Live TV and recorded TV playback stutters sometimes (1 Viewer)

[b5draw]

Hello, while watching live TV sometimes stuttering happens, say only once each 2-3 hours. I have no idea about what can cause this, I don't think it's related to the used TV card (Hauppauge - WinTV HVR-2200 - PCI-E), because last night I was watching a recorded TV item, and the same stuttering also happened. When going backwards and replaying the same part there was no stuttering ... So there was nothing wrong with the recorded data but only with the playback.

I went through some threads reading about timeshifting, disk settings, etc. I tought it could be because timeshifting files are saved on my system disk (solid state), but that can't be the reason, because recorded tv is saved on an other harddisk, and it also happens there. I have no problems with playback of other content from harddisk (for example mp4 movies).

Trying to describe the stuttering: both video and sound are hanging-g-g-g-, and then resuming.

Any ideas about solving this one or narrowing down the cause?
Thanks in advance.

My system specs:

Motherboard Gigabyte GA-Z68MX-UD2H
CPU Intel® Core™ i5-2500 (4x 3.3GHz)
RAM 8GB DDR3 1333
Video Palit Geforce GT520 1024MB
Audio AuzenTech X-Studio 5.1
HD Mach XT Jet Pro 128GB SSD (system)
HD 2TB Seagate ST2000DL003 (recorded tv)
OS Windows 7 Home Premium x64
MediaPortal 1.2.1

 

[b5draw]

Hello, no suggestions? I think it could be something systemwhise, but I can't figure out what. Yesterday evening we were watching TV and it was ok for about 1,5 hour, then at 22:06 we experienced stuttering, again at 22:31 and 22:47. I added the logfiles in attachment. I really hope somebody can help me. Thanks in advance.

 

[Owlsroost]

From the logs, it looks like something is taking a big slice of CPU time at the times you mention - video/audio samples are 3 seconds late (!) for a while, hence the bad stuttering. Possibly an MP plug-in mis-behaving or network problems ? (network problems seem to affect Windows quite badly).

No obvious reasons for the problems in the logs, but MediaPortal.log seems to be missing from the zip file.

Tony

 

[b5draw]

Hello Tony, thank you for your reply. It don't think it is network related, I work with internal disks ... Where can I find mediaportal.log? I followed the steps as described here: Log Files - MediaPortal Wiki.

 

[Owlsroost]

Where can I find mediaportal.log?

It's in C:\ProgramData\Team MediaPortal\MediaPortal\log (but it should have been included in the zip file by the logs collector)

Hello Tony, thank you for your reply. It don't think it is network related, I work with internal disks ...

Yes, so do I, but my experience is that network problems can affect running apps - it was just an idea, the problem could be caused by something else. You need to try relating the stuttering with other things happening on the PC e.g. run MP in windowed mode and have Task Manager open alongside - when it stutters check which processes are taking lots of CPU etc

You could also try running the DPC latency checker tool - DPC Latency Checker

Tony

 

[b5draw]

No luck so far ... I've already eliminated my USB Wi-Fi adapter and changed to a wired network connection, but the problem remains. Now running MediaPortal in window mode, with the task manager open, to check what process has a high CPU usage. Most of the time "System Idle Process" is on top with 95% - 98%. Other processes differ, but no process consuming more than max 3% CPU. Yesterday the stuttering occurs again, but I couldn't notice any difference on the task manager (I had the impression it hangs too, but it was just an impression). Windows event viewer has no entries on the moments stuttering occurs.

I will try again using the latency checker and hope that could give me more information. If that doesn't give me anything I'll try the windows perfmon. With my hardware I thought it would be a setup without trouble.

Has anybody experience with SSD as OS disc? I was wondering if that could be the cause of my problem.

 

[Owlsroost]

I'd also exclude all the recording and timeshift folders from virus checking/real-time scanning.

Tony

 

[b5draw]

Hello Tony,

There's no antivirus running (yet). The only real time scanning I could think of is by Windows Defender. There I now excluded the timeshifting and recording folder. I also excluded *.ts as filetype. Hope this will help, I'll keep you informed.

 

[b5draw]

Hello,

The problem finally seems to be solved. There was an issue with the drivers of the onboard network adapter. First I upgraded the drivers (a newer version of the installed one was available on the Gigabyte website). This didn't help. Then I completely unistalled the network adapter in the device manager and rebooted. After rebooting Windows 7 detected the adapter and I could reinstall the latest driver. We haven't experienced any stuttering for a week now (fingers crossed). After some research I found out the reason could be an IRQ problem, that was solved by reinstalling the driver.

Tony, thanks a lot for your advice!

 

[cecke]

Hey. It seems that I have a similar issues. Sometimes when playing a TS file from the network the playback stutters. (GB LAN). Restarting the machine solves the issues for sometime. Playing the same file locally I don't have any issues.

How did you find out that it is a network driver issue? Any tool you used? Any test you run?

Thanks

Cecke