Video Choppy as of Recently

[Podmodder]

Recently my tv playback, live or recorded, has been choppy off and on. Audio continues to play fine. The video looks as though it pauses for half a second then fast forwards to where it should be and pauses again for half a second, repeat. It doesn't do it all the time so I am confused. I haven't changed anything that I can remember, but when it started doing this I did several different things to try to fix it. I didn't make it any worse, but I didn't fix it either. It doesn't do it all the time. It decides when it wants to act this way and there is no way to predict when it will occur. For instance the recording I just watched acted this way every 5 minutes or so throughout 1 hour playback and the show I am watching now for 30 minutes hasn't acted up once. My system is more than capable. Any ideas?

Windows 7 64
SageTV 7.1.8
AMD Bulldozer FX-4100 Quad Core Unlocked Processor 3.6GHZ
8 GB DDR3 RAM
AMD HD 6570 Graphics
Asus M5A78L-MLX Board
Hauppauge PVR 150 (a colossus will be replacing this soon)
LG Bluray disc drive

I also have Shark Codec pack installed just with default settings and TMT 5 for Bluray disc playback

[Podmodder]

I should also mention that the whole SageTV UI freezes up a the same time as these events occur. Which currently is every 30-45 seconds on this particular show.

[Podmodder]

Ok, this is really starting to piss me off now -_- it's doin it on everything I watch. I've tried everything I can possibly think of apart from a full re-install, wich I don't want to do. Does anyone have even a small idea of something to try? I'm pretty much willing to try anything at the moment...

[big poppa pump]

I would suggest running a diagnostic on your hard drive just to make sure that your drive is not failing.
Second, you mention only TV...what about other videos? Do you have the same problem or do they play fine?

[Podmodder]

Hard drives are fine, they are brand new and defragmented weekly. It only happens with tv, live or recorded. Recorded tv files play perfectly fine outside of sage. I just updated java and my catalyst control center then set all my video decoder filters to use ffdshow and it is currently stable. Will see how long it lasts...

[Podmodder]

That went well. Woke up to a sagetv has stopped working error. I restarted save and got the same thing. Restarted my pc got the same thing and a java update. Updated java and sage launched but jus black screen. Changed mpeg-2 filter back to sage and video came back. I guess I'll just have to live with it like this. The spousal approval rating is starting to decline.

[PatM]

I was about to post about the same thing actually. Mine is while viewing H264 (the default tuner it seems). Haven't had time to see if setting that to record and watching something from the other cards has the same problem.

In my case the computer is brand new and has a "clean" Win 7 home. The only things I've installed are

SageTV 7 (did all STV updates)
Hauppauge cards/drivers: Colossus, 2250, and 1800

Live TV on the client (haven't had a chance to check on server for any length of time) randomly seems to do as described above.

When I check performance on the server I see HD and Network utilization jumping up and down and CPU time jumping from 3% to 35% - all at the same frequency.

When I look at the CPU utilization by processes it's SageTV Server going between 2 and 33% with svchost following along.

Rebooting the client doesn't help and it's using the microsoft codec for H264 and sage mpg for mpeg2.

Rebooting the server usually clears up the problem but it comes back after a random amount of time (sometimes more than 6 hours, sometimes immediatly).

Can anyone think of any default services etc in Win7 Home that I can turn off that might be causing this?

If not, would it do any good to turn on logging and submit that?

[TimmyToo]

I had this come up last night. Slow UI on HD300 extender and Win7 Client. Both live tv and video playback.

I did install several Windows updates last night right before and performance is an issue after rebooting.

I'm going to work on it today.

[PatM]

Think I found my culprit - windows security essentials. After uninstalling it Sage is perfectly smooth again.

Of course it may just be one of those smooth periods coinciding with the removal. I'll know for sure by tomorrow.

[BobPhoenix]

Originally Posted by PatM

Think I found my culprit - windows security essentials. After uninstalling it Sage is perfectly smooth again.

Of course it may just be one of those smooth periods coinciding with the removal. I'll know for sure by tomorrow.

I don't run Anti Virus programs on my SageTV servers. I try never to browse the Internet from any computer that I run SageTV on. That way I only have to worry about my desktop or laptop systems as the entry point for viruses.

[nethead]

funny, I had this start happening this week.

wonder if something in the video stream is causing...seeing it on CBS/NBC HD shows (only ones I've tested so far)

no Harddrive issues via S.M.A.R.T.

[ASegredo]

I had the same problem for a long time. I reinstalled my Video Card driver and it helped some. Then, two days ago, I found that Hauppauge TV server was running. I stopped it. No problems since. I think WinTV uses this service and it was started when I loaded the HVR-1600 drivers.

Go to Windows Settings->Services, find Hauppauge TV Server and stop it. Then change startup type from Automatic to Manual.

[jerryb33]

Originally Posted by PatM

Think I found my culprit - windows security essentials. After uninstalling it Sage is perfectly smooth again.

Of course it may just be one of those smooth periods coinciding with the removal. I'll know for sure by tomorrow.

Are you still running smoothly?

I also use Essentials. Did not stop it yet.
I have been fighting this for about a month. Have changed the merit on my 5 tuners and it happens with each tuner, but only on one of them that day. It seems to happen with a 10 PM show EDT, on any on the major stations.
It even happens with one tuner that is QAM. The rest are OTA.