Stuttering on LiveTV (1 Viewer)

[Shazell]

I have a similar problem as well on the latest SVN.

On my DVB-S card I get no stutter and no continuity errors.

On my DVB-T card I gets lots of stutter and loads of continuity errors.

I rolled back to a SVN of the TV server from June and DVB-T works perfectly now with no stutter. I have a suspicion that the continuity checks were added some point towards the end of June and since then no SVN is usable for me.

It could be this fix, but not 100% sure 0001347: Bad reception can crash DVB subtitle filter - MediaPortal Bugtracker

I spent a good time yesterday improving my DVB-T signal to see if thats the problem and it is now at 75% strength and 100% quality. I will see if DVBSnoop detects any problems tonight.

But whatever was changed now makes TVServer unusable on DVB-T for me

 

[tourettes]

I have a similar problem as well on the latest SVN.

On my DVB-S card I get no stutter and no continuity errors.

On my DVB-T card I gets lots of stutter and loads of continuity errors.

I rolled back to a SVN of the TV server from June and DVB-T works perfectly now with no stutter. I have a suspicion that the continuity checks were added some point towards the end of June and since then no SVN is usable for me.

It could be this fix, but not 100% sure 0001347: Bad reception can crash DVB subtitle filter - MediaPortal Bugtracker

I spent a good time yesterday improving my DVB-T signal to see if thats the problem and it is now at 75% strength and 100% quality. I will see if DVBSnoop detects any problems tonight.

But whatever was changed now makes TVServer unusable on DVB-T for me

Bad signal:

14-07-2008 23:50:48.125 Pid 231 Continuity error... 5 ( prev 0 )
14-07-2008 23:50:48.125 Pid 237 Continuity error... c ( prev a )
14-07-2008 23:50:52.187 Pid 231 Continuity error... 4 ( prev 2 )
14-07-2008 23:50:52.203 Pid 237 Continuity error... e ( prev c )
14-07-2008 23:50:53.328 Pid 231 Continuity error... e ( prev 7 )
14-07-2008 23:50:53.328 Pid 232 Continuity error... b ( prev 9 )
14-07-2008 23:50:53.328 Pid 233 Continuity error... 6 ( prev 4 )

 

[Shazell]

Ok as I said I will check with some other software tonight, but I doubt it is possible to get a better signal for me. I will report back with the results from DVBSnoop. Is there any other good stream monitoring software out there?

And my main concern is that it used to work before. I think it was not the change I mentioned above but more likely changes made around the 3rd of June SourceForge.net Repository - [mediaportal] Revision 19263

So if I understand it right, Mediaportal is now very intolerant of weak signals any errors get discarded and cause stuttering.

 

[tourettes]

SourceForge.net Repository - [mediaportal] Revision 19263

So if I understand it right, Mediaportal is now very intolerant of weak signals any errors get discarded and cause stuttering.

Yes, MP / TsReader is currently much more intolerant for dropped data in the stream (discontinuity errors) and thats visible as stuttering. The reason for this change is that lot of codecs are having issues with corrupted stream and on random basis they seem to cause whole MP to crash.

 

[elconejito]

SourceForge.net Repository - [mediaportal] Revision 19263

So if I understand it right, Mediaportal is now very intolerant of weak signals any errors get discarded and cause stuttering.

Yes, MP / TsReader is currently much more intolerant for dropped data in the stream (discontinuity errors) and thats visible as stuttering. The reason for this change is that lot of codecs are having issues with corrupted stream and on random basis they seem to cause whole MP to crash.

I don't think a weak signal is the cause of my issues? I have a settop box (2 of them) that connect to my PC via S-Video. And I can watch one SD channel without problems, or watch one SD & record one HD without problems (or vice versa), or watch one HD channel while recording another HD channel without problems. BUT I cannot watch one SD channel while recording another SD channel without stuttering/pausing/slowdown. How long has the TsReader been this intolerant? I could go back to an earlier version to test and see if thats the case...

I fully accept that I could be wrong, but I don't think its a hardware issue as I've got plenty of horsepower all along the way and I've seen other setups with less run without issue. And I think i've seen others with more (I saw someone with a quadcore) have the same issue. I'd accept that its a windows issue, but I'd like to know for sure before I take the time to reformat and reinstall.

The only thing I saw that seemed out of the ordinary was this in the mediaportal log:

2008-07-13 10:06:24.718750 [Info.][19]: TsReaderPlayer: OnVideoFormatChanged - streamtype=H264 resolution=112x448 aspect ratio=16:9 bitrate=15000000 isInterlaced=False
2008-07-13 10:06:24.843750 [Info.][13]: TsReaderPlayer: OnVideoFormatChanged - streamtype=MPEG2 resolution=720x480 aspect ratio=4:3 bitrate=6000000 isInterlaced=False
2008-07-13 10:06:38.140625 [Info.][13]: TsReaderPlayer: OnVideoFormatChanged - streamtype=H264 resolution=784x224 aspect ratio=16:9 bitrate=15000000 isInterlaced=False
2008-07-13 10:06:38.312500 [Info.][19]: TsReaderPlayer: OnVideoFormatChanged - streamtype=MPEG2 resolution=720x480 aspect ratio=4:3 bitrate=6000000 isInterlaced=False
2008-07-13 10:06:43.218750 [Info.][19]: TsReaderPlayer: OnVideoFormatChanged - streamtype=H264 resolution=3776x832 aspect ratio=16:9 bitrate=15000000 isInterlaced=False
2008-07-13 10:06:43.437500 [Info.][19]: TsReaderPlayer: OnVideoFormatChanged - streamtype=MPEG2 resolution=720x480 aspect ratio=4:3 bitrate=6000000 isInterlaced=False
2008-07-13 10:06:43.796875 [Info.][13]: TsReaderPlayer: OnVideoFormatChanged - streamtype=H264 resolution=2000x192 aspect ratio=16:9 bitrate=15000000 isInterlaced=False
2008-07-13 10:06:43.906250 [Info.][13]: TsReaderPlayer: OnVideoFormatChanged - streamtype=MPEG2 resolution=720x480 aspect ratio=4:3 bitrate=6000000 isInterlaced=False

This in tvserver_MPFileWriter log:

13-07-2008 10:14:03.765 MultiFileWriter: CloseFile
13-07-2008 10:14:03.765 MultiFileWriter:CleanupFiles()
13-07-2008 10:14:03.765 MultiFileWriter:CleanupFiles: Failed to delete file E:\Timeshift\live3-0.ts.tsbuffer2.ts
13-07-2008 10:14:03.765 MultiFileWriter:CleanupFiles: Failed to delete file E:\Timeshift\live3-0.ts.tsbuffer3.ts
13-07-2008 10:14:03.765 MultiFileWriter:CleanupFiles: Failed to delete file E:\Timeshift\live3-0.ts.tsbuffer4.ts
13-07-2008 10:14:03.781 MultiFileWriter:CleanupFiles: Failed to delete file E:\Timeshift\live3-0.ts.tsbuffer5.ts
13-07-2008 10:14:03.781 MultiFileWriter:CleanupFiles: Failed to delete tsbuffer file : 0x2

in the tvserver_TsWriter log there were some discontinuity errors, but they were from the night before, not when I had done this test (isn't the Log Collector supposed to clean those entries out?). I am pretty sure those discontinuity errors correlated to stutters from the night before, although I can't say 100% sure.

 

[Xoote]

i am having the same problem

 

[tourettes]

i am having the same problem

Some more details would be useful.

 

[elconejito]

oh btw, my full logs are here in this post on the previous page.

 

[Laban]

I have some problems with my HD channels too. I get a lot of:

14-07-2008 23:50:48.125 Pid 231 Continuity error... 5 ( prev 0 )
14-07-2008 23:50:48.125 Pid 237 Continuity error... c ( prev a )
14-07-2008 23:50:52.187 Pid 231 Continuity error... 4 ( prev 2 )
14-07-2008 23:50:52.203 Pid 237 Continuity error... e ( prev c )

in the logs.

can actually watch one of the channels though, SVT HD. The rest usually shows 1-2s then stops, or a black screen from the beginning. Sound usually works. The problem with SVT HD is that it behaves rather badly, runs in fastforward for 1s, then stops, ff, stop... The interesting thing here is that the recordings works just fine when i watch them in WMP and if i'm using Haali Mediasplitter. This goes for all HD channels btw, though i only get the ff, stop problem with SVT HD, might be because it uses 720p, not 1080i as the other HD channels. I get the ff, stop problem if i remove the Haali mediasplitter. The codec is CoreAVC both with and without Haali.

This is on a fresh install of Vista and MP. I've added one of my recordings, not sure if it helps. But maybe some other people here can take a a look and see how it works for them.

 

[morpheus_xx]

Yesterday I replaced back my Cinergy 1200-C with my other TT1500. The signal is better now, stuttering got less but still exists.

Also I made some modifications to tswriter. I reduced the amount of logging (in Technotrend api). In the last I disabled *all* logwrites from TsWriter. As result I feel the TV watching is smoother than with current extensive logging.

This *could* mean, when there are discontinuities are logged to file many time per second, could this IO lead to even more stuttering? (my timeshift partition is on another hdd, though)