Quest for stutterless TV streaming .... results. (1 Viewer)

Kaween

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Hi. Thank you for responding in a constructive manner. Much appriciated, no matter what your sentiments would be after reading my response. ;)

I will rebuild one of the testmachines again to comply with your questions and get you guys the info the way you want it. There's no doubt in my mind the problem is solvable if given a small amount of you guys' precious time.

I am however now in my hollydays, so I won't be able to do this till begining next week when I return. Be sure you're not of the hook yet. :D

What I CAN tell you (I hadn't included this in my first post) is

On your question "did RTSP work on ANY system" the answer is a resounding "YES", more specifically on the lowcost NF6100 Asrock machine, equiped with a lowly 2800 Sempron 754 cpu. It also worked pretty well on a SG-71 S478 mainboard with a SIS651 chipset, although at least one minor stutter within a one minute "viewframe" was always present.

1) I excluded the "dead switch" issue by trying 4 different switches/routers in my tests (A WL706 Thomson ADSL/VOIP, a WL716 Thomson, and a LevelOne 5port Gigabit Nic, and lastly a -fail to remember which brand right now- large 24 ports 10/100 Switch). It had no impact on the problem what so ever. I even went so far as excluding any router at all, by placing a second network card in the TVservermachine, and used fixed IP's and a crossover cable to connect to the client. It again had had no impact. I even went so far as exchanging all my cables in the process, although there was no obvious sign it had any connection to the problem, and the cabletester I used to determine the correctness of the used cables had not indiciated any issue either. And before you ask, I'm using Cat5-E which is stamped "certified for gigabit" and -again- tested by me to see if that was indeed the case, it turned out there wasn't a problem

I also failed to mention I had disabled ALL hardware firewalls where these would be included in a gives hardware, and I had NOT installed any softwarebased firewall/antivirus and antispyware, I had disabled the complete XP security system and had disabled the updating system of XP to exclude the possibility that these services would hamper performance.

2) I'm somewhat puzzled by the "include patches found here" remark. You ARE refering to the "use latest builds of TV server, SVN builds and the .net 2.0, MS SQL and Express utilities" remark, yes ? In that case, this was always done. If you're targetting another kind of updates, please let me know. In the other case, yes of course, I always installed them. I too played with various versions of TVserver, backtracking roughly a month old (including the corresponding TVserver plugin for MP of course). Again, no difference. On the Codec side, no additional Mpeg2 codec was installed in the first stage of every platform test. Only when it turned out there was irrepearable sutter on a system, a single Cyberlink PowerDVD6 license was installed, to see if the stutter would be influenced by switching to that specific codec. It never had any impact.


I understand analogue maybe dead for many people/regions. It however is still quite alive here, and will remain so for several years to come, as DVB-T is totally underdevelopped here (2 channels only), and DVB-C is lacking so many channels of our region it can't reasonably be considered to replace analogue TV. Looking at your response, I'm somewhat inclined to consider the reason you lucky people are not having these issues could be because you're not using analogue based capture cards.

Execpt a full answer with asked logs sometime next week; I will take the "worst" machine to get you that info.
 

infinite.loop

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    1) I excluded the "dead switch" issue by trying 4 different switches/routers in my tests (A WL706 Thomson ADSL/VOIP, a WL716 Thomson, and a LevelOne 5port Gigabit Nic, and lastly a -fail to remember which brand right now- large 24 ports 10/100 Switch). It had no impact on the problem what so ever. I even went so far as excluding any router at all, by placing a second network card in the TVservermachine, and used fixed IP's and a crossover cable to connect to the client. It again had had no impact. I even went so far as exchanging all my cables in the process, although there was no obvious sign it had any connection to the problem, and the cabletester I used to determine the correctness of the used cables had not indiciated any issue either. And before you ask, I'm using Cat5-E which is stamped "certified for gigabit" and -again- tested by me to see if that was indeed the case, it turned out there wasn't a problem

    I also failed to mention I had disabled ALL hardware firewalls where these would be included in a gives hardware, and I had NOT installed any softwarebased firewall/antivirus and antispyware, I had disabled the complete XP security system and had disabled the updating system of XP to exclude the possibility that these services would hamper performance.
    if the stream on a client in the LAn seems corrupted, the first step should alwayys be to check it on the serverPC where it is created by using VLC :)

    this helps to isolate the cause.
    2) I'm somewhat puzzled by the "include patches found here" remark. You ARE refering to the "use latest builds of TV server, SVN builds and the .net 2.0, MS SQL and Express utilities" remark, yes ?
    no (i posted teh wrong link before :oops: )

    open the ::wiki manual:: go to ::requirements::

    where you will find these Microsoft Hotfixes which are still not included in WindowsUpdate.

    • DVB hotfix (if you use a DVB TV card)
    • Firewire hotfix (if you upgraded to SP2 and use FireWire devices)
    • VMR 9 hotfix (fixes flickering when you play back interlaced content.)
    • BDA hotfix (if you want to use more than one DVB-bda card with WindowsXP or if the channelscan is crashing.)


    I understand analogue maybe dead for many people/regions. It however is still quite alive here, and will remain so for several years to come, as DVB-T is totally underdevelopped here (2 channels only), and DVB-C is lacking so many channels of our region it can't reasonably be considered to replace analogue TV. Looking at your response, I'm somewhat inclined to consider the reason you lucky people are not having these issues could be because you're not using analogue based capture cards.I understand analogue maybe dead for many
    what i meant was that i can not test analog here, because it vanished ~6months ago (no longer broadcasted).

    and we also only have 2 channels on dvb-t now :p

    but many of your team members are using analog cards without any issues so far.
    they even get better (stutterfree) video then dvb users just because of that "uber great" mpg stream the HW encoder produces ;)
    Execpt a full answer with asked logs sometime next week; I will take the "worst" machine to get you that info.
    nice! :D
     

    Kaween

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    Hi,

    I'm not using a firewire device, not using a DVB card, not using a BDA driver. Pure and simple only a PVR150 Hauppauge which I have in two versions (MCE and normal), and both produce the same issue.

    So I don't expect these updates would change anything in my case.

    Please note : as I mentioned before, I'm SURE the problem STARTS in the TVserver machine, because the timeshifted file already shows corruption/bad frames.

    As these cards work correctly in all other software, it would be my first guess something's wrong with the way the card produces output, generating bad frames. The way I see the problem occur (bad macroblocks) point to a bitbudget problem. VLCplayer SHOWS these bad blocks, MP playback STUTTERS upon them.

    As other software doesn't produce these problems, I suspect it has something to do with the way TVserver adresses the PVR card, possibly setting it to a too-high datarate or something, but I can't change/influence this from within TVserver. Please note that even on the "worthless machine", installing a pure MP (without TVserver) generates flawless recordings !
     

    infinite.loop

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    So I don't expect these updates would change anything in my case.
    well.... NOONE expected that the hotfix for multiple BDA cards would fix a "general crash" during channel-scan. ;)

    so please, just install these patches since they wont harm your system in any way.

    Please note : as I mentioned before, I'm SURE the problem STARTS in the TVserver machine, because the timeshifted file already shows corruption/bad frames. As these cards work correctly in all other software, it would be my first guess something's wrong with the way the card produces output, generating bad frames. The way I see the problem occur (bad macroblocks) point to a bitbudget problem. VLCplayer SHOWS these bad blocks, MP playback STUTTERS upon them.
    i know more then 5 users (some team members) with exactly the same card.
    if there would be a "general" issue, then we would have allready heard about it.
    so it must be something specific in your setup.
    and this does not necessarily mean that this is a bug in TV-Server.

    the visible stutter is a simple codec "issue". some just "skip" the corrupted frames, while other codecs display the errors as "blocky picture".

    As other software doesn't produce these problems, I suspect it has something to do with the way TVserver adresses the PVR card, possibly setting it to a too-high datarate or something, but I can't change/influence this from within TVserver. Please note that even on the "worthless machine", installing a pure MP (without TVserver) generates flawless recordings !
    The TV-Server uses the "plain" received data-stream and fires that into the directshow graph, and it seems that other applications do some "stream beautification" to remove "errors" in the stream from the TV-Card.

    the TV-Engine in MediaPortal 0.2.3.0 RC1 and below uses the MS SB-Engine, which seems to do some "stream beautification".


    from what you told me until now, i think that the reason for this is found in the hardware/drivers and not inside TV-Server sourcecode.

    But this are only guesses (from you and me ;) ).


    The developers will need your testresults to find out more.
    Lets see how these are looking then. more "wild guessing" wont help.

    enjoy your holidays, we are here and waiting for your testresults :)
     

    Marcusb

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    Kaween, just a tip that I'm not sure if you are aware of, but when watching fullscreen TV, you can press the shift key and "1" (to get a !) and you'll get the statistics of the display. Dropped frames, fps, etc. I assume this works with TV3, I haven't used it for a while. Should help see what is going on in MP.
    Also, just to let you know, I have TV3 working on a couple of different installations with no stuttering or droped frames (except for the occasional glitch when the fridge turns on, etc, thanks to DVB and EMF interference).
     

    chrispi

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    Today I installed my new hardware:

    ASUS P5W DH Deluxe
    Core Duo E6750
    ATI Radeon X1650
    2 GIG RAM
    Windows XP Prof.

    It replaced my old hardware (Core Duo with Yonah CPU / Vista Ultimate). The result: The new TV Engine runs allmost perfectly!

    SDTV has not stuttering (tested with MPV and DScaler). For HDTV I am using the PowerDVD H264 codec because with CoreAVC I get a line pattern on the scrreen and no picture. This might be a problem with the ATI video driver so I will try a NVidia card next.

    The HDTV picture is currently stuttering most of the time. After some channel switches I sometimes get a perfect picture without any problems but it gets stuttering again after another channel change. I currently can not say if this problem is originated in the Client/Codec or in the TV-Server. I will do some HDTV recordings and try VLC to clarify this. BTW: I am using the new TS-Flter.

    Thanks for the good work!

    Christoph

    PS: I think it's time for me to donate some money again...
     

    chrispi

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    Well I think my problem was more related to the hardware than to the OS. Before Vista I had XP on my machine and had the same problems. Actually it worked better under Vista than under XP Pro.
     

    mmesh

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    So what is the recommendation for CPU, DVB-S-Cards, Mainboard, Codecs, Operation System (Vista) to get the new TVEngine running without major problems?
    well, i can tell you what works here:

    Server:
    • CPU: Athlon A64 3000+
    • RAM: 2x 512MB
    • Mainboard: ASUS A8N-VM CSM
    • Video-Card: onboard
    • OS: WindowsXP XP2 + all windowsupdates + hotfixes mentioned in wiki (manual -> requirements)
    • TV-Card1: Hauppauge Nova-T USB2 Stick
    • TV-Card2: Hauppauge NOVA-HD- S2 (dvb-s2 part still buggy because of a driver bug)
    • TV-Card3: Skystar2 dvb-s (with BDA drivers)
    • TV-Card4: floppydtv-CI dvb-s
    • HDDs:
      • 1x 120GB for Windows + applications
      • 1x RAID5 with 3x 500GB Seagate SATA 720rpm for videos, pictures, music other data
      • 1x 320GB for backups and TV-Server timeshiftbuffer files

    Client 1: for HD playback
    • CPU: Core2Duo 6600
    • RAM: 2x 1024MB
    • Mainboard: ASUS P5W DH Deluxe
    • Video-Card: ATI X800XT
    • OS: WindowsXP XP2 + all windowsupdates + hotfixes mentioned in wiki (manual -> requirements)

    Codecs:
    • mpeg2: MPV and MPA
    • h.264: coreavc

    hope it helps :)

    if you have questions -> shoot

    note: i will definitly not use VISTA in live enviroment here before SP1 or SP2 ;)

    Hi!

    Sorry to drop on in this topic like this but I have some questions...

    I have a similar hardware setup: TVE3 server (AMD X2 4000+) and HD playback client (Core 2 Duo E6400). Always using latest SVN (on daily basis).
    I have no problem playing HD content (H.264 and AVC1) on my client rig.
    I'm using CoreAVC codec for this. Playback of this kind of files (avi, mkv - 720p and 1080p) is fine be it in Graphedit, MPC or MediaPortal (CPU usage well below 30%)
    I'm having trouble with couple MPEG4 encoded DVB-T channels in MediaPortal.
    I tried using PowerDVD H.264 codec but with alike success.
    When I try to watch Live TV if MP doesn't freeze or crash I get sound and no picture or eventualy multicolored lines instead of it.
    On the other hand MPEG2 channels show just fine (nVidia PureVideo codec)
    If I record the programme and play it back in Videos section all is fine but if try to play it back in TV section (rtsp stream) I have same result as for Live TV.

    Could You, please, state what codecs You have installed and what settings are You using.
    I'll try to do fresh install of WinXP and install only codecs You state on reply.

    Thanks in advance!
     

    chrispi

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    mmesh

    I use DScaler für SDTV and PowerDVD for HDTV. HW accerleration is enabled for PowerDVD/H.264. For the sound I use MPA.

    My graphis card is a ATI X1650.

    Christoph
     

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