If you ever tried to stream a file that’s still downloading or incomplete you might have noticed that Kodi will just stop playback whenever the end of the file is reached – that is expected. However, if you start playback and the file get’s downloaded more during playback, Kodi will still end playback at the position the file was at at the start of playback – that is not expected and VLC on Windows handles this way better where playback would not stop.
Fixing this problem
I have been searching far and wide for a fix to this issue and could not really find one that worked for me. I then had a thought: Maybe it was a caching problem – Kodi might spot the end of the file at playback and then just not bother to recheck once the end of the cache is reached. That was my theory. So I tried the following:
<advancedsettings>
<cache>
<buffermode>3</buffermode>
<readfactor>1</readfactor>
<memorysize>104857600</memorysize>
</cache>
</advancedsettings>I put this code in my advancedsettings.xml file and et voilà – it works! Playback is continuous even though the underlying file get’s bigger.
<buffermode>3</buffermode> sets the Kodi buffer to “no buffer” and that seemed to do the trick. I also adjusted the <readfactor>1</readfactor> but I’m not sure that this really does anything since buffering is disabled due to buffermode (docs).
How to get the advancedsettings.xml file into Kodi on Fire TV
This is a quick tip inside this quick tip (is that allowed?) on how to get the file into Kodi when you’re running on a Fire TV or any device that is not easily accessible from a computer.
Since you already have a smb share, you can use that share to temporarily store the advancedsettings.xml file and then use Kodi’s filemanager to copy the file over:
On the left side I opened Profile directory – which is exactly the place the advancedsettings.xml file has to go. On the right side I would navigate to my smb share and find the file. Once I find the file, use the options key to select Copy and you’re done, the file was copied to the left side. After that, restart Kodi and everything should (fingers crossed) now work.
That’s it, that’s the quick tip. I hope it helped and you can now stream incomplete files via Kodi.