Stuttering problem (6 Viewers)

[igalan]

I had to go back to 0.2.2.0 release, because the SVN had some problems. But lately I've only had a slight stuttering every now and then that goes away in less than two seconds. The only thing that I changed was the audio codec from MainConcept (Hauppauge) MPEG Audio Codec to MPA. Unfortunately MPA doesn't decode audio on some DVB-T channels. Since this doesn't happen too often, I can't get logs when it does (my wife wouldn't be happy if I stop the show we're watching to get some logs ).

 

[mba]

"in less than two seconds" is quite bad in my book igalan , happened 5-8 times during a movie last night, and thats annoying.
diehard2 you still think that its a process/thread that is freezing the system by taking control of the cpu for too long. How could I possibly debug this when its not visible in ProcessExplorer.
I'm a software engineer working fulltime on designing and developing C+ software so I'm not totally clueless, but its still C++ not C#, and I haven't got a development rig with a capture card I could work with. We only have the htpc in our living-room that my girlfriend would kick my arse if I took possession of.
I did some googling yesterday thinking maybe I could write an external tool that monitored the mediaportal.log for "repaint->x" messages and then took a snapsnot of the process cpu usage. But I think this should be done in the mediaportal project
where the actual problem starts. If anybody is up for the task heres a link to some c# example of getting process times http://www.codeproject.com/threads/getprocesstimes.asp

kind regards
Martin Bang Andersen

 

[igalan]

Here I don't see high CPU use during the stuttering, either. At least the Task Manager shows a steady CPU use. And this happens on mt PVR-350, which is PCI, so it doesn't suffer from the problems of USB tuners. I believe it's a codec issue, audio or video; unfortunately until I can get a log, I can't give much information.

 

[wallywalts]

Mine was stuttering for around 5 mins last night then stopped. After looking through the logs its apparent to me that its downloading the latest epg from the dvb-t signal. This seems to cause the stuttering for some reason as after about 5 mins it stopped altogether for the rest of the night. What about an option to download the epg data at a time when no one would be watching tv like 4am?

 

[broadscott]

Mine was stuttering for around 5 mins last night then stopped. After looking through the logs its apparent to me that its downloading the latest epg from the dvb-t signal. This seems to cause the stuttering for some reason as after about 5 mins it stopped altogether for the rest of the night. What about an option to download the epg data at a time when no one would be watching tv like 4am?

While downloading the EPG may cause stuttering, I am not sure that this is causing the main problem we are all speaking. Referring to the original thread (https://forum.team-mediaportal.com/tv_stutters_after_1_hour-t11510.html), turning off the EPG was one of the first things we did and we still get stuttering.

 

[broadscott]

Well, it looks like the TV stuttering has become a deal breaker! We had bad stuttering during a particularly "suspensful" moment the other night in one of my wife's favourite TV shows, after which I (and the DVR) copped a rather stern speaking to. I have been ordered to "make it work". I am currently testing MCE as a backup (and it's awful btw, not nearly as nice as Media Portal), but if it doesn't stutter, we will be going with that, no matter how much I would rather not. Please can we find a solution to this problem!

 

[richbayliss]

I too experience this stuttering (and always at a moment of suspense)

Luckily my other-half is more leanient with the technology.

I tend to find that it is only of channels of weaker reception, which supports the whole "corrupted-data" theory.

 

[tourettes]

When suspecting that ist's corrupted stream thats causing the stuttering with DVB-T/S/C do following:

1) Install tv engine3 beta
2) record multiple tv shows
3) check if VideoReDo application reports any missing packets for those recordings

 

[igalan]

We're probably looking at the simptoms of several different problems that cause the same behavior. I have this problem on my analog tuner and it doesn't suffer from interference. The DVB-T tuner does suffer somewhat to interference, specially when a mobile phone is being used near the small indoor antenna it has, but as soon as the call is finished, so is the stuttering.

In my case changing the audio codec from MainConcept (Hauppauge) MPEG Audio Decoder to MPA fixed the stutter that lasted until you rewind and resume playback. Unfortunately I lost audio on one channel too, so I'm still looking for a better solution .

I've been evaluating the possible sources and this is what I've learned:

• I understand that some codecs once are fed with bad data (due to interference on the tv signal, for instance), behave erraticaly until you reinit the stream (stop playback and resume).
• Bad video card drivers can cause trouble, too. Harware acceleration can have problems when a there is a small glitch in a frame, causing subsequent frames to be badly decoded as well.
• Grabbibg EPG data over DVB seems to cause some sutter for many users.

If anybody can add some more possible sources, maybe we could help the dev team with specific tests for each source of problems, and squash them one by one.

 

[richbayliss]

I find witht eh TVengine3 beta that guide sufing is ALOT slower, but if I recall correctly the skipping issues were not apparent.

HOWEVER - I occasionally found the stream was restarting (going to the start of the timeshift) but this was on older HW. I can possibly try on my new platform.

Does anyone know of a way to have both TVengine3 and TVengine 2.2 running (like a way to switch)