Z9X - SMB playback issues while streaming from NAS

Thanks. Yes, I have tried different ports and link aggregation (even though standard gigabit ethernet should be plenty for streaming). Nothing has worked. I even replaced ALL my switches with no change. Really annoying. I have tried running standard MacOS SAMBA as well as a custom install of SAMBA 3 as well as NFS through NFS Manager. Nothing works. Thanks for sharing your SAMBA settings. I'll be curious to see if I can tweak anything in those areas.

Again, all of this should not be necessary. It should just work. I am a video editing professional. I have 278TB of RAID 5 in this system. I can't easily just move to a Raspberry Pi with a single drive and call it a day. Very frustrating.

 

Yes, I agree. It is probably some strange combination which we have been unable to identify. It seems to happen on high bitrate H.265 video like full UHD rips with HDR / Dolby Vision and Lossless Audio. Sometimes regular BD and BD 3D rips have problems but it is pretty rare. Maybe that is because most of what I watch these days in UHD rips. If I watch low bitrate stuff, it works flawless. I have tried every setting I could think of on the box including every non-network setting in this entire thread. Nothing has worked.

Yes, this is exactly what I do...Full quality rips from UHD using MakeMKV. Nothing fanacy. no re-encoding.

Thanks for the ideas on the Zidoo settings. I will try them all.

I always turn off the Zidoo after watching it and it boots fresh every time. In fact, I tested not shutting it down and the stuttering seems a little worse.

I really think it is something in the network code. That McBluna link I posted earlier shows absolutely atrocious SAMBA performance on this box. It seems obvious that should be fixed before we tear everything else apart trying to figure this out. *shrug*

I appreciate the earnest attempt to help me with this problem. Sometimes I get the vibe people think this is all in our heads. I know I hear most people don't have this problem but this thread is 23 pages long and has been running for almost two and a half years now. This is obviously a very real problem. It is not being imagined by all these customers.

 

Yes so same here lossless audio, H.265 UHD MKV / HDR / Dolby Vision.
I tried all the high bitrate stuff 100-120mb/s and no issue. I also tried all the titles people mentioned had issues I had with no issues.
My displays are Panasonic / LG OLED TVs or JVC N7 PJ so no player led DV required. As I said I have CEC turned off.
I know some that had issues had Sony displays.
I use NFS as know it's more network efficient, but to test have tried SMB to watch a few high bitrate films all the way through and that's also fine for me.
I do have Samba server turned off on the Zidoo as have no internal / external hard drives connected anyway.

 

So strange and frustrating.

 

What display do you use? What are your other setting for things like DV & HDR, VS10, Samba server, HDCP, CEC etc?

 

Has anyone found a resolution for this? If I try and watch a large 4k remux MKV a get stutters every 10 minutes or so where the frame and sound briefly freeze for half a second and then the movie carries on. My Z1000 Pro is attached via ethernet to my Asustor Nas. I never had any issues watching through Infuse on my AppleTv but went with Zidoo because it would play the atmos files properly. The zidoo is connected to my Marantz Cinema 50 and then into my Samsung Q80T if that matters.

I have run the ethernet through a gigabit switch as other cables went to my ps4 and apple tv, and i have also tried going straight from my modem (Bell Giga Hub 4000) directly to the zidoo.

 

1st , what exactly are you remuxing on your 4K MKVs?... just to rule out a possible file issue. 2nd, when is the last time you actually rebooted both your router and NAS? Both of those network devices benefit from an occasional reboot.

 

It is not a common problem (I have Z1000Pro, Gigabit Ethernet, router and switches with 3x older NAS's). So you need to look closely at your network set up.
The only time I ever had momentary stutters/freezing was when relying on wifi or Ethernet-over-power with large (over 40Gb size) 4K remuxed files.
As suggested above, reboot all network equipment as a start and perhaps check your NAS for background tasks. I found my QNAP's go off and "do their own thing" at times, especially if PLEX is installed.

 

The NAS and Zidoo have both recently been rebooted as that was one of the first things I did. I do not believe it is an issue with the files as they play fine on Infuse Apple TV. I also took a movie that is having issue and put it on an external drive and attached it without any issues.

 

'The only time I ever had momentary stutters/freezing was when relying on wifi or Ethernet-over-power with large (over 40Gb size) 4K remuxed files.'


The majority of my media library are large 4K remuxes well above 50GB. My NAS is a just used for storage as I have nothing else running on it not even Plex. I cant even access it from outside my network as I turned that off after the Deadbolt issues that hit Asustor and Synology 2 years ago.

 

You need to try rebooting your network devices also, so switches and routers. I've had issues occasionally, rebooting my switch solved it 2-3 months back. I had a simular issue last week, rebooted switch and still not solved, rebooted internet router and all came back to normal. I suspect the router being the default gateway and I strongly suspect the DNS server was my issue, I had a new router 6 months ago (new ISP) and it's been not as good as my old Asus router.

 

The issue appears to be Zidoo related, it works for most but not for some. There is no network reset function to clear up the configuration. You could try to backup all data, do factory reset, restore HT and try again. To be sure that nothing is stuck inside Zidoo you would need to perform full image restore like rolling back to earlier firmware. Install basic image, not G and no other programs. Assign static IP and don't activate SAMBA or anything else. Test first on large files starting from Media Center before you restore HT database.

 

Not arguing Zidoo doesn't have a hand in this, but since the majority don’t have the issue, I'm not sure Zidoo can be wholly to blame. I strongly suspect it’s either a weird Zidoo setting some have set, although when some have had it from day 1 or even have it after a full factory reset it seems more likely that it’s Zidoo is being less tolerant than other kit to network issues and the combination of Zidoo with some mild network issue seems more likely to be the issue.

I let my friend borrow my Z9x after I setup his Synology NAS drive and whilst I had no issue with it and his Synology in my house, when I took them both to his, whilst changing not a single setting he then had a skipping issue. I rebooted his switch by his TV and no change, then we rebooted the switch by his Synology and router and the issue went away. Whilst the Zidoo had an issue from the network / Synology, his Plex running on his Nvidia sat next to the Zidoo talking to his Plex server on the same Synology and network did not. The issue was his switches needing a reboot (they do 2-3 months), but his logic was his Nvidia / Plex was not having the issue so it must be the Zidoo. It was the Zidoo being less tolerant of the switch issue that the Nvidia could get away with, maybe the Zidoo has a smaller network cache / buffer so gets tripped up more easily by network issues.

 

I had the same problem with high but rate (100 Mbps) not playing very well via wifi. And now it's working. Must be the new firmware or forcing my server to use smb3.

 

Glad it's working better for you but Wifi performance can be all over the map and change from day to day. Granted, if you are in a rural area and have wifi all to yourself, then probably not so much. But the vast majority of people in more urban areas have other other wifi networks crowding yours all the time. download a wifi analyzer app for your phone you will see how much of a mess it can be. It can also be super handy to find a better wifi channel especially in the 5g band that has less interference with your neighbors...

 

This sounds similar to my issue at this point, I'm almost positive its not my server.

 

Try turning off the SMB1 and SMB2 off on the server.

 

YMMV but what ultimately fixed my stuttering issue was replacing an older hard drive in my Synology NAS. One of my hard drives would occasionally show a deindentification error which I didn't think was a major issue. I ultimately replaced the drive in question to add more capacity to my storage pool and as soon as I did that I never had any additional stuttering. I was pulling my hair out trying to find the root cause and it turns out it was something related to my NAS, even though I had never noticed the issue via Infuse.

 

I think the Zidoo is less tolerant of issues, so ultimately whilst the Zidoo may not be the cause of the issue, the Zidoo may experience issues when things aren’t 100% right even though other devices may not..

 

This issue is present on the Z9X Pro :/
Smaller files run great, but I tried a full BR 4K DV Atmos file last night and had serious issues. It played well until about half way through, at which point it began heavily stuttering. Pausing and playing would pick things back up for seconds or minutes, but it would eventually start stuttering again. Then, the whole Zidoo crashed with a pink screen.

Using the latest firmware with SMB1 hosted by Ubuntu Server.

This is my first Zidoo product and I can’t say this impresses me.