Video Studdering

[davephan]

The HD200 and HDHomerun only run at 100 megs.

Dave

[Fuzzy]

Not exactly, theres no mechanism to force one to each drive. Sage will instead record the next scheduled program to the drive with the most free space. This way, the drives end up with the same level of use.

[xls]

Ah, ok. That makes sense.

Thanks Fuzzy! And davephan for the info on the bandwidth.

So I guess there is no built-in network speed and/or quality test, correct? It might be a good feature for troubleshooting, but maybe more useful for those connecting via wifi.

I got some reconfiguring to do. Ordered two new HDD for my RAID and will use the two old ones for SageTV recordings (after re-formating with 64k block size).

Thanks again!

[jmv]

FYI, I've had stuttering due to how I set up the network shares that Sage uses, an underpowered CPU, bad Network HW (a failing switch) and most recently read errors on my fast raid array. Unfortunately stuttering issues = all of the above . It would be GREAT if Sage logged stuttering and also something that would indicate why it stuttered...I am sure that the HD200's and clients all can "see stuttering" with frame drops etc...the other thing I think Sage should do is significantly increase the buffer so that issues with data supply to the client don't translate into stuttering unless the data rate is routinely below the needed rate...

[DocDJ]

Originally Posted by davephan

It looks like you are using 4k blocks instead of 64k blocks as Andy mentioned above. Can you use a separate drive for the video files formatted with 64k blocks?

You might try using a cross over cable or a Eithernet cables and a switch to isolate the problem as a wireless problem.

Your stuttering might be from both the small block size and wireless.

Dave

Since it works properly with vertical transmission, it doesn't make sense that block-size is related to the problem. I downloaded the Sage Client to my laptop (with N adapter) and saw the same results (more than 30 feet away, it stutters). It seems to be a problem that the Sage players (Client & Extender) don't use a big enough buffer for the stream.

[manufuji]

I'm not sure if this helps. Many years ago before I had sageTV, when I had an issue with video stuttering, I was told to change my controller settings.. I vaguely remember having to change "DMA". I cant find that setting on my Vista PC... but maybe you have that setting.

[Savage1701]

XLS - your ethernet switch should tell you the speed of whatever (PC, HD200) is plugged into it by how the LED's around the port are - in my case, the "Link LED's" are amber=100 BaseT and green=1000BaseT. Of course there is also a tx/rx LED that flashes as well. Is that what you are asking?

The cheapest devices I've ever seen that will actually "sweep" or "validate" an ethernet run start at $800 or so from TechTool Supply. That goes up into the 5000's for a good Fluke unit.

You can also get some software that will look at packet loss and collisions and such if you think you have poor quality cabling or crosstalk or such.

I think the HD200 is 100BaseT or "Fast" ethernet, which is really way fast enough for pretty much any HD signal including a Blu-Ray, which peaks at maybe 40 megabits per second and averages 25-30. Figuring 20% overhead loss on a 100 Base T connection you still have 80 Mb/s or 10-11 MB/s which is about what you would get if you copied a large contiguous file point to point over a 100 Base T network.

I'm surprised people can get the Wireless N to be reliable at all. But maybe if QoS is set to favor the Sage setup, the send/receive units are close, and the sun is shining...Seriously, I know that my 54Mb/s Wireless G is more like 24 in the real world, and then with some transport overhead I get around 20Mb/s or 2.5MB/s tops.

As far as "drive balancing" is concerned, yes, I've noticed if I put a new drive in Sage starts shoving everything onto it. I get away with it 99% of the time because all of mine are on a 3Ware RAID controller that has a write back cache and can buffer the recordings enough. But as near as I can tell, Sage will always try to keep my 6 recording drives "in balance" by as tight as a few per cent, which is pretty darn good.

[davephan]

Originally Posted by Savage1701

As far as "drive balancing" is concerned, yes, I've noticed if I put a new drive in Sage starts shoving everything onto it. I get away with it 99% of the time because all of mine are on a 3Ware RAID controller that has a write back cache and can buffer the recordings enough. But as near as I can tell, Sage will always try to keep my 6 recording drives "in balance" by as tight as a few per cent, which is pretty darn good.

A nice addition to a future SageTV version would be to have the recording drives selected randomly or some other method in the configuration GUI to balance the drive load, rather than sticking to filling up the drive with the most free space.

One large RAID 6 array would balance the load too. A RAID 5 array is a bit too risky for me, since you loose everything with a second drive failure, if it happens before the first drive failure is replaced, and rebuilt. Plus, RAID 5 takes a huge performance loss until the rebuilding process is completed. With RAID 6, you can loose two drives and still not loose everything.

Dave

[Fuzzy]

The drive balancing scheme is a little dated, and it WOULD be nice if it was improved, that said, with an established system, it really does work quite well. As for RAID, I simply don't see the point in it, for recordings. I much rather keep my recording drives as separate volumes. If/When I do add drives to my setup, it's a simple matter of plugging it in and adding it to the sage folders. RAID is considerably more complicated than that. You can manually move some recordings onto the new drive to pre-balance the space a bit if you want.

[Savage1701]

Originally Posted by davephan

A nice addition to a future SageTV version would be to have the recording drives selected randomly or some other method in the configuration GUI to balance the drive load, rather than sticking to filling up the drive with the most free space.

One large RAID 6 array would balance the load too. A RAID 5 array is a bit too risky for me, since you loose everything with a second drive failure, if it happens before the first drive failure is replaced, and rebuilt. Plus, RAID 5 takes a huge performance loss until the rebuilding process is completed. With RAID 6, you can loose two drives and still not loose everything.

Dave

I agree with you there. One manual way around this would be to shutdown Sage or Sage Service, after adding the new drive to Sage of course, and then moving the files so it has somewhat close to the same % fill as others.

Clumsy and a bit risky, but you could do it.

Or, a bit more tedious but safer - you could limit the new drive to the % filled capacity of the other "balanced" drives, and then gradually increse it and hopefully "trick" Sage into thinking your 2TB drive was really only 250GB, if, for example, that was what was about the average left on the other drives. Of course, it would work better if all the other drives were the same size, because at some point that newer, bigger drive is going to have the most space as you raise its ceiling past the absolute capacity of any drives that have a lower absolute capacity.

Just some thoughts.

Again, a pain in the a**, but it would probably work.

[Savage1701]

Originally Posted by davephan

A nice addition to a future SageTV version would be to have the recording drives selected randomly or some other method in the configuration GUI to balance the drive load, rather than sticking to filling up the drive with the most free space.

One large RAID 6 array would balance the load too. A RAID 5 array is a bit too risky for me, since you loose everything with a second drive failure, if it happens before the first drive failure is replaced, and rebuilt. Plus, RAID 5 takes a huge performance loss until the rebuilding process is completed. With RAID 6, you can loose two drives and still not loose everything.

Dave

By the way, I totally agree with you on that point as well. I'd like to have the cash to upgrade to a 3Ware 9650 that handles RAID 6. Or at least have a hot spare ready to go on my 9590 RAID 5 array. As finances allow I want to go to 2TB RAID 5 + hot spare or RAID 6. I have an archive server and RAID 6 has saved my bacon on more than one occassion.

[houseofreynolds]

I was experiencing a similar issue and unplugging a network switch for a few minutes fixed the problem.

[DocDJ]

I moved my USB adapter closer to the antenna, set up recording on a partition with 64K blocks, forced my router to use only N broadcasting and the extender now works fine for both HD and SD video.

The Sage support folks told me other adapters would work, but I have no clue how to get the extender to recognize them (I'd like to use one with an antenna so I can move the extender bak to the cabinet with the TV). I tried the one I have for my laptop, but the extender could not see it.

Thanks to everyone for all the help!!

[DocDJ]

Originally Posted by davephan

It would be better to use a separate drive(s) for the video storage then the drive that contains the operating system. Your video drive can also storage the images of your operating system/programs drive, if you use disk imaging for backup / recovery.

Dave

Hi Dave & Fuzzy,
Actually I have my OS, program files in 1 partition and my recorder partition in another on the same drive, but my swap file is on another drive, so I don't get too much interference (for now). But drives are cheap, so I will take your advice & get another drive. Will Sage MC have any problem recording 2 programs at the same time on 1 SATA 7200 RPM drive?

As for wired vs. wireless (from Fuzzy's post) I have to stick with wireless to avoid running cables through multiple walls and floors (and annoying my wife ). She already thinks I should have just gotten another DVR from Time Warner & pay the fees.

regards,
DJ

[davephan]

Originally Posted by DocDJ

As for wired vs. wireless (from Fuzzy's post) I have to stick with wireless to avoid running cables through multiple walls and floors (and annoying my wife ). She already thinks I should have just gotten another DVR from Time Warner & pay the fees.

regards,
DJ

Running wires is a pain. You have to make holes in the walls in a way that can be fixed and look like they never happened, which decreases the WAF a lot, especially if the holes are in the walls too long. If you do make holes in the walls, try to think of any future cabling that might be needed that runs in the same place, to avoid making more holes in the walls later.

I still have some holes in the walls a year later, so I am going to add higher speed Eithernet and other cables that I might need in the future.

I tried using the Comcast DVR. What a joke that was. The interface was very crude and clunky. After getting used to SageTV, it would be terrible to use something so poorly engineered. Maybe cable devices are cruder by default.

For example, it is difficult to setup your channel lineups with cable boxes. The favorites are setup in a flaky way, requiring extra button to press every time you use a favorite. The satellite boxes are better designed. With the satellite box setup, you basically choose what channels you never want to see in the lists. Then you never see those channels again, like shopping channels, channels that are not subscribed, and other 'garbage' channels. No extra buttons are needed when surfing with the set top box. The 'garbage' channels are simply gone.

Dave

[mike1961]

I don't use wireless for sage but I can offer some advice from the computer world....

1. Try assign static IP addresses to the client workstations rather than DHCP (if you can).

2. Try experimenting with different channels for frequency.

Ideally - use a cable.

Mike