Lag during 720p playback

[npriess]

Hi,

When I play back a video from my freeagent go portable drive, I experience a slight lag every 5-10 seconds.

Is there something to do about it? 😕

 

[BlueRevolution]

Copy it to an internal drive. Your external is not fast enough to accommodate the bitrate of high-resolution video.

You could also try playing with Plex. I've found that it has fewer problems with lag on high-bitrate videos than other players.

 

[npriess]

I just don't get it - because transfer rates exceed 30 mb/sec from my external drive.
Shouldn't that be enough for a smooth video playback?

 

[BlueRevolution]

I have the same problem with HD video. I don't know why it behaves like that, but Plex does work.

 

[npriess]

Okay - thanks for the advice 🙂 I'll try Plex.

What are the specs of your setup? computer, drive and interface

 

[Cave Man]

Copy it to an internal drive. Your external is not fast enough to accommodate the bitrate of high-resolution video.

It has nothing to do with the external drive. It has everything to do with the playback software. My Blu-ray drive is USB, which is substantially slower than any USB hard drive.

 

[npriess]

So the conclusion is;

1. VLC sucks at playing HD video from an external drive?
2. No matter how fast a drive I would connect - I would still have the same issue?

 

[BlueRevolution]

It has nothing to do with the external drive. It has everything to do with the playback software. My Blu-ray drive is USB, which is substantially slower than any USB hard drive.

I don't know about that. I also have a FreeAgent Go drive, as well as a 3.5" USB external, and both have lag problems with QuickTime and VLC. Both players work fine from with video copied to my internal drive.

That being the case, I imagine eSATA would work just fine.

2. No matter how fast a drive I would connect - I would still have the same issue?

The speed of the drive has nothing to do with it. External hard drives are the same drives that are used in computers, just placed in an external enclosure. The bottleneck is the USB interface.

 

[npriess]

I know the drives are similar to those in the computer - but what I meant was another interface. Choosing a firewire 800 drive for instance? 🙂

 

[Cave Man]

So the conclusion is;

1. VLC sucks at playing HD video from an external drive?

Not necessarily. There are too many variables to know where the difficulty lies, such as bit rate, video codec, audio codec and frame rate. But generally speaking, only Plex and XBMC are efficient play back apps for HD video.

2. No matter how fast a drive I would connect - I would still have the same issue?

I can play Blu-ray rips off of a USB2 hard drive with Plex. These are typically 1080p, 30 mbps bit rate, 24 fps and have digital audio (AC3, DTS), and I'm using a 2 gHz Mac Mini/gma950.

 

[npriess]

Tried Plex now and it actually seems to work flawlessly. Thanks. 🙂