Home Network, Playing Shared Video Files, Stutter

[philosopherdog]

I have the most recent iMac and Macbook Pro on my home network. I'm sharing files between machine and both are using wifi through a Linksys Router. I have video files (avi's) on one machine that I'm playing on the other machine. The files play no problem but their is an intermittent halting. I probably wouldn't call it a stutter exactly. It stops playing and the screen halts at a particular frame, and then after a bit it starts playing again. I'm wondering if this is normal behaviour or if I have something setup incorrectly on my network. Also, I'm wondering what the solution to this is other than copying the files from one machine to the other.

 

[oculus42]

Bandwidth Limitation

My guess: the wifi is probably barely keeping up with the amount of data you need to transfer to view a video across the wireless.

Remember that wifi is a "hub" technology. You may have a 54 Megabit router (802.11g) but that 54 Mbit is *shared*. On a modern wired network, each computer has 100 Mbit or 1000 Mbit *each*.

If something else on your network, or even one of the two computers, needs a little bandwidth for a moment, it could cause the stutter/pause you described.

To solve, either plug one (or both) of the computers into a wired network or put the media files on a third, always-wired computer and view them from there.