Video stuttering in recordings and live TV

[Skarr11]

Greetings! (Sort-of long post)...

I've had my PVR up and running now for about 6 months, pretty much trouble-free. Within the last month or so, I've noticed a video stuttering problem that seems to get worse with each recording - at first it was an occasional frame dropping out, but the last few recordings have been terrible.

Here's some computer info:

SageTV 2.1.10
Asus A7N8X-E Deluxe MB
AMD Athlon 2600
1 Gb RAM
300 Gb Seagate HD dedicated to Sage, 64k clusters
250 Gb WD HD for apps, pictures, and music
Hauppauge PVR-350 using TV-out

I recently upgraded the drivers for the 350 to the latest version (PVR250_22_23070.exe by my estimation) and things really got bad after that. I get full-on system lockups and I have to reboot the machine. So one question would be where can I get the previous version of the drivers (of course, I didn't make any sort of backups...)?

I do not suspect it is a heat-related issue because it occurs all the time. I checked it this morning by recording some live TV after the computer was shut down completely for the night and it stuttered and froze. It also occurs when viewing previously recorded programs.

When the system was stable, I was using default for all video and audio settings. I have changed a few of the defaults in various combinations to see if that helped, but no love there (although I need to go through it again and be more systematic). Another question I had was what role the DVD decoders play in normal Sage operation? Are they used only when playing DVD images through Sage, or do they also affect recording/playback of TV content?

As I mentioned above, I am using and enjoying the OSD from the 350 on the TV, and while I know many people have had problems with it, I have not had any (and it continues to work for me), so I don't think that would be a factor here.

I read about the arbitrary DMA to PIO switching issue causing problems, so I checked that and it is fine.

I've read about some of the registry settings but haven't gotten into that just yet. I figure I'll try to get the old 350 drivers and start from there.

Any other suggestions would be appreciated!

Thanks in advance,
Jeff

Edit: I failed to mention that the 300 Gb is a SATA drive, so I don't think the DMA-PIO thing applies there.

So this morning, I'm doing some testing, and I get a message telling me the SATA drive was incorrectly unplugged, like when you unplug a USB memory stick without stopping it and safely removing it. I rebooted and the SATA drive wasn't there. The SATA/RAID controlled appeared to be working correctly, according to the device manager. I'm going to connect the SATA drive to the other port and see if that does anything. Hopefully I haven't lost the drive and its 150 Gb of recordings.

[Skarr11]

Well, I swappped the hard drive to another SATA port...nothing.

I swapped out 2 other SATA cable in different ports, thinking it might be a bad cable. At one startup the hard drive was recognized, and the data was still there, Sage even saw them. Cautiously optimisitc, I did a reboot, and the drive was no longer there. Subsequent reboots did not recognize the drive.

I then used a couple of different power connectors available from the power supply...nothing.

So I think it's a bad hard drive. I'm gonna get another one over the weekend and see if that does the trick.

I'll keep you posted.

Thanks.

Jeff

[Skarr11]

Weekend progress:

I fiddled a bit with the Seagate drive with no success. I attempted to use their diagnostics tools but since the drive is not even recognized at bootup, that was a dead end. I'm gonna see if one of my friends has a MB with SATA connections and see if the drive works there before I initiate the RMA process.

So I purchased a WD 300 Gb SATA drive, installed it, formatted it with 64k clusters, reconnected everything, fired up Sage and recorded some live TV...and promptly locked up the computer. Push the big button on the case to shut down and restart. Grrr.

I recorded some live TV using the WinTV app and it looked good - no stuttering during playback, no system lockups, able to pause/FF/RW without problems, played fine both on the monitor and on the TV screen, audio and video.

Some favorites were recorded overnight, so this morning I took a look at those. Playback with Sage resulted in system lockups within about 5 seconds of starting the file, but the elapsed time of the recording continued to update in the little progress bar on the monitor and in the OSD.

I played those same files in both VideoReDo and WMP9 and they played perfectly, both audio and video.

So now I'm kinda stuck:

My "slam dunk" hard drive replacement didn't fix the problem;

I haven't played with any of the Sage settings since I replaced the HD, but that didn't work the last time;

I don't think it's a driver issue because of the successful WinTV recording/playback, unless I'm not understanding the differences in driver usage between the two apps (quite possible). I'd still like to load some older 350 drivers to see if that helps. Where can I get older 350 drivers, preferably dated? I know that some drivers from late 2004 worked well for me, but I can't remember the number/version;

I recall reading that physically moving the 350 to another PCI slot sometimes works, so I'll do that;

There's the heat issue, so I might just open up the case and blow air across the chassis until I get a real slot cooler, although I'm about out of slots;

Could it be a Sage problem? I'm running 2.1.10, maybe it's time to upgrade. I didn't really want to in the past because I had a stable system, but all bets are off now.

Any other suggestions are most appreciated!

Thanks.

Jeff

[robertmcox]

How about trying software decoding? Does that lockup too?

If this box is dedicated to Sage, then you have way more than enough horsepower. For comparison, I have perfectly fine playback on a P3/800, Nvidia decoders, ATI 9800 SVideo-out - no difference in quality from live feed off digital cable.

As for the PVR-350 drivers, they might actually make a difference -- my understanding is that the runtime firmware for the card comes from the drivers. You might im 'shspvr' for more details...he seems to be the hauppage expert around here.

[Skarr11]

Thanks robertmcox!

Yeah, when I get home from work today I will disable HW decoding only and see how that works. Rampy over at byopvr mentioned this and that changing that setting sometimes gets things to work properly.

I've found several older drivers over at SHSPVR, so I'll try those out tonight, too.
Jeff

[Skarr11]

Well, I think I solved the problem.

I tried several other things, including downloading and installing older driver versions, moving the PVR card to different PCI slots on the M/B, changing various settings within Sage, all to no avail.

I downloaded and installed Sage V2.2.8, and that seemed to fix it. I did get some pixellation in a small band at the top of the screen, but I changed the renderer from default to overlay, and now that's gone.

So, I think I can declare this problem solved.

Thanks for the help!

Jeff