2 Things to try to fix stuttering

[wazkaren]

Originally Posted by kerryp24

So the assumption is that there is nothing wrong with the recording of the shows by SageTV, but in the playing by Sage.

Kerry

Perhaps there are 2 issues. I'm seeing a problem with the recording.

Greg

[Glycerine]

Well i'll add this as my stuttering problems have stopped. Problem is, I did none of the things mentioned in the first post.

I was flipping through different vid codecs, trying to improve quality and fix the stuttering. None seemed to have an advantage as far as stuttering. Finally settled on Nvidia's and decided to leave it for the night. But not before I messed around with the GUI overscan to reduce it's size to fit on the TV. I also set the video overscan to 100% from 105%. Turned it off.

Next evening, no stutter. No other changes to sage that I can remember, no changes to the pc software. Afraid to touch the overscan to confirm, just in case it was a fluke or midnight sage raider gnomes, just going to leave well enough alone

Specs for what it's worth:
XP SP2 latest winupdates,
sage 2.2.4
NvDVD decoder trial (latest)
nforce2 soundstorm audio
geforce 4 mx 440 vid out
pvr 250
1 gig of ram, 1.83 GHz barton proc
Only other programs running are the nvidia apps and lcd smartie.

[willemse]

I am also running stutter free since setting source aspect ratio's for horizontal and vertical stretch at 100%. I can reproduce stutter by setting horizontal and vertical stretch percentages above 100%.
Watch out as changing Aspect Ratio Mode setting, Fill, source etc, also selects for each different Aspect Ratio Mode setting a different horizontal and vertical stretch percentage and can there for introduce stutter again if it was not set to 100% or lower.

I tried this with both V2.2 and 2,3 on different PC's. All with same results.

Configurations run with: FX 5200, Direct 9c without quartz modes as discussed on this forum. NVidai decoder v10067, the "two things" to try in the first post of this tread are not installed
Output is to SDTV where by TV is set primary for monitor for output and I am using overlay mode.

Quality is now as good as TV picture itself

If you try the above and have good or bad experiences make this known in this thread.
Reason being: I am in contact with Sage beta bug support and it will be good to have more data points for this annoying problem.

[kny3twalker]

can someone try this to see
if this helps
I edited two registry settings and seem to be having better luck

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Frey Technologies\SageTV\DirectX9\VMRMixerPrefs
changed from 0 to 1
and
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Frey Technologies\Common\DSFilters\MpegDec\Deinterlace
changed from 0 to 1

also I changed
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Frey Technologies\Common\DSFilters\MpegMux\BoostThreadPriorities back to 1
and changed
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Frey Technologies\Common\DSFilters\MpegDeMux\NumBuffers to 200

after fast fowarding, I am having very good luck with playback

[abasu2003]

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Frey Technologies\Common\DSFilters\MpegDec\Deinterlace

I actually did not have this entry in my registry (no MpegDec directory). Any idea why?

[stanger89]

That's probably new in 2.2 with the new Sage MPEG decoders.

[kny3twalker]

should have figured that one would not help
but why not deinterlace by default???

[Jet_Jaguar]

I did all three and I'm still having the stuttering problem. It happened tonight, while watching live TV and changeing channel. I sat counting "one thousand one, one thousand two ..." and the problem seemed as though video was freezing for one second, then moving for a second, then freezing, and so on. Audio was fine.

I switched to another channel again, and the stuttering stopped. Then I switched back to the first channel, and it was okay as well. But here's the interesting thing. I skipped back, and went to time during the program in which I got the stuttering, and it stuttered. This implies that the problem (at least the problem I'm seeing) is with the recording, not the playback.

[Lucas]

Unlikely, either it is coincidence or something to do with the video content or an entirely different problem.

[jptaz]

Originally Posted by Jet_Jaguar

I skipped back, and went to time during the program in which I got the stuttering, and it stuttered. This implies that the problem (at least the problem I'm seeing) is with the recording, not the playback.

I find myself doing this quite frequently since I had problems in the past where high client activity would actually cause the Recordings to be truncated. The file literally did not contain te information. Jeff provided me with a debug version of the file writer and so far I have not had any luck getting it to happen in a reproducible way. I used to be able to get it to happen pretty easily by just starting a number of SageTVClients at the same time, but that is not doing it any more (Probably because I have a faster PC now). If you are actually seeing the problem where the file has missing frames you should contact Support so maybe they will send you the debug writer and isolate the cause of the problem.

I don't think I see the stuttering when using either of my MediaMVPs for playback, but on the two PC based clients I do see them and most of the time now if I rewind a bit before the stutter it is fine.

John

[sadman]

Has anyone used network monitoring to check their bandwidth utilization, I use sageTV server (Avermedia 1500MCE) on a windows 2000 server, and I have 3 clients. One Client has (sage recorder Hauppauge 250 MCE). Using 2.2.4 beta (Using Cayar and Comskip successfully). Found that even with less than 50% bandwidth utiliztion, Buffers were being overrun when using mpeg2 (5 gig setting). Dialed the quality down to dvd standard and network utilization and buffer overruns dropped and no stuttering or pausing. Using 100 meg wired network. I Have 60 gig video storage on sagerecorder/client computer and 240 gig of storage on sagetv server. Can be recording simultaneous shows and watching a recordered show without stutter. No stutter in live tv. Two clients streaming has no problems, I have to test to see what happens with all three.

[jptaz]

Sadman,

Have you tried changing the NumBuffers registry key on the Clients? With such a high bit rate the default 2 MB buffer that SageTV uses to cache the Video stream may be insufficient. Previously setting my clients NumBuffer to 512(Hex 200) which resulting in a 32MB buffer helped to eliminate my stuttering. I need to test setting than again to see if it helps things with my stuttering. What I saw when monitoring the network on the SageTV Sever was that the stutter corresponded to a dip in network utilization at the time of the stutter. I still see dips in the network utilization with the bigger buffer, but it just doesn't cause the stuttering since the buffer is large enough to compensate for the dip.

John

[sadman]

I use the 32 meg buffer already, I'm just saying that some of the stuttering that people are seeing may be caused by network issues and not the software.

[Jet_Jaguar]

I wonder if my antivirus has anything to do with this? To test, I'm excluding*.mpg from real-time scanning on my machine.

Now, I do this with some trepidation, as viruses have been found using the WMV format, but that apparently has to do with Microsoft's DRM. So I'm going to try it for now.

[jason531]

Originally Posted by jptaz

Have you tried changing the NumBuffers registry key on the Clients? With such a high bit rate the default 2 MB buffer that SageTV uses to cache the Video stream may be insufficient.

Does this setting affect buffering of DivX files as well? I am curious since it is in the "MpegDeMux" section. I am seeing stuttering when playing back DivX files over the network. I am playing them on my HTPC which is running SageTV client and SageTV service. The DivX files are being served over a 100 mbit wired network from another PC.

[wazkaren]

A couple of days ago I added more RAM to my system, from 512 mb to 1 gig. The number of stutters in my recordings has now dropped off significantly. I still see one occassionally but not nearly as much.

Greg

[jptaz]

I have been having fewer problems now that I am using Hardware decoders on the systems I watch on most. Living room is using XCard to my HDTV at 1080i and it looks really good and is incredibly smooth on playback. I got caught up on the Superbowal since I didn't get home until 6:30 and it looked really good and smooth. Once I caught up I switch to live HDTV from antenna. While the HDTV feed was far better looking, the MPEG2 feed from my PVR 500MCE looked much sharper and cleaner than via DVI with software decoders.

I do think that the previous releases did a better job of playing back smoothly. On my living room system if I increase the buffers beyond 4MB without the system going into slow motion for a few seconds after a fast forward or rewind.

John

[ck-]

As requested, here is feedback on performance increase after following your suggestions.
1. Set the following registry variable as a DWORD:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Frey Technologies\Common\DSFilters\MpegMux\BoostThreadPriorities=0

2. Use Java 1.5

3. If you're using the SageTV Windows Service, try it without the service.
I never use the service. Causes too many problems and with the general reliability of Sage now, I don't find it necessary.

In addition I have installed the latest beta - 2.2.6.

My hardware is Epia M6000 with PVR350 (used for encoding only)
Prior to making these changes I had some minor performance degradation in TV and major performance degradation for DVD.
By minor I mean stutter and "blurring" every 1/2 hour or so.
By major I mean , stutter every 10 seconds. Excessive blurring on fast movement. Essentially unwatchable. Interestingly performance through PowerDVD4XP direct was perfectly acceptable (maybe 1-2 glitches through a 2 hr film).

After these changes I have been able to get good performance on output using the Epia hardware assisted decoder in the CLE266 chipset.
If it would help any others struggling to get this combination working, I would be prepared to document my settings. Roughly they are:

Video card setting - TVOut only. Disable monitor support in BIOS
Lates EPIA BIOS - 1.16 I think. Makes a massive difference to Video quality, giving proper overscan setting on tvout.
TV Video decoder Hauppauge nonCSS with bob and weave selected
DVD Video decoder PowerDVD4 with hardware acceleration and weave selected.
Overlay video
Reclock audio installed but not selected anywhere in Sage. Set force load for PowerDVD
Hauppauge registry settings for hwmc and hardware assisted decoding
Numbuffers set according to elsewhere in forum - can find exact if it helps.

[travisbell]

I have noticed the number of stuttering problems greatly go down since the 2.2.6 RC1 but I still get them... every 10-15 mins. Oddly enough, it even happens when Sage is sleeping and I use Meedio to watch my ripped TV shows.

So I am wondering, is there something that Sage does every 10-15 mins? Some kind of check, or scheduled routine?

LIke I said though, since 2.2.6 the stutters are mini compared to previous builds.

Cheers,

[ugh]

Seems you guys are talking about many different things when you say stuttering. Whole systems stuttering, the FF/REW bug, general choppiness, choppiness following suspend/resume, choppiness over network connect, and skips in recordings.


For me the problem with choppiness in playback after a suspend/resume. It would show up only if I had watched a show before the system went into S3 suspend. The audio would be fine. Exiting and restarting sage would make it playback normally.

What finally fixed it was switching from VMR9 to Overlay. Didn't matter if I was using Nvidia or Cyberlink (ATI) drivers. The registry changes and switching from service mode didn't affect anything. Java 1.4 to 5.0 didn't change anything either.

I'm using a nvidia 5200fx, 256megs, 2.2.7 release, cayars 17, AMD2600.

Hope this helps someone.
Jim