SageTVTranscoder.exe

[nielm]

if you want to find out what it is doing, install sysinternal's ProcessExplorer (a task manager on steroids) and you can see what the command line to the transcoder is...

[salsbst]

sagetvtranscoder is a real pain, no doubt.

In an attempt to solve stuttering problems, I upgraded my server and clients to Java 6 the other day.

That night, I had a very strange thing happen. Whenever either of my *client machines* tried to browse the Sage Recordings menu, a sagetvtranscoder.exe process would kick off on the *server machine*!

I didn't know that was supposed to be possible.

In any case, sagetvtranscoder.exe was hanging all three of the machines by running on the server. If I killed it about 4 or 5 times, all machines would come back to life.

My solution? I took away the permission of the user that runs sagetvservice.exe and sagetvtranscoder.exe from being able to read or execute sagetvtranscoder.exe.

[Polypro]

I like it...elegant

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[hoadie]

Has anyone reported their SageTVTranscoder.exe problems as bugs?

I run into 3 issues with it:

1. CPU sits on and stays at 100%, thus making my PC unusable
2. Starts using up more and more memory - my page file grows to 2.5gig before I kill the process.
3. Stopping the SageTV service doesn't kill the SageTVTranscoder.exe process.

Note: I don't do any transcoding of video files.

[Polypro]

The transcoder gets used for other things...previous to 6.1.7 I had thumnail generation turned off and that seemed to prevent any problems. In 6.1.7 I've turned thumbnail generation back on and haven't had any problems. I *am* using the properties to run the transcoder priority at idle though.

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[Narflex]

Originally Posted by hoadie

Has anyone reported their SageTVTranscoder.exe problems as bugs?

I run into 3 issues with it:

1. CPU sits on and stays at 100%, thus making my PC unusable
2. Starts using up more and more memory - my page file grows to 2.5gig before I kill the process.
3. Stopping the SageTV service doesn't kill the SageTVTranscoder.exe process.

Note: I don't do any transcoding of video files.

NO, no one has. We have zero reproducible cases currently of hangs/crashes with the SageTVTranscoder.exe. (there have been some in the past; but we've fixed all the ones we've received) We'd REALLY like to get our hands on cases of that if you have them. http://sagetv.com/bugs.html

[hoadie]

Originally Posted by Narflex

NO, no one has. We have zero reproducible cases currently of hangs/crashes with the SageTVTranscoder.exe. (there have been some in the past; but we've fixed all the ones we've received) We'd REALLY like to get our hands on cases of that if you have them. http://sagetv.com/bugs.html

No probs, I'll raise a bug report. Wasn't sure if it was worth it with the new version almost ready for release

[Narflex]

Originally Posted by hoadie

No probs, I'll raise a bug report. Wasn't sure if it was worth it with the new version almost ready for release

We'll still want to fix it for 6.2 of course. Or a maintenance release of 6.1.

[Rex411]

I am new to Sage and so far the main issue is the SageTvTranscoder.EXE pulling between 60-80% of my CPU. I am running 6.0.19.120 with the SageTV3.XML as my STV. I am getting serious stutter on playback of AVI files, but not so much on live TV. I have no music on the server and its been up for about 3 weeks. It seems like the EXE issue just started recently. Last changes were to add a second Hauppauge 350 card and moved my record quality down to 1.6MB/ hour from 2.0MB. Should I email support with the issue or has someone a reason/solution for the high CPU usage. I have been just ending the process in Task Manager. Thanks for the help.

[paulbeers]

Have you tried upgrading to 6.1.9? I believe a lot of fixes went into place. I would start with that. Also I don't see your system "stats", so that might help if we knew what you were running (might have too "weak" of a system).

[hoadie]

Originally Posted by paulbeers

Have you tried upgrading to 6.1.9? I believe a lot of fixes went into place. I would start with that. Also I don't see your system "stats", so that might help if we knew what you were running (might have too "weak" of a system).

I'm running 6.1.9 and am still having issues. logged a bug report yesterday.

[Rex411]

I noticed that the issue happens while I am playing specific AVI files I downloaded. When I paused the show the Transcoder went to 0% CPU. When I started the show it jumped back to 90%. If I hard stop the EXE the show freezes and does not restart. It makes sence to me that maybe the AVI I downloaded is to high quality? The stats on the file are: 608Wx336H; 112kbps bit rate; MPEG Layer-3; 23 Frames/sec; XVID compression. Is there a best format for AVI files? When the CPU spikes there is only one Media MVP in use.

My computer stats are: Pent 4- 2GHZ w/ 512MB Ram. XP Pro SP2. I have a USB 500GB external drive for my Sage files. I use 2 -Hauppauge 350 capture cards with 3- wired Media MVPs. I have no video board other than whats built into the computer. I will upgrade to 6.19 this evening.

[rickgillyon]

Originally Posted by Rex411

I noticed that the issue happens while I am playing specific AVI files I downloaded.

So these AVIs are playing back on a MVP? Then I would expect high CPU usage, as all AVIs must be transcoded to MPEG for playback on MVP...

[Polypro]

Encrypted QAM causes the transcoder to bring Sage to a stuttering halt. Who would try to record encrypted QAM?....me, unintentionally My normally clear VERSUS-HD channel was 5C'd for the NHL Playoffs. Is there a way for the transcoder to exit if it doesn'r recognize a format? (future builds).

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[RBTConsultants]

I have seen sagetvtranscoder.exe take over my machine several times. In all cases, it seemed to happen when mousing over a recording in the recordings menu. The recordings are HD shows from HDHomerun. It appears that these are corrupted .TS files, which sometimes occurs with my HDHomerun for whatver reason I am not sure (I believe it is an error at the networks or a QAM problem with cable, I don't think it is an HDHomerun problem, per se).

I have gone into Windows task manager and killed the transcoder task, but it starts right back up.

The only way I am able to stop transcoder from taking over the machine in this manner is to identify the bad show and delete it from windows explorer outside of Sage.

My guess is it is trying to generate a thumbnail from a "bad" .TS and is failing miserably at it.

[jcato]

I think something similar happened to me today. I tried to watch an HD program recorded over a firewire connection, when I hit play, nothing happened. That has never happened before. A lot of times a file recorded via firewire won't play correctly, but it tries to play and then gives an error. It's never just not responded when hitting play.

I deleted it and watched another show. When it finished, I tried to delete it and sage sat there with a spinning logo for about 10 minutes.

I killed sage with the taskmanager. It wouldn't restart. I tried rebooting and the service wouldn't start. I noticed the sagetvtranscoder running and came here and found this thread. The problem video I deleted from within sage was not deleted. I killed all sage processes, deleted the problem video and restarted sage. Everything seems to be working okay again.

[Patilan]

This so called sagetvtranscoder thingie is a third party software, available under the GNU General Public License. This particular version that is bundled in SageTV is at least three years old. In the mean time the MPlayer people have gone through at least 100 newer versions. Lately MPlayer has grown to be a rather stable and smart piece of software.

I wonder, what's holding Sage from using a more recent version? I can imagine that such update it's not a trivial job for Sage, but I'd like to see some "official" word on the subject: What is the time line for such an update? Are Sage even working on it? I've tried to raise these questions numerous times before, but I've never got an answer. I'd really appreciate if somebody from Sage could drop a line here to shed some light on the subject.

Thanks.

[joe123]

Originally Posted by Narflex

NO, no one has. We have zero reproducible cases currently of hangs/crashes with the SageTVTranscoder.exe. (there have been some in the past; but we've fixed all the ones we've received) We'd REALLY like to get our hands on cases of that if you have them. http://sagetv.com/bugs.html

It's happening to my system and I am more than willing to give SageTV full remote access to find this BUG. It is easily reproducible in my system.

Also, I upgraded my system with two different motherboard/CPU's from scratch with same results. I emailed SageTV support about my problem.

[twieder]

SageTVTranscoder.exe is (supposedly) just FFMPEG renamed. I have tried replacing this with newer versions, but the syntax must've changed because they do not work (I haven't taken the time to debug yet). You could always replace SageTVTranscoder.exe with a dummy .EXE, if you don't have any MediaMVPs/

[Polypro]

Yup. If you don't want thumbnail generation, Google/YouTube, or MVP/Transcode...renaming to *.xxe works fine. I ran like this for a while with 0 ill effects. Other than my QAM problem above, it's been behaving fine in 6.1.9 for me.

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