Develop Bugs

Xbmc Torrents on AFT

Has anyone installed xbmc-torrents on Amazon Fire Tv and experienced any problems? Thx

athosk said:
Has anyone installed xbmc-torrents on Amazon Fire Tv and experienced any problems? Thx
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Works perfectly fine for me
Sent from my Nexus 5 using XDA Free mobile app

athosk said:
Has anyone installed xbmc-torrents on Amazon Fire Tv and experienced any problems? Thx
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have che following setup.
Rooted ftv. Xbmc 13.1. Stick mount to connect an external HDD.
Xbmctorrent is configured to save stuff on a subdir in the HDD. It works fine for TV series episodes. Yesterday night I tried with a movie and had two times the fire TV to completely crash after something like 15 minutes watching. I guess this might be related to having downloaded a file which is larger than a certain threshold. The first time it crashed I also got scared because it was stuck in the Amazon black screen without any sign of life. I removed power for a while to have it start back.
I am watching a TV episode now and it seems fine.
The other issue I experienced is sometimes getting the Xbmctorrent script failed. Not on eztv though, I guess this is related on how they handle individual sources.
Any help or other experiences?
Do you guys also know a better way integrated in xbmc to pick up a torrent to be downloaded and then watch it later, rather than immediately streaming?

I have two AFTV with XBMC 13.1 and xbmctorrent.
I never had issues with any files over 4gb. I mounted a usb flash drive (NTFS formatted) with stickmount, but I don't use that for xbmctorrent. I have xbmctorrent buffer up on the AFTV internal memory.

Shinyhead said:
I have two AFTV with XBMC 13.1 and xbmctorrent.
I never had issues with any files over 4gb. I mounted a usb flash drive (NTFS formatted) with stickmount, but I don't use that for xbmctorrent. I have xbmctorrent buffer up on the AFTV internal memory.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This is really interesting. I wonder why I have so serious issues.
Yesterday I tried with a TV show, and it was stopping the reproduction immediately after starting, even though the download had no problems at all! After tried a few times, I had again the most disruptive crash with AFTV stuck on the black screen with white amazon logo. After that, I decided to uninstall the plugin.
Any suggestion?!

bastXda said:
This is really interesting. I wonder why I have so serious issues.
Yesterday I tried with a TV show, and it was stopping the reproduction immediately after starting, even though the download had no problems at all! After tried a few times, I had again the most disruptive crash with AFTV stuck on the black screen with white amazon logo. After that, I decided to uninstall the plugin.
Any suggestion?!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Try not putting any path for the download field in xbmctorrent, so it will use the internal memory to download on.

XBMCTorrent
This issue is happenning to me as well, I have toyed with all the options\save pathes possible, nothing seems to fix it.
I also opened an Issue on XBMCTorrent's Gibhub and Stream (a fork of this addon) but no help yet.
This is my favorite addon and it's a total deal-breaker for me about the AFTV
I really hope someone will find a fix for this...

Is there a difference between xbmc torrent and an android based torrent client?
Sent from my SM-G900A using XDA Premium 4 mobile app

Dragracekid said:
Is there a difference between xbmc torrent and an android based torrent client?
Sent from my SM-G900A using XDA Premium 4 mobile app
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
the difference is xbmc isnt a regular torrent addon. Its used only to stream/seed movies. you cant load a regular torrent file and expect it to download.

Oh ok cool thanks
Sent from my SM-G900A using XDA Premium 4 mobile app

I think the solution is simple.....uninstall XBMC and install SPMC (XBMC for Ouya). Alot more stable and dosnt keep the data stuck in memory.
You can get it here
https://github.com/koying/SPMC/releases/download/13.2.1-spmc/spmc-armeabi-v7a_13.2.1.apk

athosk said:
I think the solution is simple.....uninstall XBMC and install SPMC (XBMC for Ouya). Alot more stable and dosnt keep the data stuck in memory.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Is there evidence of better behavior of SPMC on AFTV than regular XBMC? I just went to the official XBMC, but maybe I did the wrong choice! Is it possible to install it without losing all the preferences over current XBMC?

I'm using the xbmc with the launcher mod, and last night got the xbmctorrent to sort of work. It was making my firetv unstable, I had at least two blackscreens while using it.
I'm not on the latest xbmc but am on the latest torrent plugin, but at this point I'm not inclined to keep chasing the plugin too often, neat as it is when it works.

bastXda said:
Is there evidence of better behavior of SPMC on AFTV than regular XBMC? I just went to the official XBMC, but maybe I did the wrong choice! Is it possible to install it without losing all the preferences over current XBMC?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
the older version of spmc works the best.
load the apk on post 9
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=54237038&postcount=9

I have personally tried XBMC on all available platforms (Apple TV, Ipad, Windows 8.1, Android minix, Android tv box wih quad core processor and 8core graphics card capable of 4K output). Best one i think is windows.....it would be apple tv but that only gives 720p output.
Now, with Amazon, XBMC torrents somehow data is being saved somewhere and if you look at the screen before launching it, you will notice that the data file keeps getting bigger and at some point that would create a problem as AFT has only 8 GB memory.
With SPMC, I haven't really seen any increaments on the data file size...i wil keep you posted in the next few days if i notice any change

I've been seeing many of the issues with xbmc torrent that I've heard reported from others - problems downloading, issues where, once a stream gets into enough trouble, the box itself resets, very long initial load times.
I thought I was giving up on it, but I was curious and decided to look into what I was seeing.
Once things get bad enough that the FTV bombs out, I also noticed that I needed to reset my firewall to get anything going on the internet in the house - aside from things that were running before I started xbmc torrent.
I took a look, and my firewall has an 8064 session limit. What I'm seeing is that I need to limit how many sessions a single client can spin up. The xbmc torrent plugin is insanely chatty, and it was exhausing my session pool!
When things got to their worst, I wasn't able to get DNS moving and when I dug in, I found that what I was seeing was that I couldn't translate the DNS requests from my lan. (In some ways, the firewall I'm using is a gynormous pain in the butt - it'd be nice if I had more than 8k outbound translations - but it makes up for it with truly epic diagnostic info.)
So, it's worth trying to see if there's a way limit the number of connections a client on your network can establish. I'm getting decent performance and still having resources available to other systems using a 512 session limit.
My impression on the FTV rebooting is that once DNS was unavailable, other services I was trying to run were crapping out, taking the OS with them.

XBMCTorrent
athosk said:
I think the solution is simple.....uninstall XBMC and install SPMC (XBMC for Ouya). Alot more stable and dosnt keep the data stuck in memory.
You can get it here
https://github.com/koying/SPMC/releases/download/13.2.1-spmc/spmc-armeabi-v7a_13.2.1.apk
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
mejdam said:
the older version of spmc works the best.
load the apk on post 9
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=54237038&postcount=9
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have tried XBMC 13.1 official, BeyondXBMC, XBMC For Ouya and SPMC.
In all of them the plugin had made my XBMC go crazy and eventually reboot the entire Fire TV, on some occasions even corrupted my XBMC Skin settings somehow.
athosk said:
I have personally tried XBMC on all available platforms (Apple TV, Ipad, Windows 8.1, Android minix, Android tv box wih quad core processor and 8core graphics card capable of 4K output). Best one i think is windows.....it would be apple tv but that only gives 720p output.
Now, with Amazon, XBMC torrents somehow data is being saved somewhere and if you look at the screen before launching it, you will notice that the data file keeps getting bigger and at some point that would create a problem as AFT has only 8 GB memory.
With SPMC, I haven't really seen any increaments on the data file size...i wil keep you posted in the next few days if i notice any change
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
roustabout said:
I've been seeing many of the issues with xbmc torrent that I've heard reported from others - problems downloading, issues where, once a stream gets into enough trouble, the box itself resets, very long initial load times.
I thought I was giving up on it, but I was curious and decided to look into what I was seeing.
Once things get bad enough that the FTV bombs out, I also noticed that I needed to reset my firewall to get anything going on the internet in the house - aside from things that were running before I started xbmc torrent.
I took a look, and my firewall has an 8064 session limit. What I'm seeing is that I need to limit how many sessions a single client can spin up. The xbmc torrent plugin is insanely chatty, and it was exhausing my session pool!
When things got to their worst, I wasn't able to get DNS moving and when I dug in, I found that what I was seeing was that I couldn't translate the DNS requests from my lan. (In some ways, the firewall I'm using is a gynormous pain in the butt - it'd be nice if I had more than 8k outbound translations - but it makes up for it with truly epic diagnostic info.)
So, it's worth trying to see if there's a way limit the number of connections a client on your network can establish. I'm getting decent performance and still having resources available to other systems using a 512 session limit.
My impression on the FTV rebooting is that once DNS was unavailable, other services I was trying to run were crapping out, taking the OS with them.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This is very interesting!
I have tried various combonations of this plugin (keep torrents, trying to save to SMB share, to Disk on Key, changing File Systems [exFAT,fat32,ntfs] and nothing seemed to work).
I have never thought of it as a network problem...
It works so good on my Windows PC and my Android Mini PC...
Maybe someone can post a way to limit the connections?
Thanks

Yeah maybe you are on the right track. My xbmctorrent also crashes quite oftenly and makes my firetv to reboot. It's very annoying.
Enviado de meu GT-N7100 usando Tapatalk

KillerJoeBR said:
Yeah maybe you are on the right track. My xbmctorrent also crashes quite oftenly and makes my firetv to reboot. It's very annoying.
Enviado de meu GT-N7100 usando Tapatalk
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Same for me.

Has anyone gotten the stream plugin to work? It's being actively developed and is apparently a fork of the xbmc torrent code.
I'm unable to get it to run, either on ftv or on a tablet, and the diagnostic logging doesn't say much to me.
My firewall supports outbound rules that apply per host, and the values it takes are sess-limit per-src-ip <number>
Probably you can do something similar in one of the open source dd-wrt platforms. There's an interesting discussion of advanced config of those at http://markmaunder.com/2011/01/26/h...-your-room-mate-or-bad-office-colleague-uses/ - but it doesn't cover sessions, but rather total per-address or per-network bandwidth. (Which I've also had set up to deal with aftv chewing up everything it can when I need to have a few hundred low-latency kilobits to reach the office - it's challenging to apply QoS to inbound, simpler to drop everything over a cap that's trying to reach a host. I unset those rules before trying xbmctorrent.)
I have the impression that xbmctorrent, at least, has its own torrent client built in. And although I've seen a configuration in the system / network menus that lets you define a proxy for xbmc to use, I haven't seen a similar config for global torrent settings.
Many standalone torrent clients have a lot of controls over maximum connections, in addition to upload/download speeds, etc.
I haven't looked to see whether a standalone torrent client, or one of the various torrent plugins for xbmc, might be able to give one systemwide control over session initiation, session timeout and session number - applying some settings that xbmctorrent would need to respect, in essence.
I suspect that they'd make it harder to use if they were able to control those things, though - xbmctorrent is doing something pretty unusual: it's polling a swarm of peers (into the thousands) and asking not just 'who has the file' but 'who has this specific piece of the file starting at time X'
It would be nice if those kinds of advanced network settings were available in the configuration of one of these video on demand torrent clients, though

AFTV XBMC Buffering Annoying - Options?

I've been reading forums all over the place related to the buffering issues I'm experiencing using Gotham 13.2 on my new Fire TV box.
The settings that get me the best results here: (Can't remember what forum I found them on)
<network>
<autodetectpingtime>30</autodetectpingtime>
<buffermode>3</buffermode>
<cachemembuffersize>708669603</cachemembuffersize>
<curllowspeedtime>5</curllowspeedtime>
<curlclienttimeout>30</curlclienttimeout>
<readbufferfactor>4.0</readbufferfactor>
</network>
The streams start really quick, but if it's 1080p, it buffers every 2 minutes 22 seconds or so. 720p works fine.
I've tried many many settings I find here and at other forums with worse results. With this one I tried the buffermode at 1 and 3.
There must be a setting I'm missing to try out.
I'm using the exact same networking connection as my old WDTV LIVE that had zero problems with these files. I just wanted to replace it with the Fire TV. Tried wired and wireless, same issues.
Thanks for any help anyone might have here.

Thered a tweeks xml that gets copied to your drive and helps with buffering.
Basically it caches some of the stream and you play catch up viewing.
Or if u pause it make coffee or wat ever the whole thing will cache for you and you can watch with our stops.
I use it and it works well.
Some more than others
Id link you but a quick google search will get you what your looking for

mychaelp said:
<buffermode>3</buffermode>.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
from kodi wiki:
0 Buffer all internet filesystems (like "2" but additionally also ftp, webdav, etc.) (default)
1 Buffer all filesystems (including local)
2 Only buffer true internet filesystems (streams) (http, etc.)
3 No buffer
So....
<cachemembuffersize>708669603</cachemembuffersize>
<readbufferfactor>4.0</readbufferfactor>
aren't really helping; since buffer needs to be enabled to be cached or read.
Also; default readbufferfactor is 1 but all examples use 10 or 20 rather than placing a decimal such as you did. Your setting may be resulting in a factor of 0.40 due to formatting
I am using mode 1 and caching to disk rather than use RAM.
The wiki warns this may shorten disk life (but I think I can afford another $10 usb stick if this one fails)
Never have any buffering issues with these settings on latest SPMC.
<buffermode>1</buffermode>
<cachemembuffersize>0</cachemembuffersize>
<readbufferfactor>20</readbufferfactor>

Here is the "official" Kodi thread: http://kodi.wiki/view/HOW-TO:Modify_the_video_cache.

gurnted said:
from
0 Buffer all internet filesystems (like "2" but additionally also ftp, webdav, etc.) (default)
1 Buffer all filesystems (including local)
2 Only buffer true internet filesystems (streams) (http, etc.)
3 No buffer
So....
<cachemembuffersize>708669603</cachemembuffersize>
<readbufferfactor>4.0</readbufferfactor>
aren't really helping; since buffer needs to be enabled to be cached or read.
Also; default readbufferfactor is 1 but all examples use 10 or 20 rather than placing a decimal such as you did. Your setting may be resulting in a factor of 0.40 due to formatting
I am using mode 1 and caching to disk rather than use RAM.
The wiki warns this may shorten disk life (but I think I can afford another $10 usb stick if this one fails)
Never have any buffering issues with these settings on latest SPMC.
<buffermode>1</buffermode>
<cachemembuffersize>0</cachemembuffersize>
<readbufferfactor>20</readbufferfactor>
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thank you for the input and tips to test out. Family is visiting right now, but shortly after the holiday I will test out. It seems there is no one-size-fits-all approach to get things working over a network with the Fire TV. Yet with my old WDTV Live player, absolutely zero issues.
I had found the settings I posted on another forum. They had the best results with zero buffering unless 1080p.
Will report back with results

gurnted said:
from kodi wiki[/URL]:
<buffermode>1</buffermode>
<cachemembuffersize>0</cachemembuffersize>
<readbufferfactor>20</readbufferfactor>
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
OK, reporting back. These settings causes rebuffering every 20 seconds or so. My settings I posted above get me to about a minute in. It appears with my setup I won't be able to use this to play 1080p movies and will need to use my ancient WDTV box for that. I had high hopes but maybe XBMC just isn't set up to work as easily as the ancient WDTV's?
I hooked them up to HDMI1 and 2, tried each in succession and the WDTV plays flawlessly while the Amazon Fire TV buffers over and over again.
I may hold on to it in case someone comes up with a method or there is a special fork just for it that works better with my system.
Thank you for your easy to read analysis. It's appreciated. But it appears by googling, that many others are having my issue as well and have returned the boxes.

gurnted said:
from kodi wiki:
I am using mode 1 and caching to disk rather than use RAM.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
How do you allow kodi to cache to disk instead of RAM? Isn't the disk flash based and less likely to get worn out compared to a spinning disk? I don't know but it seems like there is nothing to wear out if isn't spinning...
If you allow it to cache to disk then if you were to pause a movie and your sd had enough space, would it download the whole movie to disk and delete when more space is needed?
If so is there a setting where we allocate a maximum amount of disk space for the temporary downloads to fill so kodi knows when to delete other cached videos?
edit: I found the answer to my questions... setting buffer size to 0 and the temp download is deleted when the video is stopped.

От: реставрация на автомобили по света и у &#1
I am using mode 1 and caching to disk rather than use RAM.
The wiki warns this may shorten disk life (but I think I can afford another $10 usb stick if this one fails)
Never have any buffering issues with these settings on latest SPMC.
____________
Arslan1

smithdevil1 said:
I am using mode 1 and caching to disk rather than use RAM.
The wiki warns this may shorten disk life (but I think I can afford another $10 usb stick if this one fails)
Never have any buffering issues with these settings on latest SPMC.
____________
Arslan1
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If you monitor your network's activity or just watch the buffer available as the greyed out area increases when you pause a video it will show much cache is building up. I have also set it to cache to disk and it does not cache very much of a video by using cache to disk.
I posted a question about this on kodi.tv They said that kodi will only cache about 1Gb of data per 3.5Gb of free disk space, as that is the amount of free space i had at the time of posting, not sure of official caching numbers. But there is no way that kodi cached a full gigabyte as it only showed network activity for a few moments when I was trying to stream the interview through kodi's youtube.
The wiki warns about disk life but I think that pertains to spinning disks that get worn out with constant use.

mychaelp said:
I've been reading forums all over the place related to the buffering issues I'm experiencing using Gotham 13.2 on my new Fire TV box.
The settings that get me the best results here: (Can't remember what forum I found them on)
<network>
<autodetectpingtime>30</autodetectpingtime>
<buffermode>3</buffermode>
<cachemembuffersize>708669603</cachemembuffersize>
<curllowspeedtime>5</curllowspeedtime>
<curlclienttimeout>30</curlclienttimeout>
<readbufferfactor>4.0</readbufferfactor>
</network>
The streams start really quick, but if it's 1080p, it buffers every 2 minutes 22 seconds or so. 720p works fine.
I've tried many many settings I find here and at other forums with worse results. With this one I tried the buffermode at 1 and 3.
There must be a setting I'm missing to try out.
I'm using the exact same networking connection as my old WDTV LIVE that had zero problems with these files. I just wanted to replace it with the Fire TV. Tried wired and wireless, same issues.
Thanks for any help anyone might have here.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
set your advanced setting to 0 cache file, this will cache to your hard drive. You can use program such as xunity maintenance or maintenance tools to do this, just go into one of these program, i think it is under tweaks or fixes. It works great most of the time i am using this setting on my raspberry pi and on my fire tv. i have watched full 1080 movies and shows without any issue.
The buffering also depends on your internet speed. Have you try Ethernet connection if you are on wifi?
Also, test your internet speed to make sure. It also depends on the source it self, your connection may be fast enuf but the source it self is just slow or too much traffic.
Thank you

ashsha7877 said:
set your advanced setting to 0 cache file, this will cache to your hard drive. You can use program such as xunity maintenance or maintenance tools to do this, just go into one of these program, i think it is under tweaks or fixes. It works great most of the time i am using this setting on my raspberry pi and on my fire tv. i have watched full 1080 movies and shows without any issue.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I will look into xunity maintenance since I'm new to XBMC and have not heard of it. I have a SMB share from an old laptop. Old laptop may be the reason 720p works well but not 1080p. It's just odd how the WDTV Live works perfectly. Oh, I tested wired and wireless and they both give me the same issues. I thought about buying a NAS, but I read here that many still have buffering issues.
Here are the latest settings I ended up with that give me the best results. 1080p gives a cache full error and rebuffers every 30 seconds or so. 720p is perfect. I can't recall where I found these, might have been here somewhere, or other forum. Tested way too many and getting tired of it.
<advancedsettings>
<network>
<buffermode>1</buffermode>
<cachemembuffersize>20971520</cachemembuffersize>
<readbufferfactor>20</readbufferfactor>
</network>
</advancedsettings>
So thank you for the information, it appears I need to read up as to what xunity is and how it might help me or where tweaks/fixes are within XBMC (hope I don't need to buy anything new).
Maybe with the popularity of the Fire TV there will be more guides on it one day. I got the box for $14 with an amazing deal so probably will keep it at least for streaming and use the ancient WDTV for movies if I can't figure this out.

mychaelp said:
I will look into xunity maintenance since I'm new to XBMC and have not heard of it. I have a SMB share from an old laptop. Old laptop may be the reason 720p works well but not 1080p. It's just odd how the WDTV Live works perfectly. Oh, I tested wired and wireless and they both give me the same issues. I thought about buying a NAS, but I read here that many still have buffering issues.
Here are the latest settings I ended up with that give me the best results. 1080p gives a cache full error and rebuffers every 30 seconds or so. 720p is perfect. I can't recall where I found these, might have been here somewhere, or other forum. Tested way too many and getting tired of it.
<advancedsettings>
<network>
<buffermode>1</buffermode>
<cachemembuffersize>20971520</cachemembuffersize>
<readbufferfactor>20</readbufferfactor>
</network>
</advancedsettings>
So thank you for the information, it appears I need to read up as to what xunity is and how it might help me or where tweaks/fixes are within XBMC (hope I don't need to buy anything new).
Maybe with the popularity of the Fire TV there will be more guides on it one day. I got the box for $14 with an amazing deal so probably will keep it at least for streaming and use the ancient WDTV for movies if I can't figure this out.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
1) just add this path under file manager http://xfinity.xunitytalk.com
2) add XunityTalk_Repository
3) go to add on --> get add-ons
4) click on .xunitytalk repository
5) click on programs add-ons
5) click on xunity maintenance and install it
6) then run xunity maintenance --> tweaks --> click on "Add 2 cache advanced xml"
You can also use Maintenance Tools program which is under http://fusion.xbmchub.com (fusion) --> xbmc repos --> TVaddons repo --> program add-ons --> Maintenance Tools --> systems tweaks --> "ZERO CACHE"
here is link for advance settings....
http://kodi.wiki/view/HOW-TO:Modify_the_video_cache
thanks

ashsha7877 said:
1) just add this path under file manager http://xfinity.xunitytalk.com
2) add XunityTalk_Repository
3) go to add on --> get add-ons
4) click on .xunitytalk repository
5) click on programs add-ons
5) click on xunity maintenance and install it
6) then run xunity maintenance --> tweaks --> click on "Add 2 cache advanced xml"
You can also use Maintenance Tools program which is under http://fusion.xbmchub.com (fusion) --> xbmc repos --> TVaddons repo --> program add-ons --> Maintenance Tools --> systems tweaks --> "ZERO CACHE"
here is link for advance settings....
http://kodi.wiki/view/HOW-TO:Modify_the_video_cache
thanks
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Are you certain they're still using the old xbmchub address for fusion? I used http://fusion.tvaddons.ag to set up a ouya the other day. Add-on installer installed but wouldn't work and config wizard gave a script error on 4 different builds (2 SPMC, xbmc for ouya and Gotham 13.2) Couldnt get it to work. Also I've had on & off issues with aftv even though I did get add-on installer working with helix and 13.2
Does it matter? What I mean is if fusion shows up at that point does the address used make a difference? Just trying to make sense of issues I didn't have before the hub became tvaddons.

KLit75 said:
Are you certain they're still using the old xbmchub address for fusion? I used http://fusion.tvaddons.ag to set up a ouya the other day. Add-on installer installed but wouldn't work and config wizard gave a script error on 4 different builds (2 SPMC, xbmc for ouya and Gotham 13.2) Couldnt get it to work. Also I've had on & off issues with aftv even though I did get add-on installer working with helix and 13.2
Does it matter? What I mean is if fusion shows up at that point does the address used make a difference? Just trying to make sense of issues I didn't have before the hub became tvaddons.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If you click on http://fusion.xbmcub.com it will take you to tvaddons so they are both good. It does not matter which one you use since both http are being pointed at one location.
on my ATFV i am using this path http://fusion.xbmcub.com and it works fine. I have used the config wizard and it is ok but i like to add the addons only i want to keep, to keep my set up clean. As far as add on installer it is generally ok but i used this file manager to add repo http://i.totalxbmc.tv this is one has all the repo in one place and easy to find, i like it better than add on installer when i want to add 3rd party repo's.
Thank you

ashsha7877 said:
1) just add this path under file manager http://xfinity.xunitytalk.com
2) add XunityTalk_Repository
3) go to add on --> get add-ons
4) click on .xunitytalk repository
5) click on programs add-ons
5) click on xunity maintenance and install it
6) then run xunity maintenance --> tweaks --> click on "Add 2 cache advanced xml"
You can also use Maintenance Tools program which is under http://fusion.xbmchub.com (fusion) --> xbmc repos --> TVaddons repo --> program add-ons --> Maintenance Tools --> systems tweaks --> "ZERO CACHE"
here is link for advance settings....
http://kodi.wiki/view/HOW-TO:Modify_the_video_cache
thanks
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Very good info. Thanks!
In a strange twist , I'm now having issues with a videos crashing on both aftvs, both 13.2 Gotham. This keeps occurring on 2 1080p videos. I assumed the op was trying to play movies from an add-on which could be effected by the speed of the server greatly.
No buffering for me. It plays perfect then crash. The files are 5 and 8 gb. Typically I watch tv shows and if I do play 1080p they're compressed mkvs.
I found messing with buffer size can cause other issues but can't say I've got much experience with it--didn't really need to. Would pushing a advanced settings.xml to increase buffer size help? Any other suggestions?

There really seems to be some variability and misinformation regarding this stuttering, so I wanted to share my observations by experimentation so far:
Testing setup is full switched gigabit network with FireTV at 100FDX. Server is capable of 1Gbps full throughtput and is sharing files via SMB/CIFS. The network is stable.
Test PC on wired ethernet on same switch can stream any speed up to 1G
Test PC on wireless ethernet can stream any speed up to typical speed of 802.11n @ 5Ghz double-width channels (approx 200Mbps).
Appears to only affected WIRED FireTV boxes. Switching to wireless with good signal removes the buffering issue experienced.
FireTV stick is not affected (wireless only obviously).
Only applies to large bitrate MKV files (typically 1080p @ > 20 mbit). Anything lower (e.g. 720p or less) is not affected as the low throughput via wired is able to keep up.
This affects any variant of XBMC that I've tried:
Gotham 13.2
Kodi 14.0
SPMC 13.X
Affects at least 51.1.4.0_user_514006420 & 51.1.4.1_user_514013920 versions of FireOS.
None of the internet-suggested settings for the advancedsettings.xml file appears to alleviate the issue even though there are posts suggesting otherwise.
This may be true for those users, but not for all. I can't find a commonality besides the "being wired" issue.
It may be a combination of factors (OS, settings) that produce the symptom.
I'd really like to hear comments on this. Perhaps this is a network stack issue with the FireTV. Perhaps this is a buffer handling problem. I've heard others using Plex that experience these issues as well, so perhaps this leans the issue towards something on FireOS. I'm not familiar enough with detailed network settings on this OS to diagnose.
Other observations:
Oddly, setting <cachemembuffersize>XXX</cachemembuffersize> to any value causes it to be halved when in use. I've set it to 50MB, and the cache readout shows 25MB when full. Is this right?

smartymcfly said:
The wiki warns about disk life but I think that pertains to spinning disks that get worn out with constant use.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Just a word of caution: this warning also pertains to flash based memory (such as the onboard storage on the FireTV). If you're caching to disk (or the sdcard, in this case), you'll wear out the flash memory rather quickly. The flash memory used in the FireTV is not designed to write/rewrite it's data all the time. It might take a couple of years (maybe 3ish), but it will eventually wear out due to high read/write operations. After that you're kinda SOL...
If you have the RAM space available, and your internet connection is fast enough, I strongly suggest using that for caching rather than disk. I'm currently evaluating the advancedsettings.xml below. For me, they've made a significant difference in my ability to stream video to my FireTV box. It will cache 150.9Mbytes of data while streaming both local and internet content (requires ~450MBytes of free RAM for XBMC). Assuming you're streaming a 5Gbyte file (that's a very high estimate, online HD video is compressed to around half that), it will cache at least 5 minutes of video. If I run into any issues I'll try upping the RAM available for caching and let you guy's know what changes I make.
Code:
<advancedsettings>
<network>
<buffermode>1</buffermode>
<cachemembuffersize>157286400</cachemembuffersize>
<readbufferfactor>20</readbufferfactor>
</network>
</advancedsettings>

sirwoogie said:
There really seems to be some variability and misinformation regarding this stuttering, so I wanted to share my observations by experimentation so far:
Testing setup is full switched gigabit network with FireTV at 100FDX. Server is capable of 1Gbps full throughtput and is sharing files via SMB/CIFS. The network is stable.
Test PC on wired ethernet on same switch can stream any speed up to 1G
Test PC on wireless ethernet can stream any speed up to typical speed of 802.11n @ 5Ghz double-width channels (approx 200Mbps).
Appears to only affected WIRED FireTV boxes. Switching to wireless with good signal removes the buffering issue experienced.
FireTV stick is not affected (wireless only obviously).
Only applies to large bitrate MKV files (typically 1080p @ > 20 mbit). Anything lower (e.g. 720p or less) is not affected as the low throughput via wired is able to keep up.
This affects any variant of XBMC that I've tried:
Gotham 13.2
Kodi 14.0
SPMC 13.X
Affects at least 51.1.4.0_user_514006420 & 51.1.4.1_user_514013920 versions of FireOS.
None of the internet-suggested settings for the advancedsettings.xml file appears to alleviate the issue even though there are posts suggesting otherwise.
This may be true for those users, but not for all. I can't find a commonality besides the "being wired" issue.
It may be a combination of factors (OS, settings) that produce the symptom.
I'd really like to hear comments on this. Perhaps this is a network stack issue with the FireTV. Perhaps this is a buffer handling problem. I've heard others using Plex that experience these issues as well, so perhaps this leans the issue towards something on FireOS. I'm not familiar enough with detailed network settings on this OS to diagnose.
Other observations:
Oddly, setting <cachemembuffersize>XXX</cachemembuffersize> to any value causes it to be halved when in use. I've set it to 50MB, and the cache readout shows 25MB when full. Is this right?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I am seeing exactly the same behaviour and have come to a similar conclusion that there maybe some hardware/OS specific issues.
I have a gigabit lan to which the fire tv is connected and experience buffering during playback of "raw" bluray mkv rips. I've tried to disable the cache/buffer but I'm not convinced if this is making any difference. I have a wired PC running the same Helix build and advancedsettings.xml file. I see from task manager that during playback the Ethernet connection bursts between 35 mbps up to 89/90 when connected at 100 mbps, and as high as 300 mbps when I've enabled gigabit speeds. This is even with the cache apparently disabled. These bursts seem to correspond with the cache filling up.
It feels like there are wired Ethernet throughput issues that when combined with the read ahead buffer result the "Buffering n%" messages. Plus the setting to disable the cache in advancedsettings.xml doesn't seem to work either due to a bug or because I'm not configuring it correctly.

sskuk said:
I am seeing exactly the same behaviour and have come to a similar conclusion that there maybe some hardware/OS specific issues.
I have a gigabit lan to which the fire tv is connected and experience buffering during playback of "raw" bluray mkv rips. I've tried to disable the cache/buffer but I'm not convinced if this is making any difference. I have a wired PC running the same Helix build and advancedsettings.xml file. I see from task manager that during playback the Ethernet connection bursts between 35 mbps up to 89/90 when connected at 100 mbps, and as high as 300 mbps when I've enabled gigabit speeds. This is even with the cache apparently disabled. These bursts seem to correspond with the cache filling up.
It feels like there are wired Ethernet throughput issues that when combined with the read ahead buffer result the "Buffering n%" messages. Plus the setting to disable the cache in advancedsettings.xml doesn't seem to work either due to a bug or because I'm not configuring it correctly.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
FYI , firetv only has a 10/100 nic so it wont get gigabit speeds.

I may have stumbled upon a fix for my buffering issues. I've checked over and over so many things these days with my network (router, modem, laptop with SMB external drive) and began moving in a different direction than just the advanced xml file (I tired about 100 options!). I looked at how to speed up serving up my files in case it really is just that simple. I found postings of editing Samba settings in the registry, but it was way beyond what I was willing to try. Then I stumbled on this blog
http://night-ray.blogspot.com/2010/03/improving-windows-xp-smb-file.html An old post from 2010 which looked promising. Since it's an old laptop I'm using I gave it a shot. Tested through 12 movies and no rebuffering yet. This may have given me just enough extra serving power to get enough data transferred. If you're brave as well and have XP (or maybe something similar can work for other versions) give it a shot.
I still have the huge buffer of 400mb someone posted in my settings but I've been clicking play about 2 seconds into it, so I probably need to adjust that down quite a bit and see how it goes.
The guy's blog is pretty interesting as I looked at it more, strange mix of topics, but I'll be writing him a thank you!

[Q] Fire TV XBMC Stutter/Jitter

I have spent about 3 weeks with my Fire TV now and have scoured the internet for a solution but have had no luck thus far. Out of all my research thought this forum seem to have the most relevant answers, thus why I am posting here and hopefully somebody will be able to assist before I get rid of it.
First I can stream movies and television shows on Netflix and XBMC with no problems, running Kodi 14.1.
When I try and stream a movie or television show from my Windows server I get a very annoying stutter/jitter when both wired and wireless.
This happens with 720p or 1080p. I do not get any dropped or skipped frames while running codecinfo.
I have changed the video acceleration and playback settings numerous times with no luck. ie. hardware, software video acceleration, libstagefright, mediacodec etc. messed with audio and several other things that I found suggested on the internet.
Now prior to this I ran everything wireless over a WDTV with no issues at all, video nive and smooth. Should I just give up on the Fire TV and go back to the WDTV?
Any help would be greatly appreciated, thanks.

I had similar issues. Did you try SPMC instead of Kodi? Also, you might want to try using a advancedsetings.xml file to correctly set the caching and read-ahead.
EDIT: Here's mine for Kodi 14.1:
Code:
<!-- tuxen -->
<advancedsettings>
<network>
<curlclienttimeout>45</curlclienttimeout>
<cachemembuffersize>104857600</cachemembuffersize>
<readbufferfactor>10</readbufferfactor>
</network>
<gui>
<algorithmdirtyregions>3</algorithmdirtyregions>
<nofliptimeout>0</nofliptimeout>
</gui>
<videoscanner>
<ignoreerrors>true</ignoreerrors>
</videoscanner>
</advancedsettings>

How are the videos shared from your Windows server? What protocol are you using?
Have you tried a different protocol? I use SMB from my Win7 machine to FireTV and it's always worked well.

KCFish said:
How are the videos shared from your Windows server? What protocol are you using?
Have you tried a different protocol? I use SMB from my Win7 machine to FireTV and it's always worked well.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I had some issues with stuttering as well. I changed my router and the new one did not support Samba, so I switched to NFS and things got better. I still occasionally get a buffering break now, but I can't be sure if it was the new router or NFS. Everything I've read is that NFS is much faster than Samba.

Thank you all for your answers.
Sizzlechest; as for the advancedsetings.xml I did set that with other setting I found on the internet, I will give yours a try. Can someone tell me if I can edit my existing advancedsettings.xml and if so how? or do I just create a new one and push it to my Fire TV
As for what protocol I'm using on my windows server I'm not sure. I am accessing it via samba share on my fire tv, I couldn't seem to find the server using NFS, but will try it again.
It's a Windows Homer Server with Power Pack 3 2009
on an Acer Aspire Easystore.
I've read that SPMC is better on the Fire TV then KODI and have planned to try it, I just need to find some install instructions for it on the Fire TV, I have some computer background but am fairly new to the XBMC scene.

pj311 said:
Thank you all for your answers.
Sizzlechest; as for the advancedsetings.xml I did set that with other setting I found on the internet, I will give yours a try. Can someone tell me if I can edit my existing advancedsettings.xml and if so how? or do I just create a new one and push it to my Fire TV.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
There won't be an advancedsettings.xml file on a regular install. It has to be added.

Ok here is another strange one.
I brought the fire tv to my basement and hooked it up to me Epson Power Lite Home Cinema. I do not have a wired connection here so I had to run it wireless. Well it played everything perfectly!
What I was playing on before was a Sony KDL EX-500, could my TV be the problem?
This makes no sense to me, it's it something to do with the refresh rate of the tv, or a possible setting in the tv?
Ok I solved the problem .....My Sony TV has a feature called Cinemotion. I had played with the Motionflow both on and off and that didn't help the problem. Turns out Cinemotion was on and this is what was causing the stutter with XBMC. It had nothing to do with Fire TV and XBMC like I had thought and spent the last week blaming....thanks again for your help.
Cheers

Stream Stops on Kodi and OPlayer

Hi All. I'm seeing a little bit of inconsistencies with my FireTV Box. I wonder if it is randomly dying but I hope not.
1. When I play a RTSP stream on Kodi and or the OPlayer App, the stream stops in about 10 minutes and I have to restart it.
2. When I play movies from the network, the movies stop randomly and I have to resume.
I'm on a wired connection throughout. I wonder whats the issue as I've made about 22 firetv's and the same stream is played on multiple firetv's which I've made with similar configs and those don't stop. Given that those are on different networks.
I know this is a hard one to figure but any guidance or insights would help. I'm on SPMC the latest one. All other builds of firetv's which I've made are on the nightlies of Kodi which had the resume fixed. I have tried the same Kodi nightly and that too stops the stream.
I have a cordless phone on top of the firetv. Does that matter with heat etc? I can't think of anythign else.

no one with this kind of issue? Any help would really be helpful

Firestick plays some mkv files better than FireTV, why?

I have been using XBMC on my FTV that is hardwired and also have a FireTV Stick connected to 5Ghz band on my router. I was playing a 720p MKV of Interstellar. It would cause the FTV to buffer especially at the scene around 3 minutes where the cornfields are shaking from the winds.
I then play the same file wirelessly on the FireStick and it has no problems playing this same scene.
Is the video processor on the stick better than regular FTV?

I think something is wrong with your fire tv or connection.. I just watch interstellar 1080p 15 gig mkv file without any buffering issues on a wired line.
try switching to wifi.
The fire stick is much much less powerful in video and processor speed.

There are issues with the FireTV hardwired connection that makes it SLOWER than wireless. If you did wireless on your FireTV, it would work better.

Speed tests have consistently showed 5ghz to be faster than wired on my network, but I keep it wired because it's generally stronger with less interference, plus my speeds are more than fast enough for 1080p.
I'd try different Ethernet cables (simplest solution first.) I did that and found a discrepancy of over 20 Mbps.

Sizzlechest said:
There are issues with the FireTV hardwired connection that makes it SLOWER than wireless. If you did wireless on your FireTV, it would work better.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
OMG Thanks! I didn't every think to try the wireless on my FTV. This fixed the buffering on Intersellar MKV I was getting when I was hardwired.
That is so weird that the hardwired connection is slower than wireless?
How did you find out about FTV being slower hard wired?

yazyazoo said:
OMG Thanks! I didn't every think to try the wireless on my FTV. This fixed the buffering on Intersellar MKV I was getting when I was hardwired.
That is so weird that the hardwired connection is slower than wireless?
How did you find out about FTV being slower hard wired?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It's been a known issue, but it's not totally common knowledge. There's other tidbits like you should probably use SPMC vs. Kodi and how to create an advancedsettings.xml that can improve performance, too.

Sizzlechest said:
There are issues with the FireTV hardwired connection that makes it SLOWER than wireless. If you did wireless on your FireTV, it would work better.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
My testing has shown the opposite. On multiple different network setups in different locations. In some network setups that could possibly be true. But I wouldn't attribute it to the FireTV.

Wow, I never heard of wired ethernet performance issues. Good to know if I ever run into issues, and good to know if I upgrade my wifi I can reliably wifi stream everything I already do. Personal experience with live TV through XBMC (MythTV + HDHomeRun backend), my hardwired FTV is flawless, but my older 802.11n 2.4Ghz connected FTV stick has buffering/stuttering issues with some of the stations. Not a true comparison to a 1080p H.264 mkv, but it sounds like if I buy a new 5ghz wifi router I might be able to get live tv working better on my stick.

Never used this on the FireTV/SPMC, but works very well @ OpenELEC:
http://kodi.wiki/view/HOW-TO:Modify_the_video_cache
I just said cache _any_ source to RAM, like 150MB (watch out as 150MB cache means *3 = 450MB RAM usage) and never had any issues after that, even on an unstable connection. You can also set how aggressive the cache should work etc, very handy tool.