Placeshifter Stutters Etc.

[penguin303]

I'm running Placeshifter on my office box with a tvset box (i'll list specs at the end) running the server in my living room.

I find that I can play any media files (mpgs/avis) that I put on there just fine, but once I shift to live television, i get constant video and audio stutters. The living room box is connected to my router via a wireless USB adapter, but I don't believe that's causing the problems since the local movie files (Imported Media) play fine. The stutters only happen over live television.

My living room box is running on a miniepia board with a via chipset and 1gb of memory. It is not as fast as my office box, which is an AMD Athlon 4000 2.4 with 2gb of ram. I do notice that living room box is slower, but when I watch live TV on it, it still does not stutter like it does when I use placeshifter on the office box.

One last addition, when I use Client instead of Placeshifter on the office box, I get steady video, but stuttered audio.

If there are any suggestions on what might be causing this, it would be appreciated.

Also, if you need any more spec details ask me in the thread and I will try to respond.

Thanks again

[cenwesi]

have you tried adding this line to the SageTVPlaceshifter.properties file in C:\Documents and Settings\<YOURDIR>\.sagetv

video_buffer_size=32000000

[ID10Tbox]

I have the same problem - I paid for Placeshifter but it is not usable. I got it to be able to watch from the office when things are slow. I don't think it is an issue with processing power, although the CPU on the server is a bit underpowered (Via Epia MII). The reason I say that is because it seems to play fine if I run Placeshifter client from another machine on my network.

I tried from work (1400 Kbps up/1400 Kbps down) with no joy, tried the dynamic settings as well as fixed bitrate. I did put video_buffer_size=32000000 in my SageTVPlaceshifter.properties on the client and I did not see any change that I could tell. I also tried running the client on someone else's broadband connection and it was choppy and unwatchable there too.

I am seeing the exact same thing described above, if I pause Placeshifter and let the buffer fill I can watch for a little while, then when the buffer gets close to being depleted I start having problems again. My upload at home is 768 Kbps.

I'd like to be able to use Placeshifter because I am going out of the country next month and I did pay for it after all, but right now it is pretty useless.

Does anyone have any Placeshifter tips or a possible solution, or am I just stuck with it as is?

Thanks

[blade]

Originally Posted by ID10Tbox

I have the same problem - I paid for Placeshifter but it is not usable. I got it to be able to watch from the office when things are slow. I don't think it is an issue with processing power, although the CPU on the server is a bit underpowered (Via Epia MII). The reason I say that is because it seems to play fine if I run Placeshifter client from another machine on my network.

Your "server" isn't powerful enough. When you use placeshifter across the internet the server must transcode the video (compress) on the fly so that it can be streamed across the relatively slow internet connection. When you run it on a local network there is plenty of bandwith so the video doesn't need transcoding.

[ID10Tbox]

Thanks, I may try setting up my desktop machine as the server - it is a bit "beefier"

Right now the desktop machine is in the bedroom and it is loud, and not near a cable outlet (other side of the room) so it is not convenient for me to have the desktop running all of the time as dedicated Sage server.

But like I said I will certainly try it as a test setup and let you know the results

Thanks, blade!

[penguin303]

Blade,

As I mentioned in my original post, my service is setup over a local network in my apartment. I'm pretty sure that the bandwidth should be wide enough that the problem would not be located there.

Any other suggestions?

[ID10Tbox]

Not trying to hijack your thread here penguin, but I think we may both benefit from any potential solutions posted here.

Well I set my desktop machine up as a Placeshifter server, made sure utorrent was not running and eating up all the bandwidth.

Desktop machine is a 2.4GHz P4. It is on a wired DSL 1.5Mbps/768Kbps connection. In speed tests from this machine I generally get downloads of 1.2Mbps and higher and uploads at about 600Kbps and higher.
I am able to connect from the office, but video playback has not improved in any way. In fact, I tried playing an mp3 using Placeshifter and all I got was about a second worth of music here and there. I have tried with the Dynamic Streaming System on and I have tried with manually entered values, playing with the video bitrate, the audio bitrate and the frames per second. Tried with and without video post-processing turned on. None of it seemed to make much of a difference. This is using the 6.014 beta on both - maybe I should try dropping back to 5.04?

If anyone has any other ideas I am open to them. I'd really love to see this work.

[ID10Tbox]

OK I think I figured out what was happening. When I got home from work I checked my desktop PC, SageTV (not the service) was still running. It wasn't doing anything, nothing connected, but it was running AND using 99% CPU consistently. I killed that and started the SageTV service. Then from my living room machine (the weak Epia box) connected to my neighbor's wireless LAN (different network, different provider) and fired up Placeshifter. Seems to play pretty good from there - probably as good as it gets without paying to increase my upload. So I will try it from work tomorrow. The moral, even a somewhat decent processor can be brought to its knees by an errant process using all of your CPU cycles.

[belleboyd]

I am having this same issue. Recorded video is fine but Live TV is useless. I get a video stutter that makes Placeshifter unwatchable. This is across my LAN ... not out to the world. I even removed McAffee to see if that was eating up memory or processing time. I've been monitoring my CPU cycles and it's nowhere near pegged.

I will try running client to see if that helps.. but I'd appreciate any other suggestions... do you think its my setup?

Thanks!

System Info:
Celeron 1.7Mhz
Biostar U8568 mobo (VIA P4X266E chipset)
AGP Radeon 9100
768K memory
40 Gig IDE
400 gig SATA
SageTv beta 6
PVR 150

[bhyman1]

Originally Posted by cenwesi

have you tried adding this line to the SageTVPlaceshifter.properties file in C:\Documents and Settings\<YOURDIR>\.sagetv

video_buffer_size=32000000

This solved my stuttering problem. Works great now at high quality!

[millers_35]

Originally Posted by bhyman1

This solved my stuttering problem. Works great now at high quality!

Yeah it makes a world of a difference. Placeshifter is pretty much flawness now with the latest beta and setting this propery.

Miller

[Stuntman]

Originally Posted by bhyman1

This solved my stuttering problem. Works great now at high quality!

Is this used still? I can't find that properties file! I have a quad core Intel system now as the server and placeshifter still stutters on my LAN pc's!

[benny.dahan]

Originally Posted by cenwesi

have you tried adding this line to the SageTVPlaceshifter.properties file in C:\Documents and Settings\<YOURDIR>\.sagetv

video_buffer_size=32000000

Great !!!
did it on my WinPC and it's working flawlessly !!!!
how can I do it on my MAC? there is no SageTVPlaceshifter.properties
anywhere on my MAC.
I've tried to change it on the sever side (c:\program files\sagetv\clients\001f3b350e09.properties - add the line, but it's keeps delete the line when I'm launching the placeshifter on the mac.

Thanks,
Benny

[dlastor]

My server is Vista Ultimate with SageTV MC 6, dual core Opteron, 4GB with HD-PVR and a DirecTV H20. My client is WinXP , dual core centrino with 4GB of DRAM. Everything internal to the house network is on a 100Gb backbone and has plenty of bandwidth to stream high quality video over the network (wired cat5e). Internet speed tests return about 12.5MB/sec on both wired and wireless; inTRAnet is faster.

My picture is GREAT on the server in HD, and SD. Recording come up fast and audio is in sync with video.

On the client side, I am having issues. I've tried every setting in the PlaceShifter client (I wrote all possibilities down and permuted through them all).

I've tried enabling the manual streaming settings and it improved slightly, but still about 8fps with disjoint audio. If I go back to Automatic streaming settings it's an improvement over the first time I used the setings, but still not coherent video / audio. This is the case over wireless and wired network connection. THe problem only occurs when watching Sage Live TV or Sage Recorded TV from within the client / placeshifter. The metrics within Placeshifter only show a network BW of about 300mb/s when watching Live TV or RecordTV, but pops up to the mid 900s when watching internet TV or ripped DVDs on the server; both are far less than I would expect, but the 900ish Mb/s is a good picture.

On the client side (only) the CPU utlization goes up to aroudn 70%, and then drops (with the video) to nothing. WHen streaming internet TV, or ripped DVDs, the CPU utilization settles around 8%. On the server side, it's always at around 10-15%.

I've tried: video_buffer_size=32000000, but it didn't make a difference for me.

Any help is greatly appreciated! I've just switched over from SnapStream to use the HD-PVR, SageMC, and the hardware extender. I don't want to spend anymore $ on this setup if it's not going to work.

Thanks in advance!

[Sparhawk6]

I am also having major stuttering issues using Placeshifter to watch HD content. These are not h.264 files, I am watching programs via QAM channels on my HVR-1600.

When I stream content using another program, such as Zplayer, using a different codec, it plays fine without any stuttering (but the end of the file doesn't dynamically update, so I can't really watch live TV this way). VLC player also plays it (albeit without audio, that's an entirely different issue). So I know my computer can handle it. I have a Core2Duo at 2 Ghz. Not the most powerful CPU, but again, when I use those other programs to open the video files, it plays fine.

It appears that Placeshifter uses an inferior codec. Is there any way to make it use a different codec? This bugs me.

Another note - I notice that my CPU is not maxed when I use the Placeshifter.

I've tried putting in the video buffer size tweak, doesn't fix it.

Is there ANY WAY to get this resolved?