Stuttering on LiveTV (1 Viewer)

[Ambass]

Hi all,

I attach a TsReader.ax that could disable the frame discard as an option.

Could people experiencing problem test it. The higher risk is to crash codecs ( mainly h264 ones ).

To disable frame discard just add the file "c:\RelaxTsReaderForBadReception.txt" at the root level.

Let me know the results.


ambass.

 

[tourettes]

If you earlier haven't seen those log lines the reason is pretty simple. Those haven't been logged... what comes to the stuttering TsReader has been previously allowed corrupted data to be sent to video & audio codecs.

I am sorry, I don't understand. Are you saying that the continuity errors were not previously being logged?
I'm fairly sure the continuity error problem is worse today than it was in 1.0 RC2

Yes, the logging is pretty new to discontinuity errors. Previously when those have happened nothing did get written to the TsWriter.log.

 

[RickDeckard]

If you say the most likely reason is a bad signal, do you mean at the source? Because the signal and quality values reported in tv.log are actually quite high?
I think I can rule out HW going bad as I have three tuner cards and they all exhibit the same issue.

1) Quality values that BDA drivers provide to applications arent 100% correct (althou there has been improvement on the driver side).
2) Quality can vary between different spots in the time. So after 5 minutes the quality can be anything, no matter what it was previously. For example a car that drives near your house can cause interference to the DVB-C/T/S signal to that some packets are dropped (mainly true for the DVB-T). Or if someone switches lights in a different room it could cause interference to the signal (true for all types of DVB).

I accept the explanation that the signal is indeed not optimal. I guess I just have to live with that until I have some time to climb onto my roof to fiddle with the dish. In the meantime I'll give Ambass's modded TsReader a try.

However, is there a way I can lower the verbosity of the tswriter.log so it will no longer log these continuity errors? Often it logs up to 60 lines of continuity errors per second which makes the log file grow to hundreds of megabytes within a matter of days.

 

[couchman75]

Hi Guys

I've just started reading this thread after experiencing similar issues so I tried the tsreader.ax posted by romadd64 earlier on 2008-07-29, Thanks!. My tv stuttering problems were generally only an issue on one channel which may have some reception issues, this new tsreader.ax seems to have fixed my problems so far.

The main reason I was looking into this was because I experienced the same issues on any channel (on my TV Server/Client in our lounge) when I watched TV from a remote MP client, also when copying files to and from my TV Server or even copying them locally. I then started looking into some performance metrics and found that whenever Pages/sec were high (200+) MP stuttered every 5 secs or so on both, this leads me to think that perhaps MP is struggling with this memory activity caused by disk I/O. All other metrics incl CPU and Disk Queue length are quite acceptable. I see the continuity errors crop up as soon as I copy a file, otherwise the log is clear of any issues.

Has anybody else seen similar things happening?

Cheers
Russ..

 

[tourettes]

The main reason I was looking into this was because I experienced the same issues on any channel (on my TV Server/Client in our lounge) when I watched TV from a remote MP client, also when copying files to and from my TV Server or even copying them locally. I then started looking into some performance metrics and found that whenever Pages/sec were high (200+) MP stuttered every 5 secs or so on both, this leads me to think that perhaps MP is struggling with this memory activity caused by disk I/O. All other metrics incl CPU and Disk Queue length are quite acceptable. I see the continuity errors crop up as soon as I copy a file, otherwise the log is clear of any issues.

Sounds like a issue on PCI bus. Try moving the tv card on a different PCI slot. Some motherboards have chipsets that have badly behaving SATA controllers (i.e. when accessing hard disk they could drop other device data).

Other issue could be that the network speed is hitting the limits. TVE3 uses UDP, so if some packet is dropped it wont be resent.

 

[couchman75]

My TV tuner is USB. One of my hard drives is a SATA (has timeshift and recorded TV), the other an IDE (generally where I copy files from) and the problem happens when copying between any combination of these drives. However the problem is fixed with this new tsreader.ax so I'm happy at the moment.

Thanks Guys for a great piece of software!!

 

[tourettes]

My TV tuner is USB. One of my hard drives is a SATA (has timeshift and recorded TV), the other an IDE (generally where I copy files from) and the problem happens when copying between any combination of these drives. However the problem is fixed with this new tsreader.ax so I'm happy at the moment.

Thanks Guys for a great piece of software!!

You should still check the TsWriter / TsReader logs for discontinuity errors as those should be still happening (i.e. hardware is still dropping stream data).

 

[Rudi99]

The main reason I was looking into this was because I experienced the same issues on any channel (on my TV Server/Client in our lounge) when I watched TV from a remote MP client, also when copying files to and from my TV Server or even copying them locally. I then started looking into some performance metrics and found that whenever Pages/sec were high (200+) MP stuttered every 5 secs or so on both, this leads me to think that perhaps MP is struggling with this memory activity caused by disk I/O. All other metrics incl CPU and Disk Queue length are quite acceptable. I see the continuity errors crop up as soon as I copy a file, otherwise the log is clear of any issues.

That could point on my issues here: short Video-Pauses of 1-2sec. in live-TV, when a new MP-temp-file (live2-0.ts.tsbuffer1.ts etc.) is created.

 

[couchman75]

Yes I'm still getting the discontinuity errors but they are barely visible on screen. I get the odd bit of pixelization but thats way better than having the Wife winging every 5 seconds when I want to copy a file or watch TV in the office. I was also getting the odd MP crash before, now not one after a couple of days of using this new tsreader.ax.

 

[Redth]

I too am getting quite a few continuity errors, only on my HD channels... I tried the filter to 'ignore' them, but i still get minor pauses in live tv, and then i get the artifacts showing.... Now, my dish has 96% signal, but my dvb-s card only reports 67%... Now, it has always reported that level, so I thought maybe the BDA drivers weren't correctly reading the signal levels... I'm beginning to wonder if it's actually not getting enough signal now :s...

Actually, Mediaportal's tv.log reports 0% signal, 100% quality always... Not the most helpful... If I do have a signal problem, it's gotta be to do with my dvb-s card or something, since my stb gets 96% signal level....