Calling all MP New Zealanders (Both of you!!) (5 Viewers)

[gperkinson]

Hello Fellow Kiwi's,

I'm currently using EPGCollector for my EPG where I have recently moved it's execution from the built in Power Scheduler (via command line) to Windows Task Manager. I have Vista 32 bit operating system, a Nova 500-T TV Tuner card and I put my machine into S3 sleep when it's not recording. The EPG Collector download initially worked fine via Task Scheduler, but recently the EPG has not been downloading at the scheduled time (this is after S3 wakeup). If I run the Task Scheduler task manually it works fine.

I'm guessing that the Nova 500-T TV Tuner card is not re-initialising (like it does in ForTheRecord or Power Scheduler if the option is ticked)

First of all, does anyone know the command to re-initialise the tuner - I'm thinking I could simply add this into the task first.

Secondly, does anyone else have / had this issue and worked around the problem.

Any help appreciated.

 

[mm1352000]

Good evening

So how do you screenshot and upload - have never had to do that before.

You just press F11, and the screenshot is saved to My Documents\My Pictures\MediaPortal Screenshots\<date>\ for the user account you're logged into. For posting, simply attach the image as if it is any other attachment and the forum software will post it nicely for you.

Regarding deinterlacing - I use PowerDVD8 (from SAF4) and the "Best" setting in MP - keen to hear what other user use.

I assume you're talking about the "fallback deinterlace mode" in MediaPortal configuration->TV. My setting is "none". I assume the PDVD 10 codec (that I use for all video) or the graphics card picks up the need for deinterlacing.

I have also done some searching in the forums about CCC settings with mixed recommendations, so I have just left them as defaults. I'm on version 10.11 and have heard some users have stayed with earlier versions.

I'm on 10.4 as I said earlier. I rarely upgrade because (1) it works well already, and (2) I don't game. Mostly I'd just rather not fiddle with drivers any more unless there is a good reason to do so. Within CCC though I think it is important to make sure things are set up correctly. FYI, my [relevant] settings:

------------------
Display Options
------------------
3D refresh rate override = same as desktop [*important*]

--------------------------------------------------------------------
3D (mostly not important for MP - more for games I think)
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Smoothvision HD anti-aliasing:
- use application settings = true
- filter = box

Smoothvision HD anisotropic filtering
- use application settings = true

Catalyst AI
- disable Catalyst AI = false
- level = standard

Minimap Detail Level
- level = high quality

Wait for vertical refresh
- level = on unless application specifies [*important*]

Adaptive anti-aliasing
- enabled
- level = quality

OpenGL settings
- triple buffering = off

--------
Video
--------
Basic colour
- use application settings = on

Advanced colour
- video gamma = off

Basic quality (*important*)
- use automatic deinterlacing = off [*important*]
- level = vector adaptive [*important*]
- pulldown detection = on [*important*]

Advanced quality
- edge enhancement = off [*important*]
- de-noise = off [*important*]
- enable dynamic contrast = off [*important*]

Video playback
- enforce smooth video playback = on [*important* - ensures you don't set preferences that your card can't handle]

Hope that helps, although I've heard that AMD re-jigged the UI so I'm not sure whether my settings are comparable...

Edit
Regarding your EPG Collector question, have a look at the devcon command.

 

[rlevis]

The fact that the patch resolves the issue *proves* that the drives are the issue. IO operations may have crept up over time so you can't really compare 1.0 to 1.1.x or 1.2.x. Further, the more use that a drive gets, the more fragmented it gets; the more fragmented it gets, the more performance degrades. Therefore, I stand by my statement that green drives are not ideal. They are borderline, and it just so happens that Miroslav's patch reduces the IO enough that they can cope.

I'm not convinced since when the problem occurs, the hard drive LED is showing very little activity. At times the hard drive is busy while creating thumbs or similar, and there is no additional stutter at those times. There is also operating system I/O caching and hard drive I/O caching which should in theory cache the smaller I/O operations into larger ones.

I thinking it may be an issue with Vista with excessive I/O operations. But I may be wrong.

 

[mm1352000]

rlevis
On one hand you seem to be saying that MediaPortal/TV Server isn't doing much with the HDD because the LED isn't showing much activity. On the other hand you seem to be saying that the cause might be Vista doing stuff with the HDD. I don't understand how you can say Vista is using the HDD any more than MediaPortal/TV Server when you already commented that the HDD activity indicator isn't doing much. Maybe I have misunderstood - are you saying that Vista's write caching could be at fault? It could be an interesting experiment to turn off virus scanners and the Vista indexing service (known to be quite aggressive) and remove Miroslav's patch and then see if the problem comes back...

In my opinion if you change one "variable" (TV Server IO requirements for the HDD) and the problem is resolved then that "variable" must be responsible for the problem resolution. My explanation for the HDD LED would be that timeshifting/recording IO would be mostly sequential. In my experience the HDD light only flashes more often when you're doing random IO or spinning up drives...

In any case I don't think it is worth arguing over. I am grateful to Miroslav for his work and happy for you that your issue seems to be resolved.

 

[rlevis]

I just think Vista doesn't handle lots of I/O operations very well. The stuttering would occur with pre-recorded TV just as much as live TV. So the TV Server patch is likely making no difference for me, just the tsReader patch.

The HDD will pre-read sequential file data not yet asked for into a buffer, which is fairly large on the HDD. This should make reading in small buffer sizes as fast as reading in large buffers, except for the additional RAM and O/S overhead, which is where I think the issue is. I can copy a 1 GB file in around 30 seconds. I just don't see it being the cause. But as I said, I could be wrong. I intend to upgrade to Win7 in a few months and I'll do some tests then.

I've already got windows indexing disabled and no active virus scanner.

mm1352000, on a completely different subject, would you know why the TV Service uses a substantial amount of CPU while not doing anything. It hovers around 6% but spikes up to 15% while nothing is recording. It's just using enough of the CPU to cause the fan to spin faster and make more noise than I would like. Just wondering what it may be doing.

Actually I notice too that it's using a lot of RAM. I set the computer to reboot every morning at 5:30am. After a reboot, and watching a channel, the TV Service is using around 20MB RAM. By the end of the day it's up to 400MB.

 

[mm1352000]

mm1352000, on a completely different subject, would you know why the TV Service uses a substantial amount of CPU while not doing anything. It hovers around 6% but spikes up to 15% while nothing is recording. It's just using enough of the CPU to cause the fan to spin faster and make more noise than I would like. Just wondering what it may be doing.

Got some logs? My guess is EPG grabbing or a plugin doing stuff, but I can't be sure without logs. TV Server on my e6600 2.4 GHz uses about 5% CPU and ~60MB of RAM when watching TV 3 HD. Idle CPU usage is 0 with a capital Z. I don't have any plugins installed and I use EPG Collector for EPG so nothing for TV Server to do unless watching TV...

Actually I notice too that it's using a lot of RAM. I set the computer to reboot every morning at 5:30am. After a reboot, and watching a channel, the TV Service is using around 20MB RAM. By the end of the day it's up to 400MB.

Sounds like a memory leak. Have you heard about the Infoservice issue? Try that and see if it helps...

 

[gperkinson]

I thinking it may be an issue with Vista with excessive I/O operations. But I may be wrong.

Have you disabled "superfetch" in Vista? This reduced a heap of my I/O operations without any effect on the performance of the machine

 

[rlevis]

Yeah, I did that a long time ago too.

 

[rlevis]

Got some logs? My guess is EPG grabbing or a plugin doing stuff, but I can't be sure without logs. TV Server on my e6600 2.4 GHz uses about 5% CPU and ~60MB of RAM when watching TV 3 HD. Idle CPU usage is 0 with a capital Z. I don't have any plugins installed and I use EPG Collector for EPG so nothing for TV Server to do unless watching TV...

The only TV Service plugin I have running is xmltv for EPGCollector.

I think InfoService is only an MP plugin so won't affect TV Service RAM or CPU, but I have it disabled anyway as it was crashing MP occasionally.

I've attached a tswriter and tv.log for today. This will include a restart of the service which I did around 10pm. Hopefully you can see sometyhing in there using CPU and RAM, but I'm not sure you will.

I've been sitting here now for 5 minutes watching TVService.exe RAM usage in Windows Task Manager with nothing recording or playing, and the RAM just increases around 64KB every 10 seconds or so. The tv.log has not changed at all, with the last entry 20 minutes ago. Hmmm.

Cheers.

 

[STuNZ]

I've been sitting here now for 5 minutes watching TVService.exe RAM usage in Windows Task Manager with nothing recording or playing, and the RAM just increases around 64KB every 10 seconds or so. The tv.log has not changed at all, with the last entry 20 minutes ago. Hmmm.

Cheers.

I used to have a memory leak problem with TV service when I had both an analogue tuner and DVB-T tuner. Running one or other was fine, or even dual DVB-T but combination of analogue and DVB-T lost RAM over time.