Can't watch recordings!!!

[heffneil]

Hey all: out of nowhere last night and tonight I can't watch recordings for more than about 5 minutes where the set top box (hd300) reboots! I thought it was a particular recording and it appears to be more than this one recording. Then I thought it was this particular hd300 but nope two of them crash. They just power off in the middle of watching. I am currently rebooting the server. I don't recall the last recording I watched but I can watch live with no problems whatsoever. Very very strange! These particular recordings I tested are older and were recorded over the summer.

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks,

Neil

[firenice]

Originally Posted by heffneil

Hey all: out of nowhere last night and tonight I can't watch recordings for more than about 5 minutes where the set top box (hd300) reboots! I thought it was a particular recording and it appears to be more than this one recording. Then I thought it was this particular hd300 but nope two of them crash. They just power off in the middle of watching. I am currently rebooting the server. I don't recall the last recording I watched but I can watch live with no problems whatsoever. Very very strange! These particular recordings I tested are older and were recorded over the summer.

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks,

Neil

I've experienced this with a couple of recordings. The HD300 would just shutoff. I've used VRD to run a quickstream fix and all was well. Only discovered after using a computer based client, with which, an error code was thrown that the graph was unable to build. The original file was transcoded from mpeg to mkv with HB. Hope this helps.

Mike

[heffneil]

I thought I narrowed my problem down to the recordings playing off of my unraid server. I would have crashes and once I moved them to my local machine I could watch them without incident. Last night however I had a crash of my STB while watching a local recording. This is super discouraging so I obviously have a sagetv problem all of the sudden. It is very odd because the server doesn't miss a beat but the STB just turns off. If I resume the recording it plays without a problem - or sometimes is crashes again but eventually I can complete it.

Where do I start? How do I enable the super logging because I assume that is going to help me figure out WTF

Thanks!

Neil

[BobPhoenix]

Not sure what to tell you.

Maybe I am not understanding your problem either but here are steps you can take to determine if it is an individual recording or something within SageTV properties file that is causing the problem.

1. Backup your SageTV directory.
2. Delete your properties file and the auto backup of it.
3. Start SageTV and let it create a new default properties file.
4. Setup your recording directories and import directories again.
5. Try playing back a problem recording.
6. If it plays back correctly then you know it was a setting in SageTV and you can then setup your tuners and plugins again. Then test and make sure eveything is still working. Last copy back your wiz.bin to get back your favorites and watched status.
7. If however it did not playback correctly then something in the recording is causing a playback problem and you can research what it could be. Bad signal, Bad tuner, etc...

If I misunderstood your problem then ignore this post - sorry.

[heffneil]

Yeah the recordings I am watching are old - very old. This seems to be a streaming problem. Not sure why all the sudden this started but new recordings old recordings all seem to crap out for some reason

[heffneil]

Well the plot thickens it happened today while watching Live TV. Here is my logs from that time - there is a TON more but you can see the client disconnects:

Thu 10/24 8:00:42.534 [Seeker@854075] NOTHING TO RECORD FOR NOW...
Thu 10/24 8:00:42.534 [VideoFrame-0023a500034b@24ffd7] VF processing
job null nPlayin=false
Thu 10/24 8:00:42.534 [VideoFrame-0023a500034b@24ffd7] VF thread is
now waiting for 0:00:00.000
Thu 10/24 8:00:42.534 [VideoFrame-0023a500055c@731e34] VF processing
job null nPlayin=false
Thu 10/24 8:00:42.534 [Seeker@854075] Saving properties file to
C:\Program Files (x86)\SageTV\SageTV\Sage.properties
Thu 10/24 8:00:42.535 [VideoFrame-0023a500055c@731e34] VF thread is
now waiting for 0:00:00.000
Thu 10/24 8:00:42.549 [Seeker@854075] Checking video directories for new files
Thu 10/24 8:00:42.550 [Seeker@854075] Diskspace checking is running
Thu 10/24 8:00:42.550 [Seeker@854075] Verifying existence of all TV
media files in database fixDurs=false avoidArchive=true
Thu 10/24 8:00:42.783 [KillUIMgr@11b08ff] Killed EventRouter
Thu 10/24 8:00:43.085 [Seeker@854075] Enforcing keep at most limits
for the files...
Thu 10/24 8:00:43.085 [Seeker@854075] Seeker clearing unwanted and
partial files...
Thu 10/24 8:00:43.090 [Seeker@854075] Seeker waiting for 729 mins.
Thu 10/24 8:00:43.131 [FinalRender-0023a5000242@15815b0] Terminating
the BGResourceLoader for the rendering engine
Thu 10/24 8:00:43.131 [FinalRender-0023a5000242@15815b0] deinitMini()
Thu 10/24 8:00:43.132 [PluginEventQueue@d3cae0] [[SageTCPServer]]:
Event: ClientDisconnected
Thu 10/24 8:00:44.459 [PluginEventQueue@d3cae0] [[SageTCPServer]]: A
client disconnected 192.168.1.55:0023a5000242
Thu 10/24 8:00:44.460 [MiniUIClientReceiver@1296729] Exception in the
MiniUIClientReceiver of: java.nio.channels.AsynchronousCloseException
Thu 10/24 8:00:44.783 [KillUIMgr@11b08ff] Killed RootPanel
Thu 10/24 8:00:44.783 [KillUIMgr@11b08ff] Saving properties file to
clients\0023a5000242.properties

[gplasky]

Make sure you don't have any duplicate IPs on your network. Check every device including tablets and cell phones.

Gerry

[heffneil]

I don't think I have an ip conflict, wouldn't my server put up a dialog box if that was the case? I use DHCP in a certain range which excludes the server and STB's?

Is there a reason you think it would be a ip address issue in the logs?

Thanks,

Neil

[heffneil]

Sage is almost unusable now. More errors below:

10/26 15:47:58.617 [Seeker@202d6b] Enforcing keep at most limits for
the files...
Sat 10/26 15:47:58.617 [Scheduler@b1ef50] # Airs=95862
Sat 10/26 15:47:58.618 [Seeker@202d6b] Seeker clearing unwanted and partial files...
Sat 10/26 15:47:58.622 [Seeker@202d6b] Seeker waiting for 367 mins.
Sat 10/26 15:48:00.284 [FinalRender-0023a500034b@146ee2c] Terminating the BGResourceLoader for the rendering engine
Sat 10/26 15:48:00.284 [FinalRender-0023a500034b@146ee2c] deinitMini()
Sat 10/26 15:48:00.285 [KillUIMgr@1e1b5cd] Killed RootPanel
Sat 10/26 15:48:00.285 [MiniUIClientReceiver@166d497] Exception in the MiniUIClientReceiver of: java.nio.channels.AsynchronousCloseException
Sat 10/26 15:48:01.603 [MiniUIServer@1a07bb2] Dropping old MiniPlayer connection because it's old from:0023a500034b
Sat 10/26 15:48:01.604 [KillUIMgr@1e1b5cd] Saving properties file to clients\0023a500034b.properties
Sat 10/26 15:48:01.604 [PluginEventQueue@131db1f] [[SageTCPServer]]: Event: ClientDisconnected
Sat 10/26 15:48:01.605 [PluginEventQueue@131db1f] [[SageTCPServer]]: A client disconnected 192.168.1.24:0023a500034b
Sat 10/26 15:48:01.605 [Fork-OPUS4A-217436@29c74b] ENDING background channel logo preloader thread, ID = 0.7218010092763802
Sat 10/26 15:48:01.606 [KillUIMgr@1e1b5cd] Disposed Window

[waynedunham]

Originally Posted by heffneil

Hey all: out of nowhere last night and tonight I can't watch recordings for more than about 5 minutes where the set top box (hd300) reboots! I thought it was a particular recording and it appears to be more than this one recording. Then I thought it was this particular hd300 but nope two of them crash. They just power off in the middle of watching. I am currently rebooting the server. I don't recall the last recording I watched but I can watch live with no problems whatsoever. Very very strange! These particular recordings I tested are older and were recorded over the summer.

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks,

Neil

Just a thought here since I had an odd occurrence today with my HD300. Did you unplug and reboot your HD300(s)? Or did you just re-fire them with the power button on the remote?

The reason I ask is that today while I was working in the computer room I fired up some music on the SageTv Hd300 in the living room. Somewhere along the line it locked up the HD300 with a frozen image of the music animation playing.

So I restarted the HD300 with the power button (the SageTv interface worked fine, menus, selections, etc) and when I tried to play a recording I got a message saying the playback failed and oddly enough there was the screen image from the locked up music in the background.
I thought it was something with the server, so I shut down the SageTv service and rebooted the server. Same thing happened again.
I had to unplug the HD300 and plug it back in to hard boot it. After that everything was fine again.

It may not do anything for you, but figured it might be one more thing to add to your troubleshooting tree.

[Fuzzy]

The randomness, and increasing frequency of this, along with the fact that the recordings seemingly play fine on clients and the server, makes me thing this is a hardware issue in the extender. I really can't see much else that would cause the extender to shut off, that didn't happen before.

[heffneil]

Normally I would agree being hardware but I think network is the problem. I have three different extenders all exhibit this problem. I got SO fed up with the problem the other night I just went to my recordings directory and played the recording with VLC on my apple TV via airplay mirroring. It worked - the audio wasn't that great and the video was choppy at times but at least it didn't crash. What I did notice were some LONGGGGG pauses where I wasn't able to get video even with my laptop and I thought this must be the point where sage is choking? I haven't confirmed and last night I watched two or three recordings all without incident so go figure?!

Neil

[waynedunham]

Originally Posted by heffneil

Normally I would agree being hardware but I think network is the problem. I have three different extenders all exhibit this problem. I got SO fed up with the problem the other night I just went to my recordings directory and played the recording with VLC on my apple TV via airplay mirroring. It worked - the audio wasn't that great and the video was choppy at times but at least it didn't crash. What I did notice were some LONGGGGG pauses where I wasn't able to get video even with my laptop and I thought this must be the point where sage is choking? I haven't confirmed and last night I watched two or three recordings all without incident so go figure?!

Neil

It definitely could be a network problem. Many things to look into. Is it all wired, or wireless to one or more of the extenders?
One thing I did was to go into my router's advanced settings (I'm all wired BTW) and make sure that all my servers and extenders had dedicated IP's so that there was not chance of something grabbing the Ip away from one of my machines/extenders.
There are a ton of tools out there to watch your network. Check out some of them and see if you can detect that it is a network problem trying to play back one of those files on your extender(s). That might help track down where the error is happening.

[heffneil]

everything is wired and I thought up until you asked I had static ip addresses on these babies. I will have to set them back up with their correct ips shortly!

[lotusvball]

I am having a lot of the same issues. I also am getting the spinning icon when I do things like increase volume or fast forward. I believe it has to due with a Windows 7 update and/or a java update. I had java 7 running and it was a disaster so I went back to java 6 build 31 and it is better but I am still getting the spinning icon and there are still some files that won't play.

[heffneil]

I don't have the patience to cobble together the tools but if you do I would suggest exporting everything you have (favorites, EPG (guide and sources information), movie info) and rebuild or start from a fresh wiz.bin. There is no doubt in my mind that sage corrodes like a piece of metal on the beach. There are no clean up tools for its database and over time it continues to degrade. I have so much invested right now and things work - just slowly. Also I don't believe sage can really handle too large of a library. It only slows it down more and more.

Too bad they are out of business. I would love some updates and to keep the machine rolling.