[SOLVED?] HDHR Connect Stutter / Pauses

[KarylFStein]

I know I've seen posts similar to this, but heck if I can find them now. I bought a new HDHR Connect to replace a Hauppauge 2250 in my quest to move to unRAID.

The problem was when recording shows on the Connect there will be a few seconds of clear playback then a pause for a second, and so on.

Debugging steps:

* It's the same antenna feed as was on the 2250
* Playback from VLC tuning a network stream from the Connect is fine in spot testing
* The channel does not seem to matter
* Even though Connect playback via VLC and things recorded on my Prime are fine, I switched network cables and switch ports for the Connect and server just because
* Checked uptime/top during a recording and plenty of CPU
* Made sure no recordings or comskip jobs were running and tried a single recording from the Connect

The only real difference between the Prime and Connect that I could see in the logs was this:

Tue 10/17 21:54:02.308 [AsyncWatch@5ff0432c] Using quality setting "Great" for recording

I thought that the Connect was like the 2250 in just dumping data so this did not seem right. Therefore I went to Setup > Detailed Setup > Multimedia > Recording Quality > Default Quality and took a look. At that point I had just one option for MPEG2 Transport Stream--no "Great" or other options that I was accustomed to see were to be found. So I picked that.

After that my Connect suddenly turned into a Digital Tuner, which I would have expected in the first place, and initial tests seemed to suggest the change worked. Now if I do the same thing and click on Default Quality there are a number of options including "Great".

EDIT: The stuttering is back

[BobPhoenix]

I'm assuming you have tried your HVR-2250 in unRAID with the LibreElec version of the DVB unRAID Plugin? Isn't the CONNECT the one that CAN trans-code the recordings to H264?

I ask because I am using my HVR-2250s with my unRAID SageTV Docker v9 servers now and they have been working as well that way as they did with my Windows servers with v7. unRAID 6.3.5.

unRAID 6.4 causes hard locks for me with a VM and Docker on it. Haven't had time to see if the same hardware causes a hard lock with just the NAS function on 6.4.

[KarylFStein]

I decided to try the HDHR tuners instead of trying to get the 2250 and InfiniTV6 PCIe to work with unRAID, (the latter it seemed didn't have a solution anyway).

I may try to install the 2250 with the plugin, though, as the stuttering is back. This is not the unit with the built-in transcoding.

Anyone have other thoughts on things to check/try? It seems like I read some things about certain firmware to use, but my search skills seem to be lacking and may have been about another unit anyway.

[KarylFStein]

*bump*

tl;dr: would there be any benefit to running the Connect stream through OpenDCT instead of directly?

I took the Connect out of the tuner pool for a while, but put it back in recently. I set up manual recordings for all my tuners during the day and captured a few hours from all of them. This was to do a stress test on the hardware as well to make sure HDD/network/software could keep up, (and it runs comskip after a recording is done so that was also in the mix as well as mover kicking off every hour). This new server is pretty much dedicated to SageTV, so nothing else should be adding additional stress on the system resources. From what I could tell the Connect was working, (I watched the first few minutes of each show it recorded as well as the Prime and they all played back fine).

BUT!

After leaving the Connect back in the tuner pool for a little I finally got around to watching a show it recorded. Playback was fine for about 20 minutes, but then the stuttering kicked in. Unfortunately I had already deleted the previous test recordings so couldn't go back and check near the end of them to see if they also started stuttering. Now I'm a little worried because for some things I tend to record a season of a show before watching it, so not sure how many other problem recordings there are, (and if I'll be able to stream them if I wait until the season is over).

Any thoughts on how to diagnose this further would be appreciated. Now, OpenDCT does see this device, so one thought is to let it handle it and run it through ffmpeg like it does for my CableCard streams. Would that provide any benefit?

[BobPhoenix]

Can't help with OpenDCT.

I'm assuming you are recording to a share on your unRAID server? Specifically to a share that would record to the cache drive and then mover runs to go to your array drives? And since you mention mover running every hour it is a small drive and probably an SSD?

If it ISN'T an SSD but you do record to the cache drive then I would suggest you keep it from spinning down. It is not likely to help even with a spinner but is a cheap fix if it does. Other wise I've got nothing for you I'm afraid.

Edit. Actually have a suggestion if you are using the unRAID docker. Do all the performance tuning for the SageTV docker like CPU pinning etc... and use the performance governor. See if that help any. Once again it may not help but they are just configuration changes so easy to implement.

[texneus]

I've been having generic HDHR issues myself, basically since upgrading to 9 with reception glitches and pauses that I didn't have before. I originally thought my old HDHR was dying, but a new one has convinced me the problem lies elsewhere. I'm still working though everything but the following things you can try.

The following are just general troubleshooting that will help narrow things down issues with reception or your network.

1. Eliminate all spliters and amplifiers, even if just temporary. Run the antenna output directly to the HDHR. Make sure all your connections are tight and free of oxidation.

2. If you haven't already, reboot router and all switches on the network. For now at least, try to make sure there is only one switch between the HDHR and your SageTV server.

3. Re-aim your antenna, make sure it's pointed to get the best signal quality, not signal strength. In my case my antenna drifted slightly east and getting it spot on made a noticeable improvement (the HDHR is somewhat notorious in it's inability to overcome even small reception errors).

4. Run the HDHR app in Kodi to check how it behaves.


Things I've done that made a noticeable improvement (still have more to do, but the signal is at least stable enough now that I can watch it without constant glitches)

1. Pointed the antenna optimally as noted above.

2. I may be told I'm crazy, but I swear setting the HDHR to record transport instead of program streams reduced glitches by about half. Still trying to confirm, but you can play with this by setting mmc/encoders/xxx/yyy/zzz/encode_digital_tv_as_program_stream=false for all HDHR tuners.

3. If you are using any DXVA based encoder (to include Microsoft, LAV, probably most other common ones), I have found DXVA seems to throw-up garbage and skip or tear frames often in response to stream errors. I have found setting LAV to software decoding MPEG2 gives far superior results. Quicksync works OK too if you have an Intel GPU, but instead of half the screen glitching for a second or two you'll only get few lines of garbage on just a few frames but still no skipped/torn frames.

4. Occasionally I have seen issues with stutter on live TV due to there not being enough buffer to completely decode the data in real time. This can be confirmed on live TV by simply pausing for a second or two, then resuming. If playback smooths out you can increase the playback delay to compensate. Increase videoframe/local_encoding_to_playback_delay on your clients. 1500 for 1.5 seconds seems to work well for me.


Things that I have tried that made no difference.

1. Remuxing a glitchy recording. At least on paper this is all that OpenDCT would buy you (I think)

2. Run the HDHR-config command line to check for network packet loss (I don't seem to have any, at least not while looking at it).


Things I have yet to do:

Regress SageTV back to V7 to see if it's V9 or all just a coincidence.

Regress SageTV server onto different hardware, operating system, and native vs. docker for the same reasons.

Contact Silicondust support to ensure my HDHR is streaming OK (I think it is based on the above)



Hopefully some of these are helpful...