SageTV Stuttering Help Please!

[Underfunded]

Intel C2D E8400 (3.0ghz)
Gigabyte EP45-UD3R Motherboard
4GB DDR2 800mhz RAM
ATI x1800 512MB Video Card
SATA 3.0 Hard Drives (video at 64k)
HDHomeRun network tuner

All latest drivers
SageTV 6.5.7 (running in service mode, client on SAME system)
CyberLink PowerDVD 8 codec
AC3Filter Codec
ffdshow Codec

Vista Ultimate x64
Disabled SuperFetch
Disabled UAC
Disabled NetworkThrottling
Disabled Large Packets

set always_use_dshow_player in properties

Currently using EVR, CyberLink for MPEG2, DirectShow for MPEG4, AC3Filter for MPEG2 Audio, running in FSE. I have enabled DXGA through cyberlink

I'm getting stuttering while watching live tv. If I watch a show that has already recorded it plays fine.

Please help, the Superbowl is tomorrow and I have 20 people coming over! Worse case my TV has a clearQAM tuner built in but I'd rather show off my HTPC!

[jsschrstrcks]

Similar issues here, I noticed it happened when i upgraded from 2-4gb of 800mhz ddr2. I'll downgrade and give it a shot.

I've noticed if i force a re-tune (satellite set-top-box) of the channel within sage, sometimes that makes the problem go away, though at worst it takes 10+ re-tunes.

my pc has enough under the hood to run mostly anything:

phenom quad core x64 2.66ghz processor
MSI K9n SLI Platinum mother board
4gb corsair 800mhz ddr2
Geforce 8500 video card
1.5tb sata array (3 disks - raid array formatted with 64k blocks ntfs i believe) <-- recently de-fragged this drive as well)
100gb (boot drive)
windows vista x64
Latest sage tv beta

having purchased the tv tuner card long before finding this forum, and even sage tv, i have a *embarrased* Pinnacle 800i pci tv tuner card. Decent pq, but i hate the card and am considering a hauppauge 1600 (any better suggestions?) as i've heard that some tuner cards (or sound for that matter) glitch out when their driver is loaded into your ram above the 3gb mark. not sure how much truth there is to that, but considering i had no issues yesterday with audio stuttering, and then today, it stutters, it seems reasonable that its atleast possible...

any thoughts?

I'd hate to have to plug my tv into my satellite receiver for the super bowl =p

my lcd has a much nicer picture

**UPDATE**
I disabled superfetch, and tried the rest of the steps taken by the first poster, and after 10-15 minutes, so far no troubles though i'm keeping my fingers crossed, i'll keep everyone posted.

[Underfunded]

I really need some suggestions here, any help would be GREATLY appreciated! Wife is bugging me to go back to VMC since we didn't have this problem with it but I like Sage more (well, less as long as it stutters so bad)!

[gplasky]

I would get rid of ffdshow for the time being. If not configured correctly it could be inserting itself into any decoding and ffdshow is software only decoding. Make sure hardware acceleration is enabled in Cyberlink. Also try the SageTV decoder and enable the acceleration.

Gerry

[Underfunded]

What codecs would you recommend? I am plenty comfortable installing and changing merits, I just don't know which to use? Is there a "best" for watching hdtv from a hdhomerun under sagetv? Which Video, which Audio?
Thanks,
Ian.

[gplasky]

I can tell you what works for me. I'm using Cyberlink PowerDVD 8 and AC3 filter for the audio at the PC. HD Extenders everywhere else.

Gerry

[gordo]

I'm having a similar problem that started about 5 days ago. On live tv, the audio/video will pause for a split second every 2-4 seconds or so. Recorded tv seems to be fine. This appears to be happening on my avermedia capture card and HDHomeRun sources. The problem is that I've made many changes to my system recently (see below) and am having trouble tracking it down.

I've upgraded my server to vista Home Premium 64 bit (with 6GB RAM). It has a new capture card - avermedia (old server was Hauppauge eHome Wonder -or something like that).

The other major change I've made was installing the latest SageTv beta's (6.5.8) on server and Extenders.

I haven't installed any additional codec's.

Seems to me that the thing we both have in common is Vista 64 bit with recent beta's (6.5.7 and 6.5.8)

EDIT - And just to be clear, I'm seeing the problem on Extenders also.

[Underfunded]

OK. With the edits that I made in my first post and following gplasky's suggestion of getting rid of FFDShow I have most of the kinks worked out. I just watched a full episode of Chuck (including timeshifting) with only 1 really small blip.

The one issue I am still having is at the change of recording from Chuck to Heroes (livetv) the playback halted and SageTV crashed. I figure the crash was just a one off error, but I have been having the pause between switchovers (when the system is making the new file?). What should I do to resolve this? Would adding another recording hard drive be the solution? Is there a different solution even if that would work?
Thanks,
Ian.

[gplasky]

That small blip between programs is the nature of the beast. Sage is stopping one recording and closing the file and then staring a new recording by opening a new file.

Gerry

[Underfunded]

OK. Fresh load of Vista.

CyberLink PowerDVD 8
AC3Filter
DivX Pro 7

AC3Filter is handling all my audio
PowerDVD is setup for my .mpg playback (sage recordings)
DivX is setup for my .avi playback (divx/xvid files)

Verified the above with graphedit.

In sagetv I have:
Video Renderer: EVR
MPEG2 Video Decoder Filter: CyberLink Video/SP Decoder (PDVD8)
MPEG4 Playback: DirectShow
MPEG2 Audio Decoder Filter: AC3Filter

I have done the tweaks from my first post with the exception that I am not in FSE now.

As of right now I am recording 2 high def shows while watching one of them (even skipping around forward and backward in the show) with no issues!

I don't want to say that everything is fixed, the real test is tonight when my wife gets home, but it IS looking that way!

[Underfunded]

OK. Time for an update, unfortunately with another problem. I setup Knight Rider and Lost to record (8-9pm,9-10pm) and started watching Knight Rider about 30 minutes into it. I noticed that at 9pm as it was ending (I was 3/4 of the way through) the video started stuttering and SageTV became non-responsive, when I pressed any buttons on the remote the circle of death came up. This eventually cleared itself after a couple minutes and I was able to finish watching the show with no other issues. We then continued to watch Lost and had the same issue when Lost got to the end of the recording time (we were still 15 minutes behind).

I have since increased the JVM Heap to 300 (reading 312MB in sage) but am unsure if this was the issue or not.

What suggestions might you have to resolve this issue?

Ian.

[guzmana]

I had the same issue when viewing and recording hd channels, turned out the Hard drive could not keep up with the reading and writing, tried a new faster sata drive problem went away

[Brent]

I'm trying to catch up on your issues. So is the stuttering gone now? and now you're having recording problems instead of playback or both?

[Underfunded]

The stuttering that was happening while I watched a show that was actively recording is gone now.

The current issue is that while watching that show that is recording, when it gets to the end of the recording the show stutters to a halt and the UI becomes unresponsive for 1-2 minutes then will play fine again.

Sounds like a HDD speed issue, but the recording drive is a SATA 3.0 7200 drive (750GB WD). If I can't find another solution I have 2 500GB WD's that I'll setup in a RAID 0 array but am trying to stay away from that as 1 of them is the OS drive in another system and it'll be a PITA to image and shift drives around.

[Brent]

I'm not sure it is a hard drive issue actually. So as of now, you're experiencing this problem only while watching a show (presumably time-shifted) and when the recording gets to the end of that recording it messes up your playback & UI?

Have you enabled logging? If so, check the log and see what the logs might say at the exact time you're experiencing the UI lock-up

More questions:

• If you record a show can you play back the show later without problems?
• Does this lock-up happen with every recording or just certain ones?
• Is the HDHR the only tuner you are using?

Also, you might consider submitting an official Support Request to SageTV. You could keep getting ideas from the user forums here, but see if SageTV personnel can help you out too.

[Underfunded]

I'll enable logging and see what happens.

I can record a show and play it back later with no problems.

I'm not sure if it happens with every recording or certain one's. I'll play around with it today (with logging enabled)

The HDHR is the only tuner I have (and am planning on getting another), I'm fairly confident it isn't a problem with it since I can record and playback later fine.

Thanks for the suggestions. I'll try them out and see what happens.
Ian.

[Brent]

Okay sounds good. The log might help explain what is going on here.

One question I forgot to ask - are you running SageTV as a service? If so, I'd try to recreate the lockup both with the service running and without and see if that makes any difference. We'll figure it out so hang in there.

[Underfunded]

yes, SageTV is running as a service. Will try.


EDIT:
OK. I just setup the Today show to record the 10-11 and the 11-12 showings and time-shifted the 10-11, when it shifted between the actual recording there were no issues. I checked the log and didn't see anything that stuck out to me (not that I would really know) so now I am going to stress test it. I have 2 recordings setup from 11-12 and 2 more from 12-1. At 1120 I'm going to start watching one of the recordings like I normally would and see what happens at the file switchover.

[Beefcake550]

here's some insight... network bandwidth.

Perhaps you have the HDHR on the same switch/router as the HTPC? If so, when you are recording 2 shows and watching another, 3 recordings are flying around on the network. While the bandwidth is fine, it's the opposite directions that hurts. Most NICs/routers don't do bi-dir as well as one might think.

I'd suggest getting 6.5.9 - which has reduced bandwidth for HDHR since it only streams the sub-channel being recorded- as well as the latest HDHR drivers/firmware.

Or putting the HDHR on a seperate network/NIC on the HTPC. This is the solution I foudn to work best. Since you could get a cheapo NIC for the HTPC for what, $20, and then directly connect the HDHR to it.....I think that is the best bet.

-B

[Beefcake550]

Oh crap, my whole argument is based on you having a client/server Sage setup and it doesn't seem like you have it setup that way.

Sorry, still you might try the latest Sage with the HDHR drivers - it's still a valid thing to try.

-B