[vlc] Multimedia Hard drives

[Frank DiRocco]

Have you been able to play the same files from your local machine? If  
so, does the drive support a high-enough bit rate to move the file  
stream into VLC's buffer? What is the bit rate of the file? When you  
say "cannot play", does it open the files?

IMHO streaming an mkv from an external drive is not feasible. A few  
simple google search clicks (within the first 6 results) turned up an  
interesting thread regarding the mkv container and a possible 24Mb/s  
limit.

Here is a link to a Video bit rate calculator (from the same search)  
that can help you determine if the files are playable from the device,  
the thing is you will need to find out what kind of bit rate you get  
from the device into VLC. How old is the drive? Is it thrashing, I/O  
waits, bad sectors, being used by other processes such as AV scanners  
that check all opened/accessed files (McAffee and others)?

Keep in mind, encoded video (and audio) is compressed. So, you are  
moving a very large file on a disk of unknown sparsity directly into  
active memory where it is then uncompressed and read by VLC. All these  
steps will impede that transfer and rob you of speed.

Please look at the bit rate of your files, then try lower bit rate  
files. I can believe a USB2.0 external drive may have issues with a HD  
DivX file, but I find it hard to believe DivX in a low bit rate format  
will not be streamable from an external drive.

On Jan 5, 2010, at 4:13 PM, Jason Chubet wrote:

> Hi!
>
> I was wondering if it is possible to install VLC onto an external  
> media hard drive in order to make the media drive itself compatible  
> with everything that VLC itself currently is. Because right now my  
> drive cannot play divx or mp4, and possibly mkv files. Im wondering  
> if having vlc on my drive will change all that. If you need some  
> questions answered before giving me a response, i will gladly help  
> you with that. Thank you for any assistance you can provide!
>
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