pauses in Sage, not WinTV?

[crh3f]

New user here...got Sage installed without difficulty on my system, but I've got a problem. When playing Live TV, or from a recorded file, the video and audio pauses slightly every second or so; worse sometimes than others. I've switched from my slave drive to master, without change.

I have looked through a lot of the stuttering posts, and can't tell if I'm having the same problem(s) or not.

I tried last night to play in WinTV, and voila, no pausing or stutter; therefore, the problem must be with Sage, whether a resource problem or inherent program problem. Don't have CPU usage numbers for you at this moment...

Any ideas? Nothing else running on the system of significance. If the problem is that I need a new video card (quite possible), then why does it work ok in WinTV?

2.66ghz Intel
640mb RAM
native Intel display adapter
Hauppage PVR-1600
1- 30gb master HD (Windows installed)
1- 320gb WD slave HD (recording drive)
using VMR9, ffdshow MPEG decoder, ACS audio codecs

[crh3f]

hello?

[Opus4]

WinTV may be playing it live, w/o writing a file to disk first.

What is the cluster size for the partition where the recordings are being stored? It should be 64K.

- Andy

[Yalbik]

Have you tried playing the sage recorded mpg via media player?

How about on another PC? This would help diagnose whether it's a playback or an encoding problem...

Also, a severely fragmented drive can cause issues on a slower system, though I'd be surprised if that was the issue...

[crh3f]

brand new drive, formatted 64k.

plays choppy in WMP. Haven't tried another PC.

[crh3f]

update:

no "rhythmic" pausing when playing a recorded show that I wasn't watching live. Does happen when playing a recorded show that I was watching live.

more RAM? video card?

thanks

[Opus4]

So, if you let it record w/o watching it at the same time it is recording, then the recording is fine? If so, that sounds like slow hard drive throughput... but I don't remember what to check in terms of some sort of transfer mode for the drive.

- Andy

[crh3f]

yes, basically. the rhythmic pauses don't happen. The playback is still not the smoothest, but better.

I agree that it may be a write problem. This may be naive of me, but it does seem that the pausing coincides with the "write light" on the front of the box.

Maybe I need to make my new 320 drive the only drive, and not run it as a slave.

Maybe I'll buy a new video card anyway, and see what happens ;-)

[crh3f]

Ok, so here's where I am:

now with 1gb RAM, and an nVidia eGeForce FX 5200 video card

almost perfect SD playback in Sage AS LONG AS nothing else is being recorded. Stutters when watching a show that's being recorded, stutters when watching a recorded show while another is being recorded. I handles playback, but not recording and playback at the same time.

I'm using ffdshow and AC3 filter; I'm in FSE mode. I've looked over a lot of the other stuttering threads...do I need to get Purevideo, Graphedit and go through the process that others have done?

[Opus4]

Have you checked what mode the hard drive is operating in, like I mentioned above? Maybe someone else can remember the terms for this because I haven't had to look into it for years... PIO, DMA, whatever.

Also, what else is on the IDE channel with the drive? Is it 2 hard drives or a CD/DVD drive + the hard drive?

- Andy

[crh3f]

it's in DMA mode; it's on an IDE with the CD drive, but when I unplugged the IDE cable from the CD drive, it didn't seem to make a difference (but I can try again tomorrow...am at work today)

This is getting a bit frustrating, as I've dropped a bunch of money and now time into what was supposed to be a relatively easy thing to do. Getting close to taking all the "new" stuff back and giving up.

[Opus4]

(Is DMA the fastest mode?) Do not put a hard drive on the same IDE channel as a CD/DVD drive -- as I recall, the devices will only work as fast as the slowest device on that channel. Try again w/o the CD drive.

- Andy

[crh3f]

DMA is faster than PIO. I'll have to make sure the CD is off the chain...I thought I'd done it right, but I could be mistaken.

thanks

[crh3f]

Success! Once I got the CD off the IDE cable, and the jumper on the HD off (it was on slave), it works great!!!