HDTV Stuttering

[kltye]

Alright, lots of us have it. Unfortunately, mine is rather sporadic and only happens on certain channels. The stuttering here is more like "jumping" - it plays fine for a second or two, then skips a few frames, and it repeats.

It happens most noticeably on WMAQDT, my local NBC channel. It also happens on WGNDT (WB). Other channels like PBS are perfect, with absolutely no problems.

I'm using the Avermedia A180MCE card, and Sage 4.1.6 with Java 1.5 Update 6. I've defragged my hard drive, and even changed it to a parallel ATA drive (from SATA) because of potential conflicts between the tuner and the SATA controller.

Avermedia's software says the signal strength for all those channels are excellent, and the stuttering does not happen in that program either...

Am I missing something here? :P

[peterjb]

It's not just you! I get stuttering using the DVB-T support in the beta on some HD & SD channels using both a Hauppauge NOVA-T & Dvico FusionHDTV usb device.

I've submitted a bug report - It would probably be a good idea if you did as well.

Cheers

Peter

[Humanzee]

dVico Fusion 5 Gold Usb, same thing, only on some channels only somet times. Sounds like sage is working on some HD issues for 4.1.6, we'll just have to wait and see.

[kltye]

Oh *phew*, I thought my hardware was at fault. Hope they fix it soon - I've actually seen this since 4.1.4...

[mikejaner]

Me too, have to rely on Media Center to watch the Super Bowl for now.

[kltye]

Originally Posted by mikejaner

Me too, have to rely on Media Center to watch the Super Bowl for now.

Oh no, you're telling me MCE works well with HD? I've always been trying to push Sage to friends who have MCE (which I ironically help them set up).

After blundering around with some settings in the sage.properties file, and switching from JVM 1.4 to 1.5, things seem better on ABC... Fingers crossed it'll work tonight...

[SFFMicro]

Originally Posted by kltye

Alright, lots of us have it. Unfortunately, mine is rather sporadic and only happens on certain channels. The stuttering here is more like "jumping" - it plays fine for a second or two, then skips a few frames, and it repeats.

It happens most noticeably on WMAQDT, my local NBC channel. It also happens on WGNDT (WB). Other channels like PBS are perfect, with absolutely no problems.

I'm using the Avermedia A180MCE card, and Sage 4.1.6 with Java 1.5 Update 6. I've defragged my hard drive, and even changed it to a parallel ATA drive (from SATA) because of potential conflicts between the tuner and the SATA controller.

Avermedia's software says the signal strength for all those channels are excellent, and the stuttering does not happen in that program either...

Am I missing something here? :P

Another Chicagoan, greetings.

I have the same setup as you, except I'm running Sage 4.1.3. I don't notice any stuttering issues with WMAQDT, my issues are with WBBMDT. I get a number of audio dropouts and the occasional loss of sync (major pixelation to the point of it loses synch and I get green flashes and jaggies all over playback. Stopping and restarting playback ALWAYS fixes it, but there appears to be a major dropout of audio/video at the point it started). I can attribute this to electrical noise (furnace motor starting, lightning, halogen lights turned on) as I used to own a Zenith HDTV settop box that these condiitons would cause similar problems to.

Can you compare WMAQDT on another TV to eliminate electrical noise / reception problems?

Also, what cluster size did you use when you formatted your drive. There are some threads that discuss stuttering when the drive is formatted with < 64K clusters.

Are you running Antivirus software? I've had MAJOR stuttering issues when running Symantec Corporate Edition Antivirus. Disabling real time scans didn't help, I had to totally uninstall it to get any sort of playability.

Hope this helps...

Jeff

[kltye]

Originally Posted by SFFMicro

Another Chicagoan, greetings.

I have the same setup as you, except I'm running Sage 4.1.3. I don't notice any stuttering issues with WMAQDT, my issues are with WBBMDT. I get a number of audio dropouts and the occasional loss of sync (major pixelation to the point of it loses synch and I get green flashes and jaggies all over playback. Stopping and restarting playback ALWAYS fixes it, but there appears to be a major dropout of audio/video at the point it started). I can attribute this to electrical noise (furnace motor starting, lightning, halogen lights turned on) as I used to own a Zenith HDTV settop box that these condiitons would cause similar problems to.

Can you compare WMAQDT on another TV to eliminate electrical noise / reception problems?

Also, what cluster size did you use when you formatted your drive. There are some threads that discuss stuttering when the drive is formatted with < 64K clusters.

Are you running Antivirus software? I've had MAJOR stuttering issues when running Symantec Corporate Edition Antivirus. Disabling real time scans didn't help, I had to totally uninstall it to get any sort of playability.

Hope this helps...

Jeff

Which part of Chicago are you from?

I don't think I have any RF interference, but I can't check for sure. I live in a dorm, and my room doesn't face the correct direction for WBBMDT.

My drive shouldn't be problematic because they're both not fragmented, and one is formatted with 64k blocks. No AV software either running on it.

Since you're also from Chicago, do you have a green bar at the right side of the video from ABC-HD? It's pretty annoying and only occurs on that channel for me...

[Humanzee]

Originally Posted by SFFMicro

Are you running Antivirus software? I've had MAJOR stuttering issues when running Symantec Corporate Edition Antivirus. Disabling real time scans didn't help, I had to totally uninstall it to get any sort of playability.

I have been using "AVG free" for a virus scanner. Havn't noticed any problem with it related to sage.

I dropped Norton/Symantec years ago.

[mikejaner]

Originally Posted by kltye

Oh no, you're telling me MCE works well with HD? I've always been trying to push Sage to friends who have MCE (which I ironically help them set up).

After blundering around with some settings in the sage.properties file, and switching from JVM 1.4 to 1.5, things seem better on ABC... Fingers crossed it'll work tonight...

Well, I was using MCE for HDTV Viewing before SageTV supported it, and have been using it as a benchmark against SageTV because it's HDTV is really stable for me. I use SageTV for all standard viewing, and have been using it for HD but lately it has been killing the WAF.

[lovingHDTV]

Originally Posted by mikejaner

Well, I was using MCE for HDTV Viewing before SageTV supported it, and have been using it as a benchmark against SageTV because it's HDTV is really stable for me. I use SageTV for all standard viewing, and have been using it for HD but lately it has been killing the WAF.

DITTO on the WAF here. I've been hearing about it ever since I updated to 4.+ from 2.+ Trying to explain that the HDTV recording is looks/sounds better, which she agrees with, does not seem to outway the misrecordings, stuttering, hangs, etc. She would rather watch all shows in lesser quality than miss shows.

I upgrade ASAP with each new release hoping that this one will fix the current problems, but invariably just add new ones.

Not sure what else I can do as I won't go back to no HDTV. Guess my brother may still win me over to MCE. His wife now talks to my wife and extols the virtues of MCE with HDTV viewing.

[SFFMicro]

Originally Posted by kltye

Which part of Chicago are you from?

I don't think I have any RF interference, but I can't check for sure. I live in a dorm, and my room doesn't face the correct direction for WBBMDT.

My drive shouldn't be problematic because they're both not fragmented, and one is formatted with 64k blocks. No AV software either running on it.

Since you're also from Chicago, do you have a green bar at the right side of the video from ABC-HD? It's pretty annoying and only occurs on that channel for me...

Western 'Burbs, near Oakbrook.

Dorm, huh. Maybe a fellow dormie is causing some electrical noise (maybe a microwave oven in the next room??)

Yes, I too have the thin green line on ABC-HD, not as annoying as the CC data at the top of the screen. manged to get rid of those by changing the vert offset in the setup menu. May have to try this with the horz offset.

[kltye]

Instead of the WAF, I have the FAF - friend acceptance factor. Since I stay in a dorm, and have high-tech friends, I regularly have to prove that my rig is better than the competition

[kltye]

Originally Posted by SFFMicro

Western 'Burbs, near Oakbrook.

Dorm, huh. Maybe a fellow dormie is causing some electrical noise (maybe a microwave oven in the next room??)

Yes, I too have the thin green line on ABC-HD, not as annoying as the CC data at the top of the screen. manged to get rid of those by changing the vert offset in the setup menu. May have to try this with the horz offset.

I'm in downtown Chicago itself - the new building at State and Congress.

Haha, well this happens at all times of the day, so I don't think it's any external RF problems. Also, the feed works fine all the time in Avermedia's software.

I don't see the CC data so *phew*. The green line doesn't happen on digital cable from Comcast, so I'm a little pissed. Fortunately it's so think that very little offset is required for this. Gah.

[bbig119]

I'm been encountering the same problem, and until now have been blaming on decoders, and other unfindable issues related to my computer.

I've got a Athlon 3000, 1 gig ram, three SATA drive, Fusion 5 lite, and nvidia 6600GT. In sage I've tried FSE on/off, I'm using VMR9 with the nvidia decoders.

I see stuttering in Sage-- more noticable on some channels than others, but still very noticeable, especially PSBHD. I do not see stuttering at all using the DVICO program, and all my major stations are being received above 90%, most steady at 98+% all of the time.

Is there something I can do to not have the stuttering(tearing) or is there something that Sage is doing to fix it?

[cord]

I was having stuttering problems, too. While fiddling around with things, I turned off VMR9, and the stutters magically cleared up on all channels. I'm now running overlay with 3D acceleration enabled (on or off makes a difference only in CPU consumption). YMMV, of course.

[MixTracks]

See this thread...

http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=16207

I found out the same thing. I bet there are more people here that have the same problem.

I did fill out a bug report, everyone else should so the same.

[kltye]

I thought it was my SATA controller at first, because things got a lot better for me when I switched my system drive over to PATA and disabled the SATA controller. Unfortunately I still have issues with certain channels. And again, the same channel plays fine using Avermedia's software. Not sure if that uses VMR9 though...

On another note, if I switch over to overlay, the aspect ratio seems to be screwed up for me - I see thin black bars at the top and bottom, and somehow I prefer how VMR9 looks, regardless of what others may say

[MixTracks]

I agree, VMR9 does look better for me as well, along with the OSD transparencies. That is why I want HD to work smooth with VMR9.

[bbig119]

Originally Posted by cord

I was having stuttering problems, too. While fiddling around with things, I turned off VMR9, and the stutters magically cleared up on all channels. I'm now running overlay with 3D acceleration enabled (on or off makes a difference only in CPU consumption). YMMV, of course.

Yeah I did this briefly last night and really can't say I watched it enough to say that the stuttering went away, but it didn't appear to stutter. I did notice the picture quality had changed-- I assumed for the worse since everything I've read has indicated that VMR9 produces a better picture than overlay. Again, I didn't test drive it enough to form my own unbiased opinion.

I'll try it again when I get a chance-- hopefully tonight. I'll post back if I find anything interesting.