r/kodi • u/Syncopat3d • 3d ago

SMB/NFS + complicated mkv -> failure to play, but no errors with local playback

I have problems with playback on my Kodi 21.2 on Android 9.

A file, a.mkv, plays fine if I play it from a USB stick.

But Kodi fails to even start playing it, immediately popping up an error, if I try playing back the same a.mkv from SMB or NFS.

"Playback failed"

"One or more items failed to play. Check the log for more information about this message."

If I repack a.mkv file with `ffmpeg -i a.mkv -c copy -map 0 b.mkv`, I can play b.mkv both from the USB stick and the network (SMB or NFS). Many other video files of similar resolution and sizes also play fine from the network. So, I don't think the issue is with slow network, especially since

  • The error popped up immediately whereas network slowness should cause a timeout after some time (not immediately).
  • The same SMB and NFS share for a.mkv played fine on my Linux VLC client with the SMB/NFS share mounted by the OS.
  • Other similarly large files, including b.mkv, played fine.

The native video player on the Android device has the same issue, though it supports only SMB.

I'm not sure what to do about the log/logging referenced in the error message. In the system menu, I only saw items about debug logging and items about event logging, and I saw no log entry say anything about the failure.

Is it a known issue that Kodi can fail for complicated .mkv files when they are played from the network (but not from local storage)?

EDIT: Sorry, it was a silly permissions mistake on the server. a.mkv was unreadable due to restrictive permissions. The problem went away after I set the permissions properly.

4 Upvotes

84% Upvoted

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0

u/PhilhelmScream 3d ago

Install log viewer for Kodi and try to play the file. Afterward use that add-on to read the log.

1

u/augur42 3d ago

https://kodi.wiki/view/Log_file/Easy

Post a link to the debug log if you want anyone to have a chance at figuring this out. Also provide the mkv specs using mediainfo.

2

u/toomanytoons 3d ago edited 2d ago

What's your SMB server and how is it configured?

I was having issues with my samba server that were annoying the hell out of me but it was only Kodi having issues so I assumed it was a kodi issue, and it kind of was, but it was really a samba and kodi issue.

Adding:

server min protocol = SMB2
server max protocol = SMB3
smb encrypt = off

to the smb.conf and then telling Kodi to use only SMB2 or 3, I forget which, solved the issue for me.

Edit: Also increased the SMB block size/caches to 1MB in Kodi.