microstutter in 6.2.7

[sleonard]

I have been experiencing a lot of microstuttering in Sage Recordings and DVD's. I first saw this with 6.2.5 beta. It went away with 6.2.6 RC and has returned with 6.2.7 RC2. I have tried all the tricks I have learned over the 3 years using Sage but no joy.

S

[titanium]

I saw this too. I tried al the tricks too. Finally and rolled off PureVideo encoder and playback is smooth for the most part. Now using my recent Cyberlink enoder from PowerDVD.

[Polypro]

I was finally in a position to investigate this last night. I'm on 6.2.8 and was watching a recorded show (VH1 SD) recorded on a PVR500. The program went into it's s-l-o-w m-o-t-i-o-n stutter. I windowed Sage and checked CPU usage...normal. A Rew would clear it up, but it would return a minute later. I stopped Sage UI/Service and changed from Nvidia to Cyberlink decoders. I also enabeled Debug Logging. I went back and started the VH1 program, where I left off. It happened again, but now I had the logs. I sent them to Sage this morning. This has only appeared with the 6.2.x betas...never saw this from 2.2.8 to 6.1.9. I originally thought this was a problem with the HDHR and recordings in progress, but I see it on PVR500 complete recorded stuff too, so... It's like a buffer is waiting for data...like watching a youtube video that's playing faster than it's downloading.

P

[LehighBri]

The same thing happens to me. I have my HDHomeRun hooked up directly to a 2nd network card I bought. At first I thought it was my firewall software slowing things down and causing the stutter, but I shut the firewall software off and the stutter continued. I never had any stutter issues at all until the 6.2.x round of betas. Are there plans to optimize and/or fix this?

[Muchacho]

I have also started to notice this. Actually it seemed to be less of an issue with RC1 and I began to notice it with RC3. Maybe it is just that football season started and that is why I am noticing it now.

For me, the stutter is more apparent with live recording and shows that I watch while they record. The problem seems to be in the recording- b/c when I skip back and replay I get the stutter in the same places.

I hope they get this resolved- the new BDA drivers for the HDHR are vastly superior to the old ones for me, so I am stuck with the new versions.

[DFranch]

Originally Posted by Muchacho

I hope they get this resolved- the new BDA drivers for the HDHR are vastly superior to the old ones for me, so I am stuck with the new versions.

Have you tried to play a recording outside of sage to determine if the problem exists in the recorded material, or it is a playback problem? If the recording plays ok in media player or VLC, then the recording is not at fault.

[Polypro]

The recorded material plays fine in other media players, for me.

Beta Support suggested setting the following property line to true:

optimize_local_client_playback=true

I'll test it out tonight (I run in Service Mode).


Since there are so may definitions of "stutter", mine is where a show will be playing normally, then go into almost frame-by-frame playback...audio & video. It s-l-o-w-s w-a-y d-o-w-n.

P

[DFranch]

Originally Posted by Polypro

Since there are so may definitions of "stutter", mine is where a show will be playing normally, then go into almost frame-by-frame playback...audio & video. It s-l-o-w-s w-a-y d-o-w-n.

P

I've experienced several different kinds of stutter myself over the years. It finally caused me to jump ship and switch to MCE last year. I've been tempted lately to switch back, but I'm waiting to see if the HD playback is stutter free. The playback is generally stutter free on MCE, but the features are just not tweakable like on Sage.

[mikesm]

Originally Posted by Polypro

The recorded material plays fine in other media players, for me.

Beta Support suggested setting the following property line to true:

optimize_local_client_playback=true

I'll test it out tonight (I run in Service Mode).


Since there are so may definitions of "stutter", mine is where a show will be playing normally, then go into almost frame-by-frame playback...audio & video. It s-l-o-w-s w-a-y d-o-w-n.

P

It looks from your sig that you are running Vista Business on your client, is that the same system that you are seeing this stuttering in?

Thx
Mike

[LehighBri]

Originally Posted by Polypro

Beta Support suggested setting the following property line to true:

optimize_local_client_playback=true

I'll test it out tonight (I run in Service Mode).

I also run in service mode. Did support say exactly what that property does? What "optimizations" does it perform? I'm interested to know what the root cause of all this is. I use nvidia purevideo decoding and it's worked great stutter free up until 6.2.8 and the latest version of HDHR's beta 3 drivers.

[Polypro]

Originally Posted by mikesm

It looks from your sig that you are running Vista Business on your client, is that the same system that you are seeing this stuttering in?

Thx
Mike

Yup, Vista Business (Client and Server are one in the same). Runs great. Support just suggested the setting, no details. Watched two shows live, and one recorded, tonight...so far, so good.

P

[Muchacho]

Originally Posted by Polypro

Beta Support suggested setting the following property line to true:

optimize_local_client_playback=true


P

Did you add that to the regular properties or to the sageclient properties?

Thanks

[Polypro]

It's already in the properties file, set to false...just set it to true (I run in Service Mode, so the one I set was in SageClient.properties...I didn't check to see if there was one in Sage.properties).

P

[rsagetv99]

Originally Posted by Polypro

The recorded material plays fine in other media players, for me.

Beta Support suggested setting the following property line to true:

optimize_local_client_playback=true

I'll test it out tonight (I run in Service Mode).


Since there are so may definitions of "stutter", mine is where a show will be playing normally, then go into almost frame-by-frame playback...audio & video. It s-l-o-w-s w-a-y d-o-w-n.

P

Can anyone else confirm that this fixed the micro-stutter problems in 6.2.7 and above? I am on 6.2.6 until this is resolved...

[Narflex]

This registry setting may also help stuttering issues as well (but this gets reset whenever you upgrade):

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Frey
Technologies\Common\DSFilters\MpegDeMux\NumBuffers=128 (80 in hex)

The default for that is 64 (40 in hex)

[LehighBri]

Originally Posted by Narflex

This registry setting may also help stuttering issues as well (but this gets reset whenever you upgrade):

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Frey
Technologies\Common\DSFilters\MpegDeMux\NumBuffers=128 (80 in hex)

The default for that is 64 (40 in hex)

Has anyone tried this? I plan to try it tonight but wasn't sure what other's experience has been.

[Polypro]

Thanks Jeff. The "Optimize" setting seems to have done the trick...3 days now, with no slow motion. I've got today and tomorrow off, so if it's going to happen, it will in the next 2 days

P

[Muchacho]

I agree that we have different sorts of stutter as you suggested. Mine is more subtle- when text scrolls across the screen it is intermittently stuttering.

The above fixes did not help. The more that I mess around it seems the the problem is in all the beta's. It is more pronounced during live recordings than it is when watching previously recorded shows.

[Polypro]

Yup, totally different than what I had...play a video at half-speed...very noticable I did the reg settings as well...as it doesn't look like thay can hurt anything.

P

[mangriotis]

Adding that line to sage.properties on the server (it wasn't there at all) did not seem to work for me.

Actually, it was kind of working yesterday, but I rebooted because it got stuck recording a channel I didn't tell it to, and wouldn't change from it.

After reboot, I am back to slow motion stutter on material from HDHR. SD and S-video work and act fine...

I also tried the registry setting, but no change.