DVDs won't play or resume

Ami Ben-David [Boxee] added a comment - 29/May/11 3:43 AM William, It would help us reproduce and fix the issue if you could please upload the file or a file sample to the "incoming" directory at ftp://ftp.boxee.tv user: dropbox pass: swA4EQAt Before uploading, Rename the file to include the issue number in its file name. This is a write only FTP, and other people will not see your files. You can use the FTP client from http://filezilla-project.org/

Nigel Jones added a comment - 01/Jun/11 1:07 PM I have recently seen the same issue with a DVD ISO. Playing from the start works fine, but resuming from a saved position after a box restart caused a hung picture with normal audio. I had to exit and play from the beginning to get it to work.

William Polinchak added a comment - 01/Jun/11 1:23 PM I have the exact same symptoms that Nigel is seeing. I have to reboot the Boxee Box to restart the VOB file. Playing a VOB after a reboot plays perfectly fine. The restart did work fine at one time.

Ami Ben-David [Boxee] added a comment - 02/Jun/11 5:08 AM Guys, are these DVD iso files are identified using NFO files?

William Polinchak added a comment - 02/Jun/11 8:38 AM No, I don't think so. Mine are just VOBs.

Ami Ben-David [Boxee] added a comment - 02/Jun/11 9:44 AM William, Can you please add to this issue the path and folder hierarchy of the VOB files ? Thanks

William Polinchak added a comment - 02/Jun/11 7:02 PM The path looks like this on the Boxee smb://mybookworld/public/shared videos/Movies/titlename/MainMovie/titlename/VIDEO_TS

Daven added a comment - 06/Jun/11 3:04 AM Occasionally when I'm watching dvd iso's the boxee box will randomly return me to the menu. At this point, if I then try to go back and watch the iso again and resume, it will only play audio and no video or won't play at all and will simply be frozen. After this happens, if I try to watch any other movie, it will do the same thing and either have only audio or be frozen. The only way to fix this is to unplug it and hold down the power button for a minute or so. If I don't leave it unplugged long enough, the issue is still there when the boxee box starts back up. I've observed this same issue when using just the boxee software on windows 7. I've detected this both when using a wireless N with a good connection and using wired gigabit. It doesn't always happen and there is no consistency on a particular iso (sometimes it plays all the way through fine on a particular movie, sometimes not). So I don't believe there is anything wrong with the iso itself. I have this problem more with DVD 9GB movies than the older 4-ish GB, so I suspect it's an intermittent network slow down that's just enough to cause the boxee to need to buffer, but instead of buffering at those points, it simply causes errors on the boxee, which then needs not only restarted, but left unplugged for a while, in order to be able to play movies again.

Daven added a comment - 06/Jun/11 3:04 AM Update: I've now encountered the issue such that even with a hard reboot the problem still persists if I hit "resume from X" the problem will always be there and I have to reboot again to get any movie to work once I try the resume. After the hard reboot, if I hit "play from beginning" it works fine and i can fast forward to around where I was and it plays through, even through the point it froze on before. Usually when the freeze issue happens I can hard reboot and hit "resume" and it works fine. This is the first time it's not.

Daven added a comment - 06/Jun/11 4:02 AM Another update: When I'm watching via a wired gigabit connection, the problem persists as I said. However, i notice that it starts to buffer each time before it happens and exits to the menu. At that point, it's hosed, as described above. But the difference is that it actually shows itself starting to buffer every time, whereas when accessing wirelessly, it just drops to the menu.

Daven added a comment - 06/Jun/11 4:29 AM Yet another update: I monitored the network throughput the boxee box is pulling when playing the video and it's only about .05%-1% of the available connection speed (1 Gbps), so around 5 Mbps to 10 Mbps. So both the wireless N and the gigabit connection are obviously more than sufficient. Right before the freeze happens, the usage drops to zero and then about 5 seconds later, the movie freezes and drops to the menu. Further, if i instantly hit to play, it says that the network source is not available, even though it is. If I wait a few seconds, then it's back, but obviously only sound or frozen when playing at that point. Also interestingly, the problem happens waaaaay more often when using a wired connection. I can't go more than a couple minutes into the movie before it will happen when using the wired gigabit connection. When hooked up wirelessly, I occasionally can get through the whole movie, though usually it's like a 10 minute to one hour thing before the issue appears. So it appears the bug is not due to needing more bandwidth or the like. Further, the data source (a quite powerful dell server, 8 cores available, Sata6 2 TB drives, 8GB DDR3 RAM) is basically sitting idle while streaming the movies (even for the disks), so there is no issue with bandwidth nor with the datasource being the bottleneck. Just, for some reason, the boxee seems to randomly stop streaming the source, more so when wired. Given that it also happens using the boxee software on windows 7 and it is completley random with nothing appearing wrong with the iso files, I suspect it must be a software issue and not a driver or hardware issue. Please fix this asap, the boxee is basically worthless to me at the moment as I can't seem to watch any movies without continually needing to restart the boxee box.

Ami Ben-David [Boxee] added a comment - 06/Jun/11 5:00 AM Please attach a Debug log to this issue. Settings > System > Debug > Debug Level = Debug ReStart Boxee, and after experiencing the problem, close Boxee and attach your log file to the bug. DEBUG log slows down the performance. so afterward, switch the log level back to NONE Boxee Box log may be found at * http://boxeebox:8080/ under 'Boxee Logs', click on the "Get latest " link. (*boxeebox =ip address of the box) more information at http://support.boxee.tv/entries/329278-i-ve-been-asked-by-boxee-support-to-send-debug-logs-how-do-i-do-that

Daven added a comment - 06/Jun/11 5:35 AM Here's the debug file. On this, I turned on debugging, restarted, then played an iso movie (Tron). Then after about 3 minutes, it froze and exited to the menu. I then clicked to resume the movie and it loaded, but just showed a still of the last image before the freeze, and just audio playing while showing that still. I then fast forwarded a bit and the audio fast forwarded correctly, but still just showing that still for video and nothing else. Obviously sometimes it actually freezes and sometimes it loads blank, rather than the last frame shown before the freeze. Hope that helps track down the problem.

William Polinchak added a comment - 06/Jun/11 7:28 AM I'm able to play a VOB from start to finish without a problem. It's only when I stop a movie and try to resume is where I have the frozen screen.

Kosta Bryman [Boxee] added a comment - 12/Jun/11 7:19 AM - edited reproduced on 1.1.1.19092 steps to reproduce: * disconnect network cable * try to play a dvd (VIDEO_TS) * let the file play or ff then exit * resume the dvd - dvd freezes In order to play the dvd again you need to power cycle the box, if you try to do it with a network cable plugged in it won't reproduce.

Textureglitch added a comment - 13/Jun/11 6:29 AM - edited I encountered this issue as well and I may have found the cause: The player crashes if the input buffer is emptied and the player doesn't notice. I haven't encountered the problem when playing avi files or mkv or others, it only happens with DVD resumes. I've found that the frozen player problem is more difficult to recreate with a wired network. I had to switch between two resumed movies again and again up to 10-20 times before the issue appeared. I switched to my wireless network and on the very first try the player froze. I rebooted boxee, tried to resume a different movie and the player froze right away again. The problem seemed to have something to do with the wireless network connection being slower to buffer. So I tried recreating the frozen player situation by unplugging the wired network cable at different points during the playing of a movie: - If I unplug the cable while a movie is playing it simply stops and exits. - If I press resume, wait for the buffer to fill up (i.e. for the grey bar at the bottom to go all the way to the right) and then unplug the cable, the movie plays for a few seconds, then stops and exits. - If I press resume and immediately unplug the cable, the player pauses for a bit and then exits without playing any part of the movie. HOWEVER! If I press resume and wait just a second or two before unplugging the cable, I can interrupt the buffer filling process at a point where it will not exit because the buffer is too low, it will instead start playing the movie, but without enough content in the buffer (or worse, less content than it thinks it has). I managed to produce the exact same situation as happens on the wireless connection all the time: I got the first frame of frozen video and a few seconds of audio before the buffer was empty. The player did not exit by itself as it should have. I plugged the network cable in again and tried to play another movie and the player was frozen in the same way again. I had managed to crash the player just like before, it wouldn't play avi files or anything else either. I'm thinking this resume issue doesn't appear on avi and mkv files because there's simply less data to buffer; you only see it on DVDs because you're hitting the transfer limit(?). Although if it is indeed a bug in the player input buffer checks, I can imagine this could happen at any transfer speed. So in summary: 1) The player is missing some sanity checks on its input buffer. 2) The player does not recover gracefully when it crashes. If I exit and play a different movie, the player should reset itself, not remain broken. 3) Something about the way the wireless network feeds the player in 1.1 causes this bug to happen, very frequently in my case. May be something about the transfer speed or the smb server, or whatever.

Nigel Jones added a comment - 13/Jun/11 10:12 AM Just in case this helps: 1) This is over a wireless n connection 2) The ISO files are on my QNAP NAS shared over SMB From here it certainly looks like a software issue rather than a limitation of the NAS or wifi connection. Are we all using SMB? Perhaps it's an issue with seeking to a certain point in a large ISO/VOB?

Aaron Thompson added a comment - 29/Jun/11 4:48 PM - edited v 1.1.2.19250 I have zero problems with resume on my BD ISOs, whether they are 20GB or as large as 48GB they will resume as expected. For the few DVD ISOs I have it goes to the DVD menu so I don't know how resume is supposed to work there. Is it supposed to resume when you select play in the DVD menu?

steve b added a comment - 07/Jul/11 7:33 PM I'm having the same problem. If I stop/pause/leave and come back, boxee box does the following click to resume the movie and it loads, but just showed a still of the last image, and audio continues on playing. I have to shut down for about 30 minutes then pick a different movie. I noticed this happen 2 updates back. I'm on Version 1.1.2.19250. I was hopeful that the most recent update would fix this, it has not! Please fix ASAP. Thanks for all the hard work!!!! I play ISO DVD's from my Synology NAS over Wireless N.

Ami Ben-David [Boxee] added a comment - 13/Jul/11 9:28 AM verified 1.2.0.20105

Aric Reid added a comment - 16/Jul/11 10:39 PM This is the closest issue to the problem I am having- perhaps it is related. While streaming video from the internet (Glee from Fox) every time a commercial finishes playing, the play window either displays the last frame of the commercial or a black screen. The overlay playbar is still displayed. Sound continues to play. The only thing I have found as a work around, is to rewind a bit before the commercials and resume play. The commercial does not replay, and I experience no video problems. Possible this is operator error, I suppose. My total ownership time of a Boxee Box is only a few hours.

Ami Ben-David [Boxee] added a comment - 17/Jul/11 4:30 AM Aric, this issue is closed. if you are encountering issues with dvd playback please open a new jira ticket. thanks

Kennet Johansen added a comment - 24/Jul/11 9:19 AM In which version is this issue fixed, i'm using 1.1.2.1920 (BOXEE BOX) and i'm still experienceing this issue.

Ami Ben-David [Boxee] added a comment - 24/Jul/11 9:27 AM @Kennet this fix is available on 1.2.0.20222

William Polinchak added a comment - 09/Aug/11 12:45 PM This works fine now in 1.2.0. Thanks!