Anyone having Placeshifter Stuttering issues?

[spacecadet]

Whenever I am watching Live TV in the Placeshifter, I have been getting a lot of stuttering in the video and choppy playback. Sometimes the video stops on a black screen. I never had these problems in 5.0 and my upload bandwidth from my ISP is 1.5 Mbps, which should be plenty. CPU utilization on the server does not go above 50%. I noticed this in both 6.0.15 and 6.0.16.

Has anyone else noticed this behavior or have any thoughts on what a remedy might be? I am thinking of logging a bug on this.

[prushing]

Yes, I have some issues Placeshifting since 6.x all together, 5.x was almost flawless. 6.x is mroe pixelated, and picture quality is severely reduced as is performance and stability. No hardware, network, or bandwidth changes have been made...no software changes that would affect SageTV have been made.

[prushing]

My assumptions to date have been that simply need more processing power and more memory, then I will start opening up bug reports and support requests.

Anybody else have any ideas?

[millers_35]

I have found these properties to be very helpful in Placeshifter.

"video_buffer_size=64000000" or "video_buffer_size=32000000"
and
dynamic_encoding/video_resolution=D1

Miller

[spacecadet]

Originally Posted by millers_35

I have found these properties to be very helpful in Placeshifter.

"video_buffer_size=64000000" or "video_buffer_size=32000000"
and
dynamic_encoding/video_resolution=D1

Miller

I tried video_buffer_size=32000000 as per an earlier thread in the Beta, but this didn't help. I will try 64000000 and the dynamic_encoding setting and see if this helps.

[spacecadet]

Originally Posted by spacecadet

I tried video_buffer_size=32000000 as per an earlier thread in the Beta, but this didn't help. I will try 64000000 and the dynamic_encoding setting and see if this helps.

Yeah. Tried these settings with no luck.

Behavior is the same. Should also note that I agree with prushing's observation that the picture quality of Placeshifter has dropped. My picture also appears "more pixelated"

I monitored the "Statistics Window" and observed the following. When everything is working fine, the three bandwidth numbers all sit around the same value (in the 900-1200 Kbps range). When the stuttering is occuring the Channel and Target Bandwidths remain in the 900-1200 Kbps range, but the Stream Bandwidth fluctuates between 4000-8000 Kbps (which seems very odd).

Sometimes the picture drops out completely and I get stuttering Audio. Sometimes I get both stuttering Audio and Video. Eventually Placeshifter hangs and both the Audio and Video lock up.

[Mark SS]

I reported exactly the same issue with the first beta release. Was told it had been fixed in a subsequent release but I didn't get a chance to test it.

[thatdude90210]

It was fixed in .13 & .14 beta. And with those betas, Placeshifter picture quality was very good also.

But for .15 beta & .16 RC, Placeshifter is stuttering pretty badly when using dynamic streaming. It works ok if I set the rate manually though.

[Narflex]

Thanks for all the feedback. We're aware of this problem and it will definitely be fixed for the next RC. It's the #1 issue in the bug tracker.

[spacecadet]

Originally Posted by Narflex

Thanks for all the feedback. We're aware of this problem and it will definitely be fixed for the next RC. It's the #1 issue in the bug tracker.

The WAF will definitely being going back up. Thanks!

[ozfiles]

Originally Posted by spacecadet

The WAF will definitely being going back up. Thanks!

Same deal here......amen to that.

[Narflex]

Now if you all could do me a big favor and test this out now instead of waiting for the next RC and confirm it's fixed. The updated transcoder can be downloaded from:

http://download.sage.tv/SageTVTranscoder.zip

Just unzip it into your SageTV program folder and overwrite the file that's there. Then please post back with your results!

Thanks for the help.

[millers_35]

Originally Posted by Narflex

Now if you all could do me a big favor and test this out now instead of waiting for the next RC and confirm it's fixed. The updated transcoder can be downloaded from:

http://download.sage.tv/SageTVTranscoder.zip

Just unzip it into your SageTV program folder and overwrite the file that's there. Then please post back with your results!

Thanks for the help.

All I can say is WOW. It has never looked so good. I thought the grainyness was pretty normal and thought the studdering was from a buffer issue. It really looks good. When I upgraded my upload speed from 256Kb to 1Mb I couldnt really tell a difference but now it's pretty much just like being at home. Thx alot.

Miller

[Narflex]

That's what I love to hear. In the process of fixing this issue I found another non-optimal thing it was doing which I thought we had disabled...and now it is disabled so I guess the quality is even better than V5.

[millers_35]

Quality is great but as I keep testing it I notice it is slightly jerky but in earlier versions I would have a heavy stutter or pause. So the big stutter is gone, slight jerking still there, quality pretty darn good (havent tried it with a football game but Heros, and Nip Tuck look nice).

Miller

[spacecadet]

Originally Posted by Narflex

Now if you all could do me a big favor and test this out now instead of waiting for the next RC and confirm it's fixed. The updated transcoder can be downloaded from:

http://download.sage.tv/SageTVTranscoder.zip

Just unzip it into your SageTV program folder and overwrite the file that's there. Then please post back with your results!

Thanks for the help.

Quote from wife: "Yeah, I think it's working okay now."

I don't think I'm going to get anything more enthusiastic than that, so I guess it's good to go