"Pause" in TV every 5,6,7 seconds (1 Viewer)

[4Fred]

Everything is working fine on the single seat installation but when watching live or recorded TV from clients I get a pause or stutter every 5,6 or 7 seconds on the client. The stutter isnt bad image or anything like that (no bad reception), it's like a very small pause where image does a small pouse and sound disappear for maybe 0,3 secs or something.
This is not happening on the single seat installation where the TV server is installed, only when watching from clients.

I have tested from two different PCs and exactly the same problem. I have tested different codecs and nothing seem to make any difference.
I don't believe it is a network issue, I have tried to ping the single seat from a client and get all good reply all the time, everything is wired, no wireless stuff.
I don't think it's a performance issue, SSD disk for OS+MP install and Timeshift is written to ramdisk.
Since the problems only occur on clients and not the single seat I cannot image that the stream written to ramdisk is corrupted in any way, if it was I think I would have the problem everywhere.

I don't expect you guys to solve this with just this little bit of information, what I'm looking for is information how to troubleshoot this kind of issue?

 

[Paranoid Delusion]

Worthwhile running a client MP in debug mode and playing a stream for a couple of minutes and then uploading the logs, so we can see what may be going on.

Regards

 

[4Fred]

Logfiles attached.

 

[mm1352000]

Hi 4Fred

It looks like something is struggling - there is a burst of late frames every 9-10 seconds in the TsReader logs just like you say. My first suspicions are that this is a network or HDD speed issue. Wired networks shouldn't have a problem unless the wiring is bad or there is unusual interference, so that leaves HDDs. Are you saying that the recordings are hosted on an SSD drive on your server? It might be worthwhile for you to either upgrade to 1.2.0b or try Miroslav's stuttering patch...

 

[4Fred]

Additional info...
I had a x86 instalaltion of Win7 and MP as a single seat. This computer is now my client and the single seat is replaced by a x64 installation of Win7 and MP as a single seat. This computer is a monster, Intel Core i7 quad with OCZ SSD for MP+OS and 12 GB RAM with a 4GB ramdisk for timeshift. The recordings are stored on a normal SATA drive in the single seat, kind of expensive to store recordings on SSD disk

I have another small computer in the bedroom that was a client to the old single seat and is now a client to the new single seat. On this client I have had no problems with this before but do now. The only thing that is changed the the single seat, same cables and all that stuff.

The changes on the single seat is hardware and x86 to x64 OS. So my guess is that the problem is located to that hardware and nothing else...

During the weekend (or when I can find the time) I will move timeshift from RAM to SSD disk.
If that don't help I will test Miroslav's stuttering patch.
If that dont help I will insert another NIC and try that.
I will also upload debug logs from the single seat before I change anything for comparison.

 

[mm1352000]

Okay, so let us be very clear. You have problems with live TV *and* recorded TV/video playback from the single-seat on the small computer in the bedroom. No problems on the single-seat itself.

Keep in mind that any recordings/videos are not timeshifted - they are just played directly from your slower HDD (so the SSD and RAM disk won't help with that).

2 more questions:
- What brand, model and size of HDD is the regular HDD, and how full and fragmented is it?
- What happens with live TV on the small client if you start watching, pause it for 30-60 seconds, and then start watching again - does it still stutter?

 

[4Fred]

I have three computers all in all. The one in the bedroom x86 Win7, have been running fine all the time untill I switched single-seat. The old single-seat is another computer where I ran the test and posted the logs. But I have exactly the same problem on both clients but not the single-seat. The single seat is a new computer all together. The disk I use for recording and other media was used in the old single-seat and have never been a problem before... it's a western digital green 2TB disk and I've used maybe 500 GB data on it.

The more I think about it the more I belive it is a network issue (probably crappy nic on mainboard, and I do run the latest drivers).. but anyway, I will do a debug test as soon as possible and upload the logs..

 

[mm1352000]

The disk I use for recording and other media was used in the old single-seat and have never been a problem before... it's a western digital green 2TB disk and I've used maybe 500 GB data on it.

Green drives like that are "famous" for causing problems. Sometimes they work - sometimes they don't. I'd suspect that the problem is related to that. What happens if you try to view recordings stored on the SSD from either of the clients?

The more I think about it the more I belive it is a network issue (probably crappy nic on mainboard, and I do run the latest drivers)..

Even a badly working 100 Mbit/s connection should be more than enough for 10 Mbit/s video streams unless there is something *seriously* wrong...

...but anyway, I will do a debug test as soon as possible and upload the logs..

I look forward to it.
- the pause test
- playing recording from SSD
- using the SSD/HDD instead of RAM disk for timeshifting

 

[4Fred]

Logs from the Single-Seat, will test other stuff later in weekend.

 

[dmertz]

A client running on the same machine as the server uses file reads to obtain the data while a client running on a different machine uses RTSP. I think the buffering scheme is different between the two, and MP's implementation of the streaming used with RTSP seems inadequate to accommodate the transmission gaps that can result from a WD Green drive (I also use a WD Caviar Green 2TB), despite that overall bandwidth of the drive being completely adequate. My workaround is to do a file-copy across the network (my 100MB Ethernet connections result in the file copy of one hour, 6 to 7GB of .ts file taking about 20 minutes) and then viewing the show as a video.

I've spent a little bit of time trying to understand MP's RTSP (well, the stream protocol associated with the RTSP connection) buffering, but not enough. It seems to me that a reasonable implementation would buffer a small amount to allow viewing to start relatively quickly, then, while viewing, extend the buffer to accommodate gaps in delivery. Edit: Since (I believe) streaming is done at the playout rate, such buffering to accommodate server disk latency would need to be done at the server. Buffering at the client would be to accommodate transport jitter.

Dave