Video Stutter with v6

[grauchy]

Thanks to all for your great input I was able to eliminate my stuttering. It turns out that there is a conflict with a180 tuners and SATA drives. But I saw on an earlier post someone mentioned that SATA drives in a raid are not affected by this conflict.

So I reformatted by drive and came up with the following configuration:

80 GB PATA drive for OS
2 - 250 GB SATA drives in a Striped array

The SATA RAID is dedicated for recording and as an array it is not affected by the a180 SATA bug. I can't explain it but it works.

[salsbst]

Originally Posted by cummings66

I've got to give you credit, you haven't banned me yet which I've expected to happen because I've been rather vocal about my displeasure.

One of the many things that I like about SageTV is that you don't get banned for complaining.

I know Jeff wants to solve this. He's asked for my help in solving it before. I found my way to a solution under v6.0 and so I abandoned the effort to solve the stuttering, because (a) I had it working and (b) I knew there were changes coming in 6.1 to address issues found in 6.0.

Now that 6.1 beta is out, and I have stuttering and some un-renderable files again, I plan to get back with him and try to work through it. I suggest that you do the same. Whatever pressures may be causing releases and betas to go out with these problems, I know he takes pride in the software and wants it to work for everyone.

On the flip side, Jeff, it would be nice to work these issues through here (in a forum thread) rather than via email. Email doesn't allow those of us with problems to see the whole picture of the effort, and information gets scattered all over the place for us. It might help us to see the progression of the troubleshooting in a thread rather than email, because we'd probably feel more connected to the effort. Just a thought.

[cummings66]

Originally Posted by grauchy

The SATA RAID is dedicated for recording and as an array it is not affected by the a180 SATA bug. I can't explain it but it works.

I'm glad to hear you've got it working, I thought you'd have the bug. More users than not have that issue with the A180, which as I said before by all accounts is a good card as long as you've got the correct hardware setup.

I'll tuck away the raid data, useful to know. At any rate I was pretty darn sure it was not Sage doing it to you.

[cummings66]

Originally Posted by salsbst

On the flip side, Jeff, it would be nice to work these issues through here (in a forum thread) rather than via email. Email doesn't allow those of us with problems to see the whole picture of the effort, and information gets scattered all over the place for us. It might help us to see the progression of the troubleshooting in a thread rather than email, because we'd probably feel more connected to the effort. Just a thought.

I agree.

Now, on the my post.

I am not too shy about saying when I'm wrong and I'll admit it when it happens. I'm an honest above board guy who's not out to slam or smear anybody who doesn't deserve it.

I was running some tests for Jeff and part of that was to revert back to V5 and try it out. I finished doing so.

I had the stutter in Ver 5 the same as Ver 6, same shows same networks. PBS is one that stutters here all the time now.

I honestly do not remember stutter, and you'd think I'd remember it as much as I hate it. Yet it was there.

There are many changes that have been made to my system since Ver 5, it's entirely possible one of them is what makes Ver 6.1 stutter. I can't even begin to narrow it down. I've changed every single driver on my system, I don't know what I had back then because it more than likely was old and dated even then. I tend to leave it be when it works. Now they're all new, I've fiddled with bios settings relating to graphics and memory speed, I've changed memory, hard drives, fans on the cpu and graphics card, even have new cards for capture. I have done every thing I can think of to fix it, and I'm afraid all I've done is make it to where I can't do a thing to figure out what happened.

I will swear to you all that I did not have stutter, I can't prove it. I will swear to you all now that Ver 5 stutters much the same as Ver 6.1 does. For what it's worth all that means is that on my system right now both stutter and that if I did indeed have no stutter then some update or driver has caused it.

WMP for the record still does not stutter, and it's setup to use the Nvidia stuff in exactly the same manner as Sagetv. I've verified that much so I know it's not hardware.

The point of this post is to say I apologize for being so vocal about the stutter, sure it bothers me but I could use more discretion about when I post and what I say.

The only conclusion I can draw is that for me now, both stutter on hardware that's capable of playing it. I was apparently wrong.

[salsbst]

I don't have all of the details and proof to back it up (yet), but I'm nearly certain that there is a demux issue.

Graphs built with stvmcspmpeg.ax stutter (this is the filter that loads under v6 and 6.1 if I do nothing weird to the system).

Graphs built with mpegdemux.ax do not stutter.

I don't know why this happens, I don't know that it is for certain a v5 vs. v6 issue. I do know that each time I install SageTV (since I moved away from v5), I have to go through a process of unregistering demux filters until Sage's mpegdemux.ax becomes the one that is used by SageTV in building graphs. Once that is accomplished, things are ok.

I think it might be helpful to get away from the issue of v5 vs. v6, and focus on which filters actually work. I have asked before that Sage list the precise filter graph in its log file. I don't know (haven't looked yet) whether this has happened yet in 6.1, but I think it might yield further evidence.

[PhillJones]

Originally Posted by salsbst

I don't have all of the details and proof to back it up (yet), but I'm nearly certain that there is a demux issue.

Graphs built with stvmcspmpeg.ax stutter (this is the filter that loads under v6 and 6.1 if I do nothing weird to the system).

Graphs built with mpegdemux.ax do not stutter.

I don't know why this happens, I don't know that it is for certain a v5 vs. v6 issue. I do know that each time I install SageTV (since I moved away from v5), I have to go through a process of unregistering demux filters until Sage's mpegdemux.ax becomes the one that is used by SageTV in building graphs. Once that is accomplished, things are ok.

I think it might be helpful to get away from the issue of v5 vs. v6, and focus on which filters actually work. I have asked before that Sage list the precise filter graph in its log file. I don't know (haven't looked yet) whether this has happened yet in 6.1, but I think it might yield further evidence.

This is very interesting as it was a level of complexity I was previously unaware of. I figured that if you have everything set to default in sage then the way in which the video is rendered in sage would be exactly the same as WMP. This may have explained issues I've had in the past and could never fix. What do you use to see which filters are used in the graph and what do you use to change them? Is it a combination of graphedit and radlight?

[mrcandu]

I have been following this thread for while, as I too have stutterish issues using VMR9 in Sage. Could someone confirm that the VMR9 playback problem I have is the same or similar to the problem others are experiencing in this thread?. The symptoms are most apparent when watching fast sports like football. So for instance when a player is running with the ball the movement is not smooth at all and looks like frames are dropped creating a stutter like playback. Sometimes, even when a highlight is replayed in slow motion it seems as if there is some kind of stuttering at work and it doesn't take too long before it feels like you have a head ache coming on. The overall problem is subtle if you are not looking for it, but if your are it's very obvious. I use the purevideo decoder for VMR9 with the smart setting, and when watch exactly the same recorded content in WMP, the playback and PQ is perfect.
I have tried all variety of decoders and settings with VMR9 in Sage, but the best all round playback and PQ I can get is using Overlay with the Intervideo CSS decoder.
One thing to add is that this problem occurs playing back SD broadcasts. I have not even looked for problems with HD playback yet, but I presume there would be problems there to.
Hope someone can confirm this?
Thanks,
Mat.

[salsbst]

Originally Posted by PhillJones

This is very interesting as it was a level of complexity I was previously unaware of. I figured that if you have everything set to default in sage then the way in which the video is rendered in sage would be exactly the same as WMP. This may have explained issues I've had in the past and could never fix. What do you use to see which filters are used in the graph and what do you use to change them? Is it a combination of graphedit and radlight?

Firstly, I let graphedit default-render a file that had exhibited stuttering in Sage. It used stvmcspmpeg.ax, and it stuttered in GraphEdit.

Next, I removed that filter from the graph and replaced it with mpegdemux.ax. Stuttering gone.

Actually, there was a lot more trial and error in there when I was troubleshooting v6.0. Seeing the problems I had had under 6.0 repeat themselves in 6.1, I was able to pretty much go straight through the above to re-prove this solution to myself.

In order to get this solution to take effect in Sage 6.0, I had to unregister stvmcspmpeg.ax, as well as Nvidia's demux and Microsoft's default demux. I believe that whatever demux graphedit chooses for a default rendering will be the one that Sage chooses. Restarts can come in handy when you're changing things, I think.

If you want to get fancy, you could probably use RadLight or some other tool or even direct registry entries to alter the merits of the demux filters, but having already spent a ton of time on this little adventure, I was using brute force.

I haven't yet followed through under 6.1 to get Sage's mpegdemux.ax to be the default demux -- but this weekend, I will. I'm fairly confident (knocking on wood now) that it'll be successful again.

I don't really know why I didn't have this problem in v5, and honestly, I'm beyond caring at this point. Primarily, I just want the current version to work for me. Secondarily, I'd like it to work "out-of-the-box" and for others.

Hopefully others with stuttering that seemed to crop up under 6.0 or 6.1 might be able to recreate this workaround. Hint: Obviously, it doesn't make much sense to go altering filter merits or unregistering them until you find a graph that works, unless you're experimenting. I think I've done some of the experimenting, so it should be easier for others to at least test whether Sage's mpegdemux.ax helps. (Note, it's called Sage MpegDemux, or something like that, in GraphEdit).

Last I heard from Jeff, and if I understood him correctly, he didn't think
stvmcspmpeg.ax should have been included in rendering graphs at all. Well, I for one can attest that it is included after running the Sage 6.0 and 6.1 installer on my client. If I remember correctly, I've seen the same behavior on another test machine, but I'm not positive of that.

EDIT: note, after letting graphedit default-render the file, you have to manually remote the VMR7 renderer and attach the VMR9 renderer instead, at least I did (though I believe the same stuttering affected VMR7 as well).

[salsbst]

Originally Posted by cummings66

...I was running some tests for Jeff and part of that was to revert back to V5 and try it out. I finished doing so.

I had the stutter in Ver 5 the same as Ver 6, same shows same networks. PBS is one that stutters here all the time now...

It is possible that the COM versioning or other persistent changes made by the v6 installer may be preventing you from truly reverting to the state you were in under v5. I can't wait for COM to die, but that's be a while, it seems. In the meantime, true downgrading is very difficult. I wouldn't even bother trying beyond what the installers/uninstallers would do. A clean machine (or backup image of the v5 machine) would be better. If you have time, please give my filter workaround a try.

[salsbst]

Originally Posted by mrcandu

I have been following this thread for while, as I too have stutterish issues using VMR9 in Sage. Could someone confirm that the VMR9 playback problem I have is the same or similar to the problem others are experiencing in this thread?. The symptoms are most apparent when watching fast sports like football. So for instance when a player is running with the ball the movement is not smooth at all and looks like frames are dropped creating a stutter like playback. Sometimes, even when a highlight is replayed in slow motion it seems as if there is some kind of stuttering at work and it doesn't take too long before it feels like you have a head ache coming on. The overall problem is subtle if you are not looking for it, but if your are it's very obvious. I use the purevideo decoder for VMR9 with the smart setting, and when watch exactly the same recorded content in WMP, the playback and PQ is perfect.
I have tried all variety of decoders and settings with VMR9 in Sage, but the best all round playback and PQ I can get is using Overlay with the Intervideo CSS decoder.
One thing to add is that this problem occurs playing back SD broadcasts. I have not even looked for problems with HD playback yet, but I presume there would be problems there to.
Hope someone can confirm this?
Thanks,
Mat.

Your problem almost sounds to me like "microstutter", which was a term popular to describe (obviously) really minor stutter that many PCs seemed to have early in the days of DVD playback (as compared to DVD players). I think it's been proven pretty clearly that PCs don't have some sort of inherent microstutter, but that doesn't mean it doesn't still happen to lots of machines.

The problem I'm describing is definitely "macro"stutter. You don't need to be looking for it to notice it, and it makes the playback totally unwatchable.

How's your CPU utilization during your stuttering symptoms? In my case, CPU utilization cannot be blamed for the stuttering.

[mrcandu]

Thanks for the reply salsbst,
So my PC might have "microstutter" ......... doesn't sound good.
I have not looked at the CPU performance for a while, but I seem to remember it was pretty low around 10%. I will check it out and look into "microstutter" when I get back home.
Many Thanks,
Mat.

[cummings66]

Originally Posted by salsbst

If you have time, please give my filter workaround a try.

I do this afternoon, I'm off work and will experiment. One thing that might have helped me as I told Jeff is changing my resolution. I use an Infocus PJ and it's native resolution is 854x480 and it tells Windows to render 848x480 at 60hz. That's what I've used for a long time so that I'm pixel mapped.

I removed my 84.21 nvidia driver and reinstalled the latest for MCE which is ForceWare Release 90 Version: 93.71, that then let me do some things I couldn't do with the 84.21, namely I forced my display to hdtv 720p and output a true 720p signal. A lot of the stuttering I had seems like it is now gone. I watched Boston Legal fine, and it seems PBS was better, but I've got to view what I recorded last night to verify.

It's odd, but CBS which is 1080i at 29.97 fps never stutters, but all the 720p stuff at 60hz stutters and that led me to believe I had some sort of timing issues causing judder, even though that judder test program I had said it was fine.

I'm playing more with that area right now, but I do have graphedit on the system and will see what filters are in the chain and possibly try what you've done and see if it's different, if need be.

[cummings66]

Originally Posted by mrcandu

One thing to add is that this problem occurs playing back SD broadcasts. I have not even looked for problems with HD playback yet, but I presume there would be problems there to.
Hope someone can confirm this?
Thanks,
Mat.

What do you have the Nvidia Purevideo stuff set to? I had similar issues with it when using the wrong mode, i.e. you have automatic, smart, etc. Depending on version automatic works better, and some smart works better, try playing with it and see what you get.

Use the Nvidia stuff of course to test. For SD I don't believe anything in the Sage program is at fault, from what I've seen it's mostly codec related stuff there.

[cummings66]

If I did it right I've uploaded 2 graph's. One that plays back fine and one that stutters. The stuttering one does not use the nvidia stuff.

Check it out.

[astribli]

Originally Posted by mrcandu

I have been following this thread for while, as I too have stutterish issues using VMR9 in Sage. Could someone confirm that the VMR9 playback problem I have is the same or similar to the problem others are experiencing in this thread?. The symptoms are most apparent when watching fast sports like football. So for instance when a player is running with the ball the movement is not smooth at all and looks like frames are dropped creating a stutter like playback. Sometimes, even when a highlight is replayed in slow motion it seems as if there is some kind of stuttering at work and it doesn't take too long before it feels like you have a head ache coming on. The overall problem is subtle if you are not looking for it, but if your are it's very obvious. I use the purevideo decoder for VMR9 with the smart setting, and when watch exactly the same recorded content in WMP, the playback and PQ is perfect.
I have tried all variety of decoders and settings with VMR9 in Sage, but the best all round playback and PQ I can get is using Overlay with the Intervideo CSS decoder.
One thing to add is that this problem occurs playing back SD broadcasts. I have not even looked for problems with HD playback yet, but I presume there would be problems there to.
Hope someone can confirm this?
Thanks,
Mat.

One way you can tell is if using PureVideo, while watching some video, right click the PureVideo icon in the task bar and open the properties.

Look at the frame rate and you will see it running somewhere around 10-18 Mbps, but ever second or two it drops just for a moment to 0. If I use the older nVidia 84.21 drivers with Overlay, frame rate is nice and constant. Use VMR9 and/or latest 93.71 drivers, and frame rate drops every few seconds which correlates to the micro stutter.

The point about uninstallers not putting things completely back confirms my suspicions. The only way I got my setup to work was revert back to a clean install of Windows. I have only patched Windoze up to SP2. Have not installed the latest WMP and other stuff. That with older nVidia drivers (84.21) and Overlay works. Luckily I had made a disk image of the basic Windows image (using Acronis True Image) before installing Sage which allowed me to revert back to a virgin system and experiment with different versions of things.

[PhillJones]

Originally Posted by cummings66

If I did it right I've uploaded 2 graph's. One that plays back fine and one that stutters. The stuttering one does not use the nvidia stuff.

Check it out.

Maybe I'm missing the point here but that's exactly what you would expect. The nVIDIA decoders offload some of the work from the CPU onto the GPU. That's one of the reasons people use them, especially for PCs like mine which haven't quite got the horsepower to render HD.

[salsbst]

Originally Posted by cummings66

If I did it right I've uploaded 2 graph's. One that plays back fine and one that stutters. The stuttering one does not use the nvidia stuff.

Check it out.

If you can, also try altering the one that *does* use NVidia so that it uses SageTV Mpeg Demux instead of SageTV MPEG Splitter.

Neither of your examples are using VMR9, they're using VMR7, by the way. VMR9 is its own filter under DirectShow Filters.

[cummings66]

Originally Posted by PhillJones

Maybe I'm missing the point here but that's exactly what you would expect. The nVIDIA decoders offload some of the work from the CPU onto the GPU. That's one of the reasons people use them, especially for PCs like mine which haven't quite got the horsepower to render HD.

I guess the question is why one uses it and the other doesn't, by default. But there's an oddity, after checking it again they both used Nvidia, then after a couple more checks it was back the other way.

I don't get why it sometimes uses Nvidia and sometimes doesn't. Yes, if it uses Nvidia it works, and if it doesn't it stutters.

Somethings not right on my Windows Installation I'm afraid, now to see why. I couldn't get it to use VMR9, it would give me an error and say that it can't make the connection.

Maybe I'll try playing it in WMP and see what filters that uses, I can't connect to say playing back a video but I think it used to connect to WMP.

[salsbst]

Generally speaking, one reason that a certain graph will use one filter while another uses a different filter is in the process of negotiating pins. If one filter doesn't want to connect, another one from the same category (the next lower in the merit list) will be tried.

(Or something like that, I think.)

[cummings66]

Yes, the issue I had was different. On the same file I would get a different filter every so often, you couldn't guarantee it would end up being the same one each time.

I unregistered the one I didn't want and Nvidia is always the filter now, and to be honest SD seems nicer. I never had complaints with it, but it is nicer now than it was.

HD is better, enough so that I could probably live with it as is. It's not perfect, but it is improved. At this point maybe it needs more HP on the graphics card to be perfect.

I'd like to know for 100% that this is what I need to do before I spend hundreds of dollars on a card, know what I mean.

To be honest, I've considered blowing away windows and doing a total reinstall and seeing what happens. But that's not a quick process.