Video Stutter with v6

[salsbst]

Originally Posted by PhillJones

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.

I get the speed up/slowdown or loss of several seconds occasionally, as well.

EDIT: I have been attributing it to bandwidth limitations on the file server that stores the recordings.

[cummings66]

I thought it was just me that got that. I don't see it often but when I do some things would be the mouth stops moving and the audio continues on. Then it's like a FF to where it syncs up again, of course all motion stops when this happens. If you rewind to before that event it usually doesn't reoccur so you know that it wasn't the recording.

My recordings are local, so it's not your location.

[cummings66]

OK, after playing with things some more this is the default graph I get.

I'll note one thing, on one of the other graphs nowhere was the nvidia video decoder listed yet the nvidia codec was used as you could see it's icon and access it's properties. At least I assume that when I played it back it still wasn't in the chain.

I'd like Jeff to clarify something I'm thinking, I'm guessing Sage doesn't use the exact same graph as graphedit would show in all cases because it's obvious Nvidia is being used and it didn't show in the graphedit graph I had earlier.

I'm going to uninstall a couple things and see if the computer does better, since I don't browse the Internet for the most part I'm going to lose AVG and see if that helps.

[salsbst]

Two things about the Nvidia icon --

One, it can tend to hang around in the tray after it is no longer in use. Usually hovering the mouse over it in these cases will cause it to be cleaned up.

Two, it can show up due to use of the audio decoder, so even if the video decoder isn't Nvidia, you can still get the icon.

I don't know what purpose the "MPEG-2 Demultiplexer" filter has in the graph that you posted. I don't get that in my graphs.

I think that graphedit is usually going to build graphs with the same demultiplexer as sage uses, but it's certainly true that the audio and video decoders can be different if you set them to specific products in SageTV's setup.

[PhillJones]

Originally Posted by salsbst

Two things about the Nvidia icon --

One, it can tend to hang around in the tray after it is no longer in use. Usually hovering the mouse over it in these cases will cause it to be cleaned up.

Two, it can show up due to use of the audio decoder, so even if the video decoder isn't Nvidia, you can still get the icon.

I don't know what purpose the "MPEG-2 Demultiplexer" filter has in the graph that you posted. I don't get that in my graphs.

I think that graphedit is usually going to build graphs with the same demultiplexer as sage uses, but it's certainly true that the audio and video decoders can be different if you set them to specific products in SageTV's setup.

So when you drag an MPEG file into graphedit do you get a warning that some aspects of the file are not supported? Do you see the third output pin on the Sage MPEG demulitplexor? Is it connected to anything?

BTW, I know I said that I though that 1080i looked better with Sage MPEG demulitplexor but I'm going to retract that. Last night, the oscars had micro-judder. I've never seen micro judder before so I'm going to play with the demux again and see if I can see what causes it.

[salsbst]

Originally Posted by PhillJones

So when you drag an MPEG file into graphedit do you get a warning that some aspects of the file are not supported?

More often than not, I don't see that, but I have seen it a few times.

Do you see the third output pin on the Sage MPEG demulitplexor? Is it connected to anything?

Yes, I see it, and no, it's not connected to anything.

[PhillJones]

I confirmed it last night. SageMPEG Demultiplexor causes stuttering on some material whereas nVIDIA transport demux is much smoother although not perfect for everything.

Sorry guys but it's not a universal fix.

Also confirmed is that both graphs run smooth outside of sage and not inside.

I'm not going to be persuieing this for at least a while. I installed sageMC yesterday and now recording is broken so I've got to get to the bottom of that now.

[salsbst]

Originally Posted by PhillJones

I confirmed it last night. SageMPEG Demultiplexor causes stuttering on some material whereas nVIDIA transport demux is much smoother although not perfect for everything.

Sorry guys but it's not a universal fix.

Also confirmed is that both graphs run smooth outside of sage and not inside.

I'm not going to be persuieing this for at least a while. I installed sageMC yesterday and now recording is broken so I've got to get to the bottom of that now.

Sounds then like your problem and mine are different, at least.

IMO, if you can get smooth playback in Graphedit, and yet you have stuttering in Sage with the same filters (incl. same demux), then you have a case to take to SageTV as a bug, but I can empathize with you on not pursuing it for a while.

I've run out of steam on this problem at times, myself. Now that I'm mostly running smoothly, and now that I've done my duty to share what got it running again for me (on two different versions), I'm probably going to wait for some feedback from SageTV before I dig any deeper. I've reported my demux issue to SageTV already, though it didn't seem to be of too much interest.

[cummings66]

Using the graph I posted it seems my problems are not that bad right now, I watched some more HD last night without noticing the stutter which means I didn't go bonkers.

I tend to think it may be a combination of many things causing the problems, and while mine isn't perfect it's good enough to work.

[astribli]

So, not being an expert on graphedit and all that stuff, what does this all mean?

It sounds to me like some people can use graphedit to force certain demuxer and decoders to connect a certain way, and depending on configuration, it works better than the default sage internal connections between demuxers and decoders? Is that right?

Is this something the somewhat smart PC person should try to change, or wait until someone comes up with a more reliable and consistent solution?

Sorry if this is a stupid question but I for one am very literate with a PC, but not with video stuff as I have never played around with it before. Guess I should just stick with Overlay mode as it is working whereas VMR9 causes stuttering?

[salsbst]

Originally Posted by astribli

So, not being an expert on graphedit and all that stuff, what does this all mean?

It sounds to me like some people can use graphedit to force certain demuxer and decoders to connect a certain way, and depending on configuration, it works better than the default sage internal connections between demuxers and decoders? Is that right?

Is this something the somewhat smart PC person should try to change, or wait until someone comes up with a more reliable and consistent solution?

Sorry if this is a stupid question but I for one am very literate with a PC, but not with video stuff as I have never played around with it before. Guess I should just stick with Overlay mode as it is working whereas VMR9 causes stuttering?

I think your questions are right on.

In the past, SageTV just worked (for me an many others) regardless of which filters were used.

Today, things seem a bit sketchy, because:

a) digital recordings are now somewhat prevalent. It seems that the transport stream demuxing process hasn't yet reached the consistency that we had with bare MPEG2 recordings.

b) I think SageTV, the company, has fallen behind on rendering issues as they attempt to integrate various gadgets that their competitors are supporting, as far as transcoding and other niceties.

If you have something that works for you, I think you should definitely stick with it. Until SageTV, the company, finds the time to really dig in and focus on becoming a more consistent/reliable rendering system on PCs, I'm counting my blessings that I can get it to work at all.

The fact is that transport streams from the various digital providers of TV recordings are all over the map with respect to obeying standards, not to mention the quality or lack thereof of the streams that the various capture devices support.

It's not really SageTV's fault that transport streams are so different from one to the other, but it's apparently going to be the nature of the beast.

IMO, SageTV needs to devote a very talented programmer or programmers exclusively to the reading/demux/presentation to filters situation until they get it right. For a system that is otherwise superior to others on the market, SageTV's parsing and demux of transport streams right now is a sore spot.

One more time: not everyone is experiencing stuttering problems, and you might find great success with VMR9 in SageTV, but if you're happy with what you've got, then I would suggest standing pat until there is evidence that the problems some of us are having with rendering are being prioritized.

[GbrNole]

or get an HD extender and never look back when they become available...

[salsbst]

Originally Posted by GbrNole

or get an HD extender and never look back when they become available...

While I appreciate the thought, tell that to the people who invested in PCs at each node in their home entertainment system, and who want to use J. River Media Center and other PC-centric apps.

I guess my opinion is that PC users are being shafted by SageTV's quiet/glaring and subtle/obvious shift toward non-PC rendering.

SageTV is hanging us out to dry here in PC land while they pursue other devices. Going backwards with its base is a very bad sign.

That's right, I'm fed up. The silence from SageTV, aside from complaining about complaints on the forum, has become deafening. At this point, I regret the time I spent designing and building addons to SageTV. What happened to SageTV?

[salsbst]

My 2500th post was that diatribe. How fitting.

[astribli]

Originally Posted by salsbst

My 2500th post was that diatribe. How fitting.

Well I feel for you as it sounds like you are giving up, and that is not a good thing!

Seems more and more companies are worried about the competitors but forget about the core. In this case, reliability has to be # 1. If the product isn't reliable (i.e. stutters, cpu jumps to 100%, frame rates drop to 0 every few seconds, VMR9 doesn't work but plays fine in WMP, etc.) then who cares about the rest of the bells and whistles?

[toricred]

I'm trying to fix this by using graphedit. First question is, where is the best place to get a version that works? Second, how do I force Sage to use the graph I create?

[GbrNole]

**salsbst

i have to ask, is the pc setup noted in your link still your current setup? i understand your pain and some of it is still sage's doing but as i posted earlier in this thread i had serious stutter problems that were mostly caused by nvidia audio decoder and my worthless chaintech av710 (it's still a crap card) stopped using both of those and all i get now is the occasional stutter on CBS, the rest are perfect.

that said the pc in your link is pretty weak as far as playback of HD goes, well most of it is fine but a radeon 9600 is so on the borderline that it's just barely capable. also i'm not entirely sure what resolutions you're trying to scale to?

i'm sorry if i'm sounding like a sage apologist but after using the MVP for some time now i can honestly say that my much more expensive video card can't hold the mvp's jock for SD playback so i'm hopeful that an HD extender will be equally as painless.

[salsbst]

Originally Posted by GbrNole

**salsbst

i have to ask, is the pc setup noted in your link still your current setup? i understand your pain and some of it is still sage's doing but as i posted earlier in this thread i had serious stutter problems that were mostly caused by nvidia audio decoder and my worthless chaintech av710 (it's still a crap card) stopped using both of those and all i get now is the occasional stutter on CBS, the rest are perfect.

that said the pc in your link is pretty weak as far as playback of HD goes, well most of it is fine but a radeon 9600 is so on the borderline that it's just barely capable. also i'm not entirely sure what resolutions you're trying to scale to?

i'm sorry if i'm sounding like a sage apologist but after using the MVP for some time now i can honestly say that my much more expensive video card can't hold the mvp's jock for SD playback so i'm hopeful that an HD extender will be equally as painless.

Whoops, no, that stuff in the link is way outdated. I long ago set sage not to show signatures when it became fashionable to have signatures that were 10 or more lines long. I totally forgot about what mine might say.

The PC that has been plagued most since 6.0 is a Dell Inspiron 600n, which has a Radeon 9000 Mobility. Rendering via DVI->HDMI @1280x720p. Video filter is Nvidia, audio is AC3.

It worked flawlessly with Sage for HD in v5, but struggles mightily under v6.

Other than having to monkey with the demux merits, I've had to revert to "film" deinterlacing in Nvidia (was using "smart" under v5), and still, there are times when it stutters if I play back airings in a certain order. This is in our bedroom, which makes it especially annoying when something goes wrong when we're just trying to watch something and go to sleep peacefully.

I apologize for my rants. I won't take them back, since there really isn't any point in trying to remove the evidence, but I will acknowledge that I've become too emotionally invested in this system, and that I need to back off.

[GbrNole]

hey no problem i feel your pain - us tech gadgets inclined guys have all done it at one time or another with something we own (the bain of my existence used to be a 53" sony RPTV - man i had hatred in my heart for that tv and everything sony!)

i'm still shocked though that you were able to get a radeon 9000 chipset to play nice with HD - heck that's a feat in itself!

if you go over to xbit labs there's a really nice writeup on a bunch of mostly current video cards from budget to high end and how they handle video mpeg2 all the way through h.264 at different resolutions.
missingremote.com has a link to the article.

i can honestly say though that as good as the sage core is it's the 3rd party add-ons that keep people firmly locked in. heck if it wasn't for the fine work of the community members i too would probably be suffering the pains that can be MCE.

[PhillJones]

Okay, for those who are trying to follow along but not keeping up. Here's what I've done. This info is probably not definitive, it's merely what I understand to be the case at this point in time. I'm no expert.

You will need, Graphedit

http://www.digital-digest.com/dvd/do...hedit_141.html

A codec manager
Radlight is a favorite around these parts but I like
http://www.softella.com/dsfm/index.en.htm
They pretty much do the same thing but the the one above allows you to set a merit so low that the PC won't use it at all, without unregistering it. So we can put away our sledgehammers for now.


1) Let's see what you're PC is using to render the file.
Drag one of Sage's MPEG recordings into the graphedit window, just drop it in. After a few seconds you'll see something like this.



If not then you may still have sage running in sleep mode or some other application that won't release directX.

Here we see a file is split into audio and video with the sageTV mpeg splitter (Splitter=demux=demultiplexor). The video section is then decoded with the nVIDIA video decoder, the audio is decoded with the nVIDIA audio decoder. The video and audio are then passed to their respective devices.

If you press play, a window will pop up and video will play. If not, then you have bigger problems than I will address here.

2) Experiment with combinations of demux and filter
Go to the menu bar and pull up Graph-> Insert filters

Expand the Direct Show section and you'll see a vast array of filters. Scroll down to the Ss and you'll see the SageTV MPEG demulitplexor and the splitter, let's try the demultiplexor, since salsbst thinks it's best. Select it and press insert. It'll appear in the window.

Now delete the demux that's in the original graph, in the case above, it's the MPEG Splitter. A gap is now present in your graph, if you press play, you'll get an error. To make it play again, click on the output from the file ie. boston legal in the example above, and simply drag to the input of the demux, it'll draw an arrow. Then connect the video and audio outputs to the relevant decoders. Do not worry about the passthrough, it doesn't seem to matter.

Press play, is it better or worse?

You can try the nVIDIA transport demux, which works best for me and GbrNole says that the nVIDIA audio decoder causes him problems so he swapped it for AC3filter.

We have no recipe that'll work for everyone but feel free to play, you're not changing any settings at this point.

3) Change the filters

once you think you know which filters you want to replace with which, fire up the codec manager.

Go to the bad filters and select properties in softella, I think you just have to click on them in radlight. write down the name of the filter and it's present merit value, double check that you're looking at the right filter. Drag the merit down. I normally set the offending filter to the minimum value. Then open the filter that you're going to replace it with Write down which filter and the present merit value, double check that it's the right filter Drag it's merit value up to 'preferred'.

In principle, thew filter with the highest merit value will be selected but wierd things can happen, which is why I tend to completely disable the offending filters to make sure they don't get used. Salsbst actually unregisters them, but if you do so and then you wish to reverse the change, you'll have to figure out the filename of the filter, find it and reregister it. I'm not even sure how to register a filter since I never unregister them.

4) Test it,

REBOOT! No changes will take effect until you've rebooted. Then go back to step 1 and see if the right filters are being used. If not, then got to step 3 and fix the merit values. I had an issue that the Sage Demux was being called, then the passthrough was being being demuxed by the nVIDIA demux. Even though I'd set the Sage Demux to 'unlikely' I had to set the value to absolute minimum to stop it from happening.