Data Storage - QT Movie: slow playback from NAS Device

Author

QT Movie: slow playback from NAS Device

Billy

2006-11-28, 7:15 pm

I have a 2.5GB 640x480 30fps mov file that I created with QT Pro v6.x
that plays very choppy video at 2fps (average) when accessed from my
externally attached WD Netcenter NAS network drive. The sound however
is fine. When I play this .mov in QT when it resides locally on my Dell

Inspiron 8600 40GB internal HDD it plays fine - nice and smooth - both
sound and video are good.

I'm wondering if this might be due to the speed limitations of the
network drive over the LAN (but I'd be suprised, it's new) or the
network drive device's CIFS file system that it uses.

Interestingly, this issue of choppy video is similar when the mov file
is accessed from the CD/DVD drive (burned copy), which points me back
to possibly an access speed issue (it has to be slower than the local
HDD), although I think the CD/DVD uses CDFS which is another file
system format other than the standard NTFS or FAT.

Is there anything that I can do to: A.) Adjust the frame rate in the
video (it shows it in preferences/QT settings, but is unchangeable);
B.) Buffer the video stream over the LAN as you would do over the www
so that video is buffered before and while it plays; c.) Anything else.

I'm desperate to get this working because the files need to reside on
the NAS device as they are too big and too many for the local drive.
They also need to be played from there as it takes too long and is too
tedious to copy locally everytime it will be played.

Alternatively, is there another mov player that would be more efficient

in buffering a video stream from a sluggish device?

Steve Cousins

2006-11-29, 1:12 pm

Billy wrote:
>
> I have a 2.5GB 640x480 30fps mov file that I created with QT Pro v6.x
> that plays very choppy video at 2fps (average) when accessed from my
> externally attached WD Netcenter NAS network drive. The sound however
> is fine. When I play this .mov in QT when it resides locally on my Dell
>
> Inspiron 8600 40GB internal HDD it plays fine - nice and smooth - both
> sound and video are good.
>
> I'm wondering if this might be due to the speed limitations of the
> network drive over the LAN (but I'd be suprised, it's new) or the
> network drive device's CIFS file system that it uses.

Yes. This drive can only do about 6 MB/sec reads over 100 Mbps ethernet
so you are pretty limited there.

> Interestingly, this issue of choppy video is similar when the mov file
> is accessed from the CD/DVD drive (burned copy), which points me back
> to possibly an access speed issue (it has to be slower than the local
> HDD), although I think the CD/DVD uses CDFS which is another file
> system format other than the standard NTFS or FAT.

A 50X CD drive is about 7.5 MB/sec so it is in the same range as the
NAS. I don't think the file system matters in these cases.

> Is there anything that I can do to: A.) Adjust the frame rate in the
> video (it shows it in preferences/QT settings, but is unchangeable);
> B.) Buffer the video stream over the LAN as you would do over the www
> so that video is buffered before and while it plays; c.) Anything else.

If you can get a movie player that buffers, then that would probably be
the best fix other than getting a faster NAS. The Infrant NAS's do
better but they have four drive slots. They cost about $600 w/o a
drive.

> I'm desperate to get this working because the files need to reside on
> the NAS device as they are too big and too many for the local drive.
> They also need to be played from there as it takes too long and is too
> tedious to copy locally everytime it will be played.
>
> Alternatively, is there another mov player that would be more efficient
> in buffering a video stream from a sluggish device?

I think Google would be able to help with this. What happens if you use
the RealAudio player (I think it can play MOV files)?

Steve