SageTV Stutters on x.264 / Plays fine in WMP Classic

[RickWakeman]

I am new to SageTV and like it much so far. When I first installed it I was able to play some x.264 encoded (mkv container) clips, but now Sage seems to choke on them. If I load them in WMP Classic (mplayer2.exe) they play just fine, so I don't believe it to be a computer issue. I feel like I have tried every combination of filters and renderers in the list to no avail. When I play the clips in WMP, an ffdshow icon shows up in the system tray and if I click on it I can see how many FPS the clip is playing at. This does not happen when using SageTV. Please advise.

[gplasky]

I think you mean Media Player Classic. Which has its own built-in decoders. Sounds like you are lacking or haven't chosen the decoder in Sage which would decode those properly. You would need to choose ffdshow as the decoder in Sage and make sure ffdshow is configured to play those x.264 files.

Gerry

[RickWakeman]

Thank you for the prompt reply. ffdshow does not show up as a decoder in Sage. Just SageTV Player and DirectShow. This is assuming you mean at the part where it says "MPEG 4 Playback".

[gplasky]

You'll either need to use the supported h.264 decoders like PowerDVD, Arcsoft, CoreAVC or Divx h264. Or find this line in the sageclient.properties file and edit it.
videoframe/h264_video_decoder_filter=CyberLink H.264/AVC Decoder (PDVD8)

so that after the equals sign it says something like ffdshow video decoder or whatever the friendly directx name is. I think that may work. I don't use ffdshow because it is all software decoder. I use PowerDVD because it does hardware acceleration for my video card of h.264 files.

Gerry

[RickWakeman]

I installed CoreAVC (supported?) but it still does not show up in that list. I am not using any type of Sage Client, just SageTV running on my computer.

[gplasky]

Originally Posted by RickWakeman

I installed CoreAVC (supported?) but it still does not show up in that list. I am not using any type of Sage Client, just SageTV running on my computer.

When you run it there it acts like a client and you will see sageclient.properties file. What version of SageTV are you running. You should run the latest 6.6.2 to see that. Also reboot your computer after installing CoreAVC.

Gerry

[reeven]

Arcsoft decoder is better than fddshow , microsoft, coreavc, even mpc-decoder... i stopped using coreavc six months ago.

But you need totalmedia theatre v2 install, v3 does not let us to use their codecs into another directshow application.
v2 with all updates work ok won win7, by the way.

[SWKerr]

I think you are looking in the wrong section. In "MPEG4 Playback" you see the options for SageTV Player and DirectShow. Pick DirectShow. You need the box just below that "h.264 Video Decoder Filter"

Look for and Set:
Video Renderer: Overlay (Don't try the other options after you get it working well)
MPEG2 Video Decoder Filter: Arcsoft Video Decoder
MPEG4 Playback: DirectShow
h.264 Video Decoder Filter: Arcsoft Video Decoder
Audio Render: Default
MPEG2 Audo Decoder Filter: Arcsoft Audio Decoder HD

[RickWakeman]

I don't have a box labeled h.264 video decoder...I am using version 6.5.9. Am I outdated?

[HelenWeathers]

Originally Posted by RickWakeman

I don't have a box labeled h.264 video decoder...I am using version 6.5.9. Am I outdated?

Yes. 6.6.2 is the current release:
http://sagetv.com/download.html

[frontlinegeek]

To join in on this problem...

I am also having issues with choppy/shuddering playback of 1080p H264 content.

I have tried FFDShow, CoreAVC and the built in SageTV support (Using 6.6.2). All of them are the same/totally corrupt the playback. These are MKV files so I have the splitter installed but still a real mixed bag.

On the really frustrating side, I can play these same files in ANYTHING outside of Sage and they are fine. In WMP, I am only hitting 50% CPU. If I try from Sage, it jumps to 75%+ and is all jumpy and plays audio fine but skips and plays choppy.

Any insight will be welcome and I am sure the OP would be thankful too.

Jason.

[gplasky]

FFDShow, CoreAVC and the SageTV decoder are all software-based decoders for h.264 content. You would need something like PowerDVD or Arcsoft that support hardware decoding and a supported video card to get better playback. Also make sure you recording drives are formatted with 64k blocks.

Gerry

[frontlinegeek]

I know they are software based. That is why I mentioned the CPU usage. It is also why it is so messed up that in any other app but SageTV, they play fine. Is this because Sage uses Java so heavily?

Hope to be testing with Arcsoft soon...

And these are not SageTV recordings. They are imported media.

[SWKerr]

que3jxp,

One question would be what are your system specs? Cpu, Video card, os

Specs of file you are trying to play?

In Sage are you usinge overlay or something else?

I use the k-lite codec pack which installs a tool called Graphstudio. You can use Graph studio to see what the default splitters and codec are and also to try new combinations. If it plays well in Graphstudio you can get it to play in Sage.

I have had some issues in Sage with EVR but Overlay always seems to work well. Hardware decoding is nice on old equipment but any dual core cpu from the last few years would have the power to do h.264 even without it.

The only thing I have not been able to play in Sage that plays in something else is a BluRay rip with True-HD audio. It will play in MPC and Arcsoft TME fine but will choke in Sage. If I downgrade the audio it will play fine. I do not have this issue with DTS-HD audio.

Note: CoreAVC will now do hardware decoding with nVidia hardware. ATI still out of luck.

[Kryspy]

Also,

Make sure you add in your properties file --> always_use_dshow_player=true

Without this setting my 264 stuff would stutter.

Kryspy

[RickWakeman]

After upgrading to the latest version, installing Arcsoft and setting it up in SageTv, I am now playing 1080p smoothly. I only have one clip to test but it seemed to work fine. Thanks to all.

edit: Spoke too soon. After watching some live tv and going back to one of the clips...same problem.

[Kryspy]

RickWakeman,

Sorry to hear. Say hi to Oliver BTW

Kryspy

[RickWakeman]

Is there anything else I can do to troubleshoot this issue? It seems like if I close Sage and reopen it the first file I play will be fine, but if I go back to it, or another file, it is choppy, regardless if it is 720p or 1080p. Sometimes the file won't play at all, and I will see the timeline at the bottom go backwards in random increments. If I pause and play or stop and try to play again, it will usually work, but choppy.

[big poppa pump]

Are the mkv files dxva compliant. Use a program called 'MediaInfo' and make sure all your files are encoded with a 4.1 profile with a maximum of 5 CABAC frames. Any profile higher than 4.1, you are going to see stutters as well as the occasional freezes.

[RickWakeman]

I just noticed another issue with my computer that I will try to fix before I continue to place blame on SageTv. For some reason, after an undetermined amount of time of my computer being on, something (Hardware Interrupts, DPC) is using 100% of 2 out 4 of my cores. Im going to attempt to track this down, and hopefully it will fix the issue. I will check back in if and when I fix this...