Is anyone else concerned?

[Striker:WG]

I see the post that there are no known issues with 7.20 and that we are only two weeks away from the final official release of 7.0; but the BDMV support is still no where near the level of functionality to consider it a complete feature.

I have seen numerous issues posted in these support forums regarding BDMV playback issues, others have logged bugs and I know I have.

This may just be me, but the two main reasons why I was psyched about version 7 was:

#1 - the removal of the pause between shows when watching live TV
#2 - full support for BDMV playback

The first feature is working great, but the second one is no where near complete.

I still get a spinning circle and have to CTRL+ALT+DEL to end task on Sage when I try to play back Quantum of Solace, Sage crashes back to the desktop when I play several other titles, the DTS-MA does not work when playing back 500 Days of Summer, and the Dark Knight is nothing but stuttering and jumpy playback. Currently I do not have one BDMV that actually works 100% correctly.

At this point is it just me? Is there something seriously broken with my setup? All of these titles play perfectly on the same machine through PowerDVD.

-Striker-

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by Striker:WG

I still get a spinning circle and have to CTRL+ALT+DEL to end task on Sage when I try to play back Quantum of Solace, Sage crashes back to the desktop when I play several other titles, the DTS-MA does not work when playing back 500 Days of Summer, and the Dark Knight is nothing but stuttering and jumpy playback. Currently I do not have one BDMV that actually works 100% correctly.

Have you reported these to Sage? Remember they don't follow the forums closely, and the forums aren't an official support channel. If you've got problems with the beta you need to report them, and not assume someone else has.

Is there something seriously broken with my setup? All of these titles play perfectly on the same machine through PowerDVD.

It's possible. PowerDVD doesn't use directshow for BD playback, while SageTV does. The real question IMO is do they play in another directshow player like WMP, or Zoomplayer?

[Rico66]

Deng it...
I completely forgot about QoS, since it's so long that I filed a bug about this. While I don't get the spinning circle anymore, I can't say that I'm able to playback this BD within Sage. It plays somehow, but it seems without DXVA. Even though the MS DTV decoder is loaded according to the log, CPU usage is close to 100% and the video stutters badly. I haven't seen something like this for any other H.264 video (other BD rips, HD PVR recordings). Have to dig out another H.264 BD to double check, before filing another bug.

But yes, a lot of non tv playback is still hit or miss (on PC clients). VC-1 BD playback exists only on paper, online video playback is broken depending on how the SageTVDemuxer is set (I have an active bug, email thread with Sage about this), and I just noticed that one of my BD rips also breaks if I use the SageTVDemuxer. Fine if this all gets fixed in 2 weeks, but ...

[Striker:WG]

Yes, this has been reported to Sage support, twice by myself and I have noted a few others on the forums that have stated they have reported issues with BDMV to Sage Support as well.

I just tested with WMP and WMP doesn't support the M2TS file format. I can run the files through Graph Edit without issue using FFDShow to render both the audio and video streams.

-Striker-

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by Striker:WG

Yes, this has been reported to Sage support, twice by myself and I have noted a few others on the forums that have stated they have reported issues with BDMV to Sage Support as well.

Have they responded?

I just tested with WMP and WMP doesn't support the M2TS file format. I can run the files through Graph Edit without issue using FFDShow to render both the audio and video streams.

Do you have ffdshow selected as your audio/video decoder in Sage? Is it what graphedit picks automatically or did you have to build that graph manually?

[stanger89]

Also I just double checked and if you read the 7.0.19/20 announcement it says "There are no known problems in the Placeshifter Client or in the Linux versions", so they aren't saying there are no known issues at all. I'm betting you're not using Placeshifter or Linux, so the "no known problems" doesn't apply to the build you're running.

So I'm not too worried.

[Striker:WG]

The sticky at the top of this forum says no known issues in the 7.0.19 RC, the post is not specific to a certain version of the release.

http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=50043

You are correct though, I am not using Linux or Placeshifter, I am using Windows XP machine as both my Sage Server and viewing client.

I have configured Sage to use FFDShow wherever possible through the UI and the config files.

Graph Edit builds the graph using FFDShow for the Video and Cyberlink for the Audio, I have to force Graph Edit to use FFDShow for the Audio. I will see if I can promote the FFDShow Audio to be the default in Windows, but because Sage is forced to use it anyway that should be an irrelevant issue.

Yes, they have responded. The first time they asked for a segment of the QoS rip to test with and I never heard back after that.

The second time they gave me pre-access to an at the time unreleased fix that did not change any of my results. They suggested that I try AC3 Filter instead of FFDShow which also yielded no difference in results. I had to travel for a few weeks for business and was unable to continue working with support. I emailed them the other day to inform them that the issue was still unresolved even with the latest RC but I have not heard back yet.

-Striker-

[Rico66]

Did some more tests. QoS plays back fine. The issue that I described above is a bit specific to my configuration (and the way how Sage supports certain decoders only under specific configurations). I'm using MPC as audio decoder, and while this works fine for TV and DVD, it doesn't work for BDs, even if you only use the DTS core out of DTS-MA.

So if I let Sage use the DTS core only (via the recently added HD audio setting), then it uses whatever is configured as default audio decoder (MPC in my case). And this causes the stuttering that I saw. So if I use another audio decoder (e.g. ffdshow) or configure hd audio passthrough and let ffdshow select the DTS core, then I have no problem with QoS (or other BDs that use the same audio video decoder config).

I also won't recommend using ffdshow for video, since I tried that for VC-1 and it didn't work correctly. So you may want to try different decoders.

Still wondering though whether this halfway support of MPC (for audio and video) is a bug or a feature.

[isgdre]

Well, I'm concerned.

I'm new to SageTV and have already determined it's pointless to report problems via there official mechanism. All I get back is a we can't reproduce and things stay broken.

Things like.

if you pause playback (in full screen mode) long enough that the computer sleeps then when it wakes from sleep When you wake it SageTV is paused in full screen mode but COMPLETELY unresponsive to keyboard or mouse input. Workaround: goto windowed mode before pausing

Resizing the windows causes wacky results. sometimes squishing the image to the right side on the screen and your not longer able to re size it. Workaround: Move window then re size with bottom right corner.

When switching from full screen to windowed mode sometimes SageTV blanks out 3/4 of the screen and it stays that way. Workaround: Completely restart SageTV.

SageTV regularly records stuff I've already watched and records the same episode twice. True, This may be a problem with the show info they are getting but this had happend so much I don't think it's totally a Zap problem.

on and on it goes but I wont.

I wish I had a better "First experience" with SageTV. I hear 6.x was better. And frankly being beta software problems are to be expected. But Release Candidate???? Sheesh.. Yet what really concerns me is if it's company policy to just not bother with reported problems then things will never get fixed.

So... Yes.... I'm concerned.

[Striker:WG]

Originally Posted by Rico66

Did some more tests. QoS plays back fine. The issue that I described above is a bit specific to my configuration (and the way how Sage supports certain decoders only under specific configurations). I'm using MPC as audio decoder, and while this works fine for TV and DVD, it doesn't work for BDs, even if you only use the DTS core out of DTS-MA.

So if I let Sage use the DTS core only (via the recently added HD audio setting), then it uses whatever is configured as default audio decoder (MPC in my case). And this causes the stuttering that I saw. So if I use another audio decoder (e.g. ffdshow) or configure hd audio passthrough and let ffdshow select the DTS core, then I have no problem with QoS (or other BDs that use the same audio video decoder config).

I also won't recommend using ffdshow for video, since I tried that for VC-1 and it didn't work correctly. So you may want to try different decoders.

Still wondering though whether this halfway support of MPC (for audio and video) is a bug or a feature.

By MPC i'm assuming you mean Media Player Classic?

I tried downloading and installing MPC, and it doesn't give me any additional decoder options in GraphEdit or Sage to select, it only appears to be a player. Did I install the wrong thing?

Using MPC to test the playback config of my machine, I ran into some issues with it as well. With MPC I was unable to select what Filter I wanted to use, it just appeared to use the system default based on what Audio Renderer I selected to use.

Using MPC I was never able to get playback that I was satisfied with either, it would never allow the DTS to pass-through SPDIF to my amplifier to let the amp do the decoding.

The more time I spend on this, the more I debate about just buying an HD300....

-Striker-

[GKusnick]

Originally Posted by isgdre

Yet what really concerns me is if it's company policy to just not bother with reported problems then things will never get fixed.

Have you read the release notes? All of those bullet items are reported problems that got fixed. It is certainly not their policy to ignore problem reports. If it were, we wouldn't be on RC4; they would have just shipped the first RC.

[tmiranda]

Originally Posted by isgdre

Well, I'm concerned.

I'm new to SageTV and have already determined it's pointless to report problems via there official mechanism. All I get back is a we can't reproduce and things stay broken.

Things like.

if you pause playback (in full screen mode) long enough that the computer sleeps then when it wakes from sleep When you wake it SageTV is paused in full screen mode but COMPLETELY unresponsive to keyboard or mouse input. Workaround: goto windowed mode before pausing

Resizing the windows causes wacky results. sometimes squishing the image to the right side on the screen and your not longer able to re size it. Workaround: Move window then re size with bottom right corner.

When switching from full screen to windowed mode sometimes SageTV blanks out 3/4 of the screen and it stays that way. Workaround: Completely restart SageTV.

SageTV regularly records stuff I've already watched and records the same episode twice. True, This may be a problem with the show info they are getting but this had happend so much I don't think it's totally a Zap problem.

on and on it goes but I wont.

I wish I had a better "First experience" with SageTV. I hear 6.x was better. And frankly being beta software problems are to be expected. But Release Candidate???? Sheesh.. Yet what really concerns me is if it's company policy to just not bother with reported problems then things will never get fixed.

So... Yes.... I'm concerned.

Many of the issues you are describing here seem related to graphics. What graphics card are you using?

Regarding duplicate episodes - Unfortunately we all rely on the accuracy of Zap2It. Sage has put in special checks for repeat airings with non-unique IDs. Go to Setup->Detailed Setup->Customize and scroll down to "Detect repeat airings with non-unique IDs" and make sure it's set to Yes. You still will get duplicate shows, but this reduces the amount.

[Rico66]

Originally Posted by Striker:WG

By MPC i'm assuming you mean Media Player Classic?

I tried downloading and installing MPC, and it doesn't give me any additional decoder options in GraphEdit or Sage to select, it only appears to be a player. Did I install the wrong thing?

Using MPC to test the playback config of my machine, I ran into some issues with it as well. With MPC I was unable to select what Filter I wanted to use, it just appeared to use the system default based on what Audio Renderer I selected to use.

Using MPC I was never able to get playback that I was satisfied with either, it would never allow the DTS to pass-through SPDIF to my amplifier to let the amp do the decoding.

The more time I spend on this, the more I debate about just buying an HD300....

-Striker-

I was referring to the MPC stand-alone filters, not the player itself. You can use the MPC video and audio decoder within Sage for certain formats. I use the audio decoder specifically, because it's the easiest and most straight forward to configure for spdif passthrough (compared to e.g. ac3filter or ffdshow).

[Narflex]

If you are having issues with playback like this, please submit bug reports. I am aware of the bug reports from the OP, and I'm pretty sure it's currently in a state where we are waiting on feedback from the user.

Due to the enormous number of configurations that exist in PCs, we can't wait until every single user has flawless playback of all content before releasing a final version. We do ensure that all confirmed issues that we can directly relate to a problem in the software, and not a system-specific configuration issue, are resolved though. We do of course continue to work on problems after releasing the final version...there will of course be a V7.1 and possibly even future updates to V7.0 after it's finalized.

So while I understand your concerns that the specific problems you're experiencing may not be fixed by the time V7.0 is finalized, I can assure you we will still continue to work on these problems afterwards. If all users were reporting that BD playback didn't work at all, then for sure we would not be finalizing V7.0 at this point...but this is not the case (most users have no issues at all with BD playback).

And any of you that are having issues with MKV/BD playback showing just a black screen with the timeline not advancing, please submit bug reports. We did finally find something interesting in one of the demux logs on Friday that pointed to a specific problem (although we can't reproduce it, but at least now we have something to go off finally) and are going to be actively investigating it this week. We'd definitely like to see if that same issue is what is causing other similar problems as well for some users.

[isgdre]

Originally Posted by GKusnick

Have you read the release notes? All of those bullet items are reported problems that got fixed. It is certainly not their policy to ignore problem reports. If it were, we wouldn't be on RC4; they would have just shipped the first RC.

didn't say they ignored them. I did get an email saying they couldn't reproduce and I can for sure tell you that I reported it and it didn't get fixed.

[isgdre]

Originally Posted by tmiranda

Many of the issues you are describing here seem related to graphics. What graphics card are you using?

Regarding duplicate episodes - Unfortunately we all rely on the accuracy of Zap2It. Sage has put in special checks for repeat airings with non-unique IDs. Go to Setup->Detailed Setup->Customize and scroll down to "Detect repeat airings with non-unique IDs" and make sure it's set to Yes. You still will get duplicate shows, but this reduces the amount.

Ah. excellent idea. I myself am not sure. but Device Manager reports it as a Nvida Gefource 7050/Nvida nfource 630a

duplicate episodes - Ok, could it also be that SageTV keeps recording and episode if it's never been watched. I.e. it records it. I don't watch it for a few weeks and it records it again because it's not watched?

[Striker:WG]

Originally Posted by isgdre

Ah. excellent idea. I myself am not sure. but Device Manager reports it as a Nvida Gefource 7050/Nvida nfource 630a

duplicate episodes - Ok, could it also be that SageTV keeps recording and episode if it's never been watched. I.e. it records it. I don't watch it for a few weeks and it records it again because it's not watched?

It shouldn't record multiple copies of the same episode just because its not watched. It will repeatedly record the same episode if you are deleting it and not marking it as watched before deleting.

It sounds like you have some bad guide data happening for the multiple recordings. I believe there is an option in Sage for it to use additional intelligence to detect similar episodes to prevent this type of issue.

You can access this option by going to:

Setup > Detailed Setup > Customize > Detect Repeat Airings with Non-Unique ID's

I'm not sure if you've tried this option, I personally have never had to use it. It does happen the odd time that the same episode is recorded, but its never bothered me and I've always chalked it up to bad guide data.

-Striker-

[sleonard]

Not quite, Sage will record an airing only if:

1. It is manually selected.
OR
2. It matches a defined favorite AND (has not yet been recorded OR does not exist as a current recording).
OR
3. It matches an Intelligent Choice AND you have Intelligent Recording turned on.


Every airing is assigned a globally unique ID called the EpisodeID. It is part of the information Sage gets from Zap2it and is used by sage as the first and foremost ID of each and every recording it does. If Zap2it tells Sage that two seperate airings of an identical episode have different EpisodeID's than Sage thinks they are different unique episodes and records both.

In theory.

In fact I just watched (and deleted unfortunately) the final episode of The Tudors of which Sage recorded twice. Both were the same final episode both had the same name and description and even EpisodeID. I checked when I realized there was a duplicate recording. Sage should not have recorded the duplicate, yet it did.

If that's all I ever had to worry about, I'd be ever grateful for I probably would have something more robust than the HD-PVR.

S

[Striker:WG]

Originally Posted by Narflex

If you are having issues with playback like this, please submit bug reports. I am aware of the bug reports from the OP, and I'm pretty sure it's currently in a state where we are waiting on feedback from the user.

Due to the enormous number of configurations that exist in PCs, we can't wait until every single user has flawless playback of all content before releasing a final version. We do ensure that all confirmed issues that we can directly relate to a problem in the software, and not a system-specific configuration issue, are resolved though. We do of course continue to work on problems after releasing the final version...there will of course be a V7.1 and possibly even future updates to V7.0 after it's finalized.

So while I understand your concerns that the specific problems you're experiencing may not be fixed by the time V7.0 is finalized, I can assure you we will still continue to work on these problems afterwards. If all users were reporting that BD playback didn't work at all, then for sure we would not be finalizing V7.0 at this point...but this is not the case (most users have no issues at all with BD playback).

And any of you that are having issues with MKV/BD playback showing just a black screen with the timeline not advancing, please submit bug reports. We did finally find something interesting in one of the demux logs on Friday that pointed to a specific problem (although we can't reproduce it, but at least now we have something to go off finally) and are going to be actively investigating it this week. We'd definitely like to see if that same issue is what is causing other similar problems as well for some users.

Jeff,

Thank you for personally taking the time to respond to my post. I know this is not an official support forum and that you guys at Sage are doing your best to try and address issues like this.

My post was ultimatley to feel out the response from the community and see if i'm one of the few still having issues with BDMV or if there was a number of other individuals out there with similar problems. Based on the responses and the number of views i'd say i'm definitely in the minority. Good for you guys, not so great for me

This puts it back on being a system issue. I have tested with MPC and I have found that there appears to be a problem with the detection of the DTS-MA stream for the title Quantum of Solace. When the file first starts playing back there is video and no audio. If I click on the time line to advance the video it then detects the DTS-MA audio stream and everything works properly after that. What I assume Sage is doing, is looking for the audio track to be detected and because it doesn't happen properly Sage hangs where MPC just starts playing the video without the audio.

Currently I'm using the following:
AnyDVD version 6.7.1.0
Haali Media Splitter version 1.10.175.0
FFDShow Tryouts Video Decoder Rev. 3611
FFDShow Tryouts Audio Decoder Rev. 3611
VMR9 Video Renderer
ATI HD Audio Renderer to output SPDIF over HDMI to my home theater amplifier
ATI HD Audio Driver 10.9
ATI 5570 Radeon HD Video Card
ATI Video Driver 10.9
Windows XP Pro 32bit Edition

If anyone has any suggestions on what I could try adjusting, installing, or updating to correct this audio stream detection issue it would be greatly appreciated. I suspect this is the root of my BDMV issues with Sage.

Thanks,

-Striker-

[Skirge01]

Originally Posted by Striker:WG

Windows XP Pro 32bit Edition

If anyone has any suggestions on what I could try adjusting, installing, or updating to correct this audio stream detection issue it would be greatly appreciated. I suspect this is the root of my BDMV issues with Sage.

I know this wouldn't be the preferred solution, but have you considered moving to Windows 7? (Then again, you did ask for suggestions on what you could "install" or "update". ) My original suggestion would have been to try a fresh Windows install, but, given the status of XP, I wouldn't waste my time with the hassle of setting up a new OS unless it was Windows 7.