Lag when "streaming" from Timecapsule

[the Western zoo]

Hi folks,

I have just bought a 500GB Time Capsule, but when I try to "stream" video from it I get lag in the videofeed. By lag I mean that the picture and audio will stop and resume at different points.

I assume this is either because the connection speed is too slow or a drop in connection... Can anybody confirm this theory of mine? Also is there a way to measure the connection-speed and -stability?

Does anybody have any suggestions to what I should do / adjust to get it to run smooth??

Please write if you do not understand what I mean...

 

[waw74]

to check current network speed (and a bunch of other stuff) try istat menus.
http://www.islayer.com/index.php?op=item&id=28

if you look at their other programs they also have a dashboard widget if you don't want it in the menu bar

or just launch "activity monitor" it's in the utilities folder in applications.
you may have to go to window->activity monitor (or press cmd 1) after you run it if a window doesn't open.

if you are using wireless-N, you should have no problems, although you can get interference from things like microwaves and cordless phones.
also keep in mind if a B device connnects, the whole network drops to B speeds.
depending on the bit rate of the video you really shouldn't have a problem even with G or a clean B signal. a really extreme HD video should be the only thing to cause problems.
Also what type of video file is it? (avi wmv mkv)

 

[the Western zoo]

I already have iStat Menu, but didn't realize that it logged the peak speeds...
- peak upload is 7.28 MB/s
- peak download is 6.84MB/s

I have my old Airport Express connected as well for Airtunes, it does not support N, but would guess it runs G...

I have found out that the lag is dependent on the player;
QuickTime Player doesn't seem to have any lag,
VLC Player has both image and sound lag,
MPlayer has mostly only image lag, but sometimes sound lag as well
DivX Player doesn't seem to have any lag either.

It doesn't seem to matter what format I am trying to play;
- there is lag on an approx. 10000 b/s .mkv
- there is lag on an approx. 1000 kb/s .avi

Is there some kind of adjusting I can do to VLC to make it behave? Cause I usually prefer VLC to QuickTime since I like the interface better and it has better codec compatibility.

 

[the Western zoo]

Also about the lag, according to iStat the connection is "dead" while there is not a lag, then less than a second of more than 3 MB/s trafic, then a short bit of video, then the same again and again... This being on the .mkv in VLC Player.

Edit:
And I got this error message:
ffmpeg: more than 5 seconds of late video -> dropping frame (computer too slow ?)

 

[the Western zoo]

I configured VLC and MPlayer to use a larger cache and now there is no more lag!

 

[sulleric]

I configured VLC and MPlayer to use a larger cache and now there is no more lag!

How did you do this? I've always figured this is the problem, because what seems to cause the lag is the network fluctuating too much... when I watch the activity monitor I can see it going up and down because the host computer doesn't recognize that it's streaming video, only the file. I could just never figure out where to configure the buffer size.