Figured out my stuttering problem...

[GollyJer]

... at least in Overlay mode, but am not quite sure how to effectively manage the fix.

After trying for a week to fix my stuttering issues with live HDTV I finally figured out that my RAID card (Netcell SyncRaid - XFX Revo64) couldn't keep up with the synchronous read/write speeds that were needed. To test the theory I removed the array from the available video directories in Sage and added the JBOD (Just Boring Old Drive) the OS is installed on. Then I started 3 SD recordings, 1 HD recording, and watched a live HD show. NO stuttering!! YES!! (nVidia decoder, Overlay, 3D Acceleration)

So here's my dilema. I want Sage to understand how much hard drive space is available to it, but I don't want it to record directly to the RAID array. I need it to always record to the JBOD. Then I can set a task up to run each night at like 3AM to move the video files onto the RAID array.

My problem is the way Sage handles the "Where to Store the Next Recording" feature. It automatically chooses the directory with the most free space available. The RAID has ~1.2TB available and the JBOD has ~300MB so it won't get chosen for the next recording. If I change the "Leave Free" setting to something like 1000GB, then Sage doesn't calculate available free space correctly.

What should I do? I'm using SageMC. Are .my files in my future?

Thanks for your help.

[StephaneM]

Hello,

Originally Posted by jgollehon

I need it to always record to the JBOD. Then I can set a task up to run each night at like 3AM to move the video files onto the RAID array.

You can try to use this properyt in the sage.properties file :

mmc/encoders/######/forced_video_storage_path_prefix

You'll have to set this property to the exact first few characters of the directories you want to use for recordings (on the specified encoders). You can review all your directories in the "seeker/video_storage" property (to be sure to copy the right first chars of the path).

I never tried it personally but is should do the trick.

Regards,
Stéphane.

[Mikey_Likes_It]

I have a 2.4GHz Core Duo, GIGABYTE GA-965P-DS3 LGA 775 Intel P965, and a Nvidia 7600 PCI-E card
with 2 GB of fast DDR2 memory. My harddrive setup is Raid 0 with two 500GB WD SATA2 16MB cache.

Everything works great until I have about 10 HD OTA programs recorded on the partition, say over
80GB recorded. Then it seems the harddrive light is on solid for about 1-2 min at the beginning of
playback of a recorded show. Until this activity slows down the playback stutters like heck, I suppose
there is some caching is going on. After the caching subsides plays is fine and the HD LED blinks breifly
once approx. every second and playback is like silk even at 1080p. After the file is cached, I can jump
to the beginning and will not have any stuttering. If the partition is nearly empty there is no problem at all.
There also seems some dependence if the PC has been recently rebooted, meaning caching activity is
less severe if the PC was not rebooted or STV was not shutdown.

If the desktop resolution is drop down to, say 1024x768 I don't observe such high harddrive activity
on playback. When the drive is empty or nearly so have recorded from two HD OTA 720p source and
watch live OTA TV on a third source without much stuttering. However, when there is no active recording
and nothing running in the background and I start playback on a new recorded file it stutters until the file is
cached.

I can bring up performance monitor in Windows XP and look at memory paging and it is going crazy and
available memory is dropping. I don't have any anti virus software installed. During playback CPU
utilization on one core is approx. 34% and the other core is nearly idle. When watching one recorded
program and recording another the idle core takes over the recording task. Btw, I'm not overclocking
anything.

My raid 0 setup is split into 3 NTFS partitions, one is windows XP boot with 4KB allocation units and the
other 2 are formatted with 64KB partitions. Striping is configured at 64KB widths. BTW, through many
trials, I couldn't get Windows XP to load with 64KB allocation units NTFS drive, even on a singe drive.
Hence the reasoning on multiple partitions. The largest partition it about 700GB and only STV is configured
to write to it into a subdirectory. I have disabled windows restore "feature" and I have set window's virtual
partition to max 4096MB to minimize HD fragmentation on the boot partition.


Any suggestions on lowering the priority of this caching operation b/c it is killing me ?

Thanks,
Mike