Sage Videos Starting to Stutter

[mike1961]

A few weeks ago my client workstations started to "stutter" while watching TV like every 5-10 minutes or so the audio and video will "stutter" for a few seconds. It's like everything goes in "slow motion" for about 3-4 seconds. I've tried defragging the file server but it could not defrag everything I think because perhaps the 6 gig files windows doesn't have an easy time defragging.

However, I"m not sure if that is the problem because the resources with SageTVService jump around a lot and I'm not sure if that is normal either. I have a dedicated server and one more thing....this problem seems to have started when I upgraged from my 6.4 to 6.5 (latest version) and I also have the latest version of Java.
All ideas apprecated.

Thanks,
Mike

[Slack]

Hard drive ready to die?

Although I cannot prove causality - I started getting stutter / freezes on my HD-200s with some regularity. I could back up and sometimes the problem remain were it was in the program previously - and sometimes it would play the passage just fine on a second pass. I initially thought it was a new way of sage handling 'macro-blocking' that you can sometimes see on OTA recordings with marginal signal strength.

Week or so later I come home to find main recordings drive dead (click of death).

[paulbeers]

Originally Posted by mike1961

also have the latest version of Java.[/B]
All ideas apprecated.

Thanks,
Mike

Which version of Java?

[mike1961]

I have the latest version of Java. I think maybe I'll monitor which recordings are giving that "slow motion stutter." I have three drives on my Sage Server where one is the main used for permanant archives and the import library. But the other two drives are used for Sage Recordings so perhaps it is only happening with recordings on one of the two drives which might indicate that the drive is going bad. Great - I can now bump it from either a 1TB drive to either 1.5 or 2TB. Drives just keep getting larger.

What will we do when they get to the Petabyte drives 1PB (wow - 1 thousand terabytes...imagine that)?

Thanks,
Mike

[mike1961]

WOW - I READ THIS ON NEWEGG

Does anyone know anything about this???

I read this comment about the 1.5 TB drives and I'm wondering if my 1TB drive "timesout" also and is not defective at all but just times out. This comment was made about the 2 TB drive available at Newegg:

Pros: So far no timeout bugs detected. This is the reason I didn't buy Seagates 1.5 TB drives; the forums were plagued with users complaining that the drives would periodically timeout for 30 seconds at a time; a real pain if you're streaming a movie. And the problem never seemed to get fixed even after many, many firmware updates.

Does anyone know anything about this and do 1TB drives have this problem? How can I be sure to get a drive that DOES NOT have this problem? I've never heard of this problem and would appreciate if someone could describe this in more detail and why any drive would do this. Turns out that I have Seagate 1TB drives.

Thanks,
Mike

[mike1961]

Any comments on this?

[davephan]

I have two Seagate 1.0 TB drives and one 1.5 TB Seagate drive, and I haven't seen the problem yet. I had my system setup to use the 1.5 TB drive for recording video and did not notice any problems. I now use the Segate 1.5 TB drive for a video library, and have not noticed any problems playing back videos. None of my Segate drives needed firmware updates according to the Seagate web site.

Dave

[mike1961]

Strange - I have a server that has a dual processor AMD. Maybe the problem is with seagates and the mobo or cpu or some combination.

I wonder if it is a framentation issue. Anyone know of any good freeware defrag programs? Microsofts defrag does not seem to work well with large files.
Mike

[davephan]

How are you watching the videos? Maybe you have a port problem. I use MVPs that are setup for DHCP, since my router cannot assign MAC addresses to DHCP IP addresses. Sometimes the MVP units will drift out of the addresses that have opened ports. The ports are not opened up, the video can stutter. If you have a similar situation, that would explain why the video was stutter free, and developed a stuttering problem.

How much memory are you using? Initially, I tried using only 512 meg RAM, which isn't enough and causes the computer to cache to disk continueously, slowing down everything, which sometimes caused stuttering.

If you had an image of your boot drive, when the system was not stuttering, you could go back to that point-in-time and find out if that fixes the stuttering problem.

You should be using 64K blocks for the video storage. If the block size is smaller, that might be the problem. If you have Windows XP Home, you cannot defrag 64K blocks, you needed Windows XP Pro, or some other version of Windows that can defrag 64K blocks. I've tried defragging my video storage, and I've never seen any video performance improvement verses letting it become fragmented. I don't think fragmentation is much of an issue was long as you have 64K blocks.

Dave

[mike1961]

I can't imagine ports have anything to do with it because the workstations are using a UNC drive and not ports. They access the server via \\server1\sharedc \\server1\shared etc. Also, the video might be fine for 30 minutes then have a slow/stutter for around 5 seconds every 10 minutes. Or it might not do it for 30 minutes then do it 3 times in 5 minutes. But each time it only does it for 3-5 seconds (then catches up).

I've checked the task manager and sage is only using 10% of resources on the client. I have 1GB RAM on the clients. I use 64KB blocks on the server and which I could even increase the cluster size since as you know most videos are 2+ gigs.

Interestingly enough, the workstations don't seem to respond as quick as I would often expect them to (AMD 3200s). But, I'm not sure what other maintenance routines I can run to try and figure out what is going on. But, they do copy files quick from the server but sometimes if I double click My Computer or Internet Explorer it's like there is a hesitation before they open. But, I'm not sure if that is related to the problem or if it is simply a fragmentation problem on the server and that is all.

Mike

[mike1961]

I posted a thread a while back:

http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=40749

but still I have not resolved this problem and it is really annoying. I have determined the following:

1. The problem is if we are watching say a one hour show then sometimes say 30 min in the show it's like the video and audio will suddenly play slow for 1-2 seconds (like everything plays video and audio at 1/4 the speed as if the network connection got unplugged or something). It might then do this again a minute or two later and yet again as many as 5 times in one hour or more.

2. It's definitely not the recording itself because if I rewind and playback then it is fine.

3. It seems to do this on both my client workstations upstairs and downstairs.

4. I have the latest version of Java and Sage (I think it started on Sage when I upgraded to the latest version).

5. I tried to defrag the drives but that did not help.

Does anyone have any ideas how to fix this?

Thanks,
Mike

* merged *

[Polypro]

Vista? Have you tried disabling ReadyBoost and Prefetch? Have you done the NetworkThrottlingIndex tweak? Which version of 6.5?...I had some stutter on 6.5.9 that was probably related to the MPEGDemux (see beta section) and installing 6.5.13 fixed it.

P

[mike1961]

Hello - I have the following:

Sage Client - 6.5.9.204
Java 1.6.0.13

My server is XP Pro and the workstations are the same. I didn't have this problem until upgrading to 6.5.9 (I think but it has been almost a month now).

I don't have Vista at all.

If the following is not related to Vista please let me know how to disable ReadyBoost and Prefetch. Also, what is the NetworkThrottlingIndex tweak?


I'll try 6.5.13

Thanks,
Mike

[sunray]

It could be the Seagate drives if they are of the 7200.11 series. The drive freezing problem has been reported in all capacities of this series of drives. But it's hard to find the information as the Seagate forum moderators have moved all the posts about all the different problems with this series into a very long thread (65+ pages) on Seagate's web site.

The new firmware mentioned in the forum for the drives only fixes one specific problem, that of the drive disappearing from the BIOS.. But people have thought that the new firmware would fix the freezing and other problems because of the lumping together done by the moderators.

[mike1961]

A few questions and I'll give you all the latest:

First: I don't run Vista but what is the ReadyBoost and please let me know how to disable ReadyBoost and Prefetch. Also, what is the NetworkThrottlingIndex tweak?

Next, the problem appears to be on only two of the client workstations on my network and not on my computer. It seems those two computers also take FOREVER to launch Internet Explorer. It's like 10 seconds at least before it even brings up the window. I've checked the task manager and there's very little running in it. I started thinking that something is causing slowdowns with the IP address maybe so I decided to make them a static IP and that seems to have really speeded things up (all this is preliminary though as I haven't had a LOT of time to test as of yet). But, I know a static IP can make a difference for reliability on a wireless network but these are all cabled. Also, I have XP home on these machines with 1 gb memory on one and 1.5 gb on the other but they are not the fastest processors but not bad (AMD 3200s).

All comments welcome.

Thanks,
Mike

[wrems]

I had the same problems you described. I also have the 1.5 TB Seagate.

It was weird… When I first installed the 1.5 and began migrating video content over to it I also turned it into my primary recording directory. Everything worked well and I was happy. No problems at all. Then several weeks or possibly even between a month to 2 months after I installed the drive I began having the issues you mentioned above. My problems only seemed to be on the new recordings as my previously recorded content and even recordings to the 1.5 were fine.

I don’t have a good answer to this but I did resolve it. What worked for me was to stop using the 1.5 as a recording directory and use one of my known good recording drives. Now I have a 300 GB recording drive and move the recorded files to my 1.5 from time to time… It’s not ideal but it solved my problems.

HTH

[mike1961]

In other words - you are suggesting turning it into an archive drive. I have found all my MP4 files work just fine with no problems in my imported files on any drive (WD or Seagate).

I'm not sure if changing my IP to static on my two client workstations has resolved the problem but so far so good (been only 24 hours but haven't watched much tv). I have noticed that for some strange reason it also took a LONG LONG time just to launch internet explorer on these two workstations and this has nothing to do with the network drive. I mean the computer was unbelievable SLOW. But, once I changed them to a static IP launching IE is now very quick. I think the slow response time with the computer may have caused the stuttering and changing to a static IP has resolved the issue.

Mike

[mike1961]

Well I'm still stuck with this issue. I'm not sure what is causing this slowness but it also seems to happen when I go to IE or My Computer (sometimes). I noticed it seems to happen on ALL computers that view movies (not just the two workstations that I thought were slow). I'm thinking something with the Seagate 1TB drives I have might be causing this problem (they are 7200.11 drives). Anyone know anything about this or have any links for more info?

Thanks,
Mike

[sunray]

Go to Seagate's web site and look in the Community Forums section under the Support link.
Try the following links:

http://forums.seagate.com/stx/board/...thread.id=9060

http://forums.seagate.com/stx/board/...hread.id=11184

As I said in my earlier message the 1st link is over 65+ (now 75) pages long and you'll have to sort through the postings on many other problems in order to find the relevant info on drive freezings. The 2nd link is for problems with 7200.11 drives continually falling out of RAID arrays causing the array to have to be rebuilt. I believe this is also caused by the drive freezing as it causes the RAID controller to think the drive is dead and drop it out of the array. If you are looking for a more concise link to your problem there isn't any as far as I know. You will just have to do the reading yourself.

[mike1961]

Sunray - I honestly don't want to read through 75 pages of threads. But, here's two questions for you:

1. Do you think if I replace the drives with Western Digitals either 1.5 or 2 terabytes that my problem will be resolved.

2. I'm wondering if others with Sage are having this problem? It would seem that there would be a LOT more posts here on the Sage forum with this problem for those with Seagate drives. I'm not sure if it has anything to do with my AMD dual processor in combination with the Seagates. I don't think I had this problem until I changed to the 1TB Seagate drives 7200.11

Thanks,
Mike