Hopw to get rid of hitch when new time slot takes over?

[SageGk]

Is there a way to get rid of that annoying hitch/pause that takes place whenever a new time slot starts? In other words, you watching a show from 7:00-7:30 and at 7:30 the screen goes black for a split second while it loads a new show.

[GKusnick]

Nope. Sage records each program to a separate file, even during Live TV, so what you're seeing is Sage stopping playback from one file and starting playback from another.

If this is happening in the middle of a show, then something's screwy with your EPG.

[SageGk]

It happens even when I'm watching liveTV but rewind a little bit, so the show gets interrupted for a second when the time slot changes, even though I'm a few minutes behind bc I rewound. It also happens with livetv and I end up missing the last second of a show occasionally. There is no way to reduce this hitch, eh?

[Underfunded]

I am in the process of trying to figure out the same thing. In reading your post I just had a thought of having recordings start a minute early and end a minute late to see if that might help... I have a post that addresses other issue I have had but this is the current one we are looking into:

http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=39209

I'm going to follow this post and see if we can get this taken care of though.. Some have said it is something you just have to live with but I won't accept that as an answer!

[planetc]

I would hazard a guess that the source has an effect on this. I use a couple of pvr150s and it has never been any more than a brief pause for me. I found that setting the Always Tune property to false made it less intrusive. If you are confident in your tuning or prepared to accept it if it misses a beat once in a while it may be worth trying that. It's possible the effect this has is more noticeable with other tuners but it certainly made a small improvement for me.

[elyl]

What I don't understand about the accepted explanation for this - if the skip is because SageTV is closing one file and opening another, why does it still skip when I set Sage to record 2 mins before the show and 2 mins after? Surely, then, it would have 2 files open concurrently for 4 mins - why do I still get the same skip on the hour/half hour mark?

[planetc]

It still has to switch files, they are seperate files on the hard drive remember. When you consider this it makes sense and adding a couple of minutes won't take it away completely it will just allow the pause to miss the actual show. Sage cannot play back two shows concurrently.
I used to do a bit with Adobe Premiere a few years back, which at the time instead of rendering a complete file would keep all the avi clips seperate on the hard drive and play them back seemlessly according to my edits. Given this I guess it's technically possible to reduce the pause to little more than a cut from one recording to the next. With my setup it isn't far off that and it doesn't really bother me, but I can see why it could be annoying if it's any more pronounced.

[robogeek]

Originally Posted by elyl

What I don't understand about the accepted explanation for this - if the skip is because SageTV is closing one file and opening another, why does it still skip when I set Sage to record 2 mins before the show and 2 mins after? Surely, then, it would have 2 files open concurrently for 4 mins - why do I still get the same skip on the hour/half hour mark?

Here are a couple of explanations for this... If you only have one tuner, obviously you can't have that kind of padding on back-to-back recordings since one tuner can only send one video stream to SageTV. There is also a setting somewhere in the Detailed Settings that will remove padding on back-to-back recordings so you wouldn't actually have any padding even though you specified it. You will have to check your settings to be sure you don't have it set to remove padding on back-to-back recordings. Lastly, even with everything properly setup with padding and the recordings are actually recording on two seperate tuners, SageTV still has to close the first recording, tear down the playback graph, open the file, build the new playback graph, and start playback.

Face it people, unless SageTV implements some sort of circular live TV recording buffer or hooks up the preview pin of the tuners output to the playback graph instead of the file stream, you will always have some sort of delay when one show ends and a new one begins. Implementing either of these two things would have it's own challenges and limitations, so I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for either of these two solutions.

Having said all of that, there are some settings in the sage.properties file that may help reduce the delay. Off the top of my head, here are four that may affect the delay:

videoframe/fast_file_switching
videoframe/safe_fast_file_switching
videoframe/local_encoding_to_playback_delay
videoframe/network_encoding_to_playback_delay

Make sure fast_file_switching is true, safe_fast_file_switching is false, local_encoding_to_playback_delay is 0, and network_encoding_to_plaback_delay is 1500 or less. Best thing to do is comment out the existing setting with a pound (#) symbol and add the property with your new setting right below it so you can easily revert the changes back if they cause adverse behavior. If your delay issue is on the extender, try lowering the network_encoding_to_playback_delay to 500 or maybe 0...but beware that decreasing this delay too far may cause playback issues on the extender. I believe this number is milliseconds, so 1500 is equal to 1.5 seconds and 500 is equal to .5 seconds. Good luck.

[TallMomof2]

With my HDPVR I have a noticeable seconds long pause. But with the HDHR there is barely a blip. Maybe it's the way Sage handles the different streams from the tuners.

I've also noticed that when watching live the HDPVR is several seconds behind live (I'm comparing directly to a STB) but the HDHR has absolutely no lag.

[gplasky]

Keep in mind the HDHR s nothing but the digital stream going to the hard drive where the HD-PVR is actually encoding (transcoding?) the stream in it's hardware. Even though it is in hardware I would think there is still some overhead to it.

Gerry

[Striker:WG]

Originally Posted by robogeek

Here are a couple of explanations for this... If you only have one tuner, obviously you can't have that kind of padding on back-to-back recordings since one tuner can only send one video stream to SageTV. There is also a setting somewhere in the Detailed Settings that will remove padding on back-to-back recordings so you wouldn't actually have any padding even though you specified it. You will have to check your settings to be sure you don't have it set to remove padding on back-to-back recordings. Lastly, even with everything properly setup with padding and the recordings are actually recording on two seperate tuners, SageTV still has to close the first recording, tear down the playback graph, open the file, build the new playback graph, and start playback.

Face it people, unless SageTV implements some sort of circular live TV recording buffer or hooks up the preview pin of the tuners output to the playback graph instead of the file stream, you will always have some sort of delay when one show ends and a new one begins. Implementing either of these two things would have it's own challenges and limitations, so I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for either of these two solutions.

Having said all of that, there are some settings in the sage.properties file that may help reduce the delay. Off the top of my head, here are four that may affect the delay:

videoframe/fast_file_switching
videoframe/safe_fast_file_switching
videoframe/local_encoding_to_playback_delay
videoframe/network_encoding_to_playback_delay

Make sure fast_file_switching is true, safe_fast_file_switching is false, local_encoding_to_playback_delay is 0, and network_encoding_to_plaback_delay is 1500 or less. Best thing to do is comment out the existing setting with a pound (#) symbol and add the property with your new setting right below it so you can easily revert the changes back if they cause adverse behavior. If your delay issue is on the extender, try lowering the network_encoding_to_playback_delay to 500 or maybe 0...but beware that decreasing this delay too far may cause playback issues on the extender. I believe this number is milliseconds, so 1500 is equal to 1.5 seconds and 500 is equal to .5 seconds. Good luck.

i was looking for the fast_file_switching property and it doesn't seem to exist in my properties file. I added it in and set it to True as suggested, but I was wondering if anyone knows what Sage would default to on a property that doesn't exist and why that property might not exist if its something that Sage can utilize.

-Striker-

[Slipshod]

SageGK,

Open a support request with Sage and see what they say. There's no reason they can't make it work, it's just a matter of whether or not they prioritize it against other work. If they don't hear from people who don't like it and think it's a bug they'll never work on it.

LiveTV doesn't get much respect on the forums here, and I'm one of the few that thinks it's one of the things holding back Sage from more mainstream usage. Not nearly as much as the UI, but some.

Cheers,
Slipshod

[pjpjpjpj]

I see it two times, mainly:
1) When watching sports - especially football - that run longer than the time slot given... without fail it will be a crucial play with about a minute or two left in the game and I'll get that stutter.
2) I watch the local morning news show here and they have it broken into segments on the EPG... "Good Morning at 5:00", "Good Morning at 6:00", "Good Morning at 7:00", etc. They somewhat roll into each other and the little "intro" video they play on the hour sometimes starts several seconds early, and I'll see the stutter while the video is playing.

Nonetheless... while I don't watch a lot of live TV, it is annoying when I am.

[SageGk]

Well, it is becoming unacceptable, so much that the WAF has dropped considerably. When watching QAM or the HD-PVR it can take up to 5-6 seconds to resume livetv. It is disgusting and always happens when there is dialogue of course and I have to rewind to see what I missed. I think Sage really needs to look into this, I am beginning to dread LiveTV.

[GKusnick]

The switch from one file to another should rarely happen in the middle of a show, unless the show runs over its timeslot. It happens when the playback of one show ends and the playback of the next show begins, usually during a commercial or station ID.

If you're saying you're always getting a hiccup at the hour and half-hour of clock time, regardless of where you are in the playback of a program, then it sounds like something else is happening. Like maybe you have some background process that wakes up every half hour and hogs the CPU for a few seconds. My advice would be to check your debug logs to see if there's anything in there corresponding to these hiccups. You might also try disabling any add-ons you have that do comskip processing or similar background tasks to see if that makes a difference. If you have Sage set to do period library rescans, try turning that off too. And of course you should exclude your Sage recording directories from background virus scanning, Windows search indexing, and so on.

[SageGk]

Originally Posted by GKusnick

The switch from one file to another should rarely happen in the middle of a show, unless the show runs over its timeslot. It happens when the playback of one show ends and the playback of the next show begins, usually during a commercial or station ID.

If you're saying you're always getting a hiccup at the hour and half-hour of clock time, regardless of where you are in the playback of a program, then it sounds like something else is happening. Like maybe you have some background process that wakes up every half hour and hogs the CPU for a few seconds. My advice would be to check your debug logs to see if there's anything in there corresponding to these hiccups. You might also try disabling any add-ons you have that do comskip processing or similar background tasks to see if that makes a difference. If you have Sage set to do period library rescans, try turning that off too. And of course you should exclude your Sage recording directories from background virus scanning, Windows search indexing, and so on.

Well, so far so good. Thanks to robogeek, I added those lines he suggested and things seem much better now.

[SageGk]

Spoke too soon. Although the "hitch" is of a lesser duration now, whenever I have guests, they ask me what is wrong with the TV? It's embarrassing after investing so much time and money into this system.

[tedson]

This is also my family's current biggest complaint. They have learned to live with the very long channel changes, but the interruption between programs on live TV just screams problem and it makes them feel like the TV is broken.

In the car industry there is a term called perceived quality, and Japanese car manufacturers understand this. You don't have to have a more reliable car, you just have to make the users feel like it is a more reliable car. The opposite is also true. Sage is a very cool product and overall it's not bad, but it has very poor perceived quality. Live TV hiccups. Channel changed are obnoxiously slow. Very "unslick" UI. These are all things that users see every day.

In reality they are all small things, but because you see them every day they destroy the perceived quality of the product. My brother in law wants his setup to do exactly what mine does. He wants all his media in one place, but I can't sell him on Sage. He has seen all the little glitches and in his head Sage is now total junk. It doesn't matter if it is true as long as it is perceived as true. Unfortunately my wife is falling into that same boat and I don't know how much longer I will be able to hold out before the Dish Network DVR is back and in the den.

Sage really needs to have a release that doesn't add anything new, instead it just needs to polish what it has and try to improve its perceived quality.

[PLUCKYHD]

Is there any way to expand the buffer time to more than one show? The pause between one show and the next when watching livetv is kind of annoying. I understand it is starting a new file for the live buffer but is there anyway to make it keep say like 3 hours or more so you don't see this every show change?

* merged *

[Opus4]

There is no live TV buffer; SageTV records each show to its own file.

Edit: I've updated this FAQ to add this Q.

- Andy