Switched over to Samba and it seems to be working a lot smoother! Excellent!
In case anyone else is using Ubuntu Linux and want to switch over to Samba, the tutorial I followed was very simple hassle free:
http://www.jonathanmoeller.com/screed/?p=1590
I’m still having a few issues with “infinitely loading” but now I know it’s the videos rather than the connection. I’ll create a separate thread for that once I have poked around with it a bit more.