ojnihs Posted February 28, 2008 Report Posted February 28, 2008 alright, this is mostly a question for mac users, but if you windows users got some advice, i'd love to hear it. anyway, i have a bunch of tv shows downloaded on my external hdd (scrubs, house, lost, bsg, etc.) and my roommate wants to watch them on his computer in the other room sometime. i have a macbook and he has a macbook pro, and we're both running leopard with file sharing on. i'm using an 802.11g network and since about a month ago, the video streaming worked perfectly fine. my roommate could watch any and all shows that he wanted by simply connecting to my computer via the shared network. recently, however, the video streams have basically gone to shit. he can watch the shows for about 3 minutes before quicktime freezes up and basically crashes. vlc and mplayer both suffer the same problem. i was wondering if any of you mac users with more than one computers can give this a try and see if you suffer from the same problems or not. i know upgrading to a 802.11n network would pretty much solve this problem, but i don't particularly want to drop $180 for a airport express right now. any help would be great. thanks.
grawk Posted February 28, 2008 Report Posted February 28, 2008 Get the airport express (or a timecapsule). You won't regret it. alright, this is mostly a question for mac users, but if you windows users got some advice, i'd love to hear it. anyway, i have a bunch of tv shows downloaded on my external hdd (scrubs, house, lost, bsg, etc.) and my roommate wants to watch them on his computer in the other room sometime. i have a macbook and he has a macbook pro, and we're both running leopard with file sharing on. i'm using an 802.11g network and since about a month ago, the video streaming worked perfectly fine. my roommate could watch any and all shows that he wanted by simply connecting to my computer via the shared network. recently, however, the video streams have basically gone to shit. he can watch the shows for about 3 minutes before quicktime freezes up and basically crashes. vlc and mplayer both suffer the same problem. i was wondering if any of you mac users with more than one computers can give this a try and see if you suffer from the same problems or not. i know upgrading to a 802.11n network would pretty much solve this problem, but i don't particularly want to drop $180 for a airport express right now. any help would be great. thanks.
ojnihs Posted February 28, 2008 Author Report Posted February 28, 2008 Get the airport express (or a timecapsule). You won't regret it. fuck. i fucked up. i have an airport express right now that i'm using as the router (my wrt54g died yesterday, fucking piece of shit). i meant an airport extreme, but i'm sure that's what you meant.
Salt Peanuts Posted February 28, 2008 Report Posted February 28, 2008 What's the compression on the videos? I can try it with my MacBook and iMac, but I'd have to rip some videos first.
ojnihs Posted February 28, 2008 Author Report Posted February 28, 2008 What's the compression on the videos? I can try it with my MacBook and iMac, but I'd have to rip some videos first. well he's watching scrubs recently (surprise surprise) and they're just simple .avi. not hd or anything like that. i'll let you know exactly what the encoding is when i'm back home later. thanks haj.
Salt Peanuts Posted February 28, 2008 Report Posted February 28, 2008 I ripped an episode of Robot Chicken from DVD using Handbrake. I ripped one file with "AppleTV" setting and another file with "iPhone/iPod touch" setting. They were both saved on an external drive connected to my iMac via Firewire 400. I just watched both of them on my MacBook connected to my 802.11g network and had no issues with either files.
ojnihs Posted February 28, 2008 Author Report Posted February 28, 2008 I ripped an episode of Robot Chicken from DVD using Handbrake. I ripped one file with "AppleTV" setting and another file with "iPhone/iPod touch" setting. They were both saved on an external drive connected to my iMac via Firewire 400. I just watched both of them on my MacBook connected to my 802.11g network and had no issues with either files. thanks haj. yeah, it was working just fine for about 4 months and then i ran into this issue. i may be getting interference somewhere or something. i'll have to check it out. thanks again.
tkam Posted February 28, 2008 Report Posted February 28, 2008 Is his wireless connection dropping completely or just the file stops streaming?
ojnihs Posted February 28, 2008 Author Report Posted February 28, 2008 Is his wireless connection dropping completely or just the file stops streaming? files just stop and quicktime basically does the spinning ball of death and we have to force quit it. i feel that it happens because the data isn't coming in fast enough or something.
spritzer Posted February 28, 2008 Report Posted February 28, 2008 It must be a connection issue. Have you tried to increase the buffer?
Dusty Chalk Posted February 28, 2008 Report Posted February 28, 2008 Why doesn't he just copy the file locally and watch them that way?
JBLoudG20 Posted February 28, 2008 Report Posted February 28, 2008 Why doesn't he just copy the file locally and watch them that way? x2
ojnihs Posted February 29, 2008 Author Report Posted February 29, 2008 Why doesn't he just copy the file locally and watch them that way? well yeah that's a good idea, but i'm more trying to diagnose the problem. it worked and now it doesn't. what up with that?
JBLoudG20 Posted February 29, 2008 Report Posted February 29, 2008 well yeah that's a good idea, but i'm more trying to diagnose the problem. it worked and now it doesn't. what up with that? It's haunted.
deepak Posted February 29, 2008 Report Posted February 29, 2008 Here's a dumb question is he able to play videos on his computer without crashing (videos on his hardrive)? Just making sure it's not a problem with his computer (saving you a lot of grief, allowing you to focus on his computer).
ojnihs Posted February 29, 2008 Author Report Posted February 29, 2008 Here's a dumb question is he able to play videos on his computer without crashing (videos on his hardrive)? Just making sure it's not a problem with his computer (saving you a lot of grief, allowing you to focus on his computer). yeah, he can play videos on his computer fine. i'm about to give up on this thing, fucking eh.
Dusty Chalk Posted February 29, 2008 Report Posted February 29, 2008 well yeah that's a good idea, but i'm more trying to diagnose the problem. it worked and now it doesn't. what up with that?Network traffic bloat. (I.E. crap on the line). I mean, if you really want to diagnose it, I'd see if Mac has some equivalent program to tracert (or ping) to see what kind of throughput you have to his computer, or vice versa.
ojnihs Posted February 29, 2008 Author Report Posted February 29, 2008 I mean, if you really want to diagnose it, I'd see if Mac has some equivalent program to tracert (or ping) to see what kind of throughput you have to his computer, or vice versa. Great idea Dusty, thanks for that. Mac OS X has a program built in (Network Utility) that has traceroute. I'll give it a try later.
ojnihs Posted February 29, 2008 Author Report Posted February 29, 2008 well, i did the traceroute and it basically takes 1.5ms to ping his computer, so it can't be the network. damn it.
Salt Peanuts Posted February 29, 2008 Report Posted February 29, 2008 Not sure if this matters, but did either or both of you upgrade to Leopard?
ojnihs Posted February 29, 2008 Author Report Posted February 29, 2008 Not sure if this matters, but did either or both of you upgrade to Leopard? yeah we both upgraded to leopard. we're cheap so we used the same disk, but I doubt that matters, since it worked before. his computer, MBP, has apparently been running slower lately than before, which is news to me. i tried onyxing it but he says the performance isn't quite up to what it used to be. *shrug*
Salt Peanuts Posted February 29, 2008 Report Posted February 29, 2008 I'm assuming he used the "upgrade" option? That's what I did with my iMac initially, and I noticed that it wasn't running as smoothly as before and it seemed to get worse. Eventually, I just backed up my data and did a clean install of Leopard and it's been running just fine.
ojnihs Posted February 29, 2008 Author Report Posted February 29, 2008 I'm assuming he used the "upgrade" option? That's what I did with my iMac initially, and I noticed that it wasn't running as smoothly as before and it seemed to get worse. Eventually, I just backed up my data and did a clean install of Leopard and it's been running just fine. yeah, he did indeed use the upgrade feature (as did I). i think we both may do fresh installs later.
ojnihs Posted March 1, 2008 Author Report Posted March 1, 2008 http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1397383&tstart=60
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