New Stuttering on Server only

[jglev]

I just noticed stuttering on my server, but only when watching live TV. It doesn't happen when watching live TV on the client (over a wireless "g" network no less) and doesn't happen when watching a recording. The stuttering seems to almost be a freeze of the video for a fraction of a second and seems to happen rhythmically at about once every second. Although I never use it, I tried WinTV2000 to see if there is any stuttering there when viewing live TV and there wasn't any. Rebooting didn't help and changing from VMR to Overlay didn't and changing the decoder from Defalt to Intervideo for Hauppauge didn't help either.

Again, it seems to have just started out of the blue. I am using Sage version 1.4 (been holding off trying the beta of 2.0) and the PVR-250. My primary hard drive is partitioned so that the video partition is formatted using 64K blocks and a second HD (120 gigs) is also formatted with 64K blocks.

Does anyone have any ideas? Watching live TV is now unwatchable.

Thanks for your help,

[jglev]

As an update, I just installed the latest Hauppauge drivers without any improvement.

I am defragging the drive now, but it doesn't seem that fragmented.

Any takers?

Thanks,

[Opus4]

Just a stab in the dark... Any software, driver, or hardware changes on the system recently? Without something getting changed/updated, I'm not too sure why it would suddenly stop working.

- Andy

[jglev]

Originally posted by Opus4
Just a stab in the dark... Any software, driver, or hardware changes on the system recently? Without something getting changed/updated, I'm not too sure why it would suddenly stop working.

- Andy

Thanks Andy for taking a shot.

The only thing I can think of is that it has something to do with the addition of the second 120 gig HD. I added it about 6 weeks ago, but I don't recall any stuttering back then. I am wondering if I hadn't watched live TV on the sever from the time I put in the new drive to just a couple of days ago, but I can't believe that to be true. However, it is possible since I mostly watch recorded shows and only rarely watch time-shifted live TV on the server (sometimes I do watch live TV on the client, but as I said, there is no stuttering at all on the client). What I don't understand is if this is the case, then why don't I see stuttering when watching live TV on the client. It is still being timeshifted to the HD.

The new drive is a 7200 RPM drive set up as a slave to the main HD.

Thanks again,

[Opus4]

I was hoping you would say something changed that would give others ideas of what might be happening.

Does it stutter when you watch a show while another is being recorded? (Not watching LiveTV, though.)

For LiveTV, does it still stutter if you pause it for a short time & then let it play? Maybe playback is too close to the end of the currently recorded data.

- Andy

[jglev]

Originally posted by Opus4
I was hoping you would say something changed that would give others ideas of what might be happening.

Does it stutter when you watch a show while another is being recorded? (Not watching LiveTV, though.)

For LiveTV, does it still stutter if you pause it for a short time & then let it play? Maybe playback is too close to the end of the currently recorded data.

- Andy

I don't know about the first question. I will have to check when I get home.

As for the second question, the answer is yes. I started to watch a show that was being recorded (it was about 15 min. into the show, so it was timeshifted by that much) and it was stuttering even after pausing. When the show ended (I was was still watching), the stuttering ended after a pause. My guess is that this will probably answer the first question that watching a recorded show while it is recording results in stuttering.

I am thinking of finally going to version 2 today when RC2 comes out, but I have a fear that upgrading won't fix the problem.

[kny3twalker]

Try deleting the prefetches on your computer and see if the sruttering happens

[jglev]

Originally posted by kny3twalker
Try deleting the prefetches on your computer and see if the sruttering happens

Sorry if this is a stupid question, but: what are prefetches and how do I delete them?

Thanks,

[kny3twalker]

a prefetch is (well you are talking to a person that is not the most tech savy) a file on the hardware that are accessed by windows and kind of keep track of what you have been doing and adding performance is normally the idea, but sometimes windows has a hard time and can make the performance worse
basically the more you use a program the more windows thinks you like it and try to optimize it
if you delete the prefetch windows will create new ones and you will start over on the windows optimizing of Sage
but your problem has just recently started so I would try this
and anyone correct anything you think was explained badly or incorrectly
use windows search an look for SageTV and delete the prefetches that appear is the easiest way

[jglev]

As an update; defrag didn't help.

[AJ Bertelson]

What is the cluster size?

[jglev]

Formatted at 64K.

[jglev]

Originally posted by Opus4
Does it stutter when you watch a show while another is being recorded? (Not watching LiveTV, though.)

- Andy

As I expected, the answer is yes. It seems as long as it is recording, watching anything (timeshifting or previously recorded show) it stutters.

Thinking that it might have something to do with the new hard drive I put in, I removed it from the properties of Sage to force it to write only to the C: drive. Well, it still stuttered even after that, so it apparently is not the new HD, but something with the software.

I was thinking of updating now to V2, but from what I read, it probably won't help the stuttering. I figure at this point, I might as well wait for the final version to be released anyway.

Any ideas?

Thanks,

[jglev]

Well, the problem continues and seems to be getting worse over time. The pauses seem to be getting longer, but again, everything is fine on the client.

Anyone have any thoughts? I am afraid that I may have to reformat my HD and start from scratch. I'll probably wait for Version 2 to be relesaed first and try that before I wipe the drive.

Thanks,

[mikbro]

Let me ask this, if you are recording on the server, watching a recorded show on the server, and watching a recorded show on the client, is the client still ok?

It sounds as if the act of recording a stream to the hard drive (not particularly difficult) and playing back a stream (can be CPU intensive) is pushing your machine over the edge... What is your CPU utilization while playing back on the server? Any spikes in CPU usage that you can correlate to the stutters? What video decoder are you using on the server and on the client?

[jglev]

As an update, I finally upgraded to Sage 2 for both server and client in hopes of it fixing the stuttering on the server. Well, it didn't fix the stuttering on the server and now I have the same stuttering issue on the client. What is weird is that on the client, it is only intermittent. Again, the stuttering only occurs if Sage is recording and I am either watching something previously recorded or live TV that is time shifted. I noticed on the client, that the CPU usage is not 100% (it's about 18% and on the server it is about 50-60%). I am getting tempted to either re-format my server hard drive on re-trying BTV now that they have the beta out with multituner support (and a TIVO type ff and rew).

Any ideas before I make any of these drastic moves?

Thanks,

[kny3twalker]

yeah the beta 3.5 is sweet, LOL
playback was still crap
damn can they ever get it right
oh and the muted sound when using NVDVD was awesome
how about when I changed from cable TV to DSS it would hit my TV/DSS button and then not turn it off after going back to cable TV so they were always snow

do the reformat you be happier