Help - WAF is falling fast!

[WellThen]

Hello All,

I bought an HDHomeRun over the holidays, and upgraded from Sage 4 to 6.3.5. Before the upgrade, I was getting HD via firewire from Comcast STB. I still have that tuner active, but I think the HDHR gets priority (which is what I wanted.)

After about a month, I've started having problems with playback of the recordings from the HDHR. Intermittently, but on every recording, I'll hit a patch of garbled playback, where it starts stuttering, and then jumps forward as much as a minute or more, then finally smooths out and continues playback.

Anyone else had this problem? What can I do to determine if this is a problem with the HDHR or with Sage?

Finally, is there a way to temporarily disable a Tuner without deleting it? I want to try forcing a recording to the Firewire to see if the problem happens there.

Thanks in advance...

[carlgar]

Sounds like a lot of room for errors to occur. I do not believe Sage 4 supported BDA drivers, so the HDHR is probably being used as a network encoder. The network encoder is now obsolete, you should upgrade to the BDA drivers. To do that, you should remove the HDHR tuners, shutdown Sage. Get the current drivers from SiliconDust and install them. The restart Sage and re add the HDHR tuners. You should review the instructions on the SiliconDust site for configuring the tuners.

[WellThen]

Carlgar,

Thanks for the reply. Sorry if I wasn't clear, but I'm on Sage 6.3.5 - I upgraded as part of setting up the HDHR. The HDHomerun Manager says that Windows BDA is installed, so I think I'm on the BDA drivers...

[carlgar]

You can verify that by looking at the Source Details for the HDHR tuner. The Network Encode line should show false for the BDA drivers. You can also look at the recording schedule. If the HDHR tuners name starts with Silicondust then you are using BDA.

Edit: This sounds like it may be a network traffic issue. Has your network traffic recently increased? What speed network do you have? What OS are you using?

[WellThen]

Tuner name shows as Silicon Dust..., so I'm definitely using BDA.

As for the network traffic, I wondered about that. Both server and client are Windows XP SP2, and I'm on a wired ethernet at 100 Mb. Is there any way to assess if it's network traffic?

[carlgar]

You can use the task manager to get an idea of the network traffic. Worst case I would expect the HDHR to use 50% of the network if recording 2 1080i shows at the same time. You might want to look at the number of send and receive buffers your network card is using. I used to have an issue with garbled data on a few stations, then I increased the receive buffers to the max and the solved the issue.

[WellThen]

With both HDHR Tuners recording at 1080i (I think, I know they're both High Def shows and neither is ABC) plus an Hauppauge WinTV USB recording SD, I'm showing 7% network utilization, and between 45 and 60% CPU.

[carlgar]

HD can be 720p. Do the shows really show the HD symbol? 7% sounds too low for real HD shows.
Did you check the buffers for your network card? You should also check your Interrupt moderation rate, I turned mine off.

[WellThen]

All 3 shows show the HD symbol. (I don't know why the second show I selected, Supernatural, went to the Hauppauge USB Tuner, since it was an HD show.) The other 2 were CSI and Antique Roadshow. Also not sure how to confirm the resolution.

And while I'm admitting what I don't know, not sure how to check my network card buffers, or to turn of Interrupt Moderation. I looked around in Device properties, and did not see these settings. Am I looking in the wrong place?

[carlgar]

CSI probably is 1080i I think PBS is 720p. You can check by going into detailed info and looking at the format information. The encoded by line will also show which tuner was used to record the show.

You need to select the network card and look at the properties. You may need to look at different menus such as advanced. I believe this information is device dependent and may or may not exist for your card. My addon card does not give me as much control as the networking build into my motherboard. If you cannot control it, then I think I am out of ideas.

[WellThen]

Hey Carlgar, I really appreciate your help. I've just been playing back the CSI recording, and I do get the garbling/blocking/jumping intermittently.

I'm gonna try upgrading to the latest release candidate, and see if that helps. Thanks again!

[carlgar]

you're welcome. You probably should play the recording using another program such as VLC or WMP to insure that it is a record time problem as opposed to a playback problem.

[Mitch G]

Do you have comskip monitor running on the machine?
I'll notice garbling and hopping problems when comskip.exe is running - it can grab 50% of the processor at times.

Just a thought,


Mitch

[mayamaniac]

Does it stutter when watching with the VLC player through the HDHR Setup program. If it doesn't, then it is not network related.

Comskip screws my HD recordings up too, and its not processing power that is the problem, but the harddrive can't keep up with comskip and recordings at the same time.

[erik]

From the comskip tuning manual

Reducing the CPU load

Comskip runs on “Idle” priority allowing other programs to execute normally. The Disk IO by Comskip can be rather high so it may be useful to reduce the throttle the execution speed of Comskip. The main parameters for this with their default values are

play_nice_sleep=10
play_nice_start-1
play_nice_end=-1

The value of play_nice_sleep is the number of milliseconds Comskip will suspend execution after each frame processed. This will be done starting from play_nice_start till play_nice_end, both in 24 hour time format. From 7 in the morning till eleven in the evening will be

play_nice_start=700
play_nice_end=2300

[Arioch5]

Check your signal strength. I had a problem with the HDHomerun that sounds similar to what you are having. Not every show, but I would get blocking, skipping and then a section of the video that would just drop out. After a bit of troubleshooting I finally discovered that my signal strength was marginal.

I adjusted my splitters so that the bars on the HDHomerun software show full for both tuners. Since then I haven't had any problems.

[Polypro]

Are you using Cyberlink decoders?

P