[ILUG] Streaming video

[Andres Jimenez]

2005/9/21, Niall O Broin <niall at linux.ie>:
> I've been trying to do some streaming of video from a little server and
> I'm not having much joy. The server's a miniITX box so it doesn't have
> a lot of oomph, but it should still be able to handle this. I have the
> filesystem with the AVIs exported with Samba (for ease of reading by
> all likely clients) but avi playing is very disappointing - the video
> stops completely for seconds at a time.
>
I don't think "Streaming video" is an accurate title for the thread,
because you are only exporting a Samba share....

Anyway, I have done that before on windows networks and everything
worked properly. Using regular PCs (IDE HDs and ethernet 100) it can
be done for not a lot of clients (tested with 8). No specific
equipment used: PCs, network switch and CAT 5 cable. The server was
dedicated to file server only.


> Clients used have been xine on SuSE 9.3, and VLC on OS-X. Just now I
> tried to watch something on the OS-X box and gave up in despair, it was
> so bad.

I don't think problem is related with media players {unless media
player is loading TOO much the computer, that happens to mee too often
using VLC (0.8, not sure) on OSX (G3 ibook and MACmini usin
OSX10.3.9)}

> This was over a wireless connection, but it was just as bad
> with a wired connection. I did a very unscientific test by copying a
> file from the Samba share and got a rate of 500KB/s which is
> atrociously slow BUT is still more than 3x that needed for the avi file
> concerned (350MB, 40 minutes =~ 150KB/s).

I would focus on checking the ACTUAL HD's speed reading different
media files "simultaneously" and how much data the network cards are
sending. I am not happy with my wireless network's performance (USB on
MAC OSX). I dunno if that is your situation.


--
Andres Jimenez