Running multiple clients has very jerky video despite very powerful PCs

[LehighBri]

I submitted this same question to the beta email but thought I'd ask this forum as well. I'm running the latest 6.5.8 beta on my server PC in my signature below. As you can see the specs are more than capable to handle a ton of clients, but for some reason, when I connect with both my HD200 AND another client PC (which has equivalent specs to the server), both video streams are very jerky. If I stop playback on one or the other, the remaining client is smooth as silk.

Any reason why when I hit 2 clients connected the video becomes very jerky? I monitored my servers resources when 2 clients are connected and CPU is <5%. Thoughts? Note that this has been happening to me with 6.5.8 and 6.5.7 (I didn't test this in other previous betas).

[reggie14]

Likely your limiting factor is your hard drive. In general, even relatively old hard drives can handle sequential reads and writes much faster than is necessary for Sage, but your reads and writes will not be very sequential. Pieces of recordings will be all over the drive. Plus, if you're watching live TV on two different extenders, you're really doing 2 reads and 2 writes at the same time on the drive. Still, a modern 7200RPM hard drive ought to be fast enough. What are the specs on your recordings hard drive?

Also, is your recording drive formatted to 64k blocks? That's pretty important.

[gplasky]

I submitted this same question to the beta email but thought I'd ask this forum as well. I'm running the latest 6.5.8 beta on my server PC in my signature below. As you can see the specs are more than capable to handle a ton of clients, but for some reason, when I connect with both my HD200 AND another client PC (which has equivalent specs to the server), both video streams are very jerky. If I stop playback on one or the other, the remaining client is smooth as silk.

Any reason why when I hit 2 clients connected the video becomes very jerky? I monitored my servers resources when 2 clients are connected and CPU is <5%. Thoughts? Note that this has been happening to me with 6.5.8 and 6.5.7 (I didn't test this in other previous betas).

Likely your limiting factor is your hard drive. In general, even relatively old hard drives can handle sequential reads and writes much faster than is necessary for Sage, but your reads and writes will not be very sequential. Pieces of recordings will be all over the drive. Plus, if you're watching live TV on two different extenders, you're really doing 2 reads and 2 writes at the same time on the drive. Still, a modern 7200RPM hard drive ought to be fast enough. What are the specs on your recordings hard drive?

Also, is your recording drive formatted to 64k blocks? That's pretty important.

The 64K blocks are very important as reggie mentioned. Also you may want to disable the network throttling Vista is known to do. There is a reg setting that you need to change. Search the forums or google. If your issue is client performance as clients increase I would look at network and harddrive performance. Make sure you have yor directories shared and the proper permissions to access the media too. If it is incorrect there could be more overhead. I'm assuming all are on the same LAN and plugged into the same switch or router with switch ports?

Gerry

[LehighBri]

Likely your limiting factor is your hard drive. In general, even relatively old hard drives can handle sequential reads and writes much faster than is necessary for Sage, but your reads and writes will not be very sequential. Pieces of recordings will be all over the drive. Plus, if you're watching live TV on two different extenders, you're really doing 2 reads and 2 writes at the same time on the drive. Still, a modern 7200RPM hard drive ought to be fast enough. What are the specs on your recordings hard drive?

Also, is your recording drive formatted to 64k blocks? That's pretty important.

Yes, my recording drive is formatted with 64k blocks and it's practically a brand new hard drive (it's a 1.5TB 7200RPM SATA Seagate... I also patched the firmware with the firmware fix fixing issues with this specific drive). In looking at the resource monitor in Vista, the hard drive stats are below (w/ superfetch disabled):

1 client connected: 0-1MB/sec, 1% CPU
2 clients connected: 1MB/sec, 2% CPU

Finally, I remember reading around that Vista's Superfetch caused issues. I have that disabled and still getting issues.

[LehighBri]

The 64K blocks are very important as reggie mentioned. Also you may want to disable the network throttling Vista is known to do. There is a reg setting that you need to change. Search the forums or google. If your issue is client performance as clients increase I would look at network and harddrive performance. Make sure you have yor directories shared and the proper permissions to access the media too. If it is incorrect there could be more overhead. I'm assuming all are on the same LAN and plugged into the same switch or router with switch ports?

Gerry

My previous post has items related to the hard drive. I updated the stats with network performance data:
SD
1 client connected: server is at 0-1MB/sec hard drive, 1% CPU, 5-7Mbps network usage
2 clients connected: server is at 1MB/sec hard drive, 2% CPU, 5-8Mbps network usage (gets very choppy around 8Mbps)

Yes, all are on the same LAN using my WRT54G router which is using Tomato 1.23 firmware. Not sure how to check permissions on the folders... I haven't changed anything there. My server's network card is onboard network that came with my Dell PC (an Intel gigabit connection...speed and duplex set to auto negotiation). I agree, sounds like network I just don't know how to proceed!

UPDATE: I ran some tests against HD content and it's running very smoothly... it only gets jerky with SD!
1 client connected: server is at 2MB/sec hard drive, 2% CPU, 10-15Mbps network usage
2 clients connected: server is at 5MB/sec hard drive, 3% CPU, 25-30Mbps network usage

[reggie14]

In looking at the resource monitor in Vista, the hard drive stats are below (w/ superfetch disabled):

1 client connected: 0-1MB/sec, 1% CPU
2 clients connected: 1MB/sec, 2% CPU

Finally, I remember reading around that Vista's Superfetch caused issues. I have that disabled and still getting issues.

Well, when two clients are connected and watching (different) HD recordings, you should be reading about 4-5 MB/sec off the hard drive, and if you're recording, another 4-5 MB/sec of writing to the hard drive. In any case, I really think that drive should be fast enough. I could imagine more problems as the drive fills up, and it has to work harder to find free blocks to save things to.

This probably isn't really an issue with a lack of resources (but, I do sort of wonder about the hard drive). You should have plenty of bandwidth on your network, but as gplasky pointed out, there are some networking-related issues to explore. I thought Vista SP1 was suppose to fix the throttling issues, but you can try disabling it. You might want to go into your device manager, find your network adapter, and try to disable any hardware offloading it might do (e.g., checksum offloading). I think that ends up under the advanced tab under an individual device's properties.

I doubt this would fix it, but you could try disabling UAC if you haven't already. I know it used to cause other problems in Sage, and still might, so it might be good to disable it anyway.

[reggie14]

UPDATE: I ran some tests against HD content and it's running very smoothly... it only gets jerky with SD!
1 client connected: server is at 2MB/sec hard drive, 2% CPU, 10-15Mbps network usage
2 clients connected: server is at 5MB/sec hard drive, 3% CPU, 25-30Mbps network usage

OK, that sounds pretty strange. You're saying SD playback on 2 clients is jerky until you stop playback on one of your clients? But, HD playback on two clients is fine? Does this just happen with live TV or with previously recorded shows too? I'm wondering if this could possibly be related to your TV card.

[LehighBri]

OK, that sounds pretty strange. You're saying SD playback on 2 clients is jerky until you stop playback on one of your clients? But, HD playback on two clients is fine? Does this just happen with live TV or with previously recorded shows too? I'm wondering if this could possibly be related to your TV card.

I read about the registry item to modify throttling on Anandtech's site (http://www.anandtech.com/systems/showdoc.aspx?i=3233&p=2) and modified the index below to 70... still didn't work.

HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Multimedia\SystemProfile\NetworkThrottlingIndex

Then I tried turning off checksum offloading (there were many checksum offloading settings I disabled... some for ipv4, some for TCP, some for UDP). Nonetheless, they are all off now.

I have a HVR-2250 using the latest drivers from ftp://ftp.hauppauge.com/Support/HVR2250/. The next test will be testing playback of recorded SD and HD vs. how it performs live (e.g. to eliminate the HVR-2250 from the equation). Will post results shortly.

[reggie14]

I have a HVR-2250 using the latest drivers from ftp://ftp.hauppauge.com/Support/HVR2250/. The next test will be testing playback of recorded SD and HD vs. how it performs live (e.g. to eliminate the HVR-2250 from the equation). Will post results shortly.

Just to clarify, maybe you should try playing back two previously recorded standard-def shows. Make sure when both of them were recording, they were the only thing recording at that time.

But, I'd be surprised if that's it. I think the HVR-2250 has two separate hardware mpeg2 encoders. It doesn't seem like it should matter if two things are recording at once.

[LehighBri]

What a saga. While I was waiting for my 2 SD recordings to finish, I tested a couple other scenarios:

-Playback of two 1080p MKV files (smooth playback when 2 clients connected). Network usage at around 20Mbps (perfectly fine).
-Playback of one SD live TV show while playing a DVD (480p stored in VIDEO_TS folder). Smooth playback when 2 clients connected). Network usage at around 16Mbps (perfectly fine).
-Playback of one SD live TV and one HD live TV. Smooth playback when 2 clients connected). Network usage at around 21Mbps (perfectly fine).

When I tested playback of two SD recordings (good idea reggie), works fine as well. So yes, sounds like there's something wrong when two clients try to both view live SD TV only (live HD TV works fine).

Any other thoughts on what I might be able to do there? Is this due to the fact that sage doesn't formally 100% support HVR-2250 yet? I'm guessing it's either an issue with Hauppauge's HVR-2250 drivers OR how Sage implemented Live TV support (if any) for the HVR-2250.

Thoughts Sage?

[redondo_se]

I had this problem when watching the Stealers Championship game a couple Sundays ago. I was trying playback the same HD stream from my HD-Homerun at the same time on 2 different PC clients. If both clients were at the live end of the stream, both would stutter horribly. If I backed the office client up about an hour behind live, both clients played fine.

Before you get too excited, I haven't had time to test if this solved my problem yet, but ...

After that I did a little digging and found out about using UNC mapped paths for recording directories. My server was setup to record everything to the local drives, and recording were not directly accessible over the network using those paths, e.g. C:\record_dir. From what I gather, with this setup the sagetvservice process has to stream everything to the clients. If you use UNC paths are accessible on the network, the client can access the files directly. I'm not sure if the HD200 can access files directly or not.

Do you use UNC or maped paths that are accessible on the network?

My server is pretty whimpy, it's an old AMD 3200+ single core running XP Pro 32-bit. I was just thinking about upgrading it because I've had some holes in recordings when a lot of stuff is going on and this playback chopiness. But, if you're having problems with a bad mutha server, I'm not sure it will help me. My network is all gigabit and my HDHR is directly connected to my server via a secondary network card, so those streams are not on my main network.

I'll try to find some time to test to see if I still have the stutter problem after changing to UNC paths.

Sean

[nyplayer]

Try the Demux and other file here I had the same problem even in 6.58... when I used those files everything played fine.
http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?p=333372&postcount=281


What a saga. While I was waiting for my 2 SD recordings to finish, I tested a couple other scenarios:

-Playback of two 1080p MKV files (smooth playback when 2 clients connected). Network usage at around 20Mbps (perfectly fine).
-Playback of one SD live TV show while playing a DVD (480p stored in VIDEO_TS folder). Smooth playback when 2 clients connected). Network usage at around 16Mbps (perfectly fine).
-Playback of one SD live TV and one HD live TV. Smooth playback when 2 clients connected). Network usage at around 21Mbps (perfectly fine).

When I tested playback of two SD recordings (good idea reggie), works fine as well. So yes, sounds like there's something wrong when two clients try to both view live SD TV only (live HD TV works fine).

Any other thoughts on what I might be able to do there? Is this due to the fact that sage doesn't formally 100% support HVR-2250 yet? I'm guessing it's either an issue with Hauppauge's HVR-2250 drivers OR how Sage implemented Live TV support (if any) for the HVR-2250.

Thoughts Sage?

[LehighBri]

Do you use UNC or maped paths that are accessible on the network?

I'll try to find some time to test to see if I still have the stutter problem after changing to UNC paths.

I do not use UNC or mapped paths. I will try that out as well and see what happens. Let me know how your testing goes.

Try the Demux and other file here I had the same problem even in 6.58... when I used those files everything played fine.
http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?p=333372&postcount=281

Yep, I installed 6.5.8 then I copied over the latest demux and myasync file. Issue still exists both with and without the latest demux.

[redondo_se]

I do not use UNC or mapped paths. I will try that out as well and see what happens. Let me know how your testing goes.



Be aware that you're old recordings will not use UNC paths unless you make them unaccesible from the previous directory, and then turn on a switch to make sage rebuild the recording database. I had to jump through hoops to make that happen:


not sure if necessary if UNC paths actually point to local drives, but I made my sagetvservice run as a different user that has write permissions to unc paths
change recording paths to UNC in sagetv interface
shutdown and DISABLE sagetv service. you don't want it coming back up when you reboot
change drive letters of drives where recordings are so they are no longer accessible using old path. Hopefully you don't record to C:, if you do I'm not sure how to help there.
reboot server
you have to remap your unc paths after changing drive letters, make sure permissions are good, etc.
set the flag in the sage.properties file that forces sage to rebuild recording db paths, see the FAQ about moving recordings
restart sage service
when it's done rebuilding, shutdown service and remove flag from properties file
after all this, you could change your drive letters back, but I just left them with their new letters


Sean

[LehighBri]

I get the whole rebuild of the library thing but I don't need to do that... I'll just delete all my old recordings (I don't have many... I know some of you have 100s :).

I'm having trouble setting up the UNC path though. When I modify the video recording directory, I choose Network, then my Workgroup, then my PC name, the hour glass spin thing appears, then says Invalid directory. I confirmed on two PCs though that I am indeed sharing my SageTV Recordings directly so I'm not sure why Sage can't see them.

I also stopped the service and restarted it with using my Administrator user name, restarted and still no luck. Thoughts?

UPDATE: When I try to specify the path myself it says the directory does not exist do I want to create it. Something is off here.

[redondo_se]

I just typed the paths in by hand, then chose use current, or whatever it's called.

[LehighBri]

Turns out the UNC paths are case sensitive... when I browse for my PC through the network it has the name as all upper case yet that doesn't work (potential bug Sage?)

I typed in the name as all lowercase and the UNC works. Now I just need to get back to fixing the choppy video issue.

[LehighBri]

Update. I switched over to UNC paths and tried watching live TV again. Same jerky video issue is occurring so UNC paths did not fix that.

Is this due to the fact that sage doesn't formally 100% support HVR-2250 yet? I'm guessing it's either an issue with Hauppauge's HVR-2250 drivers OR how Sage implemented Live TV support (if any) for the HVR-2250.

[planetc]

Update. I switched over to UNC paths and tried watching live TV again. Same jerky video issue is occurring so UNC paths did not fix that.

Is this due to the fact that sage doesn't formally 100% support HVR-2250 yet? I'm guessing it's either an issue with Hauppauge's HVR-2250 drivers OR how Sage implemented Live TV support (if any) for the HVR-2250.

Live TV is no different than Recorded, it works the same way. The only difference being there would be more going on at the server. The client wouldn't see any difference because it still writes to hard drive and then the client reads it.
I guess that would leave a driver issue/some kind of deep down arguement for resources going on in there when you try to run the capture card and read from the hard drive together.

[LehighBri]

Sage support has been working through this with me. Still not sure exactly what the deal is but here's a quick update.

The issue only really occurs when I'm recording 2 SD channels at once and then try to do something else with an SD file (either with one of the ones recording or playing a totally separate SD file back). In that case the playback is very jerky no matter what client is playing it back. HD playback works fine.

Example:
I record 2 SD channels at once on my HVR-2250, then playback a totally separate previosuly recorded SD file and it's jerky. Support then asked that I try playback of a file on a drive that is different from my TV recordings drive. So I played back a previously recorded SD file that I copied to my imported videos drive (H drive... my TV gets recorded to my T drive) and sure enough the SD file playback is jerky in Sage. I did the same thing with a HD file and it plays back smooth.

I then close the Sage client while it's still recording the 2 SD channels and play back the same SD file I copied to my H drive in WMP and it plays silky smooth. Clearly there's something wrong with Sage's playback mechanism as the same scenario but using playback via WMP works silky smooth.

[phelme]

since you say using WMP across the network on a client works fine, are you sure the same hardware decoding is being used for both Sage & WMP on the clients?

[LehighBri]

since you say using WMP across the network on a client works fine, are you sure the same hardware decoding is being used for both Sage & WMP on the clients?

I have PowerDVD 8 set as the decoder for both.

[redondo_se]

I have PowerDVD 8 set as the decoder for both.

PowerDVD decoders actually have per-application settings. I don't remember the registry keys off the top of my head. I use ffdshow audio decoder which allows you to right click the icon in the system tray and open up the filter properties for all currently loaded filters (if they have a config dialog).

[phelme]

OK. If you have 2 recordings going and on a client you drag and drop an SD video file across the network onto SageTVPlayer.exe what happens?

[SHS]

Give this a try on the client fine by editing the Sage.properties file look for always_use_dshow_player= change false to true restart the client

[LehighBri]

Give this a try on the client fine by editing the Sage.properties file look for always_use_dshow_player= change false to true restart the client

Don't think this matters given the issue happens on my extender as well and there is no properties file for that.

[LehighBri]

OK. If you have 2 recordings going and on a client you drag and drop an SD video file across the network onto SageTVPlayer.exe what happens?

Did a couple tests tonight. When I record 2 channels then play a separate SD file on a separate hard drive via the SageTVPlayer.exe, it plays smooth as silk from the start.

If I do the previous email's scenario where I record 2 channels then play the live TV show in the SageTVPlayer.exe, again, it is also smooth as silk.... yet when I play the same live recording show in Sage itself I get the typical jerky playback.

What could cause the difference in the SageTVPlayer.exe and playing it directly within Sage?

[SHS]

Oh I see your extender as well
Just wondering dose extender plays smooth with out client playing and other way a round?.
What if you server is playing and one of the fallowing extender playing or client playing dose it still play smooth?

[SHS]

SageTVPlayer.exe is for MPEG4 Playback if you look in Detailed Setup under Video/Audio you have two option under MPEG4 Playback Directshow or SageTV Player.

[LehighBri]

SageTVPlayer.exe is for MPEG4 Playback if you look in Detailed Setup under Video/Audio you have two option under MPEG4 Playback Directshow or SageTV Player.

And what would be the reason why Windows users would use the SageTV Player vs. the directshow playback option?

[Eckwell]

Are you running any Comskip or ccextractor against the files as they are recorded? CCextractor gave me the same symptoms you have, so I stopped extracting CC until it was completed. Just a thought...

[LehighBri]

Are you running any Comskip or ccextractor against the files as they are recorded? CCextractor gave me the same symptoms you have, so I stopped extracting CC until it was completed. Just a thought...

Nope. My comskip is set to not run on live TV so I can confirm no EDL files are created until after a show has completed recording.

[phelme]

And what would be the reason why Windows users would use the SageTV Player vs. the directshow playback option?
Is the problem ONLY with viewing live recordings or any SD recording? If it's only live recordings then it might be a buffering issue. On my system I can't watch anything live without pausing it first for about 10-15 seconds and running behind the live feed, otherwise, jerky video. This happens with any of my tuners.

I think I missed the fact that you are also using an extender. Does the jerky problem happen with it as well?

SageTVPlayer (mplayer) is mostly a fall back for a lack of MPEG4 and other file container decoders in your system. But the fact that it works (on your PC client) might be pointing to some issue with the merit settings in your decoding chain or other problem with your Video/Audio settings in Sage. As I understand it, SageTVPlayer is using one set of decoders (its own) and DirectShow, those installed on your system, which in your case is CyberLink. Does the jerkiness happen no matter what viewing method: EVR, Overlay, VMR9?

The HD files playing OK is a mystery though. We're talking about MPEG2 files that are the problem here, right? And the HD files are also MPEG2?

[LehighBri]

Is the problem ONLY with viewing live recordings or any SD recording? If it's only live recordings then it might be a buffering issue. On my system I can't watch anything live without pausing it first for about 10-15 seconds and running behind the live feed, otherwise, jerky video. This happens with any of my tuners.

I previously posted that yes, it is jerky when I playback either a SD live recording and also jerky when I playback a totally separate SD file on a separate hard drive (which leads me to think SD playback in general when 2 channels are recording). Maybe I should install another HVR-2250 to really make things jerky :)

I think I missed the fact that you are also using an extender. Does the jerky problem happen with it as well?

Yes. Same story on my extender as on my client PC as on my server's client. In all 3 cases, SD playback while 2 SD channels record causes jerky playback ON ALL CLIENTS.


SageTVPlayer (mplayer) is mostly a fall back for a lack of MPEG4 and other file container decoders in your system. But the fact that it works (on your PC client) might be pointing to some issue with the merit settings in your decoding chain or other problem with your Video/Audio settings in Sage. As I understand it, SageTVPlayer is using one set of decoders (its own) and DirectShow, those installed on your system, which in your case is CyberLink. Does the jerkiness happen no matter what viewing method: EVR, Overlay, VMR9?

Haven't tried... but shouldn't matter given my previous response of... it happens on an extender too...

The HD files playing OK is a mystery though. We're talking about MPEG2 files that are the problem here, right? And the HD files are also MPEG2?

Yes... both are MPEG2 files that I recorded using Sage.

[phelme]

Hmm, it's a mystery. :confused:

I assume you've seen this thread about the HVR-2250? Seems to be a problem child.

http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=38950

It would be interesting if you could pull the 2250 out of the picture for a test and substitute some other tuner(s) to see what happens and at least eliminate it as the cause. But for some reason, I think the problem lies elsewhere.

[redondo_se]

I do not use UNC or mapped paths. I will try that out as well and see what happens. Let me know how your testing goes.


Well, I only had a chance to try one show live on 2 clients at same time the other day, but it did NOT have the stutter using UNC. But, like you said, it didn't make a difference for you anyway.

[LehighBri]

To inject a little more humor into this, you're probably thinking, who cares about SD anymore? Great question... I'd much rather have Sage focus time on Netflix/Hulu support than fixing a silly SD issue like this (guess this is an excuse to get more HD tuners :)

[voicu_n]

You should try latest drivers, available on SHS unofficial forum.
They are newer than the ones on hauppauge FTP.
also as you talking about SD vs. HD or analog Vs digital?

[LehighBri]

You should try latest drivers, available on SHS unofficial forum.
They are newer than the ones on hauppauge FTP.
also as you talking about SD vs. HD or analog Vs digital?

I just tried the 27023 from SHS's site and no luck there. And I'm talking analog I guess (the non digital stream that the HVR-2250 can record).

[LehighBri]

UPDATE: After going through a ton of different scenarios with Sage support, we narrowed it down to truly being an issue with the Hauppauge card or drivers and nothing to do with Sage. In a nutshell, whenever I record 2 SD channels simultaneously, the resulting .mpg files, when played back are always jerky/stuttery regardless of where I play it back (e.g. in Sage, in VLC, in Windows Media Player). This is clearly an issue with the recording itself.

Note that this issue ONLY occurs with 2 SD channels simultaneously recording and does NOT occur if recording 2 QAM/HD, or 1 SD. I have since filed a bug with Hauppauge's support so we'll see what happens! Appreciate everyone's great ideas and help towards resolving this.

[LehighBri]

UPDATE: The saga continues... I submitted this issue to Hauppauge support and they had me record two SD shows at once using Windows Vista Media Center. I did that, and the resulting SD dvr-ms files both played back smooth as silk... so the same scenario works fine in Media Center but still has issues in Sage which means there must be an issue in Sage. I've reopened this with Sage support so we'll see.

If any of you can help, see attached for a log which had mediaserver debugging turned on as well... support previously said they may have seen some I/O issues there which pointed them to say it's an issue with Hauppauge. In the log, I watched 1 live SD channel, then waited ~10 seconds, then went to the program guide while still in playback of the 1st recording and set another SD channel to record which caused the jerky recording/playback issue. It should be noted that this same scenario but with QAM HD channels works just fine. CPU and memory usage is very low as well

[LehighBri]

Got so frustrated with this issue that I decided to reformat my PC. I installed fresh Vista w/ SP1, Java 6 u12, HVR-2250 27023 drivers, and SageTV 6.5.9, and STILL the SD jerky playback issue exists! I just don't understand how that can be given a fresh install. Sage support did the same with an HVR-2250 and theirs plays back just fine. Would could possibly be wrong that is causing recordings to record with jerky video with a fresh install?

[paulbeers]

Got so frustrated with this issue that I decided to reformat my PC. I installed fresh Vista w/ SP1, Java 6 u12, HVR-2250 27023 drivers, and SageTV 6.5.9, and STILL the SD jerky playback issue exists! I just don't understand how that can be given a fresh install. Sage support did the same with an HVR-2250 and theirs plays back just fine. Would could possibly be wrong that is causing recordings to record with jerky video with a fresh install?

Ya know, I just started using my HVR2250 and noticed if I try to record two SD shows at the same time, they both become extremely jerky. Its almost like it is trying to record both channes thru the same encoder and therefore is only encoding every other frame....

Is that what you are seeing?

Edit: This is in Windows XP PRO SP2 (I don't think it is running SP3).

[LehighBri]

Ya know, I just started using my HVR2250 and noticed if I try to record two SD shows at the same time, they both become extremely jerky. Its almost like it is trying to record both channes thru the same encoder and therefore is only encoding every other frame....

Is that what you are seeing?

Edit: This is in Windows XP PRO SP2 (I don't think it is running SP3).

Yes, this is exactly what I'm seeing. Try this. Records two SD channels simultaneously. Then when they are both done recording, play the files through Windows Media Player... do you see jerky playback there as well? The issue for me is that the recordings themselves have issues and thus playback jerky no matter what playback player you use (e.g. WMP, VLC, Sage, etc).

[paulbeers]

Yes, this is exactly what I'm seeing. Try this. Records two SD channels simultaneously. Then when they are both done recording, play the files through Windows Media Player... do you see jerky playback there as well? The issue for me is that the recordings themselves have issues and thus playback jerky no matter what playback player you use (e.g. WMP, VLC, Sage, etc).

I'll give it a try tonight (not near my server right now to try it). Funny thing is that I have my HVR2250 setup to do both QAM tuning and SD capture via composite connections (obviously it can only do 2 at a time), and I ONLY have problems if I am trying to record 2 SD shows. If I record two HD via QAM or 1 via QAM and 1 via composite I have no problems (I may have to try this again to verify though).

[LehighBri]

I'll give it a try tonight (not near my server right now to try it). Funny thing is that I have my HVR2250 setup to do both QAM tuning and SD capture via composite connections (obviously it can only do 2 at a time), and I ONLY have problems if I am trying to record 2 SD shows. If I record two HD via QAM or 1 via QAM and 1 via composite I have no problems (I may have to try this again to verify though).

Same with me. Once I record 1 HD or 2 HD shows, they playback great. It's only with 2 SD.

[SHS]

LehighBri do want try out 7.6.1.27055?

[LehighBri]

LehighBri do want try out 7.6.1.27055?

Would love to (Hauppauge sent me 27050 but no luck there). Can you post link here and/or PM to me?

[SHS]

Here you go LehighBri
ftp://ftp.shspvr.com/download/hvr_22x0/22xx_7.6.1.27055.prerelease.zip

[paulbeers]

Didn't do anything for me.....Recorded one show and tried to watch the other and it just studdered...

[LehighBri]

Here you go LehighBri
ftp://ftp.shspvr.com/download/hvr_22x0/22xx_7.6.1.27055.prerelease.zip

These new drivers didn't do anything for me either. Paul - what video card and/or codecs are you using? I literally reinstalled Vista SP1 with just java and sage do I'm using the standard MS decoders. Same studdering issue though.

[paulbeers]

These new drivers didn't do anything for me either. Paul - what video card and/or codecs are you using? I literally reinstalled Vista SP1 with just java and sage do I'm using the standard MS decoders. Same studdering issue though.

I do all my viewing via extenders so it definately is not video card/driver related. It is definately at the recording level. Also, based on your signature, we have completely different servers so we know it isn't some kind of incompatibility with a certain chipset (like back in the old VIA KT133 days)

Edit: I did file a bug with Sage so that they are aware this is affecting more than just one person.

[LehighBri]

I do all my viewing via extenders so it definately is not video card/driver related. It is definately at the recording level. Also, based on your signature, we have completely different servers so we know it isn't some kind of incompatibility with a certain chipset (like back in the old VIA KT133 days)

Edit: I did file a bug with Sage so that they are aware this is affecting more than just one person.
Yes, use my extenders in addition to my PC clients and same story there. Keep me posted on how your bug report goes with Sage and if they come up with any creative solutions/reasons why this is happening.

Also, note that I upgraded to 6.5.11 and the latest HD200 firmware last night and same story... jerky playback when recording 2 SD shows simultaneously.

[LehighBri]

paul - just got an email from hauppauge support. Try the new 27056 drivers. I will try these tonight and see if that helps.

ftp://www.hauppauge.com/Support/HVR2250/090225_22xx_7.6.1.27056.prerelease.zip

UPDATE: I installed the new 27056 drivers above and no luck... issue still occurs.

[paulbeers]

Thanks for trying the new drivers (saves me the hassle).

I sent a 3 minute clip to Sage and the log files to Sage tonight. Hopefully they can figure something out...

[LehighBri]

Just received the following response from Sage... will let you know as soon as I hear anything re: updated drivers:

Our contact in Hauppauge reply it's their problem, they are going to give an update driver soon.

[paulbeers]

Just received the following response from Sage... will let you know as soon as I hear anything re: updated drivers:

Our contact in Hauppauge reply it's their problem, they are going to give an update driver soon.

Yep. I got the same update you did. For now I threw an old AverTV PVR150+ in my server so that I can record one SD from the HVR2250 and one from my PVR150+. The WAF factor was dropping fast, so I had to do something....grrrrrr....

[LehighBri]

WORKAROUND: I uninstalled the latest betas I've been using and reverted back to the original 4.7 official CD drivers on the hauppauge site and the issue is not present! Looks like the issue was introduced in subsequent release of the driver. I've let hauppauge support know this and I suggest you do the same. (thanks for the advice paulbeers)

[paulbeers]

WORKAROUND: I uninstalled the latest betas I've been using and reverted back to the original 4.7 official CD drivers on the hauppauge site and the issue is not present! Looks like the issue was introduced in subsequent release of the driver. I've let hauppauge support know this and I suggest you do the same. (thanks for the advice paulbeers)


Thank you for the credit, but I must give Heffe2001 the credit on this. I am sooooo happy to have a fully working 2250.

[Stuntman]

Thank you for the credit, but I must give Heffe2001 the credit on this. I am sooooo happy to have a fully working 2250.
Please upate this thread if any of the 'new' drivers correct this problem.. Thanks!

[LehighBri]

FYI... just tried the new 27076 prerelease drivers and the SD jerky video issue still exists...

[LehighBri]

Just tried the new 27090 drivers and they seemed to have fixed the issue! :clap: I can now record 2 SD channels without have the video files stutter like crazy.

http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=40844