[Resolved] Scanning during Live TV (1 Viewer)

[PureLoneWolf]

Hi there

I have been getting stuttering issues when watching Live TV on my HTPC, investigations into the logs shows that the TV Series plugin is still performing regular scans. I have ensured that the option to "scan remote shares when fullscreen video is active" is turned off, but it keeps following the 5 minute schedule to scan remote shares...which causes stuttering on live TV.

Is it possible that Live TV isn't being detected as full screen video?

All of my shows are on a server and, as I have multiple clients, I access via UNC paths.

Other than performing manual imports each time, is there a way to stop the scan from taking place when I am watching TV?

I am using v3.1.3.1888 at the moment.

Many thanks

 

[ltfearme]

Re: Scanning during Live TV

Sorry there is no other way built into the plugin except for detecting fullscreen video. I guess it fails for you, maybe everyone for LiveTV. Its possible LiveTV does not use g_Player which is used to check fullscreen state (can anyone confirm?).

For now I would change the schedule to every 60mins so its less of an impact or buy a better system

 

[Owlsroost]

Re: Scanning during Live TV

Sorry there is no other way built into the plugin except for detecting fullscreen video. I guess it fails for you, maybe everyone for LiveTV. Its possible LiveTV does not use g_Player which is used to check fullscreen state (can anyone confirm?).

For now I would change the schedule to every 60mins so its less of an impact or buy a better system

Which method or variable do you check ?

Tony

 

[mastyman]

Re: Scanning during Live TV

interesting!, i wonder if i have the same issue, PureLoneWolf how bad is the stutter / how long does it stutter for?

 

[PureLoneWolf]

Re: Scanning during Live TV

Hi mastyman

The stutter is video only...but it is pretty bad, almost like having it on x3 fast forward...freeze, jump, freeze, jump and lasts for around 20-30 seconds whenever a scan is initiated.

I have set the automatic scan to 60 minutes but, obviously, I still want to avoid that stutter.. I guess I will have to run manual scans for the time being

Thanks

 

[RoChess]

Re: Scanning during Live TV

Hi mastyman

The stutter is video only...but it is pretty bad, almost like having it on x3 fast forward...freeze, jump, freeze, jump and lasts for around 20-30 seconds whenever a scan is initiated.

I have set the automatic scan to 60 minutes but, obviously, I still want to avoid that stutter.. I guess I will have to run manual scans for the time being

You could look at your splitter and codec setup.

Some splitter and codec combinations are much better multi-thread optimized then others. The import process is done on background threads, so only when codecs are in use that do not 'share' the system resources nicely do you end up with stuttering.

I personally use the MPC-HC standalone codecs and splitters and can run a MovingPictures full-refresh via IMDb+ plugin (takes about 6 hours), an MP-TVSeries import scan and watch media full-screen at the same time without any stuttering. And this is on a relative weak dual-core AMD BE-2400 CPU.

You might be dealing with a mainboard/BIOS combination that has terrible 'Deferred Procedure Calls' latency issues. Even on a brand new Core i7 system, I've seen DPC issues that cause serious audio/video stuttering when other things were going on at the same time. Sometimes it can be indirect as well, for example with onboard LAN and a bad chipset/driver it can be that network access can generate huge amount of CPU time wasted. I've seen situations where LAN caused 80% CPU spikes on an 8-core Core-i7, which was fixed to 1% after BIOS, chipset and driver updates.

Debugging the cause (as it can be many things, or even combinations of things) can be time consuming, but it is doable if you take your time and follow a good checklist.

 

[tourettes]

Re: Scanning during Live TV

Some splitter and codec combinations are much better multi-thread optimized then others. The import process is done on background threads, so only when codecs are in use that do not 'share' the system resources nicely do you end up with stuttering.

Video playback is really timing sensitive - codecs itself aren't usally to blame, but something that hogs system resources from the rendering process itself (this case MP).

Any nicely behaving plugin should always stop all background processing when a video playback is active. Unless it is some plugin that is related to the video playback itself (like automatic crop plugin for example - and those are in many cases to be blamed on stuttering as well as the GPU to RAM texture copy can be badly performing on some HW / driver combos :O).

 

[PureLoneWolf]

Re: Scanning during Live TV

I should add that Moving Pictures doesn't affect live TV, and I have tested running a TV Series scan and watching media files (even 1080) and they are not affected. It only seems to be affecting Live TV viewing when TV Series performs it's scan.

Having extended the scan time for remote shares (from 5 minutes to 60 minutes), the stutter has moved to every 60 minutes now...I will be forcing manual scans (as soon as I can get the remote away from the girlfriend ) and that should remove the stutter entirely.

It would be interesting to know if other people get any issues too, then maybe there could be an update in future versions of MP-TV Series to check for Live TV as a valid Full Screen Video source.

Thanks

 

[tourettes]

Re: Scanning during Live TV

Just a general note: If there is no robust way for plugins to know when a video playback is active then it is a bug in MP side and it needs to be fixed.

 

[ltfearme]

Re: Scanning during Live TV

Sorry there is no other way built into the plugin except for detecting fullscreen video. I guess it fails for you, maybe everyone for LiveTV. Its possible LiveTV does not use g_Player which is used to check fullscreen state (can anyone confirm?).

For now I would change the schedule to every 60mins so its less of an impact or buy a better system

Which method or variable do you check ?

Tony

Interesting, I had a look at code and could of sworn I was using some member variable from g_Player. Apparently Not! Im using:

bool isFullscreen = false;
if (GUIWindowManager.ActiveWindow == (int)GUIWindow.Window.WINDOW_FULLSCREEN_VIDEO)
  isFullscreen = true;
return isFullscreen;

I had a look through the window enum and there is a WINDOW_TVFULLSCREEN entry as well so will add that.

Here is a test dll.