Strange pauses with 4.1

[neilbradley]

I've been battling a problem now for a few weeks now with Sage 4.1 that has me completely baffled, and I'd LOVE to get it fixed.

System configuration:

* Pentium 4, 3Ghz, Intel D925XECV2 motherboard
* 200 Gigabyte 7200 RPM SATA drive
* WinTV PVR-150 with IR Blaster (SVideo input from my satellite dish)
* SageTV 4.1.3, running as a service

Whenever I'm watching TV, and SageTV is about to change channels, there is a pause on my existing program that lasts as long as 15-20 seconds, then SageTV unpauses and keeps going. Then it's 15-20 seconds behind the recording. I can hit ->| and it'll skip to the live TV, so no data is lost.

Initially I thought this was a problem with my video being on network shares, but that's not the case. I'm now spooling only to my local hard drive, so there shouldn't be delays. I didn't notice this until version 4.x. (Oi... it just did it again, this time at the end of a 30 minute show).

During this paused period of time, the Sage TV service shows between 0 & 1% CPU utilization, and the system is highly responsive, so it's not like the system is hung up.

I also now have a few days' worth of recordings on the hard drive. On a few recordings, most notably the X-Files, right after the first 30 seconds, I have bizarre gaps. Not a typical red segment in the progress bar, but if I play it forward, when it hits a specific spot in the file, it'll immediately jump from, say, 36 seconds to 4:52, and data is missing for that period. I played back the file directly with PowerDVD, and it's skipping there, too, so it looks like the recording got screwed up.

These problems are so strange, that I'm fearful that it's bizarre enough that no one will know what it is. But the Mrs. is on my case to get it fixed, whatever it takes... Any ideas AT ALL?

-->Neil

[Opus4]

Originally Posted by neilbradley

Whenever I'm watching TV, and SageTV is about to change channels, there is a pause on my existing program that lasts as long as 15-20 seconds, then SageTV unpauses and keeps going. Then it's 15-20 seconds behind the recording. I can hit ->| and it'll skip to the live TV, so no data is lost.

Is this a pause in the middle of a show, or a pause between shows? If you are watching live & the show changes, SageTV has to take time to switch to a new recording file for the new show. That is expected.

I also now have a few days' worth of recordings on the hard drive. On a few recordings, most notably the X-Files, right after the first 30 seconds, I have bizarre gaps. Not a typical red segment in the progress bar, but if I play it forward, when it hits a specific spot in the file, it'll immediately jump from, say, 36 seconds to 4:52, and data is missing for that period. I played back the file directly with PowerDVD, and it's skipping there, too, so it looks like the recording got screwed up.

This sounds like corrupted recordings. It doesn't create multiple files when this happens? If you look at the bottom of the Detailed Info for a recording, does it list multiple files or just one?

- Andy

[neilbradley]

The 10-15 second pause happens RIGHT as the channel changes. Apparently the SageTV service continues recording during this period (it's not like my show is chopped up with red bands on the progress bar).

I'll have to get back to you on the corruption. I'll find an MPEG file, and if you're interested, could make it available if someone wants to look at it.