Stuttering when starting playback

[MaBo]

Hi,
When I start playing a file, in particular one I've edited (using PVAstrumento and cuttermaran), the start of the playback is stuttery. After a few seconds everything is fine. When playing back in for instance media player classic there is no problem whatsoever, so the file must be OK.

Any clues? Is it a pvr350-thing?
Greetz,
MaBo

[stefan]

Same thing for me (also pvr-350 user), but I've always considered it a non issue ;-) Btw, I have yet to edit a file and watch it through gbpvr, so I can't say if it gets worse or better after editing a file...

[capone]

I get that w/ file starts watching timeshift TV (so warching mpg file). It chugs a little for <15sec, mostly just a jog or two.

[manCREATEDgod]

I also have a 350 and experience the same issue.

[sub]

On the PVR350, this is caused by the playback position of the file bumping into the record position of the file. Try increasing the live tv pre-play delay, which effectively starts things with a bigger gap between the two.

Start with a big number then decrease it to find something that works well for you.

[MaBo]

Sub,
Thanks for the tip. I went up to 2500ms but nothing changed in the stuttering. What did change was a long time a black screen before playback started. Probably about 2.5 seconds ;-)

That annoyed me just as much, so I went back to 300 ms.

Greetz,
MaBo

[Darx-starz]

Hi. I have seen that you have a 160GB HD in your profile. When you run "defrag c: -a -v" is there much fragmentation? If you FTP a large file to the system does windows take a long time to write it? What does taskmgr say when you kick off a recording? Does CPU go 100% on the SYSTEM service?

Lots of things it could be. Try knocking the quality down a notch and see what that does. I see you have an ASus Pundit. Could be that its IO bound becuase the disk is fragmented or you have a CDROM on the same channel that forced PIO mode 4 and not Ultra DMA. Have a play and get back

[MaBo]

Darx-starz,
Thanks for your info. I keep fragmentation down by running diskeeper every second night. I just saw it reported only slight fragmentation. The DMA's are set correctly. There IS a dvd-writer on the same ide cable as the HD. Both run on UltraDMA, the DVD on 2, the HD on 5. So, in my opinion that should be quite OK.

Your FTP test is not feasible for me, as I don't have any netwok attached (yet ;-).

Quote[/b] ]What does taskmgr say when you kick off a recording? Does CPU go 100% on the SYSTEM service?

is not entirely clear to me. What I did was start a recording while taskmgr was open. The rows were sorted on cpu load. System didn't come hight on the list. The top ones were idle, taskmg and gbpvr approximately. To my eyes, that looks good. What's your opinion?

THe quality is not the issue, I think. One recording I used for testing the delay mentioned by sub was a low-quality one. But others have the same problem.

It appears you're quite a tweaker, if you have any suggestions, keep me posted!

Thanks,
MaBo

[Darx-starz]

Hi Mabo. Looks like you are on top of things.

Quote[/b] ]
The top ones were idle, taskmg and gbpvr approximately

Thats what I would expect. Leave it like that and do a long record or a live TV (same thing realy). You dont have to watch it. I suspect something is writing to the HD and cuasing a problem. I get a major hang when the other card kicks in (recording a show). It lasts about 3 seconds. I have seen gb-pvr makes system go 100% and I have killed the process and its restarted OK. Its happned a couple of times.

Do the taskmgr thing and try and pin it down. Let us know how you get on