Playback & GUI Freezing

[pilotguy7ca]

I've only been using Sage for a couple of weeks and I've only noticed this problem now since I've had more time to play with it. During playback of live tv the video/sound will freeze randomly, sometimes after 1 min, sometimes after 30min, and if I try and change channels or go to the guide and select a new channel when it freezes I get a spinning sage icon and I have to kill sage. If I instead go to home and select exit the program shuts down normally.

It seems to aggrevate this problem more if I do more channel changes or go back and forth viewing the guide and live tv.

I've got logging enabled and I've read threads where people have been experiencing "AWTThread Hang Detected" which it what shows up quite a bit in my logs when this freezing occurs.

My setup is:

Server
-------
Windows XP MCE SP2 (All latest updates)
Pentium Dual Core 3.4, 1GB Ram
Asus P5WG2 MB
Hauppauge 500
SageTVServices Only (Don't use gui)
Java 1.4.11

Client
------
Windows XP MCE SP2 (All latest updates)
Pentium Single Core 3.4, 2GB Ram
Asus P5WDG2-WS MB
SageTVClient with SageMC 6.10a STV
Overlay, Sage Video/Audio Decoder
Java 1.4.11

I have tried different version of Java but have reverted to the one that came with Sage. Ive tried the stock STV and I've tried changing the Audio/Video settings but it makes no difference.

I have also tried a stock trial version on another client (Windows XP64) but get the same issue.

I have not been able to try the playback on my server since I had issues installing the sound card that's on the MB.

The server has no issues with recording shows that I select (have recorded 8+ hours without problem) so I think its on the client side. I have not noticed this issue when playing already recorded media, but I have not played with that as much as Live TV.

Please help as I have already registered the programs and I love Sage compared to the competition, but I'm at wits end trying to solve this problem.
Thanks.

[AtariJeff]

Have you defragged your video storage drive? You'll get a huge performance hit if its fragged.

[blade]

Originally Posted by AtariJeff

Have you defragged your video storage drive? You'll get a huge performance hit if its fragged.

If you're drive is formatted to 64k you shouldn't need to defragment. Also don't see how a fragmented drive would cause Sage to freeze up.

[AtariJeff]

If I don't run Disk Keeper on my 300GB video drive, formatted to 64K chunks, Sage will pause and stutter like crazy. Every menu move would give the spinning icon of death. After defrag, smooth sailing.

[blade]

Originally Posted by AtariJeff

If I don't run Disk Keeper on my 300GB video drive, formatted to 64K chunks, Sage will pause and stutter like crazy. Every menu move would give the spinning icon of death. After defrag, smooth sailing.

I've been running Sage for almost 2 years now and have never defragged my video drives and have no problems like that. I know others never defrag as well without problems so I don't know why you have trouble with it, but I don't believe that's typical behavior.

[jimmyb]

Just took AtariJeff's recommendation and sure enough. Logo spins faster, less often and all runs smoother. (yes formated in 64k chunks). Since I do delete all movies and shows once watched, I figured it should not hurt. Most of the hangups were not on the server (I don't watch on that) but on the MVP and clients. Now all is quick and smooth.

[blade]

Strange, do you guys use the same logical or physical drive for recordings and OS?

My server is a celeron 366, 320mb of ram running ata 100 drives so it's about as slow as you can get. The drives are formated to 64k and haven't been defragged in almost 2 years and I have no problems with spinning icons or sluggish behavior. I believe Opus and stanger have been running even longer without defragging.

Just curious why you guys have to defrag.

[pilotguy7ca]

The video drive is 64K formatted and as far as defragging goes I usualy do it when I work on the server, so lately its been quite often. But I doubt it has anything to do with the fragmentation of the drive. The lockup of the video/sound occurs randomly and when it does I get either a lot of "AWTTHREAD..." errors in my log file on the client or it has lots of the "NOOP" messages which from what I can tell is a normal message when its connected and recieving/showing tv, but it isn't. At this point I can hit my Home button and then select to exit Sage and it appears to that that fine. But if I instead try and change channels either by going to the guide or just using my channel up/down button I get the spinning sage icon and then in order to do anything I have to kill the SageTVClient process.

I have tried to eliminate a few things: On the server I had completely disabled my commercial detecting software, the windows firewall, my antivirus software and tried to make sure that all I had running was the SageTVService. On the Client I disabled the firewall, anti-virus and was only running the SageClient software with stock sage audio/video decoders in overlay and non-3d accellerated.

I then slowly re-enabled things on the server (antivirus, showanalyzer) and in between each one on the client I would change a whole bunch of channels and go back and forth between the guide, live tv etc (doing lots of stuff seems to garuantee a lockup). And it appeared as though I got no lockups. But when I had re-enabled the last thing on the server, the windows firewall, I got a lock up. So I double checked my ports that were open, but disabled it anyways (I have a router/firewall so I'm not worried).

It seemed as though I didn't get any lockups with the firewall disabled so on the client I proceeded to re-enable the virus software and then use VMR/Nvidia codec/3da. And for the time being there appeared to be no lockups.

So to do further and longer testing I just left SageClient running and would check it every hour and change the channel and sure enough I got a lockup after about 3 hours (much longer period than I had seen before). So now I don't think that it has anything to do with the firewall and maybe I just got lucky with no lockups when I was re-enabling stuff.

???

[pilotguy7ca]

Also to clarify, when the audio/video first freezes, I don't get the spinning icon, its only after I try and do something else after it freezes that I get it.

[zeltak]

hi

i also started getting loads of freezes, when i try to go into the TV menu. i get the logo spining untill i kill it. ive tried all java versions and only 1.4 seems to be working, but saddly i cant use the xml grabber i use with that java (it needs java 1.5+)...so i am reall stuck. its strange since sage has worked for a year nearly and only now started with this behaviour....i cant see that it has to do with defrag since my video are stored on a linux server....any ideas anyone?


zeltak

[pilotguy7ca]

UPDATE!! FREEZING PROBLEM SOLVED!!

Well I completely reformatted my C: drive on my Sage server and then reinstalled only anything needed to get SageTV back up and running. I then connected a SageTV client and I was getting freezing ever 2 minutes, worse than before. Then I thought maybe I shouldn't have installed my anti-virus software (Avast home free edition, setup with default settings), so I disabled Aavst and my problems went away. I've since uninstalled it and I've been running more than 12 hours with a glitch I was thinking of adding Avast back on but I'm not sure what component of the 7 "On-Access Protections" it is. I'm thinking its either the P2P Shield, Network Shield or Web Shield since I think it scans lives streams of data as its coming and going and this must cause a break or pause in the stream, enough to give Sage a problem anyways.

Anyways, I have Avast installed on my clients so it isn't causing a problem on that end, but it must be the problem on the server end. I wish I had known this could be a potential problem earlier with anti-virus software installed on the server. There should be a note in the forums, or manual somewhere about this once its figured out what part of the software it causing it.