Will this give me better HD performance.

[pat_smith1969]

I have a sageTV server that is farily beefy (amd 4600 dual core, 2 gig memory, nvidia 6600gt vid card). It has three analog tuners and one HDHomerun (two tuners) for HD content. I am using Comskip to cut out comercials.

CURRENTLY my server is connected directly to my 50" plasma via HDMI/DVI. I also have two Media MVP devices that do SD on my other TVs in the house.

I am having a TERRIBLE time watching HD content while recording content. I get a lot of skips and pauses. I have narrowed this down to the Comskip.exe using 35% or so of my CPU. Whenever COmskip is running HD playback will skip. I checked and Comskip.exe process runs as low priority. I have set comskip to not run during prime time, but what about other times fo the day I want to watch HD? As you can imagine this drives me up a wall.

My proposed solution is this.
Take my server and put it in the basement and let it do nothing but be a server. Construct a PC to run the SageTV client and connect that to my 50" plasma. I have all the necessary parts, and already own the client software.

Will this solution help me at all with my problem? any downside to watching TV from the client instead of the server directly? Any other ideas I can do to fix my skipping issue?

[derringer]

Hmmm... 35% CPU usage shouldn't cause anything to skip, so I would look elsewhere for that problem. (As an example, I found that I could run my machine up to about 95% CPU Usage, as a dual core Intel, by transcoding videos in the background before any skipping would occur.)

I have found that the second largest casue of skipping like that is the codecs being used, quite honestly. I have had problems with codecs decoding HD streams that have no problem with SD streams (and the problems manifested themselves as 'skipping or pausing', believe it or not. I have had HDHomerun stream specific codec issues, and I have also had HDHomerun stream audio codec issues where everything else was decoded fine.

My point here is that a 35% CPU Usage shouldn't cause skipping, in and of itself. Might I suggest you try running something like DIRMON2, or another program which can launch comskip and hold its CPU usage to a certain percentage? DIRMON allows you to set the threshold for the process you run with it so that you could set it at 25% or something, as an example, or even lower, and see if your problems persist?

This would tell you if it really is a CPU thing, or if it, more likely in my opinion, is a Hard Drive access issue or even codec issue (although HDD is more likely.)

[pat_smith1969]

DIRMON2...
GREAT advice thank you.

I have used the NVidia codec, but am currently using the powerdvd codec which really looks great.

The drive I am recording on is a SATAII 500gig drive running on a built in motherboard sata controller. I would think that 2 or 3 SD recordings, 1 HD recording, and 1 HD playback would all be possible from a SATA2 drive? Of course comskip also is running against that same hard drive to do it's thing. Perhaps I need to defrag the darned thing?

[stanger89]

You might want to check the speed at which you let comskip run, I think skipping has more to do with comskip 'taking over' the HDD with reads than it does with CPU usage (I see the same thing, but comskip runs on a separate PC from my SageClient or my Sage server.

[Crashless]

What's your hard drive situation? I'm willing to bet you're overloading the throughput available there.

I have two 500gb HDs RAID 0 for my system with 2 SD analog and an HDHR and I can just eek out all 4 recording and playback HD on my MVP and Server simultaniously.

It would take more drives to do anything more then this.

[autoboy]

You are maxing out the drive, not the CPU. Are your recording drives 64K cluster size? Remember, a harddrive is a mechanical device which limits it's seek time and I bet you are running into issues with seek. Could you limit comskip to only run when you are not at home? I had similar issues with one of my recording drives and it turned out the drive was about to die. I replaced the drive and it fixed the issue. Try running some speed tests and diagnostics on the drive.

[pat_smith1969]

hard drives are as follows...
1 sata 2 80 gig drive running off the motherboard sata 2 controller. System partition is on this one.

1 500 gig sata 2 drive running off the motherboard stat 2 controller. Recording drive. All tv recordings go here, both SD and HD recordings in one directory.

2 various sata 2 drives. These are junk drives and just contain stagnant data, rarely accessed.

4 Sata 2 drives running off a RAID 5 controller card, as one big 1T volume. All my ripped DVDs are stored here, but this is not accessed much during tv watching times.

I can't see anthing that I can do differently with the drives. I have the recordings going to one drive that does nothing but record TV. It is a fairly new drive too.

I will say that If I kill all the conskip.exe processes the problem goes away (until Comskip kicks off again). Also when I have this problem the HD light is on constant, not blinking like normal. So I think you are all right, it is Comskip but it is the extra drive access Comskip needs and not the CPU. Maybe by limiting the CPU I can slow down it's drive useage.

[Djc208]

Originally Posted by pat_smith1969

I will say that If I kill all the conskip.exe processes the problem goes away (until Comskip kicks off again). Also when I have this problem the HD light is on constant, not blinking like normal. So I think you are all right, it is Comskip but it is the extra drive access Comskip needs and not the CPU. Maybe by limiting the CPU I can slow down it's drive useage.

I think the dual core is actually hurting you here. Even though comskip is low priority it has a whole second core to run on so it never gets downgraded when you start HD playback. My lowly 3000+ also shows about 35% CPU usage running comskip, but with only one core, when I start playback it gets downgraded to whatever resources remain.

I would think a second HD for Sage would help too, it will balance the recording over the two disks so it would be less likely that comskip and you will be accessing the same disk at the same time. Good luck.

[gplasky]

Originally Posted by pat_smith1969

I have a sageTV server that is farily beefy (amd 4600 dual core, 2 gig memory, nvidia 6600gt vid card). It has three analog tuners and one HDHomerun (two tuners) for HD content. I am using Comskip to cut out comercials.

CURRENTLY my server is connected directly to my 50" plasma via HDMI/DVI. I also have two Media MVP devices that do SD on my other TVs in the house.

I am having a TERRIBLE time watching HD content while recording content. I get a lot of skips and pauses. I have narrowed this down to the Comskip.exe using 35% or so of my CPU. Whenever COmskip is running HD playback will skip. I checked and Comskip.exe process runs as low priority. I have set comskip to not run during prime time, but what about other times fo the day I want to watch HD? As you can imagine this drives me up a wall.

My proposed solution is this.
Take my server and put it in the basement and let it do nothing but be a server. Construct a PC to run the SageTV client and connect that to my 50" plasma. I have all the necessary parts, and already own the client software.

Will this solution help me at all with my problem? any downside to watching TV from the client instead of the server directly? Any other ideas I can do to fix my skipping issue?

To answer your original question-yes. This will help you and is identical to what I did. Initially I had the Sage server in the LR attached to the plasma, also acting as a client and doing SA/Comskip.

Afterwards I put a decent server downstairs (P4 3.2GHz) with lots of drives (3 x SATA2 500GB, 80GB OS drive) and a client (AMD 64 X2 5400) in the LR that does nothing but run the Sage client. The MB actually uses integrated nVidia 7050 and I no longer have issues when "too much" is going on. No stutter. Comskip (Comskip Monitor) runs on the server. I also have a Freenas server on the network with a 1.2TB available. I record with a HDHR the locals all week long. 2 other PC clients and 2 MVPs. No playback issues with them all going.


Gerry

[vividweb]

I also agree that adding a separate client has helped my setup as well. I have 3 tuners, 2 analog PVR 150 and one DVB-S card, with recording on all three and watching or transcoding at the same time just seemed to overload the server. I added a new server and turned my HTPC into a client. It has been smooth sailing now for a while. I can even watch HD with out any stutter using an onboard GPU.

[Polypro]

Try switching back to the NVIDIA codecs. While they both visually look the same to me, the Cyberlink decoder (7.3 Ultra v3319f) was causing pausing during playback for me. I too thought it was hardrive throughput (I usually watch while 3 HD and an SD are recording) until I was just watching an SD show with nothing recording and getting the same pause/catch-up behavior. Switched back to NVIDIA and it plays fine. Tonight will be the test.

P

[pat_smith1969]

Thank you all for your help. I will setup a client and try that solution. I figure since I already have a client available in a case that looks like a VCR, and since I accidentally purchased a client license (thinking it was a place shifter license) I have no excuses. Infact going to a client will clear that huge server (with 12 drives in it, and three STBs) out of the living room, in it's place will be a nice looking VCR like machine.

I will also try the NVIDIA thing again but the it is not nearly as good as the one Im using now.

[bialio]

I'm suprised no one has mentioned your video card. I've got no experience personally with the 6600GT, but I suspect it doesn't offload as much of the HD burden as the newer 7X00 and 8X00 cards do - so your CPU is probably involved some in the HD decoding. Once you have Comskip running and sucking down one of your cores, it's not surprising at all to me that you see some playback issues...

The main goal on your client machine, once you move to a dedicated server that isn't running a client, should be to have only the necessary programs installed. SageClient, NVIDIA decoders, Java, remote control interface (Girder or something like that). Nothing extra like comskip or transcoding of any type.

btl.

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by bialio

I'm suprised no one has mentioned your video card. I've got no experience personally with the 6600GT, but I suspect it doesn't offload as much of the HD burden as the newer 7X00 and 8X00 cards do - so your CPU is probably involved some in the HD decoding.

For MPEG-2 a 6600GT is just fine.