Version 2 Good, Version 6 Bad?

[PlexT]

I previously ran SageTV V2 on my Win 2k Pro machine with almost flawless results. I have since done a clean install of Win XP Pro, installed SageTV V6 and switched to new anti-virus software. (Norton was driving me insane.) Now, although live TV does play on SageTV and the sound is smooth and accurate, the video constantly appears to skip and/or drop frames. Also, after live TV is initiated, I get a severely delayed response and a spike in CPU usage when I try to exit out of live TV. I haven't attempted to record video yet.

Ordinarily, I would assume that my aging machine is simply not fast enough or lacks sufficient memory to support the program, but again, I ran a previous version of SageTV with Win 2k Pro on the same machine and had virtually no problems. DirectX and Java are up to date, and I've tried seemingly every possible combination of renderer/video decoder; although, I get an 'error rendering the video portion of content' if I use any renderer other than the Default.

Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated.

Specs:
Machine: Dell Optiplex GX150
BIOS: Phoenix ROM BIOS Plus Version 1.10 A11
Processor: PIII (1.0 GHz)
Mem: 510MB RAM
OS: XP Pro (SP2)
DirectX Version: 9.0c (4.09.0000.0904) (quartz.dll 60.05.2600.2749)
Graphics Card: Intel 82815
Java Version: 1.6.0_02
Video Storage: Partition of WD external 250GB hard drive; formatted w/ 64k blocks/NTSF
Video Decoders: Intervideo (WinDVD), SageTV, nVidia (trial version)
CAPTURE DEVICE: Plextor ConvertX TV402U
SageTV and all components are exceptions to Windows XP firewall

[CollinR]

Needs processor and probably video card. Doesn't need much but have you used that machine much? I would upgrade the CPU and see if you are lucky.

[Crashless]

I would venture to guess your problem is not SageTV, but rather Windows XP. Running W2k with 512mb ram wasn't a big deal, but it is not advisable under XP, especially when using SageTV. Your 1ghz CPU is likely being hurt by the same problem.

You might be able to get away with that CPU is you get some more RAM in there and get a video card that can help with the decoding process, if you have AGP, you could probably pick up a new card for less than $100.

Honestly though...it might be time to think about a rebuild if you want to get into v6. It will be tough to take advantage of many of the new features like transcoding, MVP extenders, you tube etc with your current setup.

You could easily build a whole new setup for less than $500 that could do quite nicely.

[ben_95sl1]

I run a client with windows xp and ~400mb of ram, p3 600. Though it's no powerhouse, I certainly haven't had any playback problems like that. The background stuff like recording and such does not normally take up much cpu.

Make sure you're getting video card mpeg2 acceleration and that you're using overlay and disable automatic library refresh for now. Monitor the cpu activity during playback with task manager: there may be something else causing problems, or it just may be an acceleration problem.

[Opus4]

when I used an older/slower PC, there was a problem where the antivirus software tried to scan the video file as it was being played, so the autoscan had to be set to ignore the recording directories. That was Norton, but you said that wasn't being used & I don't know if any other AV software has the same issue. (That wouldn't do anything about the rendering error, though.)

- Andy

[reggie14]

512MB of RAM is plenty. I remember running XP when it came out on 128MB of RAM with a 600Mhz processor. It wasn't too bad, although I soon later ordered another 128MB chip. With 256MB I was running Sage alongside other applications, although that was back in the days of Sage 1.4, when Sage used far less than the 150MB of RAM that it seems to use now. Like Opus though I had to turn off antivirus scanning on the recording directory.

1.0 Ghz is probably a little on the slow side, but I think it should be fast enough, assuming the computer isn't doing anything else at the same time. The fact that you can't use VMR9 seems pretty strange. It sounds like it could be a DirectX problem. Try running the DirectX diagnostic tool (start-> run, then type dxdiag). Under the display tab you should see some options to test DirectDraw and Direct3D.

[PlexT]

Unfortunately, my machine is maxed out at 512MB RAM. I'm scheming to build a new one, but would like for this one to last another year. I still think there's hope that my problem can be fixed, because I recently attempted to record video in Sage with good results. I picked a TV show in the Program Guide and set Sage to record, which it did at the correct time. When I attempted to playback the recorded video in SageTV, I experience the same problems that I experience with live TV in Sage--dropped frames, intermittant freezing and difficulty/CPU spike when I try to stop playback--good sound though. BUT, when I played the recorded video in Windows Media Player, it played smoothly without any of Sage's playback problems. WMP did indicate that it incurred an error in downloading a codec, but the didn't seem to affect the playback at all. Don't know if that has anything to do with the fact that I am using a trial version of an nVidia video decoder (again, I have 2 other video decoders--SageTV and Intervideo WinDVD). Still, why would playback in WMP be so superior to SageTV?

If this version of Sage is hogging too much RAM, is it possible to download a prior version?

[Mark SS]

WMP may be using Purevideo for playback while Sage may be configured to use the Sage decoder. Check video codec settings in Sage setup menu.

[Taddeusz]

The reason VMR9 can't be enabled is because the 810/815 chipset video AFAIK has no 3D acceleration. It was also made way before DirectX 9 came out. I'd say the piddly onboard video is your problem with choppy playback. It probably worked fine in Win2k due to the lower resource requirements of the OS. Win XP has significantly higher resource requirements.

Some time back I had a P3 933 with 512MB of RAM on an i810 chipset. Video playback on it was abismal. Particularly at the highest resolution and bit depth. I had to scale it back to 16-bit to get workable video playback from WMP.

I know the desire to keep running something on hardware you already have. IMHO, that computer has outlived it's usefulness for this particular purpose as it probably doesn't have an AGP slot so that you can put in a decent video card.

As someone else has said. You can get a really nice computer for under $500 that would be worlds faster than what you're running now.