Video "slow-motion" problem...

[gotuitdan]

Hello,

I'm having a rather odd problem with Sage 2.0 (Release). Every now and then, when starting a new video, the video will suddenly slow down terribly. The audio will maintain a normal speed and the video *will* keep up, but it appears in slow-motion. My guess is that it is skipping frames at a relatively constant rate.

When this happens, the UI gets completely bogged down and becomes virtually unusable. If I (eventually can) stop the video, the menus are fine, but the slow-motion will *always* return until I reboot.

Basically, I *must* reboot after the first time this shows up... sigh.

I'm running this Sage with WinSync (for time), Girder (with IRMan, USB-UIRT, and X10 Firecracker), and occassionally running myHTPC for music, weather, and DVD burning.

I've tried Elecard, Cyberlink, and Hauppauge Intervideo decoders, and all of them have this problem occassionally.

My system is a PIII-866, 512MB Ram, 10GB system HD, 80GB Music drive (where I keep Windows VM at 900MB), and a 120GB Video HD... I have 3 PVR-350s installed, an SB Live 5.1 for it's digital output, a Matrox G400-TV for S-video output, and a 10/100 NIC...

Any help would be *much* appreciated, as I hate rebooting.

Thanks!

dan.

[carlgar]

I would try setting the SageTV priority to above normal. I think some background task may be starting up and stealing too much CPU time. When you reboot it may not start up background task until a later time.

Have you checked the CPU usage when this problem occurs?
What is normal CPU usage without this problem?

[nielm]

Are you using VMR9 or Overlay as a video renderer? (setup/detailed/video)

On my system (which is a PIII 600 equivalent that does not support VMR9 in hardware) if I select VMR9, playing video is a consistant 5fps @ 100%cpu!

If VMR9, try using overlay to see if that improves the response. (why this would be intermittant is bizzare... Possibly buggy video drivers?)

[gotuitdan]

Thanks for the replies... Nielm, Overlay doesn't help...

Apparently, playing MP3s (with Sage's Music Jukebox *or* with myHTPC's Music module) is a sure way to reproduce the problem... Very frustrating, since music and video are the two primary uses of the server... My guess is that something in the manner used to play mp3s causes some sort of problem for the mpeg-audio timing afterwards. Since the audio decoder usually controls video timing, that might make trouble...

Any ideas? I'm going to experiment, but this is driving me nuts... sigh.

thanks for any other pointers!

dan.

ps. I reinstalled DX9 and Elecard, just in case, and I uninstalled Intervideo... Maybe it's time for an OS refresh... double sigh.

[kny3twalker]

you could try reclock
and try using default wave out audio render