Severe stuttering and buffering in Kodi

[maeslin]

SON OF A B*TCH. I figured out what the issue was.

It's my antivirus. As soon as I disable the active virus shield, everything works a-ok with timeshifting enabled. No more lag or anything of the sort. Timeshifting disabled only stutters about half as much as with the antivirus enabled.

As soon as the active virus shield is enabled, I'm no longer able to open a channel with timeshifting is enabled.

Seems the free edition of Bitdefender doesn't like something NPVR does.

edit: I'll try with MSSE to see if the situation occurs again. Bitdefender Free has pretty much no configuration options available so I don't have the option of preventing scan of certain files and/or folders.

[jpbelanger79]

Man, just created an account to say THANK YOU! I've been messing with advanced settings for two days now trying to figure out what the problem was... Can't believe it's so obvious I was not seeing it. THANKS!

[cwindomsr]

I am experiencing issues with Recorded TV stuttering during playback. When I select a recorded video, it start to buffer and when it gets around 2% I get a "Cache full - Cache filled before reaching required amount for continuous stream"

My current configuration is:

NextPVR v3.3.6 on Windows 7 x64 SP1
Intel NUC i3:
16GB of RAM
500GB mSATA SSD
2.5 2TB SATA3 HDD (NextPVR recorded videos - 1.6TB free space currently)

Kodi Client v16.1 Jarvis on Windows x64 SP1
Intel NUC i3:
16GB of RAM
500GB mSATA SSD
2.5 2TB SATA3 HDD

10TB NAS for all videos (outside of NextPVR)

Connected via GigE

All recorded videos playback fine without stutter on the NextPVR machine
When connecting to NextPVR from the Kodi client, Live TV functions just fine without stutter, although changing channels sometimes causing

[alesupper]

Yep same problem here. AV was causing bad stuttering, buffering and audio lag. No need to disable AV though, just add an exception in your AV software for your nextpvr folder 'c:\program files(x86)\npvr'.

[tinstaafl]

Just wanted to add my vote of thanks to this thread. Just recently started using the NextPVR TV plugin with Kodi 16.1. Nearly every time I watched recorded shows I noticed buffering when skipping forward or backward. Very long pauses. Sometimes I had to even stop or restart the show.

But it was my antivirus causing the glitches!!!

I disabled real-time protection and everything plays back great now. Skips seek quickly again. I can't exclude anything because that's not an option with Bitdefender Free 2016.

Disabled protection is not a problem here, because I don't usually web surf from my living room PC. It's also an easy one-click process to resume protection if I ever need to download or install anything.

[mrdally204]

Instead of totally disabling protection, why not uninstall the free edition and use Microsoft's Security Essential antivirus which is free.

[tinstaafl]

Maybe because I want real protection if I intend to download something, otherwise it's not needed to read/write .ts files, or to watch live TV. I find that everything about my DVR is now more fluid without real-time AV :-)

And I periodically do on-demand scans of the entire system drive when I'm not watching TV.

I understand that MSE has some fans, and that's fine. I'm not attempting to start any "my AV is better than yours" debate. The web is full of those elsewhere. But I do read AV comparatives test reports and find that the number of malware samples consistently missed by MSE tells me to give it a pass. That's just my opinion. Plus there are other, better, free choices out there.

[mrdally204]

It's not a matter of having better or best AV, but having something watch your system at all times. Downloading is not the only time your system needs an antivirus. Any time you are on the net you should properly protect your system. There are plenty of malicious sites that will happily download the malware for you just by visiting. In fact a few months back, crypto ransomware was being distributed through an ads network on many legit sites. Just be safe out there my friend

[theZeigs]

I can confirm, this worked for me too. I tried so many different things - different channels on my router, fixed IP addresses, etc., but just putting in an exception in my anti-virus, fixed the stuttering and buffering issues! Thanks so much. FWIW, I use AVG so putting in an exception was simple. Thanks again.