I have a powerful PC running Windows 10.
The PC is connected to a very powerful router (Ubiquiti Dream Machine PRO) via a gigabit wire.
I also have a computer running Manjaro Linux. It is connected to the same router via WiFi 5.
I have a 1080p video file stored on an expensive NVMe SSD on the Windows PC. The file is shared over a Windows shared folder.
When I access the video via smb://
and watch it in VLC, the video stutters frequently, like once a minute. It skips a keyframe, producing a grey picture where moving objects are slowly revealing, until the the next keyframe. If I rewind 10 seconds back, it plays the same segment of the video normally, but will stutter again later on. Sometimes stutter happens with a short loss of audio. 😩
The bitrate of the video is around 10 Mbit/s.
iPerf3 measures 130 Mbit/s between the two computers.
The video is 3.7 GB and 47 minutes long. If I copy the video file onto a local disk on the Linux computer, it takes roughy 6 minutes to copy, which matches the iPerf 3 result.
I can start copying the video file and then immediately start playing the incomplete video file — and it plays throughout without a single stutter! 🤯
This happens to every video file played on Linux machine over smb://
and is agnostic of the video player app and even Linux distribution. The issue does not happen when playing on a Windows 11 laptop over \\MY_WINDOWS_10_DESKTOP
.
On an Android TV running Kodi, video playback is also unreliable. The most common issue is that the audio would hiccup once every other second, continuously, making the video impossible to listen to. It can be worked around by changing audio tracks. But when you pause the video and then resume, it may start stuttering again.
Another common issue on Android TV is that it's sometimes stops playing and starts buffering.
At another location, I am watching videos from SMB share on MacOS (yeah...) to Android TV running Kodi — and I have exactly the same issue, though network there is set up via a cheap WiFi router.
Why is the video stuttering? How do I fix it?
PS I did my homework, googling up dozens of questions identical to mine, some are older than my 10 y. o. kid. 🙈 But all answers dig into specific network issues or setups. I believe the problem may be universal to SMB or something.
PPS Please also share your advice on alternative ways to share videos from a Windows 10 PC to Linux desktop and Android TV! But please remember that such advice is not answering my question.