Firwire HDTV live playback issue (Split from main thread)

[evilpenguin]

I thought I would break this discussion out the huge thread I could get some input on stuff i've been trying.

I sent Sage about 500K of log messages last week so while they're trying to sort those out i'm going to try a few things and I want to see if I can get a few other people who might be having the same problem to try them with me.

My first instinct about this issue had to do with my system clock getting very out of sync during the recording. My sever loses about 6 seconds every half hour so I know I have a lot of time changing going on. To check this issue I adjusted my system time to be 10 seconds slow before the recording started and about 20 minutes into the recording I manually kicked off a syncronization. The first time I did this it looked like it reproduced the problem, however, after multiple successive attempts that failed to reproduce the problem I think it was just a coincidence.

The second thing I was thinking was that it might be triggered when the file hits a specific size. To check this I starting watching a live HDTV show while I had a VNC window open to my Sage Server and right when the video started stuttering I refreshed the detailed folder view to show me the size of the file just about when the problems started. I know it's a long shot, but it looks like I may have something here. I tried this three times while watching a 720p HDTV program on ESPN and all three times the file size was 2,098,000 KB give or take ~2 MB. So then I moved to a differnt channel with 1080i material and tried it again twice and once again the file size was always about 2,098,000 give or take a few Mb. So far i've tried this about 6 times on differnt channels and the result has always been the same. Could someone else who thinks their having the same problem run this test and see if their video starts stuttering at a constant file size? Come on people it's NFL playoff time, we need to squash this

[evilpenguin]

It didn't even occur to me before but that number looks suspiciously like 2 gig on the nose...

[evilpenguin]

Well I pieced together a different barebones server and only installed MCE + SP2 + Sage 4.1.5 + Firewire Recording Software and I can verify that the problem still exists and occurs, once again, exactly when the recording reaches 2.0 gig.

Since this is pretty much completly different hardware setup than my original server, (Intel chipset as apposed to Nvidia), I'm going to go ahead and rule out any type of potential hardware problems. That pretty much leaves me with either Sage, Windows, or the firewire recording software as the culprit. Hmm...

[gplasky]

I would look at the firewire software. 2 GB is usually a DOS file size limitation. I have seen some software that runs from a command prompt have that type of limitation. As long as NTFS is your file system I would think that rules out the OS. Sage can record non-firewire shows larger than 2 GB, larger than 4 GB and doesn't show a sign of stutter at the 2 GB mark. I don't record with firewire-just throwing in my 2 cents.

Gerry

[evilpenguin]

Yeah, we can probably rule out XP as the culprit too. Right now my working theory is that either Sage or SGraphRecorder is doing some type of check at 2 gig to see if the file needs to be split and that is somehow causing Sage to freak out. I'm leaning more towards Sage than the firewire recording because VLC can play the entire show while it is recording so that leads me to believe that there is nothing wrong with the file being written.

[evilpenguin]

I cranked out some more testing over the weekend and I found out some more interesting stuff relating to this issue. It starting to look like this is only an issue on SageClients.

Last week I put together a new server that has enough horse power to record and playback HDTV content and I found out that regular SageTV has no problem watching live HDTV. I was able to watch an entire hour long show live without incident. However, when I slept SageTV and started a SageClient on the same machine I ran into the same old problems when the file hit 2 gig.

Next I tried to watch the same HDTV show live on a client on a different machine and regular SageTV on the server machine. Not surprisingly, the client craped out when the file size hit 2 gig, however, the server continued to play back the file perfectly. I've created logs for all of this and sent them onto Sage support. Hopefully this will be enough info for them to squash this issue.

[evilpenguin]

Could other people who are using firewire, SGraphrecorder, and a SageClient please post here and let me know if this issue is universal. It would be very helpful to my sanity.

[mikejaner]

This may sound like a dumb question, but are you writing to a disk which is formatted as FAT instead of NTFS? That could be your problem too.

Edit: the size limitation of FAT32 is 4Gb, my bad.
Mike

[evilpenguin]

Nope everything is NTFS with 64k clusters. I'm pretty sure I've considered all the dumb little stuff that I could be screwing up, but you never know. That's why I really want to see if other people have the issue to help remove the "me just being an idiot" variable

[Kirby]

Just want to make sure, you formatted it as NTFS inside a Windows environment right, not inside linux or some other *nix variant? Not sure it would matter much, but I recall the linux NTFS drivers having issues but its been a while since I played with that.

[evilpenguin]

Nope, all my drives were formated in XP using PQ Magic.

[Kirby]

Well then the only difference in my results later will be that I formatted with XP's built in format command. Could there be an issue with PQ Magic? 2GB wont take too long to get to after I get home, 20 minutes or so from TNT-HD should do it.

Should I do any special debug settings first so that Sage will generate useful logs? If so, how?

[evilpenguin]

I don't think logs will be nessisary as i've already sent them quite a few, however, it can't hurt.

To enable logging add "debug_logging=TRUE" to your sageclient properties file. Now everytime you start sage it will create a "sagetv_0.txt" file with all of the logging information. It shouldn't take much more than 20 minutes to hit the 2 gig mark.

Thanks a bunch for helping me out

[Kirby]

Stutters like mad right at 2GB for me also. I didnt get logging turned on yet, because I had to hurry, am about to walk out again, but I can confirm that it happens here too.

[evilpenguin]

Excellent, thanks a lot for checking . I feel much better knowing that the problem prolly isn't in my set up and i'm not just wasting Sage's time. Don't worry about logging, I'll email the support guy i've been talking too and let him know that someone else verified my findings.

[Kirby]

Ok, let me know if you need more tests. Any issues playing a previously recorded show beyond the 2GB limit? I also have a Fusion 5 installed for OTA HD, I can try doing that through the client and see if it does the same at 2GB.

*update*

I just watched live from the Fusion card through the 2GB mark. It kept playing, however I did notice that right at the 2GB mark, the audio became out of sync, just barely (half a second or less). Paused playback for 10 seconds, restarted and it was fine. Now that could have been coincidence because its a OTA signal that has some breakup issues, or it could mean sometime. At this point I am leaning toward coincidence. So assuming the Fusion playback through the client is just fine, doesnt that eliminate everything but SGR, the graph, or firewire drivers (or related directly to it)?

[evilpenguin]

Nope, the recordings always play back perfectly after the show has finished recording, it's only the time between the file hits 2 gig and when the show finishs recording that the playback is strange.

As far as the culprit goes I don't think we can rule out something internal to Sage because regular SageTV plays back the files just fine; it's only the client that has trouble when the file hits the 2 gig mark. I ran a test over the weekend where I watched the same show live on the server as well as the client and while the client crapped out at the 2 gig mark the server kept on playing the file perfectly. I think that at the very least shows that the file is playable thoughout the entire recording process and that the problem might be somewhere in the transmission or reception of the TS data.

[Kirby]

Any updates on this? Cant justify buying a client license (which I want) until this gets fixed.

[AndersNolberger]

Can someone try this version:
http://www.nolberger.se/Sage/GraphRe...rder1.0.10.zip
I had one place where the file size was saved in a 32 bit signed integer and I have changed that so that it should work. But I might have missed some more place and I can not test this since I don't have the hardware (or HD).


(Edit: I put the link to the source in the first attempt.)

Anders

[cohnhead]

Wow, I am glad I found this thread, I have the exact same problem after recently converting to a server client setup. Unfortunately the Server I built doesn't have the power to play HD files without stuttering, so I was never able to determine if it was the file being corrupted or the client not being able to run.

Any solution to this issue yet. I guess I can put the server software back on my HTPC in place of the client and just have it write its files to my new server, but that sort of defeats the purpose.

Marc