Jerky playback and record with analog SDTV, HDTV perfect

[ryanlantzy]

Hi,

I've used the search function in the forum but have been unable to nail this one down exactly.

I have been struggling with SageTV and standard def analog recording and live TV viewing. Whenever I program an analog channel to record I get an MPEG file with jerky/choppy/stuttered playback. The stutters are always in the exact same place. I've verified this by playing the file back on another computer. Completely different machine and codecs... which stutters in the EXACT same places. Additionally, when viewing a live TV feed for an analog standard def channel I get seemingly random jerks and stutters. On the order of every 5 to 45 seconds... sometimes more, sometimes less. I believe this is so with live TV because in reality I'm actually watching a buffer that has just been recorded.

Note, and a big one at that... High Def playback and record works SEAMLESSLY. Perfect playback 99.99% of the time... occasional hiccup when first firing up the box and menus are fading away etc. But NO stutters after that point.

I have a newly built HTPC that has a new Gigabyte motherboard with the AMD 780G chipset (onboard ATi Radeon HD 3200 graphics). This is an AMD Phenom 9500 Quad core 2.2GHz with 4GB Ram installed. I'm using a Hauppauge HVR-1800. Latest version of SageTV V6.3 running on Windows Vista Ultimate 32-bit. Currently using the Hauppauge Intervideo NonCSS decoder with VMR9 and 3D acceleration on. FSE off. Note, I've tried just about every other combination of decoders and rendering choices to no avail.

I believe the problem is after the tuner but before writing the recorded file to disk. Not sure what is happening there... would it be using the decoder chosen in SageTV to do the encoding of the MPEG file? I suppose it could be a problem with the ADC on the Hauppauge card too.

Please, any and all suggestions are welcome. If you need more info I can definitely provide it.

[gplasky]

You're not running an antivirus program are you? If you are exclude the recording directories. Make sure the drive was formatted in 64k blocks. After that look at the video drivers for the ATI card. ATI has always seemed to be problematic.

Gerry

[GKusnick]

If the file is bad, then messing around with decoders, renderers, and graphics drivers isn't going to help. The problem is on the encoding side. I'm not familiar with the HVR-1800, but according to the Hauppauge website it has a hardware encoder for analog TV. Just guessing here, but it sounds like that hardware encoder is not being used. Double-check that you have the latest drivers from Hauppauge and that they're installed properly.

[ryanlantzy]

Originally Posted by GKusnick

If the file is bad, then messing around with decoders, renderers, and graphics drivers isn't going to help. The problem is on the encoding side. I'm not familiar with the HVR-1800, but according to the Hauppauge website it has a hardware encoder for analog TV. Just guessing here, but it sounds like that hardware encoder is not being used. Double-check that you have the latest drivers from Hauppauge and that they're installed properly.

I was only messing with the decoders, renderers and drivers to see if I could fix the encoding side as well... creating new analog recordings after each try.

I have installed the latest Hauppauge drivers, but it's one of those things... I don't know how to force SageTV to use the hardware encoder (or verify that it's doing so).

To gplasky. I would expect if any other software/anti virus was interfering, that the HDTV recordings would be corrupted as well (seeing as they are 4x the bit rate and size). That said, I'm not running any anti virus.

I reformatted the machine to "start fresh" and I'm going to make a partition with 64k clusters. The other thing I might try is disabling windows defender.

The drivers for the video card are the latest Catalyst 8.3s. Though I don't see how they would interfere with a recording.

Thanks for the suggestions so far, and keep them coming.

[ryanlantzy]

OK, update.

I reformatted the drive and reinstalled Vista. Since my problem is with the analog portion, I wanted to see if Media Center would have similar issues.

With a clean install of Vista, and the correct drivers for my card (but no hardware codecs from hauppauge) I get the same jerks and stutters on analog recordings. These were done in Media Center. However, the jerks and stutters are accompanied by green blocky video noise (much like a poorly encode avi file).

Then, after installing the Hauppauge hardware codec I played back the same file I saved. Skips in the same places... but no green blocky noise.

Then I created a new recording. Same stuttering as before, no green blocky noise. But always skips in the same place.

I'm beginning to think this is a Hauppauge Driver or hardware problem.

If I play the files back on a different computer, I get the EXACT same skips and stutters.

What next?

[lbrandolo]

You can try beta drivers from here. We HVR 1600 users saw improvement. Can't hurt at this point

ftp://wtv:Support07!@www.hauppauge.c...26017_whql.zip