A couple issues preventing me from buying...

[flipz]

Hey all. So I just have a couple of issues that I need to work out before I actually purchase SageTV and I'm hoping you guys can help me out. I'm currently using the free trials.

My setup:
Server is a Core2Duo with Windows Home Server, 3 gigs of ram, 2TB storage, running SageTV server for WHS.

HTPC is a Core2Quad with Vista Ultimate 32bit, 4 gigs of ram, running SageTV media center.

Both are hard wired via a gigabit switch. I play mostly dvds and blurays that I have converted to xvid or mkv. I was previously using XP media center and then Vista media center without any real issues. The only real reason I'm wanting to make the switch to SageTV is because I want a SageTV HD media extender for my bedroom.

My problems:
Randomly when I'm switching between videos I will have no sound at all. I pull up the menu and I'll realize that the volume inside Sage is turned completely down. I have to pull out my mouse (typically I control everything via my Harmony One) and turn the volume back up. This is completely random and I can't figure out any pattern as to when it happens. What I can say is that my remote control does all the volume through my stereo, so it's not the remote doing it. And the volume will always have been fine previously, I haven't shut down Sage or anything. I just put on a new video and the volume is off. This problem alone is enough to make me not want to purchase it due to the fact that I hate having to pull my mouse out. It ruins the streamlined HTPC.

The second problem I have is completely random stuttering. Happens in both standard def and high def stuff. I could have been watching something for 5 minutes or an hour and all of a sudden the video will freeze up for a few seconds but audio keeps going. Then the video plays in fast motion until it catches up to the audio. Sometimes this only happens once, sometimes it happens consistently through the video. I never had this happen in xp/vista media center, and my setup is MORE than powerful enough to play without stuttering. I have nothing that is taxing the cpu/memory, and there is plenty free of both. It seems to strictly be a software issue. The only codecs I have installed is ffdshow.

My final issue is that I have done everything I possibly can to stop Vista Media Center from popping up when I use my remote and hit say "My Videos" or "My Music." It always pops up in SageTV and then it loads up media center. I have disabled everything in startup items, in the registry, everywhere. I have read a ton of threads on here about it and done everything they say and it still does it. To be honest though this alone wouldn't stop me from purchasing as I could downgrade to XP if I really need to. I'm more worried about the above 2 problems.

Thanks to anyone who can help.

[jeeves5454]

As a new convert to SageTV, I don't know everything about it.
The third issue described above, regarding the Vista Media Center issue is vexing me as well. I cannot for the life of me figure out how to stop it. I am tempted to buy and configure a new remote just to prevent VMC from opening. I would really appreciate any help as well on this issue.

Regarding the stuttering, using the correct codecs might help a lot with the issue, and/or amazing hard drives. I have noticed some stuttering on my machine when a recording starts in the background, or if the same files are being accessed by multiple processes, but have not had issues under normal use (i.e. non-HD recordings, or normal watching) regardless of the quality of the media.

So, using the hardware accelerated drivers and codes would help, and really high bandwidth hard drives.

Regarding the audio, use the Radlight Direshtshow filter to check the configuration of your Audio codec/filter. I am sure someone else knows the theory better than I, but it is possible for SageTV to select an Audio codec to drive all sound, and affect SageTV as well. Currently I use the AC3Filter to drive all sound outside of SageTV and have nothing to complain about.

With a setup like yours, I am sure that you use a digital output or 7.1 speaker setup, so using AC3Filter to output everything regardless of volume will help a lot. Thats how I do it now. Best of luck

[Opus4]

For stuttering: make sure the drives where the recordings get stored are formatted using 64K clusters. If smaller clusters are used, ther is a very high chance of stuttering.

- Andy

[mcaron1234]

Originally Posted by flipz

The second problem I have is completely random stuttering. Happens in both standard def and high def stuff. I could have been watching something for 5 minutes or an hour and all of a sudden the video will freeze up for a few seconds but audio keeps going. Then the video plays in fast motion until it catches up to the audio. Sometimes this only happens once, sometimes it happens consistently through the video. I never had this happen in xp/vista media center, and my setup is MORE than powerful enough to play without stuttering. I have nothing that is taxing the cpu/memory, and there is plenty free of both. It seems to strictly be a software issue. The only codecs I have installed is ffdshow.

Originally Posted by Opus4

For stuttering: make sure the drives where the recordings get stored are formatted using 64K clusters. If smaller clusters are used, ther is a very high chance of stuttering.

- Andy

Also - Are your recordings on drives which are part of the WHS managed drive pool? Many users have complained of stuttering when recoding to drives in the pool. You can have drives connected to the WHS which are not part of the pool.


Hope that helps,

Matt

[flipz]

Thanks for the info. These drives ARE part of the drive pool, so I'm not sure if I can format them in 64k blocks because it automatically formats them for me. My whole point of having WHS is for the pooling so I wouldn't be willing to give up the drive pool in exchange for getting Sage to work right. lol.

As far as recording to the driver pool, I'm not currently using Sage to actually record anything. I do have separate drives that I create the files on though that aren't part of the pool, and then I copy them over to it. So I know the original files aren't stuttering, and as I mentioned media center never had a problem streaming from it.

I'll check out the block size. Thanks.

Edit: I just found this thread which has a few WHS users who day say a 64k cluster drive not in the drive pool is important for the recording drive, but that streaming from the drive pool doesn't present any issues. So it must be something else. I'm thinking about trying out CoreAVC instead, even though media center worked fine. We'll see. Any other ideas?

[StephaneM]

Originally Posted by flipz

My final issue is that I have done everything I possibly can to stop Vista Media Center from popping up when I use my remote and hit say "My Videos" or "My Music." It always pops up in SageTV and then it loads up media center. I have disabled everything in startup items, in the registry, everywhere.

For this you can try to use my software (see signature) and set it to "Exlcusive mode" (by clicking on the "Setup Remote" button), this will at least work for those buttons : Green button, Rec. TV, Guide, Live TV and Power.

For the stuttering problems: I just had a quick thought, make sure you applied SP1 on your Vista PC. In SP1 improvments are included for Video playback and network throughput (this may be the issue, especially if you can copy back the video file onto Vista and play it in SageTV with no stuttering).

Regards,
Stéphane.

[flipz]

Originally Posted by StephaneM

For this you can try to use my software (see signature) and set it to "Exlcusive mode" (by clicking on the "Setup Remote" button), this will at least work for those buttons : Green button, Rec. TV, Guide, Live TV and Power.

For the stuttering problems: I just had a quick thought, make sure you applied SP1 on your Vista PC. In SP1 improvments are included for Video playback and network throughput (this may be the issue, especially if you can copy back the video file onto Vista and play it in SageTV with no stuttering).

Regards,
Stéphane.

It is SP1, and I get an average of 500Mbps for my throughput so I know that's not it. I will definitely give your software a try for the remote issue though.

And your idea of playing a file straight from my Vista PC... genius! I didn't even think of that. That will definitely let me rule out my server as being an issue. I'll give that a try too and post back!

Thanks.

[StephaneM]

Originally Posted by flipz

It is SP1, and I get an average of 500Mbps for my throughput so I know that's not it.../...And your idea of playing a file straight from my Vista PC.../...That will definitely let me rule out my server as being an issue.

A few links about the network thing :

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/929707
http://blogs.technet.com/markrussino...7/1833290.aspx

Though, I would drop FFDshow and use either the default MPEG2 codec SageTV installed or Cyberlink PowerDVD codecs.

Regards,
Stéphane.

[gplasky]

Originally Posted by flipz

Edit: I just found this thread which has a few WHS users who day say a 64k cluster drive not in the drive pool is important for the recording drive, but that streaming from the drive pool doesn't present any issues. So it must be something else. I'm thinking about trying out CoreAVC instead, even though media center worked fine. We'll see. Any other ideas?

Everybody in that thread is saying they have their drives formatted for 64k and not managed by WHS. You even have a user that tried it both ways and recommends the 64k. For Sage it is a must. With WHS you can take them out of managed pool and format them to 64k blocks. I'm keeping mine out of the pool also because of the file deletion bug.

Now back in the WHS beta I actually pulled mine out of the pool, formatted them with 64K blocks and added them back in. WHS didn't format them again and I had no trace of stuttering. Your random stuttering is because of not using 64k block, especially for any HD recordings. I would bet on it.

Gerry

[bialio]

Originally Posted by flipz

As far as recording to the driver pool, I'm not currently using Sage to actually record anything.

Everything TV related in Sage is a recording - even watching live TV. It records it to the HDD, then plays it back from there. So getting to 64K on Sage's recording drive is the way to go.

btl.

[flipz]

Originally Posted by bialio

Everything TV related in Sage is a recording - even watching live TV. It records it to the HDD, then plays it back from there. So getting to 64K on Sage's recording drive is the way to go.

btl.

I'm not even using sage to watch live tv. I do absolutely nothing with it but watch movies/tv shows that I have copied from dvds/bds to my WHS storage pool.

Originally Posted by gplasky

Everybody in that thread is saying they have their drives formatted for 64k and not managed by WHS. You even have a user that tried it both ways and recommends the 64k. For Sage it is a must. With WHS you can take them out of managed pool and format them to 64k blocks. I'm keeping mine out of the pool also because of the file deletion bug.

Not exactly true. All 3 people in that post using WHS say to not add your sage recording drive to the pool. But it is mentioned that they are using drive pooling and that they can stream movies from it fine. As I mentioned drive pooling for my media server is the entire reason for my setup. Without being able to use it, I will just abandon sage.

Now back in the WHS beta I actually pulled mine out of the pool, formatted them with 64K blocks and added them back in. WHS didn't format them again and I had no trace of stuttering. Your random stuttering is because of not using 64k block, especially for any HD recordings. I would bet on it.

I'll have to see if I can pull it out, format, and then put it back in like that. That way I can keep WHS and sage. Thanks.

[David HVR1600]

Media center remote control issue:

I don't know if this will help or not but there are 4 services related to media center in the service manager.

1. Windows Media Center Extender Service
2. Windows Media Center Receiver Service
3. Windows Media Center Scheduler Service
4. Windows Media Center Service Launcher

I believe tha tlast one might be the culrpit but if your not using media center than I would just set them all to disabled and that might solver your problem. It is however possible that this is something coded in the OS.

[flipz]

Originally Posted by David HVR1600

Media center remote control issue:
I don't know if this will help or not but there are 4 services related to media center in the service manager.

Thanks for the response. Sadly I have all 4 of those disabled, as well as disabling ehtray on startup which seems to be the program which actually listens for the command. Unfortunately I have noticed (and read other posts that confirm the same thing) that even when you disable it, if you press a button on the remote it re-adds itself to the startup list. I haven't tried completely removing that file, maybe I should try that. Although I may be getting rid of Vista.

I think I resolved my problem last night as being completely Vista/network transfer speed related. I have 1 harddrive not in my storage pool so last night I reformatted that with 64k clusters, put a video on it, and still got stuttering. So that rules out it being a problem with 64k clusters, or playing it from my storage pool.

Then I played the same file directly from my HTPC and it didn't stutter. I have a gigabit ethernet card in both comps (intel), I have cat5e between each comp and the gigabit router, with a total run of less than 25 feet. When I use passmark network tester I tend to reach speeds of up to 700Mbps, however when I just transfer files between the two computers in Windows it seems to max out at 50Mbps, with an average of probably about 25Mbps. Considering bluray can get up to 54Mbps, that seems to be my problem.

I already tried disabling the new auto-tuning thing in Vista which actually did give me an increase in transfer speed, but I'm still only averaging about 25Mbps on a full gigabit network. But like I said when using Passmark I get 30x that speed. So I may just be downgrading the HTPC to XP and see what happens.

[flipz]

Ok so I am replying to my own post as I just recently completely restored by HTPC and media server and reinstalled Sage trials and I am having the same problems.

My specs are all the same as above. I ended up sticking with Vista instead of going back to XP like I thought I might do because really I don't want to have to use (soon to be) outdated software to make this run. Also because everything works GREAT in media center, I just like Sage's features so much better.

So I found 1 spot in Gone in 60 Seconds (1080p bluray converted to mkv) that I have been using for all my testing. It's where he drives a car through a window which causes a lot of glass to go flying everywhere, and it seems to be one of the highest bitrate parts in the movie. So playing it in media center / media player works completely fine. I also even loaded it up in graph edit and played it there and it works great!

Graphedit shows my video codec as being CoreAVC (as it should be) and AC3Filter for audio (as it should be). Using those like I said it plays completely smooth, no problems. Now switch to Sage, and the video stutters really bad on that part. Here is a section of my debug log.

Fri 5/30 16:30:07.486 stdout:Matroska file format detected.
Fri 5/30 16:30:07.486 stdout:VIDEO:  [avc1]  1920x816  24bpp  23.976 fps    0.0 kbps ( 0.0 kbyte/s)
Fri 5/30 16:30:07.486 stdout:ID_FILENAME=stv://192.168.1.2/\\media-server\Videos\Movies\Action\Gone in Sixty Seconds (1080p).mkv
Fri 5/30 16:30:07.486 stdout:ID_DEMUXER=mkv
Fri 5/30 16:30:07.486 stdout:ID_VIDEO_FORMAT=avc1
Fri 5/30 16:30:07.486 stdout:ID_VIDEO_BITRATE=0
Fri 5/30 16:30:07.487 stdout:ID_VIDEO_FPS=23.976
Fri 5/30 16:30:07.487 stdout:ID_VIDEO_ASPECT=2.3529
Fri 5/30 16:30:07.487 stdout:ID_AUDIO_FORMAT=8192
Fri 5/30 16:30:07.487 stdout:ID_AUDIO_BITRATE=0
Fri 5/30 16:30:07.487 stdout:ID_AUDIO_RATE=48000
Fri 5/30 16:30:07.487 stdout:ID_AUDIO_NCH=6
Fri 5/30 16:30:07.487 stdout:ID_LENGTH=7077.12
Fri 5/30 16:30:07.488 stdout:<vo_directx> adapter 0: Primary Display Adapter
Fri 5/30 16:30:07.488 stdout:<vo_directx> adapter 1: NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT 		<--
Fri 5/30 16:30:07.595 stdout:==========================================================================
Fri 5/30 16:30:07.595 stdout:Opening video decoder: [ffmpeg] FFmpeg's libavcodec codec family
Fri 5/30 16:30:07.596 stdout:Selected video codec: [ffh264] vfm: ffmpeg (FFmpeg H.264)
Fri 5/30 16:30:07.596 stdout:==========================================================================
Fri 5/30 16:30:07.596 stdout:ID_VIDEO_CODEC=ffh264
Fri 5/30 16:30:07.596 stdout:==========================================================================
Fri 5/30 16:30:07.597 stdout:Opening audio decoder: [liba52] AC3 decoding with liba52
Fri 5/30 16:30:07.597 stdout:AUDIO: 48000 Hz, 2 ch, s16le, 640.0 kbit/41.67% (ratio: 80000->192000)
Fri 5/30 16:30:07.597 stdout:ID_AUDIO_BITRATE=640000
Fri 5/30 16:30:07.597 stdout:ID_AUDIO_RATE=48000
Fri 5/30 16:30:07.597 stdout:ID_AUDIO_NCH=2
Fri 5/30 16:30:07.597 stdout:Selected audio codec: [a52] afm: liba52 (AC3-liba52)

Now this is pretty easy to read. Based on what it says, it's using ffmpeg as my video encoder. This is dead wrong. I don't even have ffmpeg installed anymore. This is a completely fresh restore and it was never even put on this machine, so obviously Sage is using it. I ran through the Audio/Video settings and set everything to default, or whatever option I needed to have it not be playing through Sage and it's still using ffmpeg. What do I need to do to stop that, as obviously that's what's causing my problems considering it plays great using CoreAVC.

Thanks, and hopefully this does it for me! Although with that said my entire goal for sage is to use the media extender and I worry I'll just have this problem with it if Sage's default stuff isn't capable of rendering these high bitrate files. Obviously I can't install CoreAVC on the media extender. Lol.

Edit: Here is a screen shot of my settings. To me it doesn't look like sage should be in control of anything, it should all be set to the default. And GraphEdit shows my default video render as CoreAVC. Any ideas? Oh and btw I have tried "video renderer" as VMR9, Overlay, and Default.

[flipz]

BUMP - Anyone have any ideas?

I actually was able to edit sageclient.properties and changed this line: "always_use_dshow_player=false" to TRUE, and all of a sudden the files played smoothly. Unfortunately the debug log STILL shows the files as being played through ffmpeg though.

Can no one explain to me why Sage is using ffmpeg when it's a fresh install that has no codecs or codec packs other than coreavc and ac3filter? I also put the decoder merit for corevc all the way up.

I'm happy now because it is playing smoothly, but it's not what I want. Anyone?