Windows 7 MKV playback stuttering from a network drive - FIX

[Vidmo]

If you find that your MKVs are stuttering when being played back from a network drive I may have a solution for you.

It seems that Windows Vista SP1 (on up) introduced a new setting (NetworkThrottlingIndex) that was designed somewhat like QOS but at the OS level instead of on the network stack itself. This setting allows the OS to throttle the network speed of applications when multimedia is being played in an effort to give the multimedia as much network speed as possible.

Unfortunately this does not work too well with MKVs as the OS seems that *some* multimedia is being played (though Windows media player or whatever your player may be) but ends up throttling the codecs (splitters etc) like that are being used to open and playback the actual content.

You can change the behavior of NetworkThrottlingIndex or even turn it off as I've done. A dword of ffffffff turns this "feature" off for good.

Code: Select all

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Multimedia\SystemProfile]
"NetworkThrottlingIndex"=dword:ffffffff

You can read more about NetworkThrottlingIndex from this MS KB
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/948066

Anandtech.com also has a write-up on this "feature" when it was introduced in Vista SP1.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/2452/2

One final tidbit, for a slight boost to your LAN network speed (which you need when copying those large MKVs to your server right?) Try using Speed Guides TCP Optimizer http://www.speedguide.net/downloads.php. With tweaks on both ends (client and server) I can reliably get 115MB/s MKV transfers now.

I hope this helps others as much as it has helped me.

PS: Love MakeMKV.
Vidmo

[palarsen]

Fantastic! I have been struggling with choppy playback of my blu-ray rips for months and this fixed it right away. Smooth playback every time!

[bpatient]

Hi - sorry for the basic request - but where and how do i insert the code above? i have this issue from a number of my MKV's played from my NAS (DS411j)

Thanks in advance!!

[Woodstock]

If you have administrator privileges on the machine, you can click on the start menu, and type "regedit" in the search bar. Hit enter, and the screen will change color as Windows asks if you REALLY want to do something dangerous, like run regedit.

Regedit is a lot like explorer, you can navigate down the "tree" to the particular registry key you need to edit.

All of this is described, by the way, in the Knowledge Base link in the original message.

[Vidmo]

Hi All,

An update to this issue. There is now an even easier method to change the NetworkThrottlingIndex value. Simply use the TCP Optimizer that I link to in my first message. It now includes the NetworkThrottlingIndex tweak along with the rest of the improvements to the network stack it makes.

Vidmo

[Vidmo]

Bump for a sticky.

[Vidmo]

Bump for a sticky.