Playback on Windows 8.1

[Opus4]

After finally moving my development PC to Windows 8.1 Pro 64 bit, I finally need to ask about how to get smoother video playback in SageTV. The video card is an nVidia GTX 660 with the latest drivers.

I'm having an issue where the video will have a slight pause every 2-3 seconds whether in a window, full screen, or full screen exclusive, but the same video will play smoothly in Windows Media Player and Graph Studio Next.

In both SageTV and Graph Studio Next, I've tried the SageTV, Mirosoft DTV-DVD, and LAV video decoders using VMR9 and EVR. As far as I can tell, I have hardware acceleration enabled (in both SageTV and in the LAV Video Decoder settings) & the result is always the same: smooth in Graph Edit; regular periodic pauses in SageTV.

Any suggestions how to solve this would be appreciated. Thanks!

Andy

[mechling-burgh]

To get smooth play back on tablets we had to go into the lav filter and turn on dxva2 native under hardware acceleration in the lav settings, maybe try that.

[Opus4]

Yes -- I've tried that & the other hardware acceleration options in the LAV options. Nothing seems to make any difference. I don't know if it isn't actually getting turned on for some reason or if there is something else different between playback in SageTV & Graph Studio Next.

Andy

[Denali]

Andy

I found the NVIDIA PureVideo Decoder v1.02.233 with VRM9 helped playback with my limited hardware.

John

[amac]

I've kept my Windows 8.1 pure having learned my lesson on XP with far too may codecs and having to set which one took priority. I never installed anything else and only use Microsoft DTV-DVD. No hiccups ever.

You've set enableDXVA=1 in the registry?
I have it set in the registry here:
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\VirtualStore\MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Frey Technologies\Common\DSFilters\MpegDec

and

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\VirtualStore\MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Frey Technologies\Common\DSFilters\MpegDec

and
HKEY_USERS\S-1-5-21-3007603377-535305365-3997853871-1001\Software\Classes\VirtualStore\MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Frey Technologies\Common\DSFilters\MpegDec

and finally
HKEY_USERS\S-1-5-21-3007603377-535305365-3997853871-1001_Classes\VirtualStore\MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Frey Technologies\Common\DSFilters\MpegDec

Don't recall setting the value but probably did at least one of them

[Opus4]

Thanks for the suggestions... I hadn't checked the registry setting before, but it was already set.

I believe I found the issue, though: garbage collection that coincided with the playback and other UI pauses. This was only noticeable when I had the debug console visible. After upping the java heap size, no more pauses. That is usually one of the first things I change, but apparently I didn't do it right on the 64 bit system.

If that was mentioned in any of the forum's video playback topics I read yesterday, I missed it.

Andy

[wayner]

Java heap problems again - let's hope we can get rid of these once and for all with 64 bit, or some other change, and give the Java heap 4GB of memory to play with.

[Opus4]

While having more memory available would be nice in the long run, I think in this case it might be my fault for setting it too low by accident. (either that or I didn't manage to set it at all and it was too low by default)

Andy

[Beaker]

Originally Posted by Opus4

After upping the java heap size, no more pauses.
Andy

How is that done? I've been having long pauses that coincide with sudden heavy hdd usage. I've tried everything I can think of and this never occurred to me.

[Opus4]

Originally Posted by Beaker

How is that done? I've been having long pauses that coincide with sudden heavy hdd usage. I've tried everything I can think of and this never occurred to me.

Have you run any diagnostics on the hard drives and/or checked Windows events for any error messages about the drives? (assuming you are running Windows) What I described wasn't using the hard drive.

Anyway, there is a registry value for SageTV named JVMMaxHeapSizeMB that you can change; the max would be 1024 decimal (400 hex). If that causes problems, set it a little lower. The easiest way to find that in the registry is to run regedit & search for JVMMaxHeapSizeMB. You'll need to restart SageTV for it to take effect.

- Andy

[valnar]

Seeing how most people have gigs of memory these days, it might be safe to set that registry entry in the next iteration of SageTV. That wasn't the case 10 years ago.

[wayner]

Originally Posted by valnar

Seeing how most people have gigs of memory these days, it might be safe to set that registry entry in the next iteration of SageTV. That wasn't the case 10 years ago.

But the max is 1GB which I believe is a limitation of 32 bit Java. And that is way too little if you run more than three clients with a graphics intensive UI.

So let's get rid of that limitation and allow using several GB.

[Fuzzy]

Originally Posted by wayner

But the max is 1GB which I believe is a limitation of 32 bit Java. And that is way too little if you run more than three clients with a graphics intensive UI.

So let's get rid of that limitation and allow using several GB.

I've had some ideas on the best way to do that, and it actually seems like Jeff already implemented it to some extent with Google Fiber. Each 'extender' is managed by it's own process on the server that acts like SageTVClient. That way each extender can utilize it's entirely available 1GB of 32bit JVM Heap. Hopefully, that part of the code makes its way into the open source release.

[JREkiwi]

Originally Posted by wayner

But the max is 1GB which I believe is a limitation of 32 bit Java. And that is way too little if you run more than three clients with a graphics intensive UI.

The max isn't really 1GB, it's just that it can create other issues going above 1GB.

I run at 1.280 GB (0x500) which prevents me maxing out the heap, but it means I can't use the client on my server to play anything.

John