HOW-TO:Modify the video cache

This page describes three advancedsettings.xml settings that can be used to maximize the cache that XBMC uses. You can use all or just a couple of these settings to see significant improvements in cache performance, should you require it.

What is the video cache

During playback from internet sources, XBMC will cache the video in RAM for a little bit. If the data rate of the video file is too slow for live playback, XBMC will pause until it can fill the cache enough so that it won't need to pause anymore. Sometimes XBMC doesn't have enough RAM and will give a "cache full" error message.

What this guide won't do

Even if you change the cache settings in XBMC, that won't change how fast the video file data comes in over the network.

• It won't make a slow server load the video any faster.
• It won't fix a slow local network.

What this guide will do

• Often the problem isn't that the network/server is consistently slow, but rather that there are dips in network/server performance. Filling the cache, even when XBMC doesn't think it's needed at the time, will help smooth out performance. Hopefully to the point where the video never has to pause in order to playback the entire file.

• Increasing the rate and size of the cache can also reduce network congestion. On a healthy 100meg LAN, a TV episode can often load in seconds, and then leave the network's full bandwidth to other tasks.

• Battery life can also be increased on devices in at least two situations by modifying these cache settings:
  • One is by keeping the cache in RAM, but increasing the size and fill-rate, so that sustained hard drive use is decreased (except for DVD and Bluray playback, which will bypass the cache). In this case the cache is being used even though all the files are local, and no network is being used at all.
  • Two is that, on certain devices, sustained slow/medium-wifi usage, over the length of the video will use more power than using fast-wifi usage for a shorter time.