HD MPEG2 video not playing smoothly

[timg11]

I record OTA video with the HDHomerun.
When I play OTA programming with SageTV, movement is not smooth. I would call it micro-stuttering, where video may freeze or change speed several times per second. It is most noticeable on smooth movement of large areas like panning or animated objects.

I can play back the MPG file with VLC, and the video is very smooth, so I think that shows that the MPEG2 stream it is getting recorded properly from the HDhomerun.

I am using the default MPEG2 video decoder filter, which is SageTV MPEG Video Decoder.
I tried switching to the other choice (ArcSoft Video Decoder) and the playback did look smoother. Unfortunately, the system crashed (freeze and reboot) after playing for about 15 seconds.

Is there any other configuration or settings I should adjust to either get the SageTV decoder to work better, or to use the Arcsoft decoder without crashing?

The VLC codec seems to work pretty well - is there a way to get SageTV to use the same decoder as used by VLC?

[timg11]

After looking carefully at programs recorded with the HD-PVR, I think the HD-PVR playback is also affected with micro-stuttering. The MPEG4 codec selected in setup is DirectShow.

[timg11]

I'm still working on solving this.
For now I'm focusing on MPEG2 (OTA video) playback. I tried all three options for Video Renderer. Here are the results:

VMR9: some stuttering 25% CPU load Crashes SageTV when stopping playback

Overlay: severe stuttering 5% CPU load Crashes SageTV when stopping playback

EVR: slight stuttering 25% CPU load Computer freezes and reboots after a few minutes of playback.

DXVA hardware acceleration is on.

I've been living with VMR9 (it is the best of the 3), but I'm still looking for a solution to the visible stuttering.

I have a test segment from the news that shows cars moving on a freeway. None of the SageTV options give smooth movement of the cars - there is some degree of stuttering. However I can play the same MPG file in VLC, and the movement is totally smooth. However there may be some interlace error in VLC , since the edges of the moving cars are more jagged than in SageTV.

[dbaxley]

I don't have an answer to your problem but am very interested in the replies you get. I too am having this problem, though, I don't think as bad as you are. Hopefully someone will reply with some useful answers.

[HelenWeathers]

I had these issues with OTA ATSC and HD-PVR recording rendering. My issues were resolved with the use of SageTV 6.5.11 and nVidia driver update.

I use the Nvidia 9600 card and the (new) 182.xx driver is very stable at default settings. I had micro stutter in everything HiDef before. Am now able to use EVR again. This is on my Vista 32 Client.

EDIT: the driver is: 182.06_geforce_winvista_32bit_english_whql - hopefully they'll have an update for XP as well.
My pans before were exactly as the OP described - almost like rapid stop action.

[timg11]

I have updated to SageTV 6.5.12, and NVIDIA driver 182.06. I still have the micro-stuttering in video playback.

I find it quite puzzling that I can play the same video file in VLC and it will be silky smooth. Is there any way to use the codec built into VLC with SageTV?

I tried using EVR again, and I still get hard system crashes after a few minutes of playback. This is the bad crash where the screen freezes, the audio re-cycles a 100mS sample, and then the computer re-boots after a few seconds.

I thought maybe it was a hardware problems, so I also replaced the RAM (and doubled it to 4G at the same time) This has not helped. I also increased the Java heap size as suggested elsewhere, but that has not helped either.

[gsfitz]

Any chance your running "full screen exclusive" mode? That caused me problems with playback of HD content.

I too have HD MPG files that play perfect in VLC but no audio in Sage, WMP or Power DVD7. The HD MPG files were made from Canon HV20 footage rendered with Sony Vegas. They look great in HD.

[VCRUser]

Originally Posted by gsfitz

I too have HD MPG files that play perfect in VLC but no audio in Sage, WMP or Power DVD7. The HD MPG files were made from Canon HV20 footage rendered with Sony Vegas. They look great in HD.

Oddly enough, my problem is the reverse: several HD MPG files that play perfectly in Sage, but no audio in VLC!

[limiter]

Originally Posted by VCRUser

Oddly enough, my problem is the reverse: several HD MPG files that play perfectly in Sage, but no audio in VLC!

I have this same problem, I don't get it at all. About 50% of my HDHomeRun recordings have no audio VLC but are fine in Sage. Obviously not an issue for this forum to address, I just thought it was odd that the player that seems to play literally anything fails to play audio from some recordings. Even more odd is I always have audio if I launch VLC from the HDHomeRun setup app. Weird.

[sflamm]

I have the same problem. Programs recorded by HDHR have no audio when played outside SageTV (i.e. VLC).

Solution?

[gsfitz]

HDHomerun posted a fix for mother boards with nForce network drivers which can cause stuttering. I believe you have to disable checksum offloading under the advanced tab of settings.

I've been struggling with the latest release of HDHR firmware which causes my system to loose channel signals every 30 minutes. Once lost I can't get the signal back until I scan for new channels in each tuner. Anyone have the old firmware 20081002?

[sflamm]

The problem I am having is that none of the .mpg's created can be played outside SageTV. They all lack sound. Within SageTV, it plays fine.

[gsfitz]

Search for a program called "Graphedit" on the internet. It's free.

You can drop your MPG into the program window and it will show you what video and audio codec's are being used to process the file.

Or, in Windows Media Player start playing the file then open the file properties while playing. It will show what video and audio codec's are being used. In your case it may show no audio codec.

Sage is using the codec you told it to. Outside of Sage that's another story.

[VCRUser]

This problem is being looked into by VLC. See the following thread:
http://forum.videolan.org/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=57797. According to VLC, the problem relates to a "timestamp gap: "this file seems to be broken (too big timestamp gap between audio and video." I have no idea what it means, but for some HD files that Sage records & will play, VLC (and Windows Media Player) refuse to play audio; DivX sometimes plays audio, and sometimes stutters.

[sflamm]

According to VLC this is some sort of problem with Sage and timecodes put on the stream.

I have noticed that programs seem to 'flash' briefly every once in a while even when playing back in Sage - though there is always audio.