HDHomeRun recording quality problem - help!

[nspindel]

I'm using the latest Sage server software - 6.5.7, and the newest Silicon Dust firmware (12312008) and am having a lot of problems with skipping/stuttering on recordings tuned with the HDHomeRun. I've noticed that HDHR recordings are taking up approximately 6GB/Hour of disk. Before the skipping/stuttering began, I know HDHR recordings had been 2GB/Hour.

If I go into Detailed Setup | Multimedia, and then into the Recording Quality settings, both of my Silicon Dust tuners are set to Great, DVD @ 2GB/hour.

If I look in my sage.properties file, both HDHR tuners have the following entries:

blahblah\default_device_quality=Great
blahblah\video_encoding_params=Great

I'm using IDE drives (formatted with 64K clusters), and thinking that trying to read and write simultaneously at a 6GB/hour bitrate might be more than the drive can handle, hence the skipping.

2GB/hour is what I'm trying to accomplish. Any idea why my settings to 2GB/hour are being ignored and the HDHR is apparently recording at an MPEG2 Max Quality bitrate?

[fidget]

Originally Posted by nspindel

2GB/hour is what I'm trying to accomplish. Any idea why my settings to 2GB/hour are being ignored and the HDHR is apparently recording at an MPEG2 Max Quality bitrate?

The HDHR is not a tuner in the classic sense. It just extracts the digital stream from the channel and sends it to SageTV. A "normal" tuner would tune the analog signal and then digitize it at your specified quality.

[dadof4]

Originally Posted by fidget

The HDHR is not a tuner in the classic sense. It just extracts the digital stream from the channel and sends it to SageTV. A "normal" tuner would tune the analog signal and then digitize it at your specified quality.

Therefor the quality setting has no affect on the file size. It will always be the same no matter which quality setting use use for the HDHR.

[nspindel]

Anyone have any suggestions then to try to resolve my skipping? HDPVR seems to be working ok, so I don't think it's network related. I'm running latest Sage, latest Java, latest HDHR firmware, and latest beta firmware for my HD100's. Have restarted everything, rebooted, and trolled these forums for hours, and am at a complete loss...

[fidget]

Originally Posted by nspindel

Anyone have any suggestions then to try to resolve my skipping? HDPVR seems to be working ok, so I don't think it's network related. I'm running latest Sage, latest Java, latest HDHR firmware, and latest beta firmware for my HD100's. Have restarted everything, rebooted, and trolled these forums for hours, and am at a complete loss...

What kind of network are you using? Wireless or wired and what is the speed? Are you using a hub or switch? It may be that your network doesn't have the bandwidth for multiple HD streams (if you are watching a live program from the HDHR you will be receiving the stream from the HDHR and then sending it to the HD100). Look at the Networking tab on the Task Manager and see what it reports.

[nspindel]

Nah, that's not it, I wish it were that simple. Linksys 350N Gigabit router, cat5e everywhere, gigabit adapter on the server. Network utilization less than 1% on the server. Network flies otherwise.

[nspindel]

Bit more about my system:

p4 3.2Ghz, 3gb ram on Asus P4R800-V mobo. So machine's on the older side, but cpu/ram are definitely not an issue. Rare that cpu is over 20%. O/S is XP Pro, SP3.

4 tuners - 2xHDHR, HDPVR, and legacy Hauppaugge WinTV card for standard def.

Each tuner has dedicated hard drive. Hard drives are IDE, not Sata, formatted at 64K clusters. Each hard drive has dedicated IDE channel, no master/slaves.

As mentioned, full gigabit network off Linksys 350N, cat5e.

Clients are HD100's.

Sage is 6.5.7 beta
Java v6 build 11 (all older installs removed)
HDHR using 12312008 firmware
HD100's using latest beta firmware.

Like I said, this setup was all working just fine up until about two weeks ago when the skipping began. Started making sure everything was up to date, nothing has resolved this issue.

The wife is going to string me up soon...

[nspindel]

One thing that I can confirm is that it's not a problem with HDHR itself, it is playback related. If I take a file that is skipping/studdering when watching on the HD100, and then transcode it to a smaller avi format so I can play it on an older pc, the playback is smooth. So the actual recordings are fine, there is something wrong with playback. To me, that also rules out network issues, since the HDHR is writing the file to disk over the network just fine.

Any ideas on what I can check?

[dadof4]

Network - HDHR to Sage Server may be fine but that does not mean HD100 to server is OK also.

You could disconnect the HDHR from the network and connect the HD100 to that node. Then see if one of the HDHR recordings plays OK.

[Mike]

I'm having similar issues. My details are below, maybe others will see something that will offer a clue.

I have a P4P800E deluxe main board with 3.0 processor and 2GB memory. I'm seeing 55 -70% CPU utilization with Sage being 1/2 to 2/3 of it and system idle processes being most of the rest. The HDHR's are on their own GB network and it shows less than 3% utilization.

My output is via a ATI Radeon 9600XT 128MB and an S video feed to the TV.

I suspect my issue is the IO to my 3ware raid card which has 4 1TB drives in a Raid 5 array, but the High CPU utilization concerns me too. Right now I'm watching the news and I see a slight pause every 15 seconds or so. Nothing is being recorded. I've seen worse stuttering, and I think that there were at least a couple of things being recorded. The HDHR's are new, so I don't have a lot of experience with them yet.

Mike

[nspindel]

So, seems to be better:

I had originally been using 6.5.3. Things seemed ok for a while, but then the skipping/studdering began. That's when I installed latest Java build and 6.5.7. Studdering/skipping continued/worsened. That was as of last weekend when I began this thread. After some more searching on the forum, I found a thread talking about skipping on the hi-def extender, and a miniclient network buffers setting, where increasing it seemed to resolve the issue. I bumped it up to 64K, which cleared things up significantly, but not 100%. Sage support got back to me after I submitted a bug report, and when I told them about my improvements with the network buffers, they acknowledged that in the next release, they realized this setting needed to be higher. Next release, 6.5.8 is out, and I installed it earlier today. So far, so good - my 80% improvement seems to be 100% now. I have not noticed any skipping or studdering since upgrading to 6.5.8, all seems perfect.

So if you're reading this post, my advice is to go to 6.5.8....

But definitely not a network issue on my end, my network flies...

[nspindel]

Ok, I'm ready to eat some crow here.

I hadn't updated this thread since I went up to 6.5.8, because once again the problems returned. I was so frustrated I couldn't even think about Sage.

Appelm and I know each other, so he came to my house today with his server and his router, just so we could test my network.

Turns out.... my problem was the router all along. I've been using a Linksys 350N, which is a new-ish gigabit model, that I guess just can't handle multicast hidef streaming well enough. Swapped out for the D-Link 4100, and Sage was solid as a rock, better than I've ever seen it. Case closed. Just ordered a D-Link 4300 (the wifi version) overnight from Amazon, should be here on Tuesday.

Seems the Linksys router is trying to be a bit more sophisticated than it's buggy firmware should allow it to be. I can copy data across the network, and I get fairly respectable speed. Gigabit to gigabit connections, and I've certainly seen 50% network utilization, so data can definitely fly. But something about the two-way hi-def traffic to/from multiple points... whatever.... it don't work!

So it was my network after all. I'm rather frustrated with the newer Linksys products actually, I've had a lot of problems with their drivers for the wireless-n card i bought from my laptop.

Looking forward to the D-Link, I just couldn't believe how rock solid Sage was just swapping out the router. To think all this time I've been trying to debug the applicaiton when it was the router all along....

[LehighBri]

I'm having similar issues with my Linksys WRT54G and am ready to upgrade. The D-Link 4100 looks great but I'm looking for something of that caliber but has wireless as well. Any recommendations there?

[nspindel]

Absolutely, I bought the DLink 4300, not the 4100. Same as the 4100 but with wireless super-g as well. MUUUUUCH better, and great wireless too.

[LehighBri]

Excellent. Think I'm getting ready to pull the trigger on the DIR-655 (gigabit router plus wireless-n).

http://www.dlink.com/products/?sec=0&pid=530

[sandor]

i've been running my 655 for going on a year now, no issues at all. firmware is updated every now and again, and seems to keep adding support (newest one turned the useless USB port into something quasi-useful)

the only shortcoming was # of ports, but i already had a gigabit switch, so it was of little consequence.