High CPU Usage with SageTV

[joe123]

Ok, here is what I discovered. My system has been up for many hours now without the high CPU problem. To recap, I did *everything* mentioned above to no avail.

So I did a little debugging. The problem is with the SageTV transcoder program that looks at the first few images of a movie and creates the icon clip that you see on SageTV menu.

What is happening is that when a recording is corrupted, that transcoder get's stuck. Later, if you re-start Sage (like most of us probably do), that transcoder goes into a more weird state taking up SageTV cpu time.

Here is how to fix it:

- Stop SageTV
- Remove all movies clips from the SageTV directory (sorry, I am not home right now, so I forget the full path). This is the directory that has a picture of the first frame per movie.
- Restart SageTV

As you browse through your recordings, SageTV will now run that transcoder to create the image clips. With Windows process explorer, watch SageTV and notice when it get's stuck on the transcoder and find out the movie it is trying to process. You will need to either delete or fix that corrupted movie. I used VideoRedo "Fix Stream" to correct the corrupted movie.

- Repeat the steps above until all movie clips have been transcoded without problems. What you are doing is finding all bad corrupted movies and either removing them, or fixing them.

In my case, I found 4. Once all of my movies were corrected, the transcoder finished to completion and I have not had any more High CPU usage.

One final note: You need to keep deleting all those movie clips as you search for bad recordings. If you don't, what happens is that when SageTV starts again and finds the same bad recording AND the image clip it was not able to complete, it goes into that very weird state which will NOT SHOW UP what it is stuck at, just the fact that is it stuck somewhere consuming more and more threads and makes for a very difficult debugging of where the bad recording is. So, make sure you repeat the steps above in cleaning out ALL of those clips until the transcoder is completely done processing all movies.

If I am not making any sense, I will try to explaint it better later tonight.

Good luck.

Windows process explorer can be found here:
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sys...sExplorer.mspx

[dvd_maniac]

Is there a way to turn off the creation of the images from video files in the latest version or is that what ui/disable_native_image_loader=true is suppose to do?
I haven't had any more problems since using service mode and editting the properties file to ui/disable_native_image_loader=true

[wtsitmn]

I "upgraded" to version 6.1 today and am not a happy camper. Like everyone here has already said, at first things are fine but over time Sage runs amok. Back to the previous version for me.

[joe123]

Originally Posted by wtsitmn

I "upgraded" to version 6.1 today and am not a happy camper. Like everyone here has already said, at first things are fine but over time Sage runs amok. Back to the previous version for me.

Just curious - has anyone else tried the above instruction with any success?

[wtsitmn]

Just to follow up on my previous post...
I restored my system to pre-6.1 and everything works fine again. I just wanted to assure anyone who thought my particular problem was brought on by some sort of coincidental hardware issue--nope. There is definitely something amiss with the new version. Too bad, because several of the annoying bugs in 6.0 were fixed in 6.1.

Well, back to the drawing board!

[joe123]

Originally Posted by wtsitmn

Just to follow up on my previous post...
I restored my system to pre-6.1 and everything works fine again. I just wanted to assure anyone who thought my particular problem was brought on by some sort of coincidental hardware issue--nope. There is definitely something amiss with the new version. Too bad, because several of the annoying bugs in 6.0 were fixed in 6.1.

Well, back to the drawing board!

I agree that something is broken with SageTV 6.1.x I am curious if you tried the "fix" I outlined above and if it worked or not?

I stronly believe that it is due to the transcoder getting stuck and SageTV has not put a way to have the process die automatically when it gets stuck, thus why the CPU goes crazy.

[unkyjoe]

Do a Google search for a program called "Process Explorer" it is made by a company "Sys Internals" that was snatched up by Mircrosoft.

It is like task manager on steroids, once you run this program it will tell you exactly what programs are tied to what process and will tell you ram usage as well as CPU thread useage, you can run it in the background and once your processor usage goes up you should be able to tell exactly what process is causing the problems.

Hope this helps.

[wtsitmn]

Originally Posted by joe123

I agree that something is broken with SageTV 6.1.x I am curious if you tried the "fix" I outlined above and if it worked or not?

Sorry, but I'm not one to spend much time debugging problems anymore. Spent too much time doing that for a living. I'll maybe give Sage another try in their next release.

[joe123]

Could one of you having this problem on 6.1.x try this and tell me if the the CPU usage goes down to almost zero (when sage is idle). This is for systems with 2 CPUs:

With Windows Explorer, set the affinity for SageTV to 1 CPU only. Normally, it is set to both CPU's CPU0 & CPU1. Set it to either one, but not both.

EDIT: Never mind - I am getting mixed results.

[joe123]

I want to follow up that even though my CPU usage went down, it is starting back up again after more hours of being up.

I think I am on the right path with the Transcoder thing being the cause since it helped when I corrected the corrupted movie, but there is more to it than that.

Basically, I am back to square one.

Can someone please tell me the link to the SageTV version which does not have this problem? I need to downgrade.

[dvsing]

I highly suspect this problem is due to corrupt video files in your media import library and sage having trouble processing them-- perhaps during thumbnail generation. I removed a few newer media files from my library when this started to happen and it stopped happening.

-Dan

[wrems]

I originally had the same problems you are experiencing. They all cleared up the moment I went to version 6.0.19 you can download it here http://download.sage.tv/SageTV_V6_0_19Setup.exe

I Hope it works well for you too!

[joe123]

Originally Posted by wrems

I originally had the same problems you are experiencing. They all cleared up the moment I went to version 6.0.19 you can download it here http://download.sage.tv/SageTVClient_V6_0_19Setup.exe

I Hope it works well for you too!

Thanks, I'll downgrade and report back.

My wife is ready to kill me if I don't fix this thing soon.

[nielm]

Originally Posted by stevech

There have been previous discussions of handle leaks here - in older versions. Some were attributed to certain versions of JVM.

Specifically, Java 1.5.something. It is fixed in recent Java 1.5 versions.
Java 1.4 was fine, Java 1.6 is better and faster.

[nielm]

Originally Posted by dvd_maniac

Is there a way to turn off the creation of the images from video files in the latest version or is that what ui/disable_native_image_loader=true is suppose to do?
I haven't had any more problems since using service mode and editting the properties file to ui/disable_native_image_loader=true

This toggles the use of a fast C library to load images, instead of Java's slower internal routines. It will not affect the transcoder.

[astribli]

Wow, haven't been here for a few months (running old 6.0) and what do I see, the same problems with 100% cpu.

So several months later, and apparently a few more minor version releases, and the solution is to downgrade the software????

Come on Sage. What type of software programming is this? There is absolutely no reason software should be creating excess threads, regardless of if a file is corrupt or not.

The fact that 6.0.19 version works, and the latest doesn't, tells me there are some serious problems in Sage's defect bug tracking, source control, and testing procedures.

Will this be fixed in 6.2 ? Or will that introduce other bugs?

[joe123]

Hi.

I am currently working with Jeff @ SageTV and he has been able to see the problem first hand.

We are not sure what it is yet, but so far, it may be a driver problem so we are trying to rule that out.

Also, the high CPU goes away if I turn off (power off) my MediaMVP's. Can someone having this problem and on V6.1.19 try this please:

- Turn off SageTV
- Power off all MediaMVP's
- Turn on SageTV and see if the high CPU goes away?

By the way the above test is my idea - has nothing to do with SageTV troubleshooting this problem.

Thanks,
Joe

[Fluffdaddy]

Originally Posted by joe123

Hi.

I am currently working with Jeff @ SageTV and he has been able to see the problem first hand.

We are not sure what it is yet, but so far, it may be a driver problem so we are trying to rule that out.


Thanks,
Joe

Great to read. Hopfully I can go bACK tO 6.1.19 someday.

[badcrash]

I didn’t have this problem with the previous Sage version and I upgraded and now I have this same problem. I tried reinstalling Windows XP Pro using the latest drivers, patches, and BIOS. I made a complete clean install of everything, I DON’T HAVE ANY photos, clips, recorded shows or media files in the machine or the Sage designated hard drive for recorded shows – so, this thing about corrupted media files is absolute BULL CRAP

This is my configuration: AMD 64 3500, ATI Radeon X800 Pro, one PVR-150 (with latest driver), ASUS motherboard, and 2GB RAM. I’m starting to think that I wasted my money.

[Fluffdaddy]

Originally Posted by badcrash

I didn’t have this problem with the previous Sage version and I upgraded I DON’T HAVE ANY photos, clips, recorded shows or media files in the machine or the Sage designated hard drive for recorded shows – so, this thing about corrupted media files is absolute BULL CRAP

This is my configuration: AMD 64 3500, ATI Radeon X800 Pro, one PVR-150 (with latest driver), ASUS motherboard, and 2GB RAM. I’m starting to think that I wasted my money.

Settle down big guy.
Downgrade back to 6.0.19 version, watch TV and wait for a 6.1.19 fix for those of us that are having problems with it..
Life's to short to be head-banging.