[mythtv-users] Playback Video Stutters & Audio Quits on one Frontend

[Craig Huff]

I'm stumped and need help.  I've been trying to understand why some video
files work fine and others give me grief.  If I play a "bad" file on my
BE/FE, it plays just fine.  If I play the same file on the remote FE, it
will play ok for a second or two, but then the audio quits and the video
will stutter like it's in slow motion.  If I play a "good" file, it works
just fine anywhere.

A "bad" file is one of my older recordings that has a file type description
of:
          "MPEG sequence, v2, program multiplex"
(using the 'file' command in an xterm).
A "good" file is one of the newer ones with a description of:
          "MPEG transport stream data".

The BE/FE is based on an ASRock Z77 Extreme4 motherboard with an Intel Core
i3-3250 CPU @ 3.50GHz, integrated HD Graphics 2500 and 16GB of RAM.  The
video connection is DVI-D.

The remote FE is based on an ASRock A785GM-LE motherboard with an AMD
Phenom II X4 965 CPU @3.4GHz, Nvidia GT710 PCI-E 2.0 Graphics adapter, and
4GB of RAM.  The video connection is HDMI (with 5.1 Audio via the HDMI
cable).

The ethernet connection is 1GB/second rated, not tested.

I fiddled around with various audio options and the pre-defined VDPAU
profiles (made things worse! -- audio would drop out faster) vs. the High
Quality profile.  I tried tweaking processor settings with cpufrequtils and
only managed to get it running so hot it would freeze up until I forced it
to shutdown and waited for it to cool off again.

Short of transcoding the problem files to a format that works, or getting
completely new hardware for the remote FE, I'd appreciate any suggestions
for what I might have missed to try and get this to work.

I'd also appreciate any advice on how to transcode the files into a format
that will not cause this problem, preferably using Handbrake, Avidemux,
and/or ffmpeg.

--
Craig.
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