Media Player Classic, excessive bandwith issue

Thanks for all your work on these great packages, you ROCK!

Looked over the FAQ first and all posts on the first page of the forum without any luck. I'm using Mega Codec pack and MPC is my main player for music and video. Using 64bit, when ever possible, at least 90% of the time. I don't have a strong connection atm, otherwise it might not be an issue. I'm sharing wifi in the house, getting about 4meg down and 2meg up. It seems when ever I play a video (i.e. mkv, avi or mp4) while I'm downloading all of a sudden DL drops from 4meg to less than 1meg in worst cases. Doesn't seem to be an issue with mp3 files for example. Win 7 pro, with default K Lite settings. About the only thing I settings changed are default file types, set to MPC.


Thanks for any tips or suggestions.

I assume these files are located elsewhere on the network? Playing local files shouldn't have effect on download speeds, except if your harddrive can't cope with the activity.

Try adjusting this setting:
LAV Splitter > Maximum Queue Packets

With a lower value it will buffer less data. The standard value is 350. K-Lite deliberately uses a higher value to ensure smooth playback over wifi. Particularly situations with unstable/bad connections. If your connection is good enough you could lower it a lot. For example 500.

A large value only causes a peak in bandwidth usage at the start. The total usage is the same if you watch the whole file. So it should not matter much for the average download speed.

Thanks for the reply.

Oddly no, the videos and music (not effecting download speed) are all on my drive. Guess I should have been more clear, this is not in reference to Streaming at all. It's making no sense to me, unless some of the Codec files are constantly Pinging or sending data (which they don't seem to be). I got the files directly from the site, well at a download link. I've used K Lite for years and I'm baffled as to what's causing it. Even wondering if I'm missing some update with my Win 7 (currently SP1) might be an issue.

Thanks for any tips.

MPC-HC (and the codecs it uses) doesn't make any Internet connection at all, except for the subtitle download functionality, which is disabled by default. Also, that doesn't use much bandwidth.

Have you tried a very small video file?

I suspect it is because of either high CPU load or high disk activity. Which download tool are you using? Some torrect clients for example have advanced options where you can configure how it writes the data to disk. Reducing the number of reads/writes it does (though caching and larger buffers) can help improve performance.

Do try that setting I mentioned.

Thanks for the reply.

I've never changed default settings so not sure how/where to can change 'LAV Splitter > Maximum Queue Packets'. I looked in MPC options with no luck, is this in the main menu directory Tweak Tool? CPU usage is only 10%, RAM is about 20% and not sure where to check hard drive activity.

You might be onto something with the Hard Drive activity, reader is newsbin, directory and download is on the same drive and same partition. I check my fragmentation and it's actually pretty good at .2%. Yet downloading and playing 1080p movie on the same drive and partition, sounds like it could be problematic. Guess downloading to a completely different drive, might be a solution.

Thanks

Codec Tweak Tool > Configuration > DirectShow Filters

There is also a shortcut in the the start menu.

In the newsbin settings look for ChunkCacheSize setting. Increasing that may help.

Thanks for the replies.

Just got back to this and found the Maximum Queue Packets set to 2880. I'm still not sure need to change it, since I never Steam video, but will try reducing it to 500 if it starts again. Still looking into the newsbin setting. Also looking into setting up another separate drive, watch movies from 1 drive and download to another.

Thanks

If you have a lot of RAM, then you could create a RAM drive for storing the temporary files of newsbin.

Thanks for the reply.

That sounds like a cool idea, but don't think I have enough RAM atm. After getting some sleep, I might have been unintentionally misleading. I realized watching a youtube could technically be Streaming. In my sleep deprived mind, I was thinking Twitch streaming, where people watching others play games and such. It's still seems a great idea for me to have a separate drive to download files too, then I'll keep shows, movies and game on a separate drive. So far things are running good atm.

Thanks and good luck!