HDHomeRun (HDHR) Prime + SageDCT

[wreuvers]

Originally Posted by babgvant

Ah. I'm not sure that recording to a pooled drive is a best practice either way, especially since SageTV support load balanced recording to multiple targets.

Disabled DriveBender. Have it writing to a local hard drive on a SATA3 interface.
I increased the Write Buffer to 8192, the RTP Buffer is 131072 and I have Write Async on and am not using PBDA.
Installed a new (arrived today) Intel Gigabit CT PCI-E Network Adapter EXPI9301CTBLK (although this should not be an issue as I am writing to a local drive).
SageDCT is consuming 35-40% CPU on my 6 core machine, and is now consuming 2.1GB of ram on my machine within 15 minutes of starting 3 simultaneous records.
Running WHS 2011 - any help would be greatly appreciated.

When recording a single show, SageDCT sits at 0-1% CPU and 85MB.
Recording 2 shows, it hits 5-18% CPU and is creeping past 400MB.

[KJake]

My setup isn't flawless, but resources have been pretty well in-check I'd say.

Check the send/receive buffer settings on the Intel NIC and try increasing them.

I have my write buffer at 9216 and RTP buffer at 262144; write async off; going to UNC path.

[babgvant]

Originally Posted by wreuvers

Disabled DriveBender. Have it writing to a local hard drive on a SATA3 interface.
I increased the Write Buffer to 8192, the RTP Buffer is 131072 and I have Write Async on and am not using PBDA.
Installed a new (arrived today) Intel Gigabit CT PCI-E Network Adapter EXPI9301CTBLK (although this should not be an issue as I am writing to a local drive).
SageDCT is consuming 35-40% CPU on my 6 core machine, and is now consuming 2.1GB of ram on my machine within 15 minutes of starting 3 simultaneous records.
Running WHS 2011 - any help would be greatly appreciated.

When recording a single show, SageDCT sits at 0-1% CPU and 85MB.
Recording 2 shows, it hits 5-18% CPU and is creeping past 400MB.

1) Large amounts of memory = slow disk (or more correctly, slow write throughput)
2) Large amounts of CPU utilization usually = overloaded NIC (either due to poor drivers, config issues, or some unknown thing)

Given your observations, it should be clear that the target disc cannot keep up (fine w/ 1, then gets bad as you move to 2 +).

Are you writing to UNCs (\\servername) or the directly to the drive (d:\)?

If you are writing directly to the drive, you need a faster drive or you need to figure out how to split the load across multiple drives (e.g. use multiple recording targets, RAID 10, etc). If you're writing to a UNC, either use the replace paths feature in SageDCT or use local drive targets in SageTV.

[wreuvers]

Originally Posted by babgvant

1) Large amounts of memory = slow disk (or more correctly, slow write throughput)
2) Large amounts of CPU utilization usually = overloaded NIC (either due to poor drivers, config issues, or some unknown thing)

Given your observations, it should be clear that the target disc cannot keep up (fine w/ 1, then gets bad as you move to 2 +).

Are you writing to UNCs (\\servername) or the directly to the drive (d:\)?

Directly to the drive. I have pulled 2 drives from the pool and using these seems fine with 2 recording streams. I am removing a 3rd drive from the pool, and then will see the results. My concern is that my 6-core may not be able to handle the 3 streams from the HD HomeRun Prime and the 2 x HD-PVRs.

[razrsharpe]

Originally Posted by wreuvers

My concern is that my 6-core may not be able to handle the 3 streams from the HD HomeRun Prime and the 2 x HD-PVRs.

Just as a point of info... my core 2 quad (q6600), 4gb ram, win2003 32bit machine can handle the: 3x prime streams, 4x hdhr ota streams, and 1x hdpvr stream just fine (all while handling 3-4 live comskip jobs happening). Mind you it never does this in real life but i have tested it to see if it can keep up... (i use unc recording paths that are local to the server)

[babgvant]

Originally Posted by wreuvers

Directly to the drive. I have pulled 2 drives from the pool and using these seems fine with 2 recording streams. I am removing a 3rd drive from the pool, and then will see the results. My concern is that my 6-core may not be able to handle the 3 streams from the HD HomeRun Prime and the 2 x HD-PVRs.

On a properly configured system CPU load should be very low.

[phelme]

Originally Posted by wreuvers

Installed a new (arrived today) Intel Gigabit CT PCI-E Network Adapter EXPI9301CTBLK (although this should not be an issue as I am writing to a local drive).

Even if you're by-passing the loopback by writing locally it does seem to matter. Intel's drivers apparently handle this better than anyone else from my experience.

[wreuvers]

Originally Posted by babgvant

On a properly configured system CPU load should be very low.

Seems that the only issue is DriveBender. Writing to separate drives (pooled by SageTV's Bandwidth setting), the machine never goes past 3% CPU when recording 3 HiDef streams, and SageDCT never creeps past 21MB usage! So it is definitely DriveBender - I am awaiting their support to respond.

[phelme]

well this is rather fascinating. over the past couple days I've had a number of recordings that start out fine but then become unplayable under SageTV. According to playback with VLC, after several minutes all these recordings suddenly have DRM enabled on them. Hmmm. Wonder if this is an SD bug of some kind. It's not happening on any of the network channels, but cable fare like AMC, Speed, USA etc. I'm on the 0730 beta build for the Prime.

There are some others on the SD board that have been hit by this as well.

I've since rebooted my Prime and this seems to have helped for the moment. It probably reset the Cable Card.

[Ron]

Are there any advantages to upgrading to 2.4 if 2.2 seems to be working without issues?

[babgvant]

Originally Posted by Ron

Are there any advantages to upgrading to 2.4 if 2.2 seems to be working without issues?

No

[stanger89]

So after weeks of working fine, now all of the sudden SageDCT can't find my HDHR Prime, and reports that commands are "actively refused", nothing's changed in the machine or the network or the setup or the firewall, sagedct and sagedctconfig are allowed through....

[babgvant]

Originally Posted by stanger89

So after weeks of working fine, now all of the sudden SageDCT can't find my HDHR Prime, and reports that commands are "actively refused", nothing's changed in the machine or the network or the setup or the firewall, sagedct and sagedctconfig are allowed through....

Can you find the Prime via UPnP? Have you tried rebooting it (the Prime)?

[sflamm]

Two questions:

1. Is SiliconDust Quickview still working?
2. Did you install Windows updates this past 'patch tuesday'?

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by babgvant

Can you find the Prime via UPnP? Have you tried rebooting it (the Prime)?

You mean via the HDHR config? yes it's there, and it works in QuickTV.

[Sparhawk6]

Well, I haven't had time to test babgvant's latest attempt to fix the "No Signal" / bad stream issue, although it looks like someone tried it and it didn't seem to work. Recently 2 new channels were added to my lineup, two channels that I was very much looking forward to, and both are on the messy Comcast stream; hence, on both I get the "No Signal" error. Again, I can play the file just fine in windows, but my extender won't play it. So depressing!


EDIT: I tried the new SageDCT, enabling the VLC option. I made sure to enable VLC on the firewall. I still get the "No Signal" error. Here is my log. Thanks again Babgvant.
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/43581/SageDCT_3468.log

EDIT 2: In fact, none of the channels work when I enable the VLC option. Obviously something isn't working right.

[babgvant]

Originally Posted by Sparhawk6

Well, I haven't had time to test babgvant's latest attempt to fix the "No Signal" / bad stream issue, although it looks like someone tried it and it didn't seem to work. Recently 2 new channels were added to my lineup, two channels that I was very much looking forward to, and both are on the messy Comcast stream; hence, on both I get the "No Signal" error. Again, I can play the file just fine in windows, but my extender won't play it. So depressing!


EDIT: I tried the new SageDCT, enabling the VLC option. I made sure to enable VLC on the firewall. I still get the "No Signal" error. Here is my log. Thanks again Babgvant.
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/43581/SageDCT_3468.log

EDIT 2: In fact, none of the channels work when I enable the VLC option. Obviously something isn't working right.

Add a FW exclusion for vlc.exe.

[Sparhawk6]

Originally Posted by babgvant

Add a FW exclusion for vlc.exe.

I had already added it as an Inbound exclusion before I tried it and before I posted that log. I hadn't done that for Outbound. I will do that tonight when I get home.

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by babgvant

Can you find the Prime via UPnP? Have you tried rebooting it (the Prime)?

I see, looks like I didn't have the UPnP ports (1900, 2869) enabled in the firewall.

[Sparhawk6]

Originally Posted by babgvant

Add a FW exclusion for vlc.exe.

I set "vlc.exe" to "allow" for both inbound and inbound connections in the firewall. I still got a "no signal" on all channels. Here is the log:
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/43581/SageDCT_2924.log