Wait Spinner when trying to FFW?

[Shaw]

SageTV v9 (fairly new install)
Windows 10
LAVFilter Video Decoder
Not fullscreen exclusive mode
HDTV recordings playback

After watching recordings now with the new v9 setup, I have noticed that if I have been watching a stretch of a few minutes, then I go to skip FFW (either the +120 or +10), it will put up the spinner, hang for a few seconds, then skip forward as intended. It wont do this for every skip forward though... just only if its been playing back for many minutes.

Never did this on my old v6 on XP (unless XP was about to die itself because it had been running too long without a restart). This seems to be a new issue with how I have this new one setup on win10 and v9.

Is it a common issue? Something thats like "oh yeah, its because you are doing such-n-such" or whatnot?

Its not SUPER BAD... but it is one of those rough edges that is a new occurrence. If its fixable, great, if not, I can survive.

[BobPhoenix]

I've had the same problem on my Windows Servers. It essentially goes away when I switch to the unRAID docker and 64 bit Sage Server. I have found that if I use a Windows server I have to keep my favorite count less than 50-100 and my recording count below 2000 then my Windows servers work fine. Right now my Windows server is at 39 favorites and my unRAID servers are 498, 411 & 358 favorites each. The Windows server has 1180 recordings and my unRAID servers have 10,069, 11,642 & 19,442 recordings. Note I'm using HD300s for playback I don't know what a client connecting to the servers would experience. Maybe nothing maybe same spinning circles while watching. I think if I would hit the info remote button every 5 minutes or less there would be NO spinning circles while trying to advance on a Windows server with lots of favorites and recordings.

[Tiki]

I have always had this issue (been using Sage since v3 on XP, through v9 on Win 7 and everything in between). For me it's always been somewhat random. Sometimes after restarting the PC it will go away and skips will be instant the first 10-15 times, then it will return, and then it will come and go, sometimes skipping instantly, sometimes spinning circle for 5-7 seconds. I've never found a fix.

[Shaw]

Odd. Ok.

I should mention, I dont use server, this is all on the same machine as sagetv. The old XP rarely did it, if I noticed it. But this new win10 with v9 setup, its pretty much after every 5 minutes of constant watching. A commercial comes up and sure enough, if I hit skip 10 or skip 120, it spins and thinks, then does it. Subsequent skips within the same commercial break are very fast though.

[graywolf]

Originally Posted by BobPhoenix

I've had the same problem on my Windows Servers. It essentially goes away when I switch to the unRAID docker and 64 bit Sage Server. I have found that if I use a Windows server I have to keep my favorite count less than 50-100 and my recording count below 2000 then my Windows servers work fine. Right now my Windows server is at 39 favorites and my unRAID servers are 498, 411 & 358 favorites each. The Windows server has 1180 recordings and my unRAID servers have 10,069, 11,642 & 19,442 recordings. Note I'm using HD300s for playback I don't know what a client connecting to the servers would experience. Maybe nothing maybe same spinning circles while watching. I think if I would hit the info remote button every 5 minutes or less there would be NO spinning circles while trying to advance on a Windows server with lots of favorites and recordings.

Bob - what my spouse complains the most about is when she scrolls thru the recording list of goes into one to look at future airings there are times that it spins or is sluggish. Not so much when we are watching. Like you, have a ton of recordings.

Did you also experience spinning circles during those times also or just FF/RW while watching?

Wondering if moving to Linux/unRaid might help resolve that.
Might not be too bad an issue since I do all the SageTV PC maintenance, otherwise it could be since she doesn't know Unix.

Would also see if unRaid, how HVR-1600 linux support/pass thru would be. Not sure if those MB/CPU would support or not. Might just go native linux (then decide which distro)...choices, choices, choices

[wayner]

This shouldn't happen but I have seen it happen occasionally and was usually fixed by reducing the number of connected clients or restarting SageTV.

I use Skip and SkipFwdx2 ALL the time as I mainly use SageTV for watching sports and skip through all stops in action so without this functionality SageTV would not be mearnly as useful for me.

Regarding the HVR-1600 - do you use that for OTA? It should work in unRAID but if not then you might want to consider HDHRs as many of us use them and drivers are not an issue since it is a network device.

[graywolf]

not OTA but rather with DirecTV STB (SD)

[BobPhoenix]

Originally Posted by graywolf

Bob - what my spouse complains the most about is when she scrolls thru the recording list of goes into one to look at future airings there are times that it spins or is sluggish. Not so much when we are watching. Like you, have a ton of recordings.

Did you also experience spinning circles during those times also or just FF/RW while watching?

Wondering if moving to Linux/unRaid might help resolve that.
Might not be too bad an issue since I do all the SageTV PC maintenance, otherwise it could be since she doesn't know Unix.

Would also see if unRaid, how HVR-1600 linux support/pass thru would be. Not sure if those MB/CPU would support or not. Might just go native linux (then decide which distro)...choices, choices, choices

How big is your Wiz.bin file?

Sorry for long post that follows!

My Living Room Windows server Wiz.bin grew to 155MB again. It got to 450MB on SageTV 9.0.something before I blew it away and started over again from scratch. Pure speculation but it seems like every time I upgraded SageTV the Wiz.bin would increase in size a little until it reached a critical point and then it jumped. From ~100MB to 155MB for the 9.1.5 upgrade. I did get spinning circles on V9 Windows with a normal Wiz.bin and a lot of favorites and recordings. But it was ridiculous on the living room server with the huge wiz.bin.

I've since migrated (and blew away the massive Wiz.bin) to unRAID server in basement. I just use the Windows install of SageTV on that PC as a network encoder for the Hauppauge Colossus v1 card in it. The new unRAID docker instance of this server has a 37MB Wiz.bin - so back to normal. I re-imported all of the favorites in the Web server after exporting them to XML from the Windows box. Didn't save watched status and I had to mark all old recordings as watched but I'm finally back in business on that server.

Also of note on the Wiz.bin file size: it has grown on another unRAID Docker server to 194MB in size but it doesn't appear to affect that server very much (400+ favorites by the way) - which is why I though the number of favorites might be affecting this more than the size of the wiz.bin. But since Windows SageTV is 32 bit Sage might have been running out of memory loading the massive Wiz.bin and it isn't on unRAID Docker and the 4GB of memory I have allocated. At least if the Wiz.bin size is really my problem. Last time I asked about Wiz.bin size it was the "Agents" (had millions) and expect it is again but haven't checked on that yet since the logs rotate too fast. Have to increase the number of logs and size and check it some time. But doesn't appear to affect my performance much. Certainly not as much has my Livingroom Windows server.

As to when I saw spinning circles on my living-room windows instance: I got spinning circles just navigating up/down/left/right on the "Watch Now", "Recording Info", etc.. popup menu. When it takes more then 30 seconds to go from Watch Now to the right one menu entry (in advanced mode) - over to Search Person or Future Airing buttons - it is a real pain. Restarts would help for at most 30 minutes before the spinning circles were back.

Biggest problem I notice on unRAID Docker is browsing recordings on spun down drives on the unRAID array or browsing in the guide while channel logos or show graphics download. Otherwise it is very snappy like my 39 favorite Windows server. Just seems like SageTV is reading the recordings every time I am browsing. Probably to see if it really exists. I might try to see if I can make a custom instance of the SageTV Jar that doesn't do that - if I can find it - which is not very likely.

Also of note: I had SageTV recording from my HVR-1600 on unRAID docker but the tuner was crappy for me and retired it. Not sure if it was because of the bridge chip (x1 PCIe to PCI) on the MB for the PCI slot or if the 1600 is just bad. But in any case I retired that card again in favor of HDHRs or HVR-2250s. This was true with ESXi and Windows server VM as well as unRAID docker on same hardware so wasn't a problem specific to unRAID or the docker.

As to MY DirecTV SD box: I'm going to use a Windows network encoder SageTV using nVidia DualTV on ESXi (did that for years when I had a v7 Windows server). Now have unRAID VM on same ESXi server running SageTV Docker. Also using HD-PVR windows drivers on that ESXi server because 5.1 sound doesn't work for me with SageTV Docker. Have heard that Stereo on unRAID Docker works fine with HD-PVR. But 5.1 sound doesn't for me on unRAID Docker. Only get 70% good recordings max on HD-PVR with unRAID Docker and nearly 100% with the Windows network encoder.

Why am I using ESXi you ask: unRAID won't pass through anything on my PCI slot because of the bridge chip. ESXi works fine passing through any card on the PCI slot. ESXi 6.5 has a problem as well but I have worked around it. It wouldn't pass through the flash drive to unRAID VM - it was always listed as not present when going back in. Two solutions for that: use ESXi 5.0 instead which worked for years or pass through MB USB controller to unRAID on ESXi 6.5. Currently I'm doing the latter and have ESXi installed to HDD/Datastore combo drive. But I may drop back to ESXi 5.0 instead so I can install ESXi on a flash drive and keep the HDD as a datastore only. Just don't have enough time to try it right now.

Some day (probably never come) I'm going to remove all the graphics displays from a custom STV. No channel logos, no preview pics etc... and see if that makes a difference. But first I will probably try the SageTV3.xml STV and see if that will improve the browsing in the Guide on Linux or in general on Windows.

Another possibility that might be affecting this is ComSkip. I notice a few spinning circles on unRAID Docker when ComSkip is running and I'm navigating around. I may try something like SJQ and run comskip from a whole separate box dedicated to running comskip for all of my servers rather than having a local copy on each server. Certainly on unRAID VM on ESXi anyway.

[matt91]

Originally Posted by BobPhoenix

...and my unRAID servers have 10,069, 11,642 & 19,442 recordings....

um, do you plan to have lots of free time to catch up on your shows?

[BobPhoenix]

Originally Posted by matt91

um, do you plan to have lots of free time to catch up on your shows?

If I hadn't gotten laid off I was planing on retiring in 10 years and I would cache up then. Now I have to work for 15 years to get the retiree heath care at a minimum. Assuming it will still be available for retiree's from my new employer in 15 years anyway. Didn't really want to work until 70 but downsizing killed my early/normal retirement plans. Besides I can wait a little later - I'll probably never get everything watched anyway. Greater than 50% of the recordings are vintage shows from 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s anyway - so I've already watched them - just can't remember them well. Like watching a new show again now.

[Shaw]

Things sorta got off topic

Some points which may matter, or not:

- My wiz.bin is oddly smaller after I drug it over from the xp box. About 12mb.

- My recordings list is always small, I delete things I watch. This past week when getting the FF spinners, I've only had like 1 or 2 other shows in the recordings listing beside the one I'm watching (not sure why that would affect FF though).

- No other machines are connected to my sagetv machine. It does not host any videos or content.

- If I'm skipping a lot in a show (like americas got talent... omg so much skipping over nonsense)... I never see the spinner happen. But shows where I'm watching a good hunk of it, then a commercial comes up... spinner.

- Its almost like "something goes to sleep", and has to be woken up when I want to FF.

- I am not sure, but I believe it began after I installed LAVFilters to clear up the horrendously ugly 1080i recordings.

- Happens on both 720p recordings, and 1080i. I don't watch "Live TV" (wish I could remove it from the menu actually).

[BobPhoenix]

Originally Posted by Shaw

Things sorta got off topic

Sorry about that my fault.

- Its almost like "something goes to sleep", and has to be woken up when I want to FF.

That's the feeling I got too.

I don't watch "Live TV" (wish I could remove it from the menu actually).

Me either anymore and when I did it was always started from the Guide not from the menu.

I would see what was on and start watching the show prior to the one I was interested in or watch from where ever it was at the time. If I liked it I would find next airing and setup a manual recording or favorite if it wasn't airing again in the guide.

Nothing really to say about other points since I'm using an extender rather than a client for the LAV filters in particular.

[belleaudb]

Add me to the list. No changes to my system at all and the problem started about a week ago.

JVM heap size: 271mb used/625mb total/1038mb max

So I don't think it's a Java memory issue.

[Shaw]

After more watching, it seems to occur around after 10 minutes of continuous watching.

For example, when I watch recordings of the late show, his long intro monologue, and second stint, are usually well over 10 minutes, and so trying to skip the commercials that come up... I get a long spinner wait.

However when watching something like a normal 1hr drama/saga show, the commercial breaks come up around every 5-7 minutes and I dont ever seem to see a spinner.

And for something like Americas Got no Talent This Season, where I'm FF skipping like crazy over garbage, it never hangs or hiccups or fries (unlike my old sage machine used to do if I went too crazy with the skipping for long periods lol).

SOooooo.... just gotta pinpoint what is causing it. I'm sure it may be something windows10 related, or some sort of 'something falling asleep' ... I'm going to try and fiddle with power settings, display sleep settings, hdd sleep settings and all that, to see if there is anything maybe gunking the works.

[stuckless]

based on what you are describing, this sounds like a drive being put into sleep mode. I had a similar issue with unRAID, initially, because when I would watch a move, at the end, I'd get a spinning circle because it would try to access another drive (to load images, fanart, etc), and that drive was asleep. Setting all drives to never sleep fixed the issue for me. In the SageTV_0.txt log file you'll likely see it trying to load an image, followed by the hang detected in UI messages.

[Shaw]

Actually after some more 'paying attention' ... I realized I was a bit in error.

Its the 720p recordings (this is from HD broadcast) that do NOT seem to have any 'spinner' on skipping foward even after 15 minutes of playtime.

Yet, the 1080i recordings (different channel, like CBS), DOES have the spinner, and it can even happen just 3 minutes of watching.

I also dug around in sleep and hard drive, and power settings, and nothing is actually set to go to idle modes or sleep modes. Everything is on 'power ac' full performance.

Starting to think its actually the LAVFilters and 1080i specifically which is doing something. I need a better 1080i playback choice, as the built in sagetv one, and that ms one both are terrible (bad interlacing, skipping, jerky). Again, no issues with 720p playbacks, oddly.

Hmmmmmm.....

[Rob23]

Shaw - Did you resolve your issue on the 1080i recordings? Also, which version of the STV 9 are you using?

[Shaw]

I have no resolved the issue yet.
I also dont know which version I'm on, I'd have to go look at write it down

I did find out, if I do this: "pause" "play" "skip forward", it will NOT give me the 5 second spinner... so I do cut off about 4 seconds of wait time by first quickly pausing then playing, THEN skipping forward.

Sure wish I knew what the real reason was, thus to know which is to be at fault, sage, the filters, windows 10, or whatever.

[belleaudb]

The pause play trick works for me too. But still an issue and complaints from family.

Hopefully this can get fixed. I might try a complete new install.

[Tiki]

Originally Posted by belleaudb

The pause play trick works for me too. But still an issue and complaints from family.

Hopefully this can get fixed. I might try a complete new install.

Pause/play seems to work for me as well. Doesn't seem to matter if 1080i or 720p content. I do all my playback directly from Sage PC (Windows 7) to TV. Using EVR renderer and Microsoft decoder.