HD content Jerky/Stutters

[jayrbrown77]

My HD video playback is stuttering. I've done the following with no success.

1. Defrag the partition
2. Verified that the partition is formated with the correct Sage requirements
3. Reverted back my 93.71 (93.xx) forceware driver back to the 91.xx
4. Changed the Purevideo settings to smart from automatic. No success. Switched back to automatic.
5. Attempted overlay, but no picture was displayed.
6. Video Quality set to fair
7. Changed video decoder to sage decoder (worse!)
8. VBox driver the beta driver, and one released before the beta.

The video file size is 7.5 GB. Reading the file shouldn't be the problem. CPU Usage during playback is around 30 to 40 %

Out of ideas.

[coppit]

I have the VBox USB 3560, and I'm having similar troubles. Are you seeing good audio and video for about 15 minutes, then hiccups, then repeat of 2-3 minutes of the show after it clears back up?

What version of Java? I'm using 1.5.10.

Is it the recording or the playback? What happens if you open the .mpg file in Windows Media Player? I get the same glitches, which means it must be the recording phase.

Part of me hopes I don't get it resolved so I can justify trying a Shuttle x200 with my USB tuner as a server.

[jayrbrown77]

Yes, I'm using the same versioin of java that you are.

The problem is throughout, audio is good, but picture is jerky. In the past, I haven't had good success with smooth playback in Microsoft Meida Player. I'll attempt again.

That brings up a good point, I noticed I had a recording of an ABC show, that play's back perfectly, but this CBS show doesn't. Although I get 100% signal for the CBS station. I'll have to try recording some more shows tonight, and see what happens.

[coppit]

Originally Posted by jayrbrown77

Yes, I'm using the same versioin of java that you are.

I heard there were memory leaks in Java 5.0, but I thought they were fixed in update 10. Anyway, I downgraded to 1.4.2 and will report my results.

Originally Posted by jayrbrown77

The problem is throughout, audio is good, but picture is jerky. In the past, I haven't had good success with smooth playback in Microsoft Meida Player. I'll attempt again.

That brings up a good point, I noticed I had a recording of an ABC show, that play's back perfectly, but this CBS show doesn't.

It sounds like we're having different issues. My problem occurs for every channel, SD or HD content.

[jayrbrown77]

And mine is just for HD.

Does the recording quality affect playback for HD. I have it set to fair which is around 7.5GB/hour. The abc show that was recorded that playsback without stutter was recorded in BeyondTV 8.5GB/hour(which plays it back crappy, but sage plays that video back stutter free). I changed my recording from fair to best, and will see what happens.

Anybody else experience anything simular. What do people have their recording quality set to for HD?

[Muchacho]

I can only get smooth HD playback with the old nvidia drivers (the 80 series). I have a 6000GT as well. I would try using those old drivers- I am using the 84.25 set and get pretty good results.

[blade]

Originally Posted by jayrbrown77

Does the recording quality affect playback for HD. I have it set to fair which is around 7.5GB/hour. The abc show that was recorded that playsback without stutter was recorded in BeyondTV 8.5GB/hour(which plays it back crappy, but sage plays that video back stutter free). I changed my recording from fair to best, and will see what happens.

Anybody else experience anything simular. What do people have their recording quality set to for HD?

Recording quality only applies to analog capture not HD. The HD streams are already encoded when you receive them. All your capture card does is write the data to the disk.

[camus]

And just to add to that ABC broadcasts at 720p while NBC/CBS at 1080i, hence your stuttering on NBC or CBS.

[GollyJer]

Originally Posted by Muchacho

I can only get smooth HD playback with the old nvidia drivers (the 80 series). I have a 6000GT as well. I would try using those old drivers- I am using the 84.25 set and get pretty good results.

Does this work for 1080i content? Are you in Overlay or VMR9 mode?
Thanks.

[jayrbrown77]

Originally Posted by Muchacho

I can only get smooth HD playback with the old nvidia drivers (the 80 series). I have a 6000GT as well. I would try using those old drivers- I am using the 84.25 set and get pretty good results.

I set it to the 84.x version and I'm still having issues. It just looks like it is skipping frames, so it doesn't look smooth. I changed the nvidia picture quality to high performance, but that didn't seem to help any. The older driver did mess with my color, but I don't think that will be hard to fix. I just can't stand watching HD that is not smooth. Did you make any changes to the video settings.

I'm using VMR9, with purevideo. Overlay doesn't even work for me. Found out that I didn't have the latest Purevideo, so I installed that. No change. Still AFU.

[coppit]

I figured out my problem... I had hooked a USB hub into the same motherboard hub as my VBox USB tuner. Then I had a USB 1.x device attached to the external hub. I guess the external hub then ran at 1.x speed, which caused my motherboard hub to also run at 1.x speed.

After very carefully separating my USB 1.x and 2.0 devices, I'm now recording from 2 VBox HDTV USB tuners at the same time without a hitch, even to the same hard drive.

My new project is to build an unRaid server...

[Kos.]

If you have a Vbox 150 or 151, there is a new driver out, at: http://www.vboxcomm.com/drivers03.htm. For one thing, it does better tuning. My previous driver just could not pull in a VHS HD station. Now it does. Maybe this might help you also.

[cummings66]

Those aren't new drivers, been there quite a while in fact and there could be a problem using them. The infamous BSOD does result if you have more than one of the cards in your system, and sometimes occurs if you have different capture devices as well.

[gwgunter]

Same type of issue here. I believe misery deserves company so I'll offer my 2bits on this. Changing the decoders does seem to effect the stuttering for the better and sometimes for the worse. I've tried manipulated the overlay, FSE, and 3d acceleration stuff but still not working. I guess my next step is to install the vbox on a new pc and try to duplicate the issue on different hardware. Any ideas to help are greatly appreciated?



System:HP z540 with a Haup 500, 150, and the USB Vbox 3560. Integrated Radeon x300. Nvidia decoders, overlay mode, FSE, and Java 1.5.11

[OttoNP]

Try these settings for 6600GT card (GPU of at least 400 mhz) and better:
1. Use VMR9, nvidia video, AC3 audio decoder, set FSE mode to on, Set Sage to load in full screen, restart computer and see how it goes.

If no good, then try:

2. Use VMR9, nivida video decoder, open a video to access nvidia decoder and set to "film", AC3 audio decoder, set FSE mode to on, set sage to load in full screen, restart computer and see how it goes. If it works well, you can probably turn FSE off, I have found I only need FSE mode if I use "smart", "automatic", or "video" in nvidia decoder

If still no good, then try

3. overlay, nvidia video decoder, ac3 audio decoder, set FSE to off, 3d accel on, set sage to load in full screen, restart computer and see how it goes. Film may make a difference, but to me once I switch to overlay there is little effect (FPS same).

Final comments:
1. If GPU is less than 400 mhz, you probably can not run with VMR9, only overlay
2. Make sure hardware acceleration is enabled
3. Nvidia video decoder good
4. Nvidia audio decoder very bad (with spdif and 1080i shows)
5. Check CPU usage, if at 100, could be other processes running or not enough CPU processor. nvidia video decoder drops cpu usage a lot..
6. If CPU is low, then look at bitrate in video decoder, does it drop to 0? if it does, could be hard drive speed issue
7. If CPU is low, bitrate looks pretty constant, then probably driver/decoder/graphics card issue
8. 1080i shows seem to be most troublesome
9. restarting between tests can help, especially when experimenting with FSE mode
10. Try to test on same scene

I really hope this helps everyone, I can not tell you how happy I was to finally get smooth HDTV playback. For reference my system is Asus AN8X, EVGA 7600GT, 1GB memory, AMD3200, 2 WD 160GB drives in SATA Raid 0. I had a 7300GT and closest I got to acceptable playback was overlay with 3d accel off. VMR9 in film mode was only slightly worse.

[12three45]

When i had XP installed, HD from my HDHomerun worked fine 90% of the time and had trouble with a couple shows like 24 with audio stuttering. Now with Vista, I can't get smooth play back on any HD recordings. It seems like audio is recored fine, but video just seems to skip frames.

Anyone else having this problem too? Any fixes?

Current config: Vista Business, AMD64 4000+, EVGA 7600GT, 600GB RAID 0, 2 GB memory, and 2 GB readyboost, HDHomerun.

Vista also runs my processor a lot higher than XP for other processes and not just SageTV. Sage runs around 40% and Vista has system processes which I can't figure out what that is that takes up the rest of the CPU. I just bought an Opteron 185 dual processor and see if it will help out.

Andy

[bbig119]

I've got a 6600GT and while I haven't tested in quite some time, I can tell you that older 80.x series drivers from nvidia performed better than the newer 90.x series. I stopped upgrading when I figured this out back at the end of summer so I can not comment on if things have gotten better, but my impression is that the newest drivers mostly offer features for the newer cards and not the 6600 series.

FWIW, I can get smooth playback with VMR9 using FSE. However due to the way my HT setup works, using overlay makes the system much easier to use and for HD I have a hard time noticing a PQ difference. Its the analog that suffers most from overlay vs. VMR9.

[jphhughes]

Originally Posted by OttoNP

Try these settings for 6600GT card (GPU of at least 400 mhz) and better:
1. Use VMR9, nvidia video, AC3 audio decoder, set FSE mode to on, Set Sage to load in full screen, restart computer and see how it goes.

If no good, then try:

2. Use VMR9, nivida video decoder, open a video to access nvidia decoder and set to "film", AC3 audio decoder, set FSE mode to on, set sage to load in full screen, restart computer and see how it goes. If it works well, you can probably turn FSE off, I have found I only need FSE mode if I use "smart", "automatic", or "video" in nvidia decoder

If still no good, then try

3. overlay, nvidia video decoder, ac3 audio decoder, set FSE to off, 3d accel on, set sage to load in full screen, restart computer and see how it goes. Film may make a difference, but to me once I switch to overlay there is little effect (FPS same).

Final comments:
1. If GPU is less than 400 mhz, you probably can not run with VMR9, only overlay
2. Make sure hardware acceleration is enabled
3. Nvidia video decoder good
4. Nvidia audio decoder very bad (with spdif and 1080i shows)
5. Check CPU usage, if at 100, could be other processes running or not enough CPU processor. nvidia video decoder drops cpu usage a lot..
6. If CPU is low, then look at bitrate in video decoder, does it drop to 0? if it does, could be hard drive speed issue
7. If CPU is low, bitrate looks pretty constant, then probably driver/decoder/graphics card issue
8. 1080i shows seem to be most troublesome
9. restarting between tests can help, especially when experimenting with FSE mode
10. Try to test on same scene

I really hope this helps everyone, I can not tell you how happy I was to finally get smooth HDTV playback. For reference my system is Asus AN8X, EVGA 7600GT, 1GB memory, AMD3200, 2 WD 160GB drives in SATA Raid 0. I had a 7300GT and closest I got to acceptable playback was overlay with 3d accel off. VMR9 in film mode was only slightly worse.

Just for information purposes what cpu utilization to you get when recording and playing back HDTV. I have a Athlon 3500+ and its runs between 50% and 70%. By the way your informations has helped me. Thanks

[OttoNP]

Just playing back a HDTV show live it will be between 20-30%. for AMD3200. When I'm recording a show showanalzyer comes up pretty quick and it jumps to 99-100% but still no stutter (I kind of expected that it would and I'd have to set show analyzer to run at certain times). I'm not sure where it would be recording 1 show while watching another without SA; however, last night was a great torture test on it. We were watching one HDTV show while recording two HDTV shows and showanalyzer was running on one the recording shows at the same time (it runs on one show, then the next) with not stutter, made me very happy!

Even with HDTV I would not expect a large change in processor because of recording a show.

Your issue reminds me of when I was running Sage with a Pentium III 733mhz, I had a weird experience involving high CPU usage while recording. My first setup was PentiumIII 733mhz, 2 tuner 500 card, and a single 150GB IDE drive. I could tape two SD shows at once while watching another. I'd see maybe 5% change in processor when taping a show. I could not run SA while watching anything, even after messing with throttling in SA. Nor I could run with VMR9 and I had to use nvidia video decoder. I got my hands on a 80GB and a 150GB IDE drive and figured why not install them and go to the next version of sage. After I added them, i could not watch one show while recording a show period whereas before adding them i could tape 2 shows and watch one fine. After sorting out the effects of new Sage (could not get version 5 working with this setup) The CPU would go near 100% while just taping 2 shows. I quickly found that by removing the drives everything would be fine, playing around with everything, I managed to get it working by switching around what was in each PCI slot, it seemed to be some kind of IRQ issue that would slow the whole system down.

Here is a link to that thread:

http://forums.freytechnologies.com/f...ad.php?t=17038

I see your using a hdhomerun, so everything is coming through network interface. I went back and forth between hdhomerun and hvr-1600, landed on hvr-1600 because of sale at circuit city. Maybe network interface is creating more CPU usage for you, what is usage when just recording a show?

[jphhughes]

Originally Posted by OttoNP

http://forums.freytechnologies.com/f...ad.php?t=17038

I see your using a hdhomerun, so everything is coming through network interface. I went back and forth between hdhomerun and hvr-1600, landed on hvr-1600 because of sale at circuit city. Maybe network interface is creating more CPU usage for you, what is usage when just recording a show?

These are the approx numbers from task manager.

Recording with SageTV 30-40%.

Playback with SageTV 33-45%

Playback with VLC 22-44%

LiveTV with SageTV 61-71%

I assume Live TV would be like recording and watching the same show. This number seems high.