Z9X - SMB playback issues while streaming from NAS

You know that is a good call, I will turn off ethernet, enable wifi and try tonight. I've got a Wifi 6 AP in the house so it should have plenty of bandwidth available. I'm seeing lots of issues with Synology and Zidoo myself as well. Thanks for the brainstorming khollister!

 

One other observation on this end - I do get stutters or pauses in 4K movies on teh Z9X only when I have another job running that is accessing the NAS drives (backup job or even just ripping a UHD and writing the file directly to the NAS. If there is anything running on the NAS or potentially enough network traffic from other devices sharing the switch, it is conceivable you are having network collisions the Zidoo doesn't deal with properly.

try disconnecting everything from the switch except the Z9X and the NAS

 

One other bit of info for completeness - I am running my QNAP without RAID, just 5 independent volumes so there are no RAID background processes running. I also do not have any server processes running on the QNAP other than SMB - no DLNA, Plex, security cameras, etc.

 

My Nas only has SMB running, no DNLA, NFS services, etc. All 5 disks are setup as SHR not true raid.

 

Boxer,

I was corresponding with Zidoo support via Facebook and they provided me with the below debug instructions. I plan to try this tomorrow and capture when the issue occurs. Can you also do the same? Maybe if we send them multiple examples that show similar issues they will dig deeper into the issue.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/...jDTYMMQ3tufOPVrJ6AR_5ZbxFGd99C0oEkxGEPaavEyOQ

 

I am also having random stuttering on my new Z9X when streaming UHD MKVs from an SMB share on my Mac. I have a large RAID 5 with 9 WD Red Pros in it - very fast. Nothing else on my network seems to be having this kind of problem. I have read EVERY message in this thread and tried every idea floated no matter how silly is sounded. Nothing worked. I am on 6.4.42_G firmware and running ZDMC 19.4. This is maddening!

I will try the debugging mentioned in the prior thread. We have to figure this out! This box has such promise but this is a showstopper - literally.

 

Just to add in to this thread my report from another that may be related.

If I start a 4k movie (iso) as play movie all goes well end to end. When I choose play Menu the menu stutters really badly and if I play the movie from the menu it continues to stutter constantly in the movie. This is playing from Samba 2 share hosted on a RAID1 NAS.

Linkstation DS220 NAS, unmanaged Gb switch, cat6 cables, Zidoo (reports 1Gb connect).

zidoo, Denon AVR4400h, LG 85000SKA

 

The process linked above for generating the log file worked well and I was able to capture output during a freeze this morning. Based on looking at the log there is a lot of chatter around HDCP around the time of freezing. I've sent my log off to Zidoo for evaluation but the entries in the log file during the freeze are very different from what's seen during smooth playback, so hopefully it provides a clue.

 

Thank you! I plan to do the same. Unfortunately, I have a big project with a tight deadline looming so I can't mess with it right now.

How did you get the files to Zidoo? Where do we send them?

 

service@zidoo.tv

 

OK, I am doing this tonight. I'll report back. I decided I want to get this fixed more than I want to meet my deadline.

 

Well, I ran Realtek Debug until I had a stutter. Lots of log files generated. Not sure which is the important log file but I checked rtk_dump/20230105/DumpLog/DumpLog_20230105_182542.log and found Kodi doing a lot of activity it should not have been doing while I was watching the movie. It seemed to be scanning my network share and doing things in directories which had other movies in them. I remember reading this in at least one of the other posts in this thread. This is a problem. It should not be happening. It may in fact be the cause of this issue. We need to figure out how to stop it.

Something else important, I can see the IP address of my server and the username and password used to access that share in this log file! This is a very serious security issue. There is no way I am sending this to anyone else unless I clean it up first. What a pain.

 

I cleaned up the log file and submitted everything to Zidoo with an explanation of what I was doing when the problem happened. I noticed the scanning of other directories only happened at the beginning when I started logging and at the end when I stopped logging. Maybe that was just the ZDMC menu loading itself and had nothing to do with the actual stutter. Who knows...

I will keep playing.

EDIT: I have confirmed if I let the logging continue for 10 minutes past the stutter, the access to other directories does NOT happen at the time of the stutter. I have also confirmed the video directories being accessed in the log corresponds to items being displayed in the menu. At least that mystery is solved. I think we can rule this out. Still looking for something else.

 

Ran the logging again. Got more stutters. Found some interesting log entries only showing up around the time of the stutters:

01-05 20:39:47.461 E/RVSD_VDecRtk(18760): 3711.[RVSD] wait decode done empty.h:0xafa7e000.vpu(0x7107dc87,0x710a7e85,172542,r:16604673).ring(0x71059b29,0x710a7e85).wpDiff:0.
01-05 20:39:47.464 E/RVSD_VDecRtk(18760): 289.[RVSD] empty new data < 1024.h:0xafa7e000.vpu(0x7107dc87,0x710a7e85,172542,r:16604673).ring(0x71059b29,0x710a7e85).wpDiff:0.

01-05 20:40:07.106 E/RVSD_VDecRtk(18760): 3711.[RVSD] wait decode done empty.h:0xafa7e000.vpu(0x703081ae,0x70339a60,202930,r:16574285).ring(0x702d5bd4,0x70339a60).wpDiff:0.
01-05 20:40:07.107 E/RVSD_VDecRtk(18760): 289.[RVSD] empty new data < 1024.h:0xafa7e000.vpu(0x703081ae,0x70339a60,202930,r:16574285).ring(0x702d5bd4,0x70339a60).wpDiff:0.

01-05 20:40:10.108 E/RVSD_VDecRtk(18760): 289.[RVSD] empty new data < 1024.h:0xafa7e000.vpu(0x70339a60,0x703f11a2,751426,r:16025789).ring(0x70339a60,0x703f11a2).wpDiff:0.

01-05 20:40:10.575 E/RVSD_VDecRtk(18760): 3711.[RVSD] wait decode done empty.h:0xafa7e000.vpu(0x703b11a2,0x70400e46,326820,r:16450395).ring(0x703b11a2,0x70400e46).wpDiff:0.

01-05 20:40:13.109 E/RVSD_VDecRtk(18760): 289.[RVSD] empty new data < 1024.h:0xafa7e000.vpu(0x70435ea6,0x704b5ea6,524288,r:16252927).ring(0x70435ea6,0x704b5ea6).wpDiff:0.

01-05 20:40:13.595 W/Thread-11( 6776): type=1400 audit(0.0:3423): avc: denied { read } for name="ubject_r:boot_prop:s0" dev="tmpfs" ino=2154 scontext=u:r:system_app:s0 tcontext=ubject_r:boot_prop:s0 tclass=file permissive=0
01-05 20:40:13.599 E/libc ( 6776): Access denied finding property "ro.boot.storage"
01-05 20:40:13.619 E/RVSD_VDecRtk(18760): 3711.[RVSD] wait decode done empty.h:0xafa7e000.vpu(0x70435ea6,0x704f5ea6,786432,r:15990783).ring(0x70435ea6,0x704f5ea6).wpDiff:0.

EDIT: Sent these second log files to Zidoo and my email was rejected as "550 Mail content denied." Looks like we need a better way to coordinate with them.

 

Weird the email got rejected, I received a reply from Zidoo Service this morning indicating they had received my attachment and were forwarding to engineering. Did you include some of the log snippets in the body of the email? Wonder if that may have triggered a content filter on their side.

 

Yes I did include some log entires. I thought the same thing so I removed them but it still got rejected. I ended up getting it to go though by creating a new email from scratch. I think it didn't like the forward I had in there. Go figure. I haven't heard anything back yet.

I had a real bad stutter last night but I wasn't logging. I'll try to get a really bad one logged. This is the single biggest issue with this product. It is affecting the core functionality of the device, it has caused people to sell their units, it is showing up in product reviews on Amazon and is spreading through negative word of mouth. It should be at the top of the priority list. As a software engineer myself, I understand you can't fix what you can't reproduce so I will do everything I can to help them reproduce it.

 

Agreed, I'm also a software engineering director so understand what they need to be able to isolate the issue. I really like the product otherwise and it's very nice to have my entire media library available at full quality through one device. I told them I'll do what I can to help them isolate the issue so we can make the device even better for all users.

 

Excellent! I agree. It is a good product with great potential! It just has a couple of issues - this being the worst. Luckily, not everyone has this issue. Or maybe it is too bad it is so intermittent, otherwise it would have been fixed by now. As we know, these reports have been coming in for years.

I will do whatever it takes to help with this. I'll even roll up my sleeves and get my hands dirty in code. This can be fixed and it must be fixed!

 

For those that commented on unusual HDCP activity in the log, do you have HDCP disabled, set to 2.2 or 1.4? I have one on 2.2 since I thought I had a couple HDMI handshake issues early on. And I have no stutters.

 

I had mine on 2.2 but have disabled since looking at the logs. Didn’t have any freezing or stuttering last night after the change but will test further tonight.