Hourly freeze?

[robk]

I had CNN on in my office today and I noticed a strange hourly "freeze" on the hour, as the programming changed from one show to the next. I forget what the morning show is called, but it changes in the guide at 10AM to something else, then at noon it changes again to "Wolf" or something. At these changes, it seems Sage does a bit of "housekeeping" and deletes the old buffer file and creates a new one. This freezes my machine for 30 seconds or so. Is this normal?
Also, If Sage is run for 24 hours or more, it seems like there is a memory leak, the remote becomes very slow, almost unresponsive. Free ram drops to 50 meg or less.
The system is not the ultimate, I just threw it together to watch TV, I had no intention of creating a fantastic Home Theater, but that may change. It's a Soyo MB with 512MB DDR 2100 Ram, Celeron 2.7, 30Gig OS drive, 60 Gig Video drive, WinTV-PVR 250, ATI Radeon 7000, Sonic decoder pack.
Anyone else seeing these issues?
Thanks,
Rob

[stanger89]

It is normal that there will be a pause (not a freeze) when Sage closes one file, and then re-initializes the hw/opens a new file. How long the pause is will depend on a number of things including recording quality and the speed of your machine.

About the memory, you might want to look at this:
http://forums.sage.tv/forums/showthr...3713#post43713

[robk]

One other note: the video quality using 3G/hr is great. Using a satellite Svideo feed, it's hard to tell the difference between straight thru and Sage!
Rob

[Opus4]

Originally posted by robk
If Sage is run for 24 hours or more, it seems like there is a memory leak, the remote becomes very slow, almost unresponsive. Free ram drops to 50 meg or less.

Are you using the Hauppauge remote & my SendMessage utility along with it? If so, please download the updated dll from Hauppauge attached to this post. That dll did have a memory leak. If that doesn't apply... then I'm not sure about the solution. Edit: Oh well... I see you got this info already, above, while I was typing.

Not sure about the pause issue... switching to a new recording should only take a few seconds, not 30.

- Andy

[robk]

I looked at that thread about memory leak, but it doesn't apply because I'm not running IRREMOTE. I'm using the Hauppauge remote (because it it is small and works well) with a USB-UIRT which works perfectly most of the time. Sometimes, after 24 hours or so, it becomes slow and unresponsive, requiring a reboot of XP.
Stanger89- I get a long freeze, where there is no responce from the remote or mouse during these hourly "show changes".
OT- my 20 year old kid drives a '96 4.6 stang with all sorts of aftermarket stuff!

Rob

[kny3twalker]

the irremote and hauppauge remote are the same thing so it does apply to you
the irremote is just the software for the remote

[Opus4]

But... it doesn't apply if he's using the USB-UIRT & not the Hauppauge IR receiver... and not running the Hauppauge IR software at all.

Edit: as a tip to the topic of the day... how's the fragmentation on your drives?

- Andy

[kny3twalker]

D'OH!

[robk]

You're right, I'm not running Hauppauge's IR software. Just their remote with a USB-UIRT. The drives are defragged, actually the video drive was just formatted NTFS 64K clusters last weekend.
I was watching CNN again today, and like clockwork, when the morning show changes over to Daryn Kagan at 10, a 30 - 40 second freeze with lots of disk activity, then again at 12 when Wolf Blitzer takes over! If I look at the video drive, there is always an mpg file with the creation time that corresponds to the freeze at the program change.
Rob

[gplasky]

Double check your drive and make sure it's using DMA and it hasn't mysteriously changed over to PIO mode.

Gerry

[broderp]

My HTPC does the same thing between one show ending and another starting, weather it be on the hour or half hour. I have a LONG pause, screen locks up, for about 10 seconds. It use to be only a slight pause, like a second or so. This is not acceptable.

I'm using he huapauge remote, but this happens even if I'm just watching TV, so I don't think it's a remote issue. It also seems this happened the same time I changed my video storage path.


What can be causing this?

I defrag my drive regularly, but according to others, this should not be a requirement.

[robk]

The dedicated video drive reports in device manager Ultra DMA Mode 6, but I understand if Windows detects crc errors, the mode may drop to PIO without warning.
Rob