Live TV becomes choppy when left on?

[mercer]

Hey -
I just set up a 2.8 p4 with 4 x Win-TV 350's, and if I leave the machine running overnight with 4 screens up, they playback is choppy by morning.
The cpu usage, which is normally around 15% per instance of sage while viewing, drops to about 5%, and the audio is fine, but it's like the framerate drops to <10 fps. Also, if I leave sage up, but the viewing window closed, when I check it in the morning the viewing windows take >30 sec to come up, playback is fine, but it takes about 30 sec to change the channel (I hit the channel up or down button, and just wait....). When I close the viewing window & open it back up, channel changing is fine.
anyone else having this problem, or one like it? I know it's not a big problem & there are workarounds, but it's a little annoying & with the amount of hype about these new versions, i expected them to not have problems like this. My box is fully patched, latest directx, decend video card, latest version of sage recorder, 512 mb of ram, memory usage is low enough, cpu doesn't get maxed out....is there a setting I should check, or some kinda config change I could try? Thanx!

Oh yeah, i just wanted to throw in for anyone thinking about sage that i'm not at all unhappy with the software overall...for $20 it's unbeatable & i'd recommend it to anyone. i used to use showshifter, & this kicks it's ass. it's a small, simple, easy to use program that does exactly what it says. keep up the good work!

[falchulk]

What Mpeg2 codec do you use?

[mercer]

Hmmmm....I didn't know I needed to install one...I thought that my 350's install disc & sage would include all the software & codecs I need. In sage the "video decoder" is set to "InterVideo NonCSS Video Decoder for Hauppauge", and when I check my installed codecs in device manager I don't see anything that specifically says mpeg-2. I can open the files fine in windows media player, so i figured my codecs were fine.
Do i need a standalone codec? if so, can you recommend one (preferably free or on the cheap)?

[falchulk]

Intervideo is what I was looking for. Hows your disk on fragmentation?

[mercer]

Good call. It was VERY fragmented, I deleted a lot of files & I'm defraging it now. Also, I only had the 40 gig drive that the machine came with, i just threw in a 60 as a video-only drive, so that might help keep it from fragmenting so much (crosses fingers)...

I'll leave it up tonight & post again in the morning.

[Opus4]

BTW -- if you format it as NTFS with 64K clusters, it won't matter nearly as much if it becomes heavily fragmented. Fragmentation & small clusters just requires too much seek time for the drive to be able to deliver the data throughput needed.

- Andy

[mercer]

no luck. both drives have almost no fragmentation, and the same thing was happening this morning. again, i closed each viewing window & opened it again & the problem went away.

i've got a new machine coming in this week or next that i'm going to put these cards in perminantly. if no one has any ideas i probably won't mess with it until i've got my new box set up. It's a little faster; dual xeon 3 ghz processors, 1 gig of memory, dual sata 250 gig drives; i'm just waiting because they sent me the wrong motherboard. if it's something with the setup i'm using i'll find out then...

[insomniac]

hmmm...when I used to overclock quite a bit, i would overheat my vid card, etc and it would get choppy. Give it a few seconds rest and it would be good to go for a bit. Think maybe you have a heat problem? Also, check your memory usage at the point that it gets choppy. That looks like too little ram for 4 instances of sage.

I.

[falchulk]

Ok, I missed this "I just set up a 2.8 p4 with 4 x Win-TV 350's, and if I leave the machine running overnight with 4 screens up".....what exactly do you mean 4 screens up?

[mercer]

first question: i'm not overclocking, but yes, the cards get a little hot, but not to the point of overheating. I doubt it's a heat issue just because as soon as i hide & show the viewing window the problem is fine, it's just when i don't touch the machine for a while. as far as memory usage, i've checked it & it's a little high (that's why i'm throwing more in my new system), but no higher when it's choppy compaired to normal.

second question: i just mean 4 copies of sage running, all viewing live tv. i also mentioned there are some slowdown problems when i just leave the recorders running, without watching...i'll check the machine after a few hours (usually overnight) & the program reacts very slowly.

[Opus4]

I'm curious... what is the cluster size? You are still dealing with reading/writing 4 streams at once. 8 actually for live TV: 4 writing the recordings & 4 reading for playback. Does this happen if there is only 1 live tv session active?

- Andy

[DoughBoy]

Im new at this so this could be way off base, but is your hard drive set to turn off after X amount of time without use. Also is the windows screensaver running. I think I saw a setting in Sagetv to use a screensaver. It might be a conflict between the two screensavers. Just my 2 cents.

[mercer]

I haven't tried with only 1 active copy of sage...i'll give it a shot tonight.

defraging seems to have helped with the slow reaction times when sage is left on for a long time & not watching live tv...last night i left 4 copies running and when i checked them this morning the viewing windows came right up, and changing channels is immediate (no delay like before). i thought this was connected to the original problem, but maybe not...?

oh yeah...no windows screensaver, no sleep mode...no power save mode...

[mercer]

Nope. I just left one copy of sage running, viewing live tv, and it's choppy now.
I don't have time to mess with it today, and i'll be away for the weekend, then monday i'll hopefully (finally) have my new motherboard, then i can just throw the cards in there & see if the problem goes away...

i'll let you all know next week & thanks for the help