Multiseat: A lot of stuttering, artifacts, pixelation, freezes with RTSP/UNC (7 Viewers)

[HTPCSourcer]

Have you all seen this?

There is actually much more And I've tried everything.

...but updating the driver on the server rectified the problem.

Like Snoopy I do run the latest available Intel driver. It should be clear though that those "available" drivers are the Intel Win 7/Win 8 versions and you then need to trick the 2012 server OS to allow installation of such a driver. Intel would not publish server-intended versions for its network chips.

Having said this, I believe that Snoopy has clearly demonstrated that we are not dealing with such a 'simple' issue - or we would both get errors when we are for example attempting to copy large files, which is not the case. At the same time I don't know if such errors would be logged but a least I have not seen anything in the server event log nor in the client's.

 

[breese]

I grabbed the logs from post #45
I found something my system does not show and maybe it is related....
It appears in every configuration.log and mediaportal.log

[2014-10-26 10:20:52,554] [Config ] [Config Main] [INFO ] - String not found, using English: 1321 : Auto Decoder Selection
[2014-10-26 10:20:52,554] [Config ] [Config Main] [INFO ] - String not found, using English: 1322 : Force Source filter
[2014-10-26 10:20:52,554] [Config ] [Config Main] [INFO ] - String not found, using English: 1323 : Video Codecs for .TS files
[2014-10-26 10:20:52,554] [Config ] [Config Main] [INFO ] - String not found, using English: 1984 : Refresh video thumb
[2014-10-26 10:20:52,554] [Config ] [Config Main] [INFO ] - String not found, using English: 1989 : There is read only file in the folder!
[2014-10-26 10:20:52,564] [Config ] [Config Main] [INFO ] - String not found, using English: 1990 : Wake Up Server
[2014-10-26 10:20:52,564] [Config ] [Config Main] [INFO ] - String not found, using English: 1991 : Please wait until the server is waking up
[2014-10-26 10:20:52,564] [Config ] [Config Main] [INFO ] - String not found, using English: 1992 : The server is not available.
[2014-10-26 10:20:52,564] [Config ] [Config Main] [INFO ] - String not found, using English: 1993 : Check the network connection or increase the timeout value.
[2014-10-26 10:20:52,564] [Config ] [Config Main] [INFO ] - String not found, using English: 1994 : Wait until the share comes online.
[2014-10-26 10:20:52,564] [Config ] [Config Main] [INFO ] - String not found, using English: 1995 : Create folder thumb from thumbnails
[2014-10-26 10:20:52,574] [Config ] [Config Main] [INFO ] - String not found, using English: 1999 : Name with Duration
[2014-10-26 10:20:52,574] [Config ] [Config Main] [INFO ] - String not found, using English: 2000 : The song is read only!
[2014-10-26 10:20:52,574] [Config ] [Config Main] [INFO ] - String not found, using English: 2001 : The picture is read only!
[2014-10-26 10:20:52,574] [Config ] [Config Main] [INFO ] - String not found, using English: 2002 : The movie is read only!
[2014-10-26 10:20:52,574] [Config ] [Config Main] [INFO ] - String not found, using English: 2003 : The file is read only!
[2014-10-26 10:20:52,574] [Config ] [Config Main] [INFO ] - String not found, using English: 2004 : Do you want to delete?
[2014-10-26 10:20:52,574] [Config ] [Config Main] [INFO ] - String not found, using English: 2148 : Do you want to change it on all sub-folders?
[2014-10-26 10:20:52,584] [Config ] [Config Main] [INFO ] - String not found, using English: 2149 : Question
[2014-10-26 10:20:52,584] [Config ] [Config Main] [INFO ] - String not found, using English: 34064 : An Internet connection is required\nFor Last.FM Radio
[2014-10-26 10:20:52,584] [Config ] [Config Main] [INFO ] - String not found, using English: 100513 : Enter the old PIN code
[2014-10-26 10:20:52,584] [Config ] [Config Main] [INFO ] - String not found, using English: 100514 : Enter the new PIN code
[2014-10-26 10:20:52,584] [Config ] [Config Main] [INFO ] - String not found, using English: 300232 : Only update files after {0}

Also, mediaportal.log has a lot of these errrors

[2014-10-27 20:34:33,509] [Error ] [19 ] [ERROR] - LoadSkin: Running on wrong thread - StackTrace: ' bei System.Environment.GetStackTrace(Exception e, Boolean needFileInfo)
bei System.Environment.get_StackTrace()
bei MediaPortal.GUI.Library.GUIWindow.LoadSkin()
bei MediaPortal.GUI.Library.GUIWindow.OnMessage(GUIMessage message)
bei TvPlugin.TvFullScreen.OnMessage(GUIMessage message)
bei MediaPortal.GUI.Library.GUIWindowManager.ActivateWindow(Int32 newWindowId, Boolean replaceWindow, Boolean skipHistory, String loadParameter, Boolean skipAnimation, Int32 focusControlId)
bei MediaPortal.Player.g_Player.ShowFullScreenWindowTVDefault()
bei MediaPortal.Player.g_Player.ShowFullScreenWindow()
bei TvPlugin.TVHome.TvDelayThread()
bei System.Threading.ThreadHelper.ThreadStart_Context(Object state)
bei System.Threading.ExecutionContext.RunInternal(ExecutionContext executionContext, ContextCallback callback, Object state, Boolean preserveSyncCtx)
bei System.Threading.ExecutionContext.Run(ExecutionContext executionContext, ContextCallback callback, Object state, Boolean preserveSyncCtx)
bei System.Threading.ExecutionContext.Run(ExecutionContext executionContext, ContextCallback callback, Object state)
bei System.Threading.ThreadHelper.ThreadStart()'

 

[HTPCSourcer]

Hi @breese,

Thanks for looking into the details.The first part of the log is simply a missing skin translation because @Snoopy87 is using a skin with German as the language and it would simply fall back to English. This has definitely no impact on how the software is running.
According to @HomeY the "wrong thread" messages can be safely ignored. These were introduced by devs to follow up on something else and unrelated. I understood that these messages will disappear in the next 1.10 edition.

Thanks,
HTPC_Sourcer

 

[HomeY]

According to @HomeY the "wrong thread" messages can be safely ignored. These were introduced by devs to follow up on something else and unrelated. I understood that these messages will disappear in the next 1.10 edition.

Agree, except the part that they will disappear in the next 1.10 release.
These LoadSkin error are only showing up with Debug logging enabled, not with the normal Info loglevel setting. All Pre Releases automatically set Debug loglevel, all Final releases have Info loglevel by default, so that's how they will 'disappear' from the logs in the Final releases.

 

[HTPCSourcer]

Maybe off-topic, but can you quickly explain the why of these messages. Do they indicate that something is actually wrong, and if not, why are they generated?

 

[regeszter]

Do they indicate that something is actually wrong

Something is wrong but we don't have enough resource to fix it.

 

[HTPCSourcer]

Something is wrong...

But the conclusion is that it is not affecting the OP's Live-TV glitches, correct? If yes, we can close the off-topic discussion
/End OT/

 

[HTPCSourcer]

The actual remote access stuff (SMB) is transparent to TsReader, and is handled by the OS (Windows).

Understood.

If the OS returns an error when TsReader requests data from a file, there isn't really much that can be done ...

We are looking at a file that is in the process of being written (via pointer access?). I don't know your code (and I don't pretend I would immediately understand it either) but how is the Windows read function operating? I assume that the file is not read byte by byte but probably in larger blocks. What would be the theoretical behavior if the same block was written by the Server and simultaneously read by the Client ? I would expect the read operation to be delayed until the server's write access to the same block is finished. Standard block size is probably 4096 (the timeshift files residing in my case on a 6G IMDISK-created RamDisk).

If the hypothesis of read/write conflict is correct then we should no longer log any of these strange error messages when watching Live TV if we went back say 60 seconds in the buffer and continued watching. I'll check this out and report here.

 

[HTPCSourcer]

Alright, myth busted: above-mentioned working hypothesis is wrong. ´

I was watching from buffer with 30 sec 'rewind' during 15 min and then decided to take a look at tsreader.log. The respective directory on the client is shared by Windows, so I just tried to open tsreader.log from another PC using notepad. It took reaaaally long but eventually it opened. Again lots of invalid signature errors but I had absolutely no glitches on TV.

However, MePo did not appreciate me looking into one of its files. When I returned to the TV, Live TV had stopped and what I saw was the MePo TV Server connection screen. So somehow the MePo writing process appears to not be entirely failsafe, while I thought file handling operations would resolve any conflict. Does anybody have an explanation?

In the end @Owlsroost is probably right in suggesting to simply not log these signature events,

 

[Vasilich]

So somehow the MePo writing process appears to not be entirely failsafe,

TSWriter just doesn't expect that someone opens its files with write access (what notepad always does). So try to open this in e.g. MPC-HC