Network Encoder playback stuttering

[svalmorri]

Hello,

I have the following problem when watching LiveTV from a network encoder (MT) source: what happens is that exactly 20 minutes after the channel has been tuned, video playback starts to stutter and gets even worse. There is no stutter at all in the first 20 minutes of playback. If I quickly change the channel then re-tune on the same, stutter is gone and I have 20 minutes more.

I thought it was a MyTheatre issue so I kept both (SageTV and MT) playing back the channel and what I noticed is that MT maintains a fluid playback while SageTV stutters: that moved my focus on SageTV.

Then I tested it with a Placeshifter connection, tuned on a MT channel and there was no stutter at all, even after hours of playback. Looks like the stuttering phenomena only applies to the main SageTV console when connected to the server.

I have tried to change several parameters (recording quality, video renderer etc) but the results are the same. Also there aren't memory & CPU peaks during stuttering.

Please also note that it is working well when playback is done from one of the two Hauppauge 500 MCE sources...

My environment is as follows:
SageTV 5.0.4 server
OS: XP Pro MCE - 1 GB RAM
MyTheatre 3.33.5 (running on the same machine)

Any idea to help sorting it out?
Thanks

[Opus4]

Have you tried pausing playback for a little while & then continuing? It sounds like playback might be catching up to the end of the recorded stream.

- Andy

[svalmorri]

Yes I have tried that too but when you play it again, it continues to stutter: the only way to stop it is changing channel back and forth.

Even if it's an end-of-stream issue it looks quite unlikely that it occurs after about 20 minutes each time. An additional thing I have discovered is that the recorded show stutters in the same position when played with different players (e.g. Media Player). This means the stream is managed (displayed and recorded) in the same - wrong - way.

The playback is totally unacceptable the way it is: it's a huge stuttering, like 2 seconds pause and 2 seconds video :-(

[svalmorri]

No other ideas? I can't believe I'm the only one using the MT plugin and having this problem?!

[azakinthinos]

I had very similar problems but it was not after 20 minutes but a few minutes. My setup had my recording directory on the machine I was running Sage while the network encoder was running on another machine. When I swithced the recording directory to the machine that was running MT everything seems to work fine. My guess was that Windows Share performance was just terrible. Hope this helps.

[svalmorri]

Unfortunately in my case MT is running on the same machine: I tried to switch the recording folder to the same drive where MT runs (I actually have a C: IDE drive and a D: RAID0 drive made of 2 sata disks) but I had the same results. Could it be some settings in the Purevideo decoder?

What decoder do you use?
What version of sage are you running?

I'm thinking to downgrade to a previous version, just to see if the problem was introduced by 5.0.4

Thanks for your feedback