Audio delay then to stutter

[AJ Bertelson]

So I have been working with sage tv over the last couple of days and it is has been amazing(video quality) and fustrating(stutter) at the same time.

I am starting to really diagnos this though. When running sage it will run for about a min or so and then the audio will get out of sync with the audio then it goes into stutter.

I have my 200gb drive into 2 partitions, both are NTFS the partition that sage is recording to is 64k but it is still stuttering.

What are some other steps that I can do before format?

[ErsatzTom]

Watch the cpu load. If it gets to 100% that is the problem... you probably need to either record at a lower quality or use the hardware decoder on a 350 (though currently you can't get the osd with that solution, just the picture). I had this problem when I was running the client on an older box (amd 700mhz) and had to set the recording quality back to the default (great). I don't know if this is the most common cause of stutter but it is the easiest to check. I'd also try different decoders.

[AJ Bertelson]

Running a 1600 rite now.

I am doing sandra benchamrk. I have heard the stutter is a unique problem in that there really is no one sinlge solution(besides the 64k clusters).

[AJ Bertelson]

Drive index was 34022kB/s

Slower then a ata100 but faster then a atat66, actaully it is middle of the road.
bufferd read was 71 MB/sec
Buffered write was 39MB/sec

[stanger89]

What decoders are you using?

[AJ Bertelson]

Originally posted by stanger89
What decoders are you using?

sonic decoders(raviscent)

[stanger89]

Hey, me too, but I know that doesn't help.

Have you tried playing the files back something else CP or WMP? Do they do the same thing in another player?

[AJ Bertelson]

Well I installed the shs stuff and now I get no sound.

This doesn't happen when I am running other applications at all but I noticed that re-clock was running when sage was running so I unistalled Re-clock and we will see what happens.

edit-The CPU load is about 17%

edit+1-We just finished watching badboys and I had sage running in sleep mode. No stuttering but still no sound.

edit+2-Sound fixed, I had sound set to default and now and running it as C-media Direct sound wave out device. Going to let sage run all night and see what happens in the morning.

[AJ Bertelson]

Went home for lunch today and the stuttering is back.

Tonight I try moving the card to the farthest PCI slot.

[AJ Bertelson]

Ran Sage all night long and woke up this morning to no stutters. Looked like the swapping of cards worked.

[AJ Bertelson]

Dang it.

The thing is still stuttering I noticed sage was taking up about 60% of CPU resources when I did the three finger salute to windows.

running out of ideas here.

[scafremon]

Keep us posted AJ. I submitted a support request, and the response was to reformat a partition to 64k to solve the problem. I'm already frustrated with Sage, and this would only be increased 10 fold if I reformat my drive and still have stutter.

[AJ Bertelson]

Well I am trying a santa cruz install tonight and we will see how this works out.

edit-Here is another question, When specifying the size under general. How do I constrain sage to only use 20gb of when recording?

[AJ Bertelson]

Still no luck.

Woke up this morning to waking sage from sleep and having it stutter. All though I did noticed something when I deleted the old recordings. If I turned sage off(still having all the old recordings) and when I went to watch sagetv I noticed that it was stuttering. I closed out of sageTV went and deleted all the recordings and I believe the stuttering had left.

I am starting to think it is something in the fragmentation of the files on the hard drive but I used Partition magic to resize the clusters to 64k.

edit-I just verified that it had its own IRQ

[AJ Bertelson]

Edit+1-Entire diske(partions 1 and 2) are now 64k.

whoops, looks like I didn't do a edit. I also turned off the maxtor acoustic management software.

[olyar15]

OK, first thing to determine is what the source of the stutter is: recording or playback?
Have you tried playing back the recordings in another player, such as Windows Media Player? Also try recording a short segment (like 5-10min) and then copy onto a CD or DVD so you can try it on another computer. If it stutters on different computers and different player software, then you know that it is recording improperly. This may mean you have a defective PVR card. Or there is some weird hardware conflict. Any chance you are using an older VIA-based motherboard?

Now if the recordings that stutter in your copy of Sage work fine in other machines or with different player software, then you know that Sage is recording fine. Now you just have to troubleshoot the playback. Do other Mpeg2 movies play fine, such as videos you download from the net, DVDs, etc? Do you have updated drivers for your motherboard, soundcard, etc.?

Once you can narrow down the problem to a recording vs. playback problem, then it might be easier to solve. BTW, your hard drive should be more than fast enough to play the video files. Just make sure you have DMA on.

[AJ Bertelson]

Ok it looks like the resize to 64k of the other partiion worked since I woke up to a non-stuttering sage this morning. The other thing that I changed though was turning off the maxtors quiet drive tech so I will turn that on sometime later this week and see what happens as I really want to duplicate this problem.

Sage was the only program that did this also, it was stutter on playback also. DMA was also turned on.

Edit-WHAT THE HELL AM I CURSED as soon as I post this message sage starts stuttering again.

[SHS]

Sound like to me the problem may be due to you motherboard
what under the hood?.

[AJ Bertelson]

Iwill XP-333r

its what I was thinking too but I just installed a IDE card to see what will happen. But people have gotten sage to run on systems less powerfull then this.

[stanger89]

Is that a VIA KT333 board?

edit-

I just looked at the Iwill site. It's an ALi ALIMAGIC 1 board. That's scary. There's a good chance that is your problem. Do you have the latest drivers/bios for that board?