Stuttering on all clients/previously stable system

[APillowOfClouds]

I have a server with a quad core AMD chip and two 1TB WD SATA drives. One drive is dedicated to recording shows. The other is used only for long term storage of photos etc and there is a separate 160GB WD drive for the OS (XP Pro). The server runs two ATI Wonder cards with one SD tuner each and the system is hooked to two Scientific Atlanta boxes tuned with a USB-UIRT. I have a SD MediaMVP client and two PC-based clients running off of average single-cpu tower boxes. All of this had been working wonderfully but as of late I get random stuttering when watching recorded shows on the MVP as well as the PC based clients.

I did have some bad memory and just switched out last night to a brand new 2GB SIMM but it does not seem to help as I still experienced stutter last night.

I have not defragged the show drive and I suspect the issue may be i/o since when it happens I see nop spike in CPU or memory on the server and of course on the MVP that's not an issue. However, I have had this setup probably a year and a half without ever defragging and have never had a problem with it until about a month ago so I'm not sure if that could be an issue. I have run the windows disk check on the show drive a couple times and it never showed any issues.

What's the most likely place to look for the cause? The machine is also running ComSkip and always has been but is not running anything else. I do not have Sage in service mode. I do find that if I skip back a couple of times the stuttering will eventually go away but I can pause for up to a minute and the stuttering does not go away. Very odd.

[jlmdxtv]

Personally, I'd view a couple of shows on the client using VLC or some other player. (Sage Client problem? - likely not since your MVP is seeing it too).

I'd also check to see if the stuttering is in the same exact place in the show. (Drive problem).

It could be your router needs to be reset/re-powered or the ethernet cable or card in the Sage Server is bad.

ALSO: make sure you're not running any anti-virus on the recording directories.

john

[APillowOfClouds]

Originally Posted by jlmdxtv

Personally, I'd view a couple of shows on the client using VLC or some other player. (Sage Client problem? - likely not since your MVP is seeing it too).

I'd also check to see if the stuttering is in the same exact place in the show. (Drive problem).

It could be your router needs to be reset/re-powered or the ethernet cable or card in the Sage Server is bad.

ALSO: make sure you're not running any anti-virus on the recording directories.

john

Definitely not in the same place because if I back up or exit and go back in the same spot will play smoothly and the anti virus is out because I don't put any on the server but the network is an idea, I'll have to run some tests copying large files to see how it is working and I will definitely try playing via VLC too. Thanks.

[Fuzzy]

Most likely cause of this 'spontaneous change' would be harddrive failure. Try copying some of your problem vids to an import folder on the other drive, and play them from there. If they play reliably, the recording drive is the culprit. Network cabling doesn't typically degrade like this... hard drives do.

[Savage1701]

Originally Posted by APillowOfClouds

I have a server with a quad core AMD chip and two 1TB WD SATA drives. One drive is dedicated to recording shows. The other is used only for long term storage of photos etc and there is a separate 160GB WD drive for the OS (XP Pro). The server runs two ATI Wonder cards with one SD tuner each and the system is hooked to two Scientific Atlanta boxes tuned with a USB-UIRT. I have a SD MediaMVP client and two PC-based clients running off of average single-cpu tower boxes. All of this had been working wonderfully but as of late I get random stuttering when watching recorded shows on the MVP as well as the PC based clients.

I did have some bad memory and just switched out last night to a brand new 2GB SIMM but it does not seem to help as I still experienced stutter last night.

I have not defragged the show drive and I suspect the issue may be i/o since when it happens I see nop spike in CPU or memory on the server and of course on the MVP that's not an issue. However, I have had this setup probably a year and a half without ever defragging and have never had a problem with it until about a month ago so I'm not sure if that could be an issue. I have run the windows disk check on the show drive a couple times and it never showed any issues.

What's the most likely place to look for the cause? The machine is also running ComSkip and always has been but is not running anything else. I do not have Sage in service mode. I do find that if I skip back a couple of times the stuttering will eventually go away but I can pause for up to a minute and the stuttering does not go away. Very odd.

I'm with the other posters on either HDD or network issues. About once every 3 months, for whatever reason, I get stuttering on my network, with everything including the internet, and need to do a cold reboot of my entire network - cable modem, router, and switch, in that order when I power back up. Then, smooth sailing for months.

If the skipping/corruption is never in the same place and happens with playback by different devices on your network, then I'd try a cold restart of every part of your actual network hardware.

Worst case - take a spare slot and put a secondary NIC in it, or use the other NIC if your MB has dual NIC's. I have had systems where built-in NIC's stop working or get so flaky I just take them offline. I don't recommend teaming the NICs even if your MB allows it. Sage does not need that and teaming can be problematic.

By the way - you know this stuttering occurs with both cards, correct? I have had tuner cards go bad over the years. You can check which card is feeding a show by looking at information about that show or checking system info in Sage to see which card(s) are busy at any one time.

One other thing - I've had Windows updates reset/change my NIC's in my Sage Server to less desirable settings. You may want to make sure your NIC's settings/properties have not been altered.

[kamp]

I'm wondering if this problem has been resolved yet. I'm having the same issue currently and it's rather annoying. Definitely diminishing the WAF.

The problem seems to be worse if I skip forward.

After the problem initially presented itself, I tried defragging the hard drives, but it hasn't improved.

[APillowOfClouds]

Originally Posted by kamp

I'm wondering if this problem has been resolved yet. I'm having the same issue currently and it's rather annoying. Definitely diminishing the WAF.

The problem seems to be worse if I skip forward.

After the problem initially presented itself, I tried defragging the hard drives, but it hasn't improved.

I haven't solved it yet unfortunately - it's either network or HD. I was going to try defragging too but if that didn't work for you it probably won't work for me. Anyway I haven't defragged for a couple of years and never had this issue before. I think I may try a network adapter first since that will be cheapest and then swap out the HD if that fails. Let me know if you have any luck.