IPTV Playback freezing

[Tunes0710]

Tonight whilst trying to watch a few channels on IPTV, it would play for 45 seconds or so and then freeze for a couple of seconds...then resume playing and then freeze again.

At first, I wondered if it was because I had xteve serving up the channels to NPVR (xteve/npvr/kodi all on the same box). So I added a couple of channels direct from the IPTV provider (even though xteve was set to forward with no buffer). But it still buffered.

I tried it using an IPTV app and the playback is fine. So I then restarted NPVR and tried it through the web interface, but it was the same play/freeze/play/freeze/etc

I've included logs, but not sure if you need me to try something specific.

I flushed the logs, restarted npvr and then opened the webpage / went to tv guide and selected the channel.

Also in the debug log it showed the full url/port/user/pass of my IPTV provider, which I removed. When I added the channels, I logged in via the new XC button that Sub created, so perhaps that needs to be obfuscated in the logs?

Let me know what else you need to try and debug this please.

[sub]

Also in the debug log it showed the full url/port/user/pass of my IPTV provider, which I removed. When I added the channels, I logged in via the new XC button that Sub created, so perhaps that needs to be obfuscated in the logs?

Can you supply one of the logs via PM, so I can see what messages appeared? (so I can remove them for the next build)

[mvallevand]

I see a problem in the log sub is going to SD with a blank username that was supposed to be fixed for this release did you add any custom dll's from attachements?

Also although you have a copy not transcode ffmpeg still can't create the m3u8 file in real time How does direct play in Kodi work?

2020-05-23 21:57:22.863 [DEBUG][24] [FFMPEG]: frame= 713 fps= 27 q=-1.0 size=N/A time=00:00:25.32 bitrate=N/A speed=0.954x
2020-05-23 21:57:23.378 [DEBUG][24] [FFMPEG]: frame= 731 fps= 27 q=-1.0 size=N/A time=00:00:25.92 bitrate=N/A speed=0.958x

Martin

[Tunes0710]

There haven't been any custom dlls added since the last upgrade.
I did have SD details in, but removed them, thinking that would stop it trying to log in.

Playback is ok usually, whether it's terrestrial, it sometimes stutters when starting a channel, but after a second or two it "catches up" and is fine... whether that's OTA tv or IPTV.

Additionally, I've done a full restart of the PC and apart from a couple of freezes, the streaming actually seems a lot better.

Wondering if it could be a resource issue? it's an i5-4570 with 8gb of ram, running Kodi/xteve/NPVR.
xteve can take a couple of gb of memory as the SD xmltv can be 800mb that it imports, although what it passes through to nextpvr is only about 130mb.

[sub]

I see a problem in the log sub is going to SD with a blank username that was supposed to be fixed for this release did you add any custom dll's from attachements?

I just tried the current release in a clean VM, and it's not doing that. I'm not 100% sure why his log shows it happening.

[sub]

What does your <SchedulesDirectUsername> node look like in config.xml? I'm wondering if it's got spaces or something in it?

[sub]

As Martin said, it looks like your machine is not quite keeping up with transcoding, so that will be stop/starty in the web app, so probably best to focus on Kodi for now, since it can directplay the stream without transcoding.

From past experience, I'd focus on a specific channel, and check it in different clients. My IPTV channels, even though they from the same provider, end up coming from different servers, and some are consistently good, and some can't deliver the streams fast enough so have problems like you describe.

Ultimately very few IPTV providers actually encode and stream there own channels. They're usually paying a mixture of 3rd parties to provide them, and they're hosted in different places, with differing network capacity etc.

[Tunes0710]

<SchedulesDirectDays>9</SchedulesDirectDays>
<SchedulesDirectDaysOvernight>15</SchedulesDirectDaysOvernight>
<SchedulesDirectUsername>RsMhRLpCfDU=</SchedulesDirectUsername>
<SchedulesDirectPassword>RsMhRLpCfDU=</SchedulesDirectPassword>
<SchedulesDirectMigrationDone>true</SchedulesDirectMigrationDone>
<SchedulesDirectURL>https://json.schedulesdirect.org/20140530</SchedulesDirectURL>

Although as I mentioned, I did delete what was in SD username and password as I didn't want/need it to be imported, I was just testing how it worked.

[Tunes0710]

It was "Destination America HD" that I was trying and it was buffering on Kodi, but not in the IPTV app, and then also in the web client, but as you explained, it'll probably be because of the transcoding.

Since writing this, the stream in Kodi paused twice, but then it will be ok for a few minutes, whereas there aren't any pauses on the app.

[mvallevand]

That's not even a valid hash length.

Martin