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AppleTV buffering & sticking

R

rexone

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Our gen2 AppleTV is about to get used as a hockey puck if I can't get this sorted...
Some movies it will for no explicable reason just take forever to buffer and then 'stick' during playback & go jumpy.
This is not with material we are streaming from the net but from local material!
The ATV is connected to our TimeCapsule via ethernet & our iTunes library resides on the TC.
The problem most often happens with movies saved into iTunes after they have been created in & shared out from iMovie.
They will playback fine on any of our computers but just not the ATV.
Help!!!!!!
Please 😱
 
Hi,

I had the same issue. It is somewhat fixed by forcing a different name for my 5GHz Time Capsule network and making sure my apple TV uses THAT network and not the 2.4 GHz one.

I think a network will downgrade to the speed of the slowest devices connected to it. So only wireless-n devices that support 5GHZ are allowed on my 5GHz network and use the best speed.

It might be pure luck, but that's how I understood it. 🙂
 
I second the recommendation of using N. I have no problems with two Apple TVs on an N-only network.

Also, if your Mac's connection to the Time Capsule is wireless, then you have the same problem as a NAS user: when you play content, the data is read from storage, sent over the network to your Mac, then *back* over the network (and running into itself coming the other way) to the Apple TV. You might copy of movie from the Time Capsule to your Mac and play it from there to see if it helps.

A.
 
Thanks for the replies GenesisST & Alrescha.
As my ATV is connected by ethernet would the wireless configuration be relevant?
I’m wondering if the issue has to do with these particular files that are being exported by iMovie as it only seems to be happening with files from this source.
I export them from iMovie at 1080 and the ATV2 is only 720 playback.
Is it possible that the ATV is having to downscale them on the fly & can’t handle it?

I should also add that this is only a reasonably recent problem. Only started happening in the last couple of months so I'm guessing it's something screwed up in one of Apples recent updates.
 
If these files played before, then the question is "what changed?". The Apple TV? The network?

If you suspect the Apple TV you can reset it and try again. If you have a mini(micro?) USB cable you can attach the Apple TV to iTunes and reload the firmware (perhaps an older version, if available).

A.
 
Alrescha said:
If these files played before, then the question is "what changed?". The Apple TV? The network?

A.
Click to expand...

Thanks again Alrescha, that is the question & I can only assume the "what..." is at Apples end as nothing has changed in how I create, manage, store or stream these files...

But I think I've solved it... one of the short movies I made in iMovie I just re-exported in 720 instead of 1080. It played-back flawlessly.
So it would seem that the AppleTV 2 with the most recent software updates applied can no longer correctly handle downscaling of 1080 to 720.
 
Sedulous said:
I have experience same problem. Solved it by simply restarting the ATV2.
Click to expand...

Thanks Sedulous, I had tried all the classic tricks such as restarting, unplugging etc but nothing was working & the issue just seemed to be with these particular files.
It also is happening with 1080 footage from my GoPro so I'll try importing some of that at 720 & see what happens but I suspect that this is an issue with the down-scaling not working in the latest updates.
 
rexone said:
Thanks Sedulous, I had tried all the classic tricks such as restarting, unplugging etc but nothing was working & the issue just seemed to be with these particular files.
It also is happening with 1080 footage from my GoPro so I'll try importing some of that at 720 & see what happens but I suspect that this is an issue with the down-scaling not working in the latest updates.
Click to expand...

Not sure what else to tell you. I run all sorts of h.264 video through my :apple:TV2 and never needed more than a restart to fix buggy playback. Other than problems caused by network or hardware problems unique to your set up, I don't know anything worth trying. Good luck.
 
I had a similar problem with my ATV3. Movies would take forever to load and sometimes wouldn't start at all. Restarting the ATV only solved it temporary.

I downgraded the firmware back to 5.3 and everything is much better. Movies load and start quickly now.
 
I've had the same problem several times recently and the fix appears to be re-booting my Airport ... never had the problem until a few weeks ago.

It's a bit annoying actually.
 
Just got mine yesterday. Haven't had much chance to play with it, but I did notice that it took about five minutes to load a 30 second video from my phone. And several times when streaming a video through Safari I had some problems; once, got sound and no video, and another time had the "stuck buffering" situation. The wheel was spinning, the beginning of the video came up, but it loaded very slowly and it never did start playing. Will try to reset if it happens again. I even checked the download speed and it seemed OK to the ATV.
 
lexvo said:
I had a similar problem with my ATV3. Movies would take forever to load and sometimes wouldn't start at all. Restarting the ATV only solved it temporary.

I downgraded the firmware back to 5.3 and everything is much better. Movies load and start quickly now.
Click to expand...

How do you downgrade to 5.3?! PLEASE i am ripping my hair out! I have restored, reset and still get this inconsistant ATV3 buffering problem every couple weeks for NO apparent reason? Everything internet wise in the house is lightening speed, no changes whatsoever with anything! one night its fine and the next its stupid! I am hardwired and for a puck that works 70% of the time with no issue I just cannot figure out this frustrating mystery...
 
Hi rexone,

Couple of quick questions:

1. Does playback of movies purchased/redeemed through the iTunes Store work fine?

2. Are the movies that are not playing ones that were either (a) ripped from DVD/Bluray or (b) created as home videos from video camera/iphone etc.?

If you answered yes to both then one of the issues that can occur when creating your own home movies or ripping DVD/Blurays is that the video metadata container is created at the end of the video file instead of at the beginning. The metadata contains information such as movie length, key-frame indexes, etc.

Files with the metadata container at the beginning can start playing almost straight away on the aTV. If the metadata is at the end of the file, often the whole or a substantial part of the file needs to be downloaded before playback can begin. This is problematic for large files. Moving the metadata to the start of the file leads to almost instant playback while the file is still buffering on the aTV.

This problem used to happen to me with DVD/Bluray rips until I realised that in Handbrake I could check a box that says "Web Optimized". This problem also occurs when you try and airplay video from your iPhone Camera Roll to your aTV - you will see it buffer almost to the end even though it might only be a 30 second clip, whereas an iTunes movie will start almost instantly.

I suggest you use Handbrake and re-encode one of your problem files with the "Web Optimized" check-box checked and see if that makes a difference. If it does then that likely is your issue.
 
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