Stuttering on MP4 files

[bigbill]

I usually run ffmpeg to compress the huge mpg files i get from the HDHR OTA on Sagetv.

Occasionally the HD200, mibox or Nvidia Shield stutters playing them back. To rule out the network I used a very long cat 5 cable with cross over plug to go direct from the server to the extender as a test. I had the same stuttering occasionally. Which according to the WAF, it is way too often if it ever happens.

I have the same issues using WiFi to a mibox in my RV. I am looking at all the
Video Renderer, Decoder Filters and other setting in the video/audio settings for the sage server and wonder if any of those affect playing the mp4 videos on the external devices like the HD200/300

This screen shot shows the current settings.. -Bill

[wayner]

Are you sure that the stuttering isn't in the original MPEG-2 source file? Does the stuttering always happen at the same spot in the file?

[bigbill]

It does not always occur in the same place, also, if I pause for a bit the stutter goes away for a bit like it buffered some of the file and then it runs out again and stutters again.

[wayner]

Strange - it sounds like a network problem but you have kind of ruled that out with a direct connection. Have you ensured that you get decent speeds across the network - even with a direct connection? I have a NIC go bad on a motherboard on my Sage server and it fell back to 10Mbps

[bigbill]

The nic on the sagetv server is fast. I pull large files from it all the time and consistently get close to 100 megabyte speeds. (not mega bit) Not sure how it can be that fast on a gigabit link. There must be compression in the mix.

Maybe its the nic on the HD200 going bad. I will swap that out for a HD300 I have in the RV and see what happens.

BTW, the settings that I asked about in the initial post have nothing to do with what happens on the hardware clients??

Thanks, Bill

speedtest.JPG

[Tiki]

Originally Posted by bigbill

BTW, the settings that I asked about in the initial post have nothing to do with what happens on the hardware clients??

Nope. Pretty much everything in that menu is for controlling local video playback on the Sage Server. There's not much to set on the Extenders, since most of the decoding is handled in hardware (you can't tell it which decoder to use for playback or whether to use hardware acceleration on the video card, etc.).

[Tiki]

BTW - speed test is not really a good indication of whether your network hardware has issues. Problems with your NIC or Ethernet switch can cause packets to be lost or corrupted. Ethernet is very resilient so can resend lost packets. For something like file transfer, it's not a big deal if some packets arrive out of order, but real time video is much less forgiving.

Also, network troubles aren't the only thing that can cause stuttering playback and recordings. Problems with a hard disk (even if it's not the disk your video is stored on) are another likely culprit. And of course, over-burdened CPUs can cause similar problems as can memory problems. It's worth taking a look at the Windows error logs to see if it reports any issues.