video stuttering in 2.2.2

[davey_fl]

So I finally took the plunge and upgraded my main sage box from 2.0 to 2.2.2. My 2.0 install has done on may 4th and has been rock solid with ZERO, and I mena ZERO problems. No freezups, nothing. However, I wanted to take advantage of Cayars STV and this can't be done with 2.0. Now I'm having the following problems:

1) Video stuttering: If I use any other decoder other than InterVideo CSS Hauppauge I get this terrible stutter. It's quite fast, every 2 seconds, and makes it unwatachable. This is with Sage Decoder, Cyberlink, Sonic DS, Nvidia. Video Card is a 9800Pro with the latest Catalyst drivers.

2) Freezups: 3 times last night when I went to bring sage out of sleep mode all I get is a black screen that requires CTRL-ALT-DEL to kill it and restart it. Of course, this is during recording, so I lose the partial recording.

3) Overlay problems: I'm using the preview window, and when I select a show to watch it goes to full screen, but the preview window stays small and it waits 2-3 seconds before it "fills" the screen, otherwise it's all black (with the preview window at the top right).

4) Total lockups after 10 seconds: Twice now I've had to kill the properties file completely and reconfigure the whole thing. When starting sage, it would allow you to nagivate etc for exactly 10 seconds after starting, and then totally freeze on whatever screen you were on, requiring a CRTL-ALT-DEL to shutdown sage. The only way to fix this was to create a new properties file.

My hardware is top notch, lots of ram, 4 TB of storage space (although I didn't have it all added in - but I had enough). My Sage Server has 2 PVR-250s in it. I hadn't added network clients and the Server mode wasn't running. I was not (am not) running it as a service and these problems occur without the Custom STV installed yet....

Any advice??

thx guys

David

[davey_fl]

Well it as gotten worse. As soon as I add my networked drives in and restart sage it locks everytime at "SageTV Core is initializing". If I run the Sage Service Sage will start but none of the added network shares are recognized. I tried UNC pathes as well as mapped drives, neither works. Guess I'm going to have to go back to 2.0. This is really bad, beta versions shouldn't "break" everything else, they're supposed to add functionality. Doesn't make any sense that a much older version would provide better stability.

David

[rsagetv99]

Not sure if this is your problem or not, but I was having a terrible stuttering problem as well, until I uninstalled WinTV 2000 (the program that comes with the Hauppage hardware). Once I did that the problem seemed to disappear - maybe it was just a coincidence though.

[DFA]

I am having some stuttering problems as well. These are not dropped frames but a very irritating jerkyness. It comes and goes for me. Sometimes just a closure and restart of Sage cleans it up. Other times I have to reboot and not just a restart but a complete power down to clean it up. Stuttering is always present after coming out of an S3 sleep state and I've worked around it by having Girder automatically close Sage and restart it on resume event (keeps the problem mostly transparent to the wife).

I also get some freezes but they are infrequent but nevertheless a problem.

This is with nVidia decoders in VMR and no Sage Service. My HTPC is standalone with one PVR-250 so is straight forward. Latest JRE and Hauppauge drivers and tried various ATI drivers. Ofcourse, latest is not always best and have wondered about JRE and Hauppauge but this seems to be a playback-side issue. We do a fair amount of live TV viewing.

I went from 2.0 to 2.1.10 and then 2.2.2 to get the builtin power management feature. The power management feature has some issues of its own as well.

I am hoping for an update that corrects these things since I will agree I did not have them with 2.0 version.

[bizarro]

I am having the same problem as dfa. I am running an Abit NF7 mb with a 2800 Sempron and 512mb 2700DDR and a Hauppauge PVR 350.

[DFA]

Nice to have enough confirmation that you have some confidence that you are NOT dealing with a problem unique to only your system. I am running an A7N8X-Deluxe with 512 MB Corsair dual channel, 2600+ XP, PVR-250, Xcard, Zoltrix PDI capture, 9600XT, Sony DRU-500A, 1-120 GB PATA HDD and 2-250 GB SATA HDD's in Raid0.

I am seriously considering dropping back to 2.0 and forgetting power mgt. for now. The complaints from my better half are mounting. Seems to me from personal experience and quite a few posts from others that there were "ghosts" in 2.1 that were not fully resolved and have carried over into 2.2.

I am a little disappointed in Fry as of late in that they have not seemed as agressive in resolving what seems to be some degree of conscensus on certain issues. My perception is that the final release of 2.0 was definitly more stable than 2.1 and 2.2. My .02.

DFA

[davey_fl]

That's what I did (went back to 2.0.19). There is just no way I could run 2.2.2 with the instability problems. I agree I haven't seen any worthwhile updates as to the progress of the next release. I'm really hoping that they're not that far off from a stable release but my guess is I've got a long wait ahead of me.

[CanadianEh]

I also am seeing these problems with my Athlon 2600+ and an Abit NF7 w/512 MB, 330GB, 2-PVR250's(v16) when running 2.2.2. As of this morning, it looks as if the whole install may be lost, as Cayar's STV (v14) is reporting "-30 GB free", 3/4 of my shows are missing from the Media Library (hopefully in Sage only!!) and it refuses to show video, giving some error message (at work right now, will have to check when I get home for the exact message).

It's gonna be a long evening after work

[Crazedz]

I had some sage crash issues with the nvidia codec as well switched over to the cyberlink drivers and it doesn't crash anymore but now i have strange jumps while useing the ffw skip buttons it will jump forward seamingly a random amount in the show sometimes and at times while ffw the show will move a frame at a time for about 20 seconds till it seams to catch up to itself then plays fine it's kinda anoying.

[bizarro]

It started not responding to my remote, so I am back to V.2 with no problems. Oh well sometime soon?

[Crazedz]

Ok fixed that random jump issue or at least it seams to be fixed i had to switch the audio codec to a different codec from the video. Now power dvd 6 video and hauppaugge's audio codec.

So far 4 hours with no random skips or funny freeze frames. But this is kinda irritating having to mix codecs like this.

[kny3twalker]

you cannot use networked storage with service mode or UNC paths with service mode
I believe......
I have no networked storage so I can really say for sure

I have playback issues but refuse to roll back to 2.0 and lose my wiz.bin
I am waiting and hoping SageTV will add exclusive fullscreen mode
this should help many issues concerning playback

[nielm]

Originally Posted by kny3twalker

you cannot use networked storage with service mode or UNC paths with service mode
I believe......
I have no networked storage so I can really say for sure

I am afraid thats not correct.

You cannot use MAPPED DRIVES with service mode
You CAN use UNC paths to network storage IF the service is being run as a real user (and not the default LocalSystem account), and the remote system has read permissions on the share for this real user, or for the 'guests' group (IIRC).

I am using service mode on W2k, accessing video and music library on a remote WXP share, and do not have any problems

[davey_fl]

thanks nielm. That addresses one issue but problems still exist with corruption of the properties file, lockups, non-responsive UI, not coming out of sleep mode etc etc. I really like the new features you get using a custom stv but I'll have to stick with V2 for now until a stable, working release comes out

[kny3twalker]

I am afraid thats not correct.

You cannot use MAPPED DRIVES with service mode
You CAN use UNC paths to network storage IF the service is being run as a real user (and not the default LocalSystem account), and the remote system has read permissions on the share for this real user, or for the 'guests' group (IIRC).

thanks neilm I was hoping either you or Opus would see this
but I knew there were other things causing his problem
so wanted to get the issue known in the discussion

[bizarro]

Crazedz, has changing your codec's solved the stuttering problem for you?