Pauses while using AirPlay

try rebooting your router, sometimes that can help.

Also make sure you're not getting some interference on your WiFi.

I had terrible problems on 2.4Ghz in my 'hood - baby monitors, wireless CCTV, microwave ovens, all sorts of crud. Great connection for 2, 3 or 4 days, then almost no throughput for hours or even days.

It all disappeared when I went to 5Ghz.

It sounds like you are talking about Mirroring. Then, most likely, either your Mac is choking on the real-time transcoding, or your network is being overwhelmed by real-time transmission of the complex video. Since it is being aggravated by simple actions on the computer, it sounds like the former.

How smoothly does something Airplay (not Mirroring) from iTunes? That will test the process without the transcoding bottleneck.

Beachguy said:

The video continues to play just fine on the MBP- it's a June '12 I7 (2.6Ghz) model with lots of RAM (16GB). The ATV is what is pausing- audio AND video.

Click to expand...

Right, so the problem is somewhere between getting the video from the desktop, through the network, to the aTV and onto the TV. I suspect it is the first step, since it was affected by typing on the computer. Remember that the Mac has to take the video it is playing and transcode it to mp4, then send that through the network so that the aTV can play the video.

If you try a simple Airplay (not Mirroring), which sends a properly encoded video to the aTV from iTunes without playing it on the screen, it should play fine, unless there is a problem with the network connection (radio interference from another electronic device, for example). I would find a free HD TV show from iTunes and use that as a test, as it will be relatively complex, but within specs of the aTV. You could try a full quality BluRay MP4, to really stress the system. If that plays fine, then the problem is at the computer end of the process.

Once you know where the issue is, you might be able to solve the problem by tweaking the problematic system. QOS settings or wifi channel change on the router or moving the aTV to avoid local radio interference, as a couple examples). On the computer, you might be able to remove a background process to improve the transcoding process. Hopefully, you'll be able to find a thread where someone has optimized their mac for Mirroring, in that case.

Beachguy said:

SOme clarifications:

1. While playing video, the Mac is NOT in use otherwise.
2. This is video played locally on the Mac, not iTunes or otherwise.
3. How do you do straight Airplay?
4. This only started happening recently.

(5) I am usually playing my video through VLC, since they are usually AVI or MPG vids, since I also have Windows machines used to play video.

(6) Also, the router won't allow me to change channels. My own routers do, but I don't have them in use right now.

Click to expand...

1. I'm not sure I know what you mean by this.
2. Airplay works best from iTunes, since you are simply sending a file to the aTV that it can play natively, not converting it in the computer first.
3. From a Mac, you use iTunes, select the aTV from the airplay menu (looks like a box being pierced by a "^"), then hit play.
4. Unfortunately, computers and networks are dynamic systems.
5. Windows machines can also play .mp4/.m4v. If you are using videos transcoded by someone else, they may simply be bad conversions that are taxing the limits of your system.
6. My Comcast router, when I had Comcast, allowed me to sign in and administrate things like channel settings. I think I got the default sign-in and password off the internet, somewhere.