Video Stutter with v6

[salsbst]

Originally Posted by cummings66

Yes, the issue I had was different. On the same file I would get a different filter every so often, you couldn't guarantee it would end up being the same one each time.

I unregistered the one I didn't want and Nvidia is always the filter now, and to be honest SD seems nicer. I never had complaints with it, but it is nicer now than it was.

HD is better, enough so that I could probably live with it as is. It's not perfect, but it is improved. At this point maybe it needs more HP on the graphics card to be perfect.

I'd like to know for 100% that this is what I need to do before I spend hundreds of dollars on a card, know what I mean.

To be honest, I've considered blowing away windows and doing a total reinstall and seeing what happens. But that's not a quick process.

Have you or have you not tried the other Sage demux filter in graphedit? I'm really curious what that would do for you.

[PhillJones]

Originally Posted by cummings66

I guess the question is why one uses it and the other doesn't, by default. But there's an oddity, after checking it again they both used Nvidia, then after a couple more checks it was back the other way.

I don't get why it sometimes uses Nvidia and sometimes doesn't. Yes, if it uses Nvidia it works, and if it doesn't it stutters.

Somethings not right on my Windows Installation I'm afraid, now to see why. I couldn't get it to use VMR9, it would give me an error and say that it can't make the connection.

Maybe I'll try playing it in WMP and see what filters that uses, I can't connect to say playing back a video but I think it used to connect to WMP.

Oh okay, now I'm following you, I miss-understood you and thought that you'd built those graphs.

It's certainly odd, but i guess the solution to that part of it is simple enough. Now I guess just play with the demuxer and you're probably golden. (fingers crossed).

Let us know how the choice of demux affects your playback. I'm going to look into the same thing myself over the week-end if I can figure out how to manipulate the graphs.

[Chilli]

Originally Posted by mrcandu

Thanks for the reply salsbst,
So my PC might have "microstutter" ......... doesn't sound good.
I have not looked at the CPU performance for a while, but I seem to remember it was pretty low around 10%. I will check it out and look into "microstutter" when I get back home.
Many Thanks,
Mat.

I had microstutters during HD playback using the Intervideo NonCSS decoder - worse in VMR than Overlay but it's there in both modes. Changing to Intervideo decoders fixed the stuttering in BOTH modes! Interestingly, I got microstutters when the CPU was running at 15% with NonCSS decoders but switching to the Intervideo decoder caused CPU to run at 50% but playback is beautifully smooth in both VMR and Overlay modes. It's almost like the CPU wasn't doing any of the heavy lifting when using the NonCSS decoder...

I'm using Intervideo as the audio decoder with VSE off. My system is an AMD X2 3800+, 1GB RAM, nForce 430, 320GB SATA, WinMCE 2005 (Update Rollup 2), Nvidia 7300GS 256MB w/93.51 drivers (1080p HDMI-out to TV; DVI to monitor), Java 1.5, HDHR and Sage 6.0.19.

[hechacker1]

Originally Posted by cummings66

Yes, the issue I had was different. On the same file I would get a different filter every so often, you couldn't guarantee it would end up being the same one each time.

I unregistered the one I didn't want and Nvidia is always the filter now, and to be honest SD seems nicer. I never had complaints with it, but it is nicer now than it was.

HD is better, enough so that I could probably live with it as is. It's not perfect, but it is improved. At this point maybe it needs more HP on the graphics card to be perfect.

I'd like to know for 100% that this is what I need to do before I spend hundreds of dollars on a card, know what I mean.

To be honest, I've considered blowing away windows and doing a total reinstall and seeing what happens. But that's not a quick process.

Confirmed. I just checked mplayerc and the SageTV MPEG Splitter had higher priority than Nvidia's splitter.

I downloaded this software:
http://www.softella.com/dsfm/index.en.htm

and put SageTV splitter to 0 priority. Stuttering is now completely eliminated on most channels using the "smart" setting in the Purevideo decoder.

Before "smart" never worked and I had to use "automatic".

[mrcandu]

Originally Posted by cummings66

What do you have the Nvidia Purevideo stuff set to? I had similar issues with it when using the wrong mode, i.e. you have automatic, smart, etc. Depending on version automatic works better, and some smart works better, try playing with it and see what you get.

Use the Nvidia stuff of course to test. For SD I don't believe anything in the Sage program is at fault, from what I've seen it's mostly codec related stuff there.

Originally Posted by Chilli

I had microstutters during HD playback using the Intervideo NonCSS decoder - worse in VMR than Overlay but it's there in both modes. Changing to Intervideo decoders fixed the stuttering in BOTH modes! Interestingly, I got microstutters when the CPU was running at 15% with NonCSS decoders but switching to the Intervideo decoder caused CPU to run at 50% but playback is beautifully smooth in both VMR and Overlay modes. It's almost like the CPU wasn't doing any of the heavy lifting when using the NonCSS decoder...

I'm using Intervideo as the audio decoder with VSE off. My system is an AMD X2 3800+, 1GB RAM, nForce 430, 320GB SATA, WinMCE 2005 (Update Rollup 2), Nvidia 7300GS 256MB w/93.51 drivers (1080p HDMI-out to TV; DVI to monitor), Java 1.5, HDHR and Sage 6.0.19.

Originally Posted by astribli

One way you can tell is if using PureVideo, while watching some video, right click the PureVideo icon in the task bar and open the properties.

Look at the frame rate and you will see it running somewhere around 10-18 Mbps, but ever second or two it drops just for a moment to 0. If I use the older nVidia 84.21 drivers with Overlay, frame rate is nice and constant. Use VMR9 and/or latest 93.71 drivers, and frame rate drops every few seconds which correlates to the micro stutter.

The point about uninstallers not putting things completely back confirms my suspicions. The only way I got my setup to work was revert back to a clean install of Windows. I have only patched Windoze up to SP2. Have not installed the latest WMP and other stuff. That with older nVidia drivers (84.21) and Overlay works. Luckily I had made a disk image of the basic Windows image (using Acronis True Image) before installing Sage which allowed me to revert back to a virgin system and experiment with different versions of things.

Thanks for you input....
I'm now fairly sure that my problem with "micro stutter" is not Sage specific and is not related to this thread anyway, so I will start another for this problem elsewhere. But just to add that the frame rate display using purevideo is pretty consistant without any drops in both VMR9 and overlay, as is my cpu usage which is under 10%. I have played about with all variety of settings in purevideo, sage and the display driver, so now I'm gonna try to play about with older drivers for my 7900gs, but being a fairly new card, i'm not sure how far I can go back.
Thanks again for the input.
Mat.

[salsbst]

Originally Posted by mrcandu

Thanks for you input....
I'm now fairly sure that my problem with "micro stutter" is not Sage specific and is not related to this thread anyway, so I will start another for this problem elsewhere. But just to add that the frame rate display using purevideo is pretty consistant without any drops in both VMR9 and overlay, as is my cpu usage which is under 10%. I have played about with all variety of settings in purevideo, sage and the display driver, so now I'm gonna try to play about with older drivers for my 7900gs, but being a fairly new card, i'm not sure how far I can go back.
Thanks again for the input.
Mat.

Before you give up on Sage as being a part of the stutter, I would ask that you verify the graph in GraphEdit.

WMP is going to use whatever are the default filters. So will GraphEdit if you let it create a graph for you. I'm (personally) most interested in the demux situation, and I think you should be, too, as you try to resolve your issue. It's an important part of understanding any rendering problem, but one which applications tend not to report.

If you allow GraphEdit to build a graph for a recording that gives you stutters, what demux filter does it use?

[salsbst]

Regarding my own stuttering and rendering problems (now under 6.1, previously under 6.0), I think I'm approaching a solution again. It looks like, once again, using Sage's mpegdemux.ax is the key to being able to render all files and having them mostly not stutter. It doesn't work well unless I set Nvidia's video decoder to "film" deinterlacing, though. And I have had some trouble with some files either not displaying video in Sage or hanging at the spinning thingy. In graphedit, this graph works flawlessly every time. In Sage, it appears to be a bit hit or miss for now. SDTV mpeg2's from Hauppauge cards are fine, SDTV from firewire seems fine. HDTV from firewire and from HDHomeRun have been off and on, but right now, I think they're working. When they don't work, backing off of the playback, playing back an easier file (SDTV from Hauppauge, for instance), and then re-attempting the HDTV file seems to be a somewhat reliable way to get things straight.

I'm going to let it ride for a few watching periods with my wife and see where things land.

Jeff, are you out there? Would appreciate your involvement.

[DigitalWarrior]

I haven't been doing any HD recording, but I was suffering from some "microstuttering" when playing back SD content. I traced the problem to the use of AMD's Cool and Quiet driver. So if you have an AMD-based system and you have the Cool and Quiet driver installed and enabled, try turning it off or removing it as part of your troubleshooting. Just another thing on your list of things to try.

[cummings66]

Originally Posted by salsbst

Have you or have you not tried the other Sage demux filter in graphedit? I'm really curious what that would do for you.

No, I have not used the one you said caused you to have stutter. I'll give that a shot this weekend since it looks to be poor for any outdoor stuff.

[cummings66]

Originally Posted by hechacker1

Confirmed. I just checked mplayerc and the SageTV MPEG Splitter had higher priority than Nvidia's splitter.

I downloaded this software:
http://www.softella.com/dsfm/index.en.htm

I'll try that one, I used the other and even though I gave a higher priority to the Nvidia stuff it never came up, I even told it the sage was not preferred and it still used it. That's why I unregisterdd it.

I've got more work to do. I know I'm this close "" to buying the XFX 7600GT card and trying it out. It's better than my 6600GT I'm sure, but I'm still not sure it's not a filter issue somehow causing it.

Part of the bug is that it works sometimes and other times it doesn't making it hard for Jeff to recreate. I wonder if what's happening is what happened with me when I used graphedit, it showed different graphs on occasion for the same file for no reason. I'm curious why the OS allowed that to happen and the answer to that might be what solved the issue for others. I know I've had perfect playback, then the same show later on stutters and nothing changed. No updates, reboots, anything. Just like graphedit showed my system sometimes rendered it differently, now to discover why?

[salsbst]

Originally Posted by cummings66

No, I have not used the one you said caused you to have stutter. I'll give that a shot this weekend since it looks to be poor for any outdoor stuff.

Actually, you've been using the one that I believe *does* cause stutter (for me), according to the graphs you posted. The one that doesn't cause stutter is C:\Program Files\SageTV\Common\MpegDeMux.ax, which is listed in GraphEdit as SageTV MpegDemux.

[coryking]

While I dont have any real way to reproduce this, I offer this:

No Studder:
- Sage v6.0.19.120
- Windows XP, sp1
- Java 1.5.x

After a drive format I put on XP, sp2
Now I've got studder and problems "waking up". Same driver versions, same directx versions. I put on Java 1.6, it was worse. Reverted to 1.5 and the studder is better.

These studders feel like the system is swapping. What is more intersting some of the studders are actually part of the recording, like it was hicupping while being recorded. I'll watch the hard drive light, and it will almost go solid during the hiccup. When I restart the front end, the studder will go away for a while. Almost like a memory leak, but probably instead some kind of caching that sagetv is doing...

I really am starting to think that these newer versions of sage require more memory. I've got 640mb of ram on that thing. I'm not complaining, mind you, I think new systems really should have about 2 gigs of ram these days. I just suspect 640mb doesn't cut it anymore and I'll have to pony up for some more.

What would help, I think, is if people post the amount of ram they've got.

By the way, is there a way to configure debug logging from within sagetv? If there ain't, it really should. The lady gets mighty suspicious when I have to drop into windows to muck around, and I personally don't get to excited about editing config files by hand. Give me a way to turn it on and you can dump it right into the sagetv directory. After that, I can just pull the log file off the network, zip it up, and mail it off. She'll be none the wiser and I can help you repro what I suspect is a very, very frustrating bug. :-)

[cummings66]

Originally Posted by salsbst

Actually, you've been using the one that I believe *does* cause stutter (for me), according to the graphs you posted. The one that doesn't cause stutter is C:\Program Files\SageTV\Common\MpegDeMux.ax, which is listed in GraphEdit as SageTV MpegDemux.

The one being used, or was at any rate is the stvempeg.ax? I'm not able to get to that computer just yet. Now it defaults to a different decoder and as I said that one produces better results on SD and I think better on HD.

I think my display resolution timing chase might have been a red herring.

In the sage properties file you'll see an option to turn on debug logging, set it to TRUE. That's the only way to do it.

Regarding the SP1 vs SP2, yes the directx stuff was changed. The quartz.dll file is different depending on you arrived at the DX9c level. Mine is 1.2 Megs in size, some are close to 1.8 megs. I've read that is possibly also a problem, it's used in VMR9 playback. If I could get rid of DX9 safely and reinstall from the redist kit I have I could prove it. I've got one of those programs that claims to do it, but it's so risky...

[stevech]

Originally Posted by coryking

I really am starting to think that these newer versions of sage require more memory. I've got 640mb of ram on that thing. I'm not complaining, mind you, I think new systems really should have about 2 gigs of ram these days. I just suspect 640mb doesn't cut it anymore and I'll have to pony up for some more.

What would help, I think, is if people post the amount of ram they've got.

Sage 5 here. 1G RAM. If you do not try to do transcoding or commercial editing on the same PC, I think 1G is plenty. Perhaps even 512MB.

[astribli]

Originally Posted by cummings66

The one being used, or was at any rate is the stvempeg.ax? I'm not able to get to that computer just yet. Now it defaults to a different decoder and as I said that one produces better results on SD and I think better on HD.

I think my display resolution timing chase might have been a red herring.

In the sage properties file you'll see an option to turn on debug logging, set it to TRUE. That's the only way to do it.

Regarding the SP1 vs SP2, yes the directx stuff was changed. The quartz.dll file is different depending on you arrived at the DX9c level. Mine is 1.2 Megs in size, some are close to 1.8 megs. I've read that is possibly also a problem, it's used in VMR9 playback. If I could get rid of DX9 safely and reinstall from the redist kit I have I could prove it. I've got one of those programs that claims to do it, but it's so risky...

None of that stuff made any difference. DX, quartz, etc. In fact latest versions of all that seemed to make it worse.

In my previous posts, what made it work for me was:

1. Clean install of Windows
2. Only patch Windwoes to SP2, nothing beyond that (this is a dedicated machine so don't care about other updates)
3. Only install nVidia drivers version 84.21. Some people pointed out that installing latest (93.71) then trying to revert seemed to screw it up.
4. Install nVidia PureVideo
5. Use DecCheck to set default video codec to PureVideo
6. Sage 6.0.19
7. Set Sage to use Default Video Codec, Overlay, no FSE

This all works great now on this hardware:

1. nVidia 6200 AGP w/256MB
2. PCTV HD Pro Stick USB (everything is direct over the air ATSC - works great !)
3. ECS Nforce3-a Motherboard w/512 MB RAM
4. Sempron 3100+ processor
5. 300 GB SATA drive
6. CPU runs around 20-30% while recording HD and playing back previously recorded HD simultaneously.

I get smooth playback, very sharp picture, and if you look at the video codec throughput (via PureVideo properties), it is a pretty solid 10-18 Mbps depending on broadcast. No disappearing to 0 Mbps every few seconds.

In addition, the overall response of Sage is nice and fast. When trying to use latest drivers, VMR9, etc., and when things were stuttering, even though CPU was still around 30-50%, it might work depending on channel, but everything was sluggish. Even clicking menus were slower. With setup above, it's all great.

[PhillJones]

So I checked an I was using the nVIDIA demux. I used filter manager to set the merit of nVIDIA and Sage MPEG Splitter to Do not use and got it to use Sage MPEG Demux.

One thing that i noticed is that Sage Demux has a passthrough. it was originally connected to something just called MPEG demultiplexor that has no outputs. What's that about?

I figured it would cause unnecersary overhead so disabled it. Now graphedit tells me that aspect of the file are unsupported but it plays fine. I'm not sure if I should put it back in because I don't know why it was there.

By the way. I recorded the latest Gray's Anatomy. It won't play in sage but will play in Windows media player. It's the only recording I've seen do this. Do you think there are any tests or debuging I can do that might shed some light on this issue? If anybody what's me to try anything, let me know. If not I'll just delete it.

[salsbst]

Originally Posted by PhillJones

So I checked an I was using the nVIDIA demux. I used filter manager to set the merit of nVIDIA and Sage MPEG Splitter to Do not use and got it to use Sage MPEG Demux.

One thing that i noticed is that Sage Demux has a passthrough. it was originally connected to something just called MPEG demultiplexor that has no outputs. What's that about?

I figured it would cause unnecersary overhead so disabled it. Now graphedit tells me that aspect of the file are unsupported but it plays fine. I'm not sure if I should put it back in because I don't know why it was there.

I see the extra pin on Sage's mpegdemux.ax as well. I'm not sure what its for and haven't identified it specifically as a problem, so I've just left it alone.

Did you find that this demux filter improved anything w/respect to stuttering?

By the way. I recorded the latest Gray's Anatomy. It won't play in sage but will play in Windows media player. It's the only recording I've seen do this. Do you think there are any tests or debuging I can do that might shed some light on this issue? If anybody what's me to try anything, let me know. If not I'll just delete it.

There are a couple of files I've found that seem to balk at being rendered when I have mpegdemux.ax in the mix. This is actually much better than the other demux filters, which definitely refuse to render a number of my recordings. With mpegdemux.ax, those that do pose trouble the first time Sage attempts to render them, are actually renderable the second time I try (after backing out of playback onto the menu). It seems like there may be some timing problem with the graph building process that is solved by giving it a second chance.

Again, within Graphedit, the results are obviously better with Sage's mpegdemux.ax. In SageTV there are hiccups, but it's still worlds better than the (default) alternative, which is Sage's mpeg splitter.

[cummings66]

Originally Posted by astribli

7. Set Sage to use Default Video Codec, Overlay, no FSE

This all works great now on this hardware:

On my system that is also smooth as silk, it's like a completely different machine using overlay. The only problem is I hate overlay and won't use it, VMR9 gives a much improved picture when calibrated vs overlay calibrated.

Overlay is acceptable, but on my 84 inch screen (small I know) it just does not have the pop that VMR9 does. The good thing is most of the shows I watch are on CBS and I can render 1080i without stutter, it's 720p that gives it a fit. And that is not all the time. For example Boston Legal stutters, yet other shows on ABC are fine. Boston Legal doesn't always do that either, that's where I think my machine is doing something on it's own in regards to filters.

Somebody help me out here, doesn't graphedit have the ability to tell you what the graph is that say WMP or Sage uses? I could have sworn it did that, but it won't tell me anything now.

[PhillJones]

Originally Posted by salsbst

I see the extra pin on Sage's mpegdemux.ax as well. I'm not sure what its for and haven't identified it specifically as a problem, so I've just left it alone.

Did you find that this demux filter improved anything w/respect to stuttering?

There are a couple of files I've found that seem to balk at being rendered when I have mpegdemux.ax in the mix. This is actually much better than the other demux filters, which definitely refuse to render a number of my recordings. With mpegdemux.ax, those that do pose trouble the first time Sage attempts to render them, are actually renderable the second time I try (after backing out of playback onto the menu). It seems like there may be some timing problem with the graph building process that is solved by giving it a second chance.

Again, within Graphedit, the results are obviously better with Sage's mpegdemux.ax. In SageTV there are hiccups, but it's still worlds better than the (default) alternative, which is Sage's mpeg splitter.

It's not night and day but I think it's better than the nVIDIA demux. I haven't tried Sage MPEG Splitter to see if it's bad, maybe I'll give that a run tommorrow. I'm pretty sure that 1080i material is smoother.

What audio decoder are you using. I'm using nVIDIA although I was using ffdshow until recently. I think somebody said that using AC3filter helped with their stuttering issues.

I'm actually trying to solve my occasional stuuter issue. It's not the same as the micor stutter you guys are having. I get a sudden speed up of motion that lasts half a second or a loss of half a second of video every so often. Probably happens once per hour of playback on average.

The non-playing file isn't demux related. It didn't work using nVIDIA and doesn't work using sage MPEG demux. I also sometimes get a refusal to play that's solvable by stopping and restarting, this one is repeatable, it just never plays under sage.

[thatdude90210]

I saw some weird stuttering on HD files after upgrading to the latest Catalylst 7.2 driver. System is amd 64 3500 & x800xt. It's one of my Sage clients. After upgrading video driver, the cpu usage tripled and video stutters badly on HD.

I checked the decoder and hardware accel is still on. Tried other decoders, overlay/vmr9, audio decoders etc, but nothing helped.

So I rolled back to my previous driver, which was Catalyst 6.8, and HD video plays perfect again.

I have no problem with Cat 7.2 on another system with an x1600pro.