Is there a way to adjust buffer settings for streaming?

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robotmay
Posts: 2
Joined: Fri Jan 25, 2013 11:07 am

Is there a way to adjust buffer settings for streaming?

Post by robotmay »

I'm finding I get streaming issues due to the buffer being depleted before MakeMKV spins the drive up to fill the buffer again. Are there any configuration options for either the GUI/CLI clients where I can specify, for example, that the buffer should always be at least 50% full?
At the moment it only spins up just as the buffer runs out, which causes a very tiny slowdown in playback which totally breaks the video in VLC (VLC usually stops responding too, on OSX/Windows/Linux).

I've tried looking through the docs but I couldn't find anything relevant.
marcusj0015
Posts: 58
Joined: Thu Nov 29, 2012 5:52 pm

Re: Is there a way to adjust buffer settings for streaming?

Post by marcusj0015 »

In Mkvtoolnix, you can go to mmg then to the header editor, and I forget what the setting is called in there, but it sounds like a buffer setting.
Woodstock
Posts: 9978
Joined: Sun Jul 24, 2011 11:21 pm

Re: Is there a way to adjust buffer settings for streaming?

Post by Woodstock »

The question is about the buffering by MakeMKV when streaming a disk. Some of that has to do with the settings the operating system has for the disk buffer on optical drives, and how long the drive takes to spin up and seek when the OS shuts it down.

This question came up last year, and the search function should be able to find it. Try "streaming time-out".
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robotmay
Posts: 2
Joined: Fri Jan 25, 2013 11:07 am

Re: Is there a way to adjust buffer settings for streaming?

Post by robotmay »

Woodstock wrote:This question came up last year, and the search function should be able to find it. Try "streaming time-out".
Aye, I did find a topic or two on it, and the general consensus seemed to be to set the disc read speed to 1x so the buffer never filled. However that seems like a bit of a weird workaround, and I would have thought this would be a problem best solved in the software itself. Is there a reason why it only refills the buffer when it is completely empty?
Woodstock
Posts: 9978
Joined: Sun Jul 24, 2011 11:21 pm

Re: Is there a way to adjust buffer settings for streaming?

Post by Woodstock »

That would be a question for the OS writers - the disk read buffers will be filled as fast as the disk can provide the information, and the OS will then dole that data out until it needs more. Setting a lower buffer count would mean that the disk is still spun up when the OS asks again, but that might not always work.
MakeMKV Frequently Asked Questions
How to aid in finding the answer to your problem: Activating Debug Logging
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