HD Extender transport stream problems

[iammike]

I've been trying to watch football with my new HD Extender this afternoon, and have found the process very frustrating. I'm recording the Steeler game on a MyHD card and attempting to play back the file through Sage. I don't have the MyHD network encoder, so I'm importing the video instead.

The first problem I've run up against, which is a general Sage issue, is that Sage does not correctly play back the file being recorded live. Sage only sees the first minute or two of the file and won't play past that point. I've worked around this problem by periodically stopping and restarting the recording. I still have to refresh my imported videos before Sage correctly recognizes the time on the file correctly. For instance, Sage was saying a 30 minute file was only a minute and a half. After refreshing, it sees the file as 30 minutes long. This problem is also seen when playing the file back from the Sage server so it's not an extender issue.

The second problem I've seen is with skipping ahead 10 or 30 seconds on the extender. The skip time appears to be more or less correct, but the extender will often times play the first 5 or 10 seconds of the file incorrectly after skipping. It's playing it back at 2 or 3 times normal speed. I've tried to recreate it on the server and can't recreate it so I'm pretty sure this is an extender issue.

The third problem I've seen is with the extender getting confused about where it is in the file. This is again when skipping back and forth in the file. The extender will often times jump back to the beginning of the file when skipping ahead, but the time bar still shows the correct time. If I skip ahead, sometimes it will jump back to where its supposed to be. Of course at this point, I've missed a play and when I try to jump backwards half the time or more I'm at the beginning of the file again.

The other interesting issue I've seen is what appears to be fairly high memory usage on the server after having a lot of these problems. It was up around 200MB a little while ago when I was having particularly bad problems. I stopped and restarted the service, and after some initial startup fluctuations the memory usage leveled out in the mid 90's. I went back upstairs and tried to watch the game again, and was still having problems. I finished watching the first half on the server, and have noticed that the memory usage is back up to around 149MB now.

I think I saw a post about the HDHomerun indicating that folks were having to use program streams to get it working correctly, so I'm wondering if I'm running up against the same issue(s) here. I'm thinking I should probably open a ticket with support on this, but thought I'd post here first in case I'm missing something.

Anybody have an idea on how to fix this?

Thanks,
Mike

[tmiranda]

I'm using a HDHomeRun and have had no such problems. I'm also watching the Steeler game at the moment (and living close to Jacksonville I am happy with the score so far )

[iammike]

Originally Posted by tmiranda

I'm using a HDHomeRun and have had no such problems. I'm also watching the Steeler game at the moment (and living close to Jacksonville I am happy with the score so far )

And issue number 4, ?#!*&@ing Jacksonville won the game.

Are you recording to program streams or transport streams with your HDHomerun? Also, does it work pretty much seamlessly with Sage?

Thanks!

[fidget]

Originally Posted by iammike

I've been trying to watch football with my new HD Extender this afternoon, and have found the process very frustrating. I'm recording the Steeler game on a MyHD card and attempting to play back the file through Sage. I don't have the MyHD network encoder, so I'm importing the video instead.

The first problem I've run up against, which is a general Sage issue, is that Sage does not correctly play back the file being recorded live. Sage only sees the first minute or two of the file and won't play past that point. I've worked around this problem by periodically stopping and restarting the recording. I still have to refresh my imported videos before Sage correctly recognizes the time on the file correctly. For instance, Sage was saying a 30 minute file was only a minute and a half. After refreshing, it sees the file as 30 minutes long. This problem is also seen when playing the file back from the Sage server so it's not an extender issue.

The second problem I've seen is with skipping ahead 10 or 30 seconds on the extender. The skip time appears to be more or less correct, but the extender will often times play the first 5 or 10 seconds of the file incorrectly after skipping. It's playing it back at 2 or 3 times normal speed. I've tried to recreate it on the server and can't recreate it so I'm pretty sure this is an extender issue.

The third problem I've seen is with the extender getting confused about where it is in the file. This is again when skipping back and forth in the file. The extender will often times jump back to the beginning of the file when skipping ahead, but the time bar still shows the correct time. If I skip ahead, sometimes it will jump back to where its supposed to be. Of course at this point, I've missed a play and when I try to jump backwards half the time or more I'm at the beginning of the file again.

The other interesting issue I've seen is what appears to be fairly high memory usage on the server after having a lot of these problems. It was up around 200MB a little while ago when I was having particularly bad problems. I stopped and restarted the service, and after some initial startup fluctuations the memory usage leveled out in the mid 90's. I went back upstairs and tried to watch the game again, and was still having problems. I finished watching the first half on the server, and have noticed that the memory usage is back up to around 149MB now.

I think I saw a post about the HDHomerun indicating that folks were having to use program streams to get it working correctly, so I'm wondering if I'm running up against the same issue(s) here. I'm thinking I should probably open a ticket with support on this, but thought I'd post here first in case I'm missing something.

Anybody have an idea on how to fix this?

Thanks,
Mike

I have had similar problems with programs that I have recorded with the HDHR. In my case, it will start playing back properly but then start playing in fast forward mode. I have reported this as a bug to Sage.

[flavius]

I had similar issues when I was still using my HDHR as a network device.

[tmiranda]

I'm using transport stream, which i believe is the default.

[iammike]

Originally Posted by tmiranda

I'm using transport stream, which i believe is the default.

You must be living right or something. It sounds like a lot of folks are having problems. From reading the thread below, I was under the impression that Sage was trying to steer folks towards program streams, but perhaps I'm missing something.

http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=29143

[kevine]

Originally Posted by iammike

You must be living right or something. It sounds like a lot of folks are having problems. From reading the thread below, I was under the impression that Sage was trying to steer folks towards program streams, but perhaps I'm missing something.

http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=29143

I understood it this way as well. If it's changed, I'd like to know though.

[Diginerd]

TS works just fine for me from HD Homerun. You can set a delay in the properties file which keeps the playback a few milliscones behind realtime. i have mine configured for 5 seonds and it works like a champ.

[iammike]

I'll try that setting tonight, although I was having the issue on completed recordings.

I'm assuming that it's a general Sage property rather than a hdhr specific setting. Is that correct? I'm currently recording my OTA with MyHD cards.

Thanks,
Mike

[iammike]

I've partially corrected my problem. I put a better cable on my Sage server and bumped it up to gigabit speed. When I did this, the stability of the extender became much better. At 100Mbit, some files were unwatchable. The extender would actually stop playback when I tried to skip around in the file, and would stutter pretty badly. I also noticed that my network utilization was averaging around 40% which is about 3 or 4 times what it should have been. According to TSReader the files I've been playing have around 14 or so mbit data rates. At 100 mbit, the final round of the PGA tournament was unwatchable. I couldn't get more than 10 or 15 minutes into the file before the extender would give up. At gigabit, I was able to watch the whole thing last night. The problems with skipping around in files as well as the timeline issue still remain however.

I also tested with program streams last night and found them to be very solid. I could skip around all I wanted and the extender behaved very well. No 10 or 15 seconds of fast forward until it figured out how to continue. Transport streams, regardless of the source (R5000 or OTA) still had the problem. As was the case before, the server had no issues playing the files. Using the skip commands worked perfectly, and instantly started playing after the appropriate amount of skip time.

I'm going to submit a bug report for the skip and timeline issues today.

[Jeraden]

I have a ton of old .ts files recorded via sagetv v4. On all of them, they work fine under the regular sagetv client app on a PC. But on the HD extender, every one will play fine for 5 seconds, then it will start to just fast-forward. If I skip ahead, it will start playing again fine for 5 seconds, then start fast-forwarding again. Always happens after 5 seconds of playback, no matter where in the file. Anyone else run into this?

[hemicuda]

Mine does this when I skip back. FFW's back to the point I started from usually. haven't had any trouble w/ skip forward.

[iammike]

Mine only does the fast-forward thing after I've skipped around in the file. It does so for about 10 or 15 seconds of video time, maybe 3 or 4 real time, and then resyncs. I don't think I've seen it spontaneously do that when playing normally with the possible exception of one file that had continuity errors. You might try running your files through TSReader to see if there are any problems with them. The extender doesn't seem to be as fault tolerant as the client.

[littlerm]

I am having the same problem. Also, sometimes when I skip back I get no audio then the video pauses after a few seconds and I have to skip back again to get everything going again. It's quite annoying. I am recording from a Motorola cable box using firewire and it does this on HD and SD material. Hopefully a firmware update will fix this.

[iammike]

Thought I'd update this thread with a piece of information from Sage support. This is a known problem that Sage is working on. I'm not sure if I'm stating what everyone already knows, but thought I'd post the info to this thread for anyone doing some research.

For what it's worth, I have to give George at Sage some big kudos. This guy has sent me replies on Sunday and again today, Christmas. My problem isn't solved yet, but you gotta give the Sage boys an A for effort.

[polen]

I also have a Motorola firewire setup and all my recordings through it are raw TS. Both my HD and SD recordings through this setup act up when skipping to a point I'm scared to press skip. Sometimes I'm pressing skip multiple times and out of the blue it jumps like 15 minutes. Another strange thing is sometimes randomly the recording will just almost stop then display still pictures slowly advancing with no sound. The wife calls me in there to say "IT"S DOING IT AGAIN!!" If I stop the recording and start it again, clears it up. Last thing, when skipping forward, the time indicator jumps forward like 5 minutes then back to what it supposed to be. The skip works like it should, just the time indicator bounces up then back.

I see none of these issues on recordings done by my analog capture card.

-Polen

[inseattle]

I see similar behavior with my firewire recordings. I opened a case with Sage on Friday. Hopefully they wont say that my setup is unsupported. The HD Extender is pretty much unplugged until this issue gets resolved. I haven't seen this behavior with my HDHomeRun tuners after I forced them to record program steams instead of transport streams. I have hundreds of hours of recordings in TS format so a lack of support for it would be a no go for me.

Originally Posted by polen

I also have a Motorola firewire setup and all my recordings through it are raw TS. Both my HD and SD recordings through this setup act up when skipping to a point I'm scared to press skip. Sometimes I'm pressing skip multiple times and out of the blue it jumps like 15 minutes. Another strange thing is sometimes randomly the recording will just almost stop then display still pictures slowly advancing with no sound. The wife calls me in there to say "IT"S DOING IT AGAIN!!" If I stop the recording and start it again, clears it up. Last thing, when skipping forward, the time indicator jumps forward like 5 minutes then back to what it supposed to be. The skip works like it should, just the time indicator bounces up then back.

I see none of these issues on recordings done by my analog capture card.

-Polen