, 2008 at 9:38 am
Darck1,

I have no idea… I thought Firmware 2.5 would fix it and then the 2.6, but so far no luck. It really sucks. If I play media that is in iPhone-format it doesn’t stutter, but the bitrate is so low that it looks pretty bad (more or less like Hulu).

Out of curiosity are you going over WiFi or wired? I am putting in new Powerline adapters shortly and will compare to see if suddenly it can handle the content better.
Brad Says:
December 11th, 2008 at 8:27 am
Still skipping! Is sony ever going to fix this!
Riyad Kalla Says:
December 12th, 2008 at 5:35 pm
Brad,

That’s a damn good question, I have no idea what’s going on here with the streaming. Either they need to increase the buffer size and tweak the buffering strategy to be more aggressive, or fix whatever bug is causing the stutter because the media I’m trying to stream isn’t that intense at all.

I’d also point out that using PlayOn, I’m able to stream/watch Hulu (low quality) and Netflix (medium quality) just fine… maybe none of it as high as my DVD rips, but those are only done at like 1500 kb/sec anyway, hardly “HD”.
CutterValen Says:
December 13th, 2008 at 11:25 pm
Everything was going great! till someone at playstation got a stupid idea……fucking assholes.
MARTINM Says:
January 1st, 2009 at 12:38 pm
Finally got my movies to stream to my PS3.

I open Windows Media player on my Vista PC then play a movie on my PC ( you can pause it if you like).

Go to my PS3 and open the Windows Media Player Server and select/play any movie faultlessly.

If anyone can explain why , please do.
Chas Says:
February 5th, 2009 at 8:53 pm
This is still a problem regardless of hi or low def even with the latest update. I can stream through iTunes off a 802.11n AP to an HP iTouch PC, no problem-o. Same file to the PS3 off a different, but still 802.11n AP, stutter like a crazed lunatic.

If HP can manage to do make this work fine on a PC via wireless, why can’t Sony with their “media hub” gaming console. What a bunch of crap. I guess I’ll be relegating this thing to just gaming and get another AppleTV.
Riyad Kalla Says:
February 5th, 2009 at 8:57 pm
Chas,

It’s maddening, but I don’t see it with lower bitrate video… just DVD-quality and higher video even when the transfer rate is no where near capping out the connection… it’s maddening because I want to rip my DVD collection to a high quality backup that I can stream when I want, but I can’t because the PS3 doesn’t want to play nice… really really annoying.
Rob Says:
March 2nd, 2009 at 4:23 am
Hi

I’ve got this problem with a 1080p movie. What’s the best way to copy it to the PS3’s hard drive? The file is 8GB. Can I copy it over my wireless network to the PS3 somehow? Thanks!
Lennos Says:
March 9th, 2009 at 5:00 am
Just got 80GB PS3 this weekend only to find that streaming MP4’s stutters really bad. Can copy same MP4 to PS3 HD and plays without any problems (no skipping at all).

Can also stream high res DivX AVI files with no problems.

Finally using PS3 Media Server can transcode MP4 file to MPEG2 on the fly and it streams with no issues at all.

How the hell can Sony manage to stuff up the streaming of MP4 files. When streaming AVI’s and transcoding to MPEG2 the network utilisation is really low, but when streaming MP4 (no transcoding) network utilisation goes way (like 10x over my 54g wireless).

Can’t figure this out, have used TVersity, Nero Media Home, and PS3 Media Server all with same results.

I hate having to debug this $^!+ myself.
Kulmanister Says:
March 13th, 2009 at 3:33 am
My 60GB first batch PS3 stutters with every video stream possible with 2.60 firmware in my 54 Mbps WLAN. WLAN modem/router is Zyxel P-660HW-D1 with the latest firmware. It doesn’t matter if the video is transcoded or not, Java PS3 Media Server 1.10.51 shows the stream speed drops to 500-1000 kbit/s after about 10 minutes of video stream.

The PS3 media server author notes on the change log there was a bug with 1.10.1 version but I feel you can’t help the WLAN stream from stuttering with the current PS3 firmware. It doesn’t seem to matter which media server you use, I’ve tried also Fuppes and TVersity with just the same results.

The transcoding buffer on my 3.8 gig E8500 dual core PC is full but the PS3 receiving buffer/cache seems to take ages to be flushed. It also doesn’t matter if I stream camcorder mpeg2 videos, they act just the same.

I don’t know what mechanism the PS3’s streaming buffer uses but it still seems to be flawed in the 2.6 firmware. I’ve read that it used to work mostly great before 2.5 update so it’s sad that they have put up such many firmware updates with the same problems still intact.
Kulmanister Says:
March 13th, 2009 at 4:09 am
Well my latest findings are that after the initial big dip in speed Java PS3 Media Server seems to happily keep up the bandwidth for quite some time until it starts to show steady 16252 kbit/s speed which it really is not because the video stutters like mad. You can help it for a couple of seconds by pausing the video, otherwise the video is just a frame by frame show. I have tried capping the maximum bandwidth to different values, doesn’t matter. I have tried different transcoding quality settings and just about every possible combination with a no go.

I hereby declare PS3 DLNA streaming capabilities totally broken. I don’t know if it would work if I dropped the WPA2-PSK security. Initially when I connect the PS3 with my WLAN modem/router it shows there is gives me no uPNP connection but afterwards it seems to be fine in the WLAN list. MTU is 1500 and the WLAN connection is bridged aka my ISP gives own IP addresses to my PC and PS3.
Kulmanister Says:
March 14th, 2009 at 2:50 am
Today I tried something I thought would be ridiculous trying to get uPNP/DLNA to work: I disabled uPNP from my PS3.. and lo & behold, WLAN streaming from PC to PS3 started working like a charm in an instant. Great bitrate, good image quality, all video types stream. Now I’m a happy chap \O/

So, uPNP is enabled on my WLAN modem/router but isn’t on my PS3 and that resolved my problem. Using Java PS3 Media Server with MEncoder, don’t know if MTU has got anything to do with it but on 1500 it works well.
Kulmanister Says:
March 14th, 2009 at 6:44 am
Oh well, it was too good to last for ages. Stuttering came back after a couple of hours and there always seems to be stuttering involved if I don’t transcode mpeg4 videos. So only mpeg2 streams an sich but I’m happy I can watch stuff for more than a couple of minutes straight on.

I’m still kinda happy with the performance because earlier I couldn’t get it to work at all. Now to forever wait for well performing PS3 firmware.
Riyad Kalla Says:
March 14th, 2009 at 3:55 pm
Kulmanister,

That’s a seriously detailed run-down right there. Really appreciate you posting that here for everyone that’s running into this crap.

I would have never guessed at playing with the uPNP settings to make headway with this.
Lennos Says:
March 16th, 2009 at 2:57 pm
Well tried Kulmanister tips and they did seem to help for DivX streaming but not MPEG4. Interestingly when I set MTU manually I have a lot more problems connecting to media servers. Have to restart TVersity for it to be seen again (Don’t know what was going on there).

Anyway have now setup wired connection and all is working good (obviously with more bandwidth), however something that is still very surprising is the utilisation levels. When play MPEG4 files (Nero Digital Cinema AVC) it uses close to 99% on a 100Mbps link. Compare this with an equivalent quality DivX file which only seems to use around 30-35%. However even the lower DivX utilisation would explain stuttering on a wireless network as I have hardly ever seen a wireless network that can sustain transfer levels of this speed. For readers information MPEG4 and Divx files sizes are roughly the same 750-800MB converted DVD episodes of about 42min playing time, so that should give some idea of the quality of the video being streamed. Dolby Digital 2ch or Dolby Digital 5.1ch.

Another thing of interest is that when videos stutter it is always the audio in MPEG4 that hits 0Kbps first and not video which seems to drop to 1Mbps before still video and stuttering starts.

Anyway wired connection has fixed my immediate problem but will continue to packet trace and see if I can find anything. Previous packet traces showed alot of duplicate ACK’s coming through from the PS3 so not sure what this is all about.
Kulmanister Says:
March 17th, 2009 at 4:28 am
Nice to hear my findings with the PC->PS3 WLAN streaming are appreciated. There are still occasional problems with my PS3 receiving the stream, the performance seems to degrade while the hours passi. I still think there’s some kind of receiving buffer getting full and PS3 is not flushing it early enough so it just stalls for the moment. The 54G WLAN speed is good enough for constant HD streaming, that’s what I’m totally positive of.
Kulmanister Says:
March 17th, 2009 at 4:31 am
OK maybe I exaggerated a bit with the HD streaming but at least my 54mbit WLAN can in my tests handle “almost HD” -bitrates
Riyad Kalla Says:
March 17th, 2009 at 7:24 am
Lennos,

Really interesting data point on the bandwidth utilization even over a Wired connection. I don’t really understand that though, saturating a 100 mbit connection for a 800 mb file — that would imply that the PS3 would have transferred the entire file within seconds/minute but it’s got a 42-min run time… so what is it doing the rest of that time?
Lennos Says:
March 18th, 2009 at 5:11 am
Further analysis of he network utilisation shows an average of around 60% utilisation for MPEG4’s. At least not maxing out the connection but still pretty high considering the size of the file.

The PS3 info on the file shows that the Video Codec is AVC 2.4Mbps, but when playing the video and displaying information on the PS3 it gets up to 8Mbps for Video in the top right of the screen. My assumption is that this is the average bit rate at which the file was encoded (actually 2.38Mbps was chosen in Nero but close enough), so I would have thought that ~2.4Mbps should be the network transfer rate, but obviously up to 8Mbps depending on video action. Still even at this rate I can’t figure out why it is transferring at around 50Mbps over the wired network, and this would be far too high under wireless even with the best signal and no encryption.

Is it possible that video decompression is happening at the streaming server (Vista PC running TVersity) and the resulting larger data volume is then being transferred across the wire. I would have thought that with streaming video the information would be sent in compressed format and decoded and uncompressed at the destination (PS3)? I do not see any additional CPU utilisation on my Vista machine when streaming video (but on a QUAD core Phenom I suppose it has more than enough grunt to mask any issues. However if I transcode the video while streaming into MPEG2 format I definately see a CPU hit (as one would expect), but when transcoding video I do not see the stutter.

Confusing, I do not really see any major issues in Wireshark when capturing the traffic and TCP Windows are being filled.

Will keep testing.
Lennos Says:
March 18th, 2009 at 5:26 am
OK found Nero has Profile Category of Sony with a specific profile of PS3 AVC available. Am re-encoding a DVD episode using this profile with no changes to the default Video Settings or Encoder settings. Will set Video bit rate quality to 2.38Mbps (same as what I have used for other encodings that are stuttering), Maybe this special PS3 AVC profile is optimised for playback on the device. Will post results shortly.
Lennos Says:
March 18th, 2009 at 6:27 am
Nero PS3 profile made no difference to network utilisation.
Riyad Kalla Says:
March 18th, 2009 at 7:56 am
Lennos,

To determine if decompression is occuring on the TVersity side, bring up the process manager on the machine that hosts TVersity and see if it’s pegging the CPU.

TVersity should not be doing any post-processing on the video if it’s already in a format the PS3 understands — it should just pass it through like a download, maybe using 3-5% of CPU to handle the high speed connection. That’s what I have with my NAS and PS3 now. But if you are seeing 20-50+ percent CPU usage, then TVersity is doing something to it.
Lennos Says:
March 18th, 2009 at 2:06 pm
I only see increase CPU when I force trancoding of MPEG4 into another format (MPEG2), meaning it converts on the fly thus the CPU hit. I am not seeing any CPU hit when just streaming MPEG4 direct with no transcoding. I just can’t figure out why it is using so much data on the wire. Your comments about the size of the file being transferred in minutes at this speed I agree with and I see this when copying the file to the PS3, so it has me stumped why this is happening when streaming the content. Everyone should note that I do not see this level of utilisation when streaming DivX movies of roughly the same quality, it is only when streaming MPEG4. PS3 definitely is doing something weird with these files.
Riyad Kalla Says:
March 19th, 2009 at 8:47 am
Lennos,

Damn interesting find — now I’m doubly confused as to what the PS3 is doing with the data or to TVersity… I wonder if the “wire rape” scales with the size of the original media or if for some reason it’s always pegged around the same level — which would be even stranger.

I’ve encoded everything I have as MPEG4 so it plays nice with my iPhone — I really don’t want to re-encode just so the PS3 is happy… any thoughts on how to proceed?
Lennos Says:
March 19th, 2009 at 12:53 pm
At this stage I have no issues playing MPEG4 when copied down to the PS3 so I have tended to copy a couple of videos down and watch them straight off the hard disk. Running over a wired connection also has no probs (despite the high util%), it is only the wireless where the issue is.

Also note it is not just with TVersity as I have also tried PS3 Media player v1.11 and Nero v8 media server. If you really want to stream then I would use either TVersity with forced Transcoding or the PS3 Media Server with Transcoding enabled as it doesn’t seem to have the same problems.

Re-encoding wasn’t an option for me as I have too many files, so I just ran a wired connection given the rest of my home was already cabled (except this one room). It is not like the PS3 can’t play this stuff it just can’t stream it over wireless. One thing I am going to test is whether I can play the material over wireless using a laptop and Nero Showtime. I now need to see if this is just a PS3 problem or whether it is a more generic issue. Will post results. It would be good to see others results if they can do the same also as it may not be a PS3 thing.
Riyad Kalla Says:
March 20th, 2009 at 2:19 pm
Lennos,

Damn-interested to see what you find with playback on a laptop and not the PS3.
derek Says:
March 29th, 2009 at 11:41 am
I am trying to stream 1080p to my ps3 using a wired connection and the ps3 1.10.51 media server. My network runs at 100 mbps. I even tried a crossover cable from the laptop to the ps3, still 100mbps. Anyways no matter what I do when streaming 1080p with this media server it stutters. Is it the buffer on the ps3 or my network. If I pause the movie for awhile the buffer eventually gets full but then when I start watching it the buffer eventually gets drained until it stutters again. This only happens on 1080p, on 720 it works fine. My laptop is a dual core with 3 gigs of ram. (dv9810ca). Any help, or if you know what the issue is, it would be much appreciated.
derek Says:
March 29th, 2009 at 11:43 am
Ive also tried playing with virtually all the settings on the ps3 media server, nothing changed anything.
derek Says:
March 29th, 2009 at 12:05 pm
Now I am thinking maybe it is the processing power. When I do it on my single core it transcodes at a max of 56000 and on the dual core its max was 100401. If I had a quad core then possibly the trancoding buffer could stay ahead of the draw and there would be no stutter correct.
Riyad Kalla Says:
March 30th, 2009 at 5:41 am
Derek,

To figure out if it’s your PC, bring up the task manager while the 1080p media is streaming, and check your Processor load… if it’s maxed out at 100%, I think that’s probably the problem… but if it’s hovering around 50% then it’s probably the stuttering that the rest of us are seeing.
metoo Says:
March 30th, 2009 at 7:41 am
I’ve also go the same issue and have raised a support call which has been escalated to Sony UK head office. I’m seeing around 20Mbps load on my media server for a mp4 file created at an average of 1Mbps. It simply cannot be right. It will work on a direct Ethernet link but will not play via wireless or homeplugs as they just cannot cope with this level of saturation. Mediatomb is not encoding anything.

Starting to get really hacked off now and really want this to work.
Riyad Kalla Says:
March 30th, 2009 at 11:27 am
metoo,

Please keep us posted with what you find — this is the most backward bug I’ve ever seen… non-existent bytes bogging down a broadband connection to cause stuttering… just doesn’t make any sense
metoo Says:
March 30th, 2009 at 12:31 pm
Will do. If anyone has any good concise technical info I can provide to Sony then please post it on here. Any reproducible scenarios with technical explanation to back it up would be great. I have pointed them at this thread, and I have also shown my observations re 1Mb/s file flooding my networks to 20Mb/s. Did someone manage to try streaming to a laptop to compare? Or an xbox 360? I could do with detailed network analysis streaming to other devices that I can throw at them as I dont have anything else to test with.
Tes-- Says:
March 30th, 2009 at 1:26 pm
For me, this happens when starting playback of a HD movie after the 50% mark (So, for a 60 minute movie, starting/seeking after 30 minutes produces heavy stuttering). This happens both when streaming and when playing back from the harddisk. It does not matter what size the files are.
If you disconnect en reconnected your tv/monitor during this stuttering playback, serious graphical corruption will appear even after exiting the movie.
Tes-- Says:
March 30th, 2009 at 1:27 pm
Also, there is no increase in bandwidth usage
metoo Says:
March 31st, 2009 at 1:01 am
Thanks Tes, though I believe your issue is different from the one most are experiencing here
DCOne Says:
April 2nd, 2009 at 2:10 am
Does anyone know if firmware 2.70 addresses this?
Kulmanister Says:
April 2nd, 2009 at 12:48 pm
2.70 fixed all my video stream stuttering issues \O/
Kulmanister Says:
April 2nd, 2009 at 12:50 pm
Haven’t checked MP4/matroska videos yet though but I tend to transcode nearly everything (sans MPEG2 videos )

PS3mediaserver is weight its gold now. And oh man I’m a happy chap now
Kulmanister Says:
April 5th, 2009 at 3:57 am
Well, I was too early with my enthusiasm, once again

Playback is a lot better now but it isn’t perfect. There’s still always some stuttering involved, it only happens a lot, lot later now but its still there.

Still, I can now almost cope with the pauses.
Riyad Kalla Says:
April 6th, 2009 at 9:45 pm
Is the time between delays longer? That was the thing that killed me with the previous stuttering, I couldn’t even get through 10 secs of playback without it stuttering before — if it’s only every 10 mins or something that’s livable.
metoo Says:
April 7th, 2009 at 2:21 pm
I’m not sure this is fixed, but it is definitely better. I reckon performance has doubled i.e. my 200m homeplugs could previously deal with 1000K bitrate at 720 res, now they can cope with 2000K easily. The network still seems to flood higher than 1M (16-20M??), but it appears to cope with it better. Wireless is the same – I can now play back around double what I used to be able to – and can now play back 1000K bitrate as long as I set optimize for streaming flag in handbrake when encoding.

As I said, I don’t think it is quite right, and without the homeplugs I’d be limited to low bitrates with wireless only. Haven’t heard anything from Sony yet – will be interesting to hear their response to my support ticket.
Riyad Kalla Says:
April 8th, 2009 at 7:32 am
metoo,

What HomePlug’s are you using? We have been covering Powerline quite a bit here, ultimately waiting for the first HomePlug AV II spec’ed devices to come out and finally give us HD-capable connection speeds in the house — there are some existing “200mbps” devices on the market that claim “HD”, but as you know, in a typical connection scenario all those 200mbps devices perform at like 40-70mbps… hardly that impressive with Wireless-N sitting around easily accessible.

I’d probably crap my pants in happiness if we could get some 500mbps (200 or so actual) HomePlug devices out on the market this year.
metoo Says:
April 9th, 2009 at 12:56 pm
comtrend powerlines. They reckon I’m getting between 70 and 110M – but I dont believe that. That is from upstairs to downstairs though – they get quicker on the same floor.
Riyad Kalla Says:
April 16th, 2009 at 9:25 am
For the folks streaming off of ReadyNAS devices, NETGEAR has released an update to the ReadyNAS OS that revamps the UPnP A/V streaming implementation — I haven’t tested it yet to see if it improves this streaming situation over Wireless-G but plan to later today.
Bigr2008 Says:
April 21st, 2009 at 8:47 am
I used the new verison of ps3 media server with my whs. The program works and is impressive however, when I play movies mt2s files I am experiencing a lot of choopy video. Any ideas guys?
kulmanister Says:
May 21st, 2009 at 7:27 am
^^ can’t comment on your situation with so little background info. Media streaming experience depends so much on available bandwidth that you must keep in mind you can never get as good bandwidth with WiFi/WLAN as with traditional LAN.

My WLAN streaming problems are now finally solved with the latest firmware upgrade (2.76), it was lot better for me than before with 2.70 but now I haven’t had any hickups with whatever I stream through wireless. You need to keep in mind if you use for instance PS3 Media Server with WLAN you need to cap the upper bandwidth limit.
merlin2049er Says:
July 22nd, 2009 at 11:49 am
Yes, this is really annoying. It seems mp4 files are really troublesome.
I’ve used a combination of media streamers (Tversity/Vuze/Mediatomb) from my desktop and laptop PCs.

I actually streamed a divx file without any interruption using Mediatomb on Ubuntu. So I might try converting files to divx and try it again.
Tim Says:
August 3rd, 2009 at 10:33 pm
This problem is really unacceptable!! I have however had some luck resetting my PS3 to factory defaults. It didn’t stop my studdering problem but it did reduce the occurrences.
Gocsan Says:
August 10th, 2009 at 12:42 pm
I originally had the same problem with everyone else when trying to play the mp4 files until I discovered a *transcode* folder. If you browse through this *transcode* folder, you will find another mp4 file which seems like the same file you originally wanted to play. Playing this new mp4 file you will not experience any stuttering. I hope this helps.
Riyad Kalla Says:
August 10th, 2009 at 8:40 pm
Gocsan,

Weird… where, on the originating device? Are you streaming from a standard UPnP A/V device, some other software?
Gocsan Says:
August 11th, 2009 at 5:43 am
Sorry Riyad I forgot to mention that I am using PS3 Media Server. It is pretty much out of the box and I haven’t experienced any stuttering issues with this software so far.
Riyad Kalla Says:
August 11th, 2009 at 7:58 am
Gocsan,

Thanks for the clarification and that’s excellent news — especially for folks looking for non-stuttering alternatives.
hardwaremonkey Says:
September 11th, 2009 at 6:49 am
Just installed PS3 media server pms-setup-windows-1.10.51.e x e on XP, it’s so much more straight forward to use than media player and Tversity. I stopped using media player because I hate their interface and it messing with my Itunes stuff. Tversity is good but sometimes rebuilding the database can be a chore and sometimes it hangs.

I still get stuttering from MP4’s but can only get around that by copying the file to PS3 instead, my network sits at 10%, CPU and memory hardly register, so it’ just a bug – I can live with that from just MP4’s. Maybe there is a setting for this, it looks like I can tweak the settings – I’ll repost if I find it.

Setup:
The one and only thing I had to do was to force the network port to my GigE interface because I think my VMware interface confused it and also changed the thumbnails to 200seconds from 1second – other than that this is THE most straightforward app for PS3 out there – bar none… Good job to those guys…

http://code.google.com/p/ps3mediaserver/
Riyad Kalla Says:
September 11th, 2009 at 8:43 pm
Thanks for the heads up, last year I heard mixed reviews of ps3 media server but recently I’ve been hearing great things about it. Nice to see it progressing.
kulmanister Says:
September 28th, 2009 at 10:59 am
Hello, long time no see

Only today I understood I would never get wireless streaming to work with public IPs, dunno why. So I resetted my Zyxel altogether (it actually lost my password so it was an easy decision…), changed it from bridged mode to routing, made it to fetch public IP for itself, put up a local lan DHCP server, enabled NAT to my 192.168.1.12 address PS3 with ports 80, 443, 5233, 3478, 3479, and 3658 (dunno why PS3 would need http/s server ports open? but so do the internets say).

Enabled uPnP on Zyxel, personally I don’t understand why do some media server uPNP guides recommend you to put up uPNP service discovery also in XP or Vista although all you need is your WLAN/router/switch/WLAN gadgit to let its uPNP open some ports for you…?

The I was able to fetch DHCP ip for my comp, fired up PS3 media server 1.11.356, tagged the new WLAN IPs to my PS3 (IP 192.168.1.12, gateway/router 192.168.1.1, first DNS same as gateway, other DNS IP I checked with ipconfig /all. Most defaults, enabled uPnP and voila, NAT 2 and uPnP enabled. Finally, after some funny 8 months of constant fighting with the troubles.

Yes I was stupid not to understand to change to routing earlier but c’est la vie. Hope this helps somebody.

And wireless G gives me something like 14-16 Mb speed, kinda far from advertised 54

WLAN streaming stutters less if you gap the PS3 MS bandwidth to such extent. PS3 itself shows rather much less, for me 6-7 Mb.

Ah, now for some movies
Riyad Kalla Says:
October 1st, 2009 at 12:36 pm
kulmanister, very nice! Certainly appreciate you taking the time to type all that up for others. I had a buddy that finally got TVersity to stop stuttering on his PS3 by going to Wireless-N, and then the other guy here had good luck with the ps3streamingserver.

I think we are in the clear with some different configs, but I’m just bummed that my Wireless-G isn’t going to hack it for a standard h.264 DVD-quality rip.

I’m *still* waiting for damn Powerling Gigabit adapters to wire up my house with something more solid if they ever happen.
awdawd Says:
October 13th, 2009 at 3:52 pm
I tried to do video as well as picture streaming, but I just ended up copying the files over to my external harddrive or PS3, since it made playback smoother and faster.
kulmanister Says:
October 18th, 2009 at 10:59 am
Well yeah, WiFi-G isn’t enough bandwidth for HD video but you can always plug in Wireless-N hotspot to your PS3, config it and there you go. Another option for “wireless” transfer is just what Riyad Kalla said, Ethernet over Power but it seems to depend on the quality of the wirings in the house.

And I’m only happy if there’s even one place in the internets where people can find what might be the problem with their particular setup, I know I didn’t although I was looking for the solution to my problem for too long.
Mark Says:
October 19th, 2009 at 7:32 am
I’ve been using the PS3 Media Server to stream stuff to the PS3, odd thing is 1080p stuff streams perfectly where as 720p struggles with just a half an hour TV programme.
Riyad Kalla Says:
October 21st, 2009 at 7:57 am
Mark — that’s *really* odd… what kind of network setup you got, also are the 1080p and 720p file formats different? what about bit rates?
Mark Says:
October 31st, 2009 at 6:55 am
Well fingers crossed looks like it was resolved by installing the latest Beta version of PS3 Media Server. Although it does struggle with some of the intensive stuff in both 720p and 1080p from what I first thought but this is more than likely because of my networking throughput…

For some reason the PS3 will only connect properly at 100 Half duplex and will not attempt to connect in any 1000Gb mode so I can only assume there’s a problem with my ethernet cabling whih is currently using Cat5e cable so will try Cat6 cable eventually.
Mark Says:
November 3rd, 2009 at 7:17 am
Scratch that finished re-installing last week and its doing it again now even with the latest beta version, wonder if its related to the OS as before it had x64 XP installed now it has XP SP3 slipstream installed and I have the same problems when streaming small 720p episodes like The Cleveland Show.
Mark Says:
November 16th, 2009 at 2:10 pm
Finally solved this, for anyone having the same problems seems its related to some CTU MKV releases. Under the ‘Common transcode settings’ you need to tick ‘Remux when audio track is AC3′ this solved it for me anyway.
Riyad Kalla Says:
November 19th, 2009 at 6:05 pm
Mark, I don’t work with MKV’s much — do you mean a setting in a particular piece of conversion software or transcoding software?
Mark Says:
November 20th, 2009 at 3:43 am
Yes, sorry I mean the PS3 Media Server software. Only saw this thread the other day, tried it and it worked:

http://ps3mediaserver.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4025
Ben Says:
November 20th, 2009 at 8:11 am
I use TVersity.

I was having massive problems like this, but after reading around and trying a few different things in this thread I can now stream 720p/1080p with no slowdown during 30+Mbps spikes during the stream (Up (720p) and Dark Knight (1080p) during the Imax sequences as an example) over Wireless G.

Previously MP3’s would stutter.

The only setting I changed was Microsoft MPEG-4 to Windows Media Video 8 in the Transcoder settings.

Tested with Up, Dark Knight, 3hr version of Watchmen and a couple of FLAC encoded albums. All of which previously refused to function correctly or smoothly.

Up and Dark Knight were both orginally encoded in mkv, and re-encoded using mkv2vob (Automatic settings, x264 transcoding codec, PCM instead of AC3) to mpg.

Now Sony just needs to implement mkv support for the PS3…

Hope this helps someone.

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