Jerky Playback on some commercials and most shows

[RazorRust]

Windows 10 
NextPVR v5
WinTV-HVR-955Q
LAV Filters

I get jerky playback on most shows. Then it will go to commercial and play great. Then the next commercial might be jerky. It's like some commercials and shows are too high quality or too high frame rate and the tuner or something is struggling.

The issue is the same in the web app, desktop app, vlc, and kodi.

Are there any settings I can try? Is there a way to troubleshoot this?

Thanks.

[mvallevand]

Given the different clients you tried this is most likely just a signal issue caused by a poor antenna, antenna placement, splitters or noise.

If you upload the zipped logs we might be able to see how the signal strength is. Also if you upload a short recording showing them problem to a site like Google Drive or OneDrive we can look but we likely would just confirm the problem.

For troubleshooting you could also see how the same channels play in WinTV.

Martin

[tinstaafl]

For troubleshooting you could also see how the same channels play in WinTV.

An excellent suggestion for WinTV DualHD users!

Hauppauge was kind enough to include a pair of signal monitor apps, one for each tuner, that you can use to align your OTA antenna with during recording or live TV.

The WinTV app is simple to load and select channels with. Since I use an indoor antenna, I occasionally bump it out of alignment so that the distant stations then have issues. These tools make it a snap to verify that the antenna is positioned correctly and receiving an OTA signal without errors.

[Legacy14]

This most likely isn't your issue, but I'll mention it anyway since you never know...

Back in November of 2021 I upgraded to NPVR 5 and experienced a lot of stutter and pixellation in my recordings. I play the files using a Patriot media player connected to my TV.

I messed around with settings in NPVR and checking signal quality/strength with the signal monitor app, which yielded nothing. Then I went back to the basics. The reason I upgraded to NPVR 5 in the first place was because I replaced my main HDD with a new one, and opted to do a clean installation of Win 10 rather than clone the contents of the old drive onto the new one. After installing Win 10, I installed the apps I wanted to use, including NPVR V5

I initially had NPVR save the recordings on the primary (new) HDD. All the recordings would show stutter in the recordings, regardless of which channel they were from. My system has a second HDD for extra data storage. I changed the recordings directory to be on the second HDD, and that solved the issue. As far as I can tell, the stuttering I was experiencing was entirely due to the fact that the new HDD (bog standard Seagate Barracuda) just can't keep up with the data rate from recording video from the antenna. When I switched the recording directory to be on the second HDD, the recordings were fine from that point on. Might be worth checking out if you have a second HDD on your system.

[tinstaafl]

I initially had NPVR save the recordings on the primary (new) HDD. All the recordings would show stutter in the recordings, regardless of which channel they were from. My system has a second HDD for extra data storage. I changed the recordings directory to be on the second HDD, and that solved the issue. As far as I can tell, the stuttering I was experiencing was entirely due to the fact that the new HDD (bog standard Seagate Barracuda) just can't keep up with the data rate from recording video from the antenna. When I switched the recording directory to be on the second HDD, the recordings were fine from that point on. Might be worth checking out if you have a second HDD on your system.

It makes sense that you had an issue with your recordings on your primary system HDD running on Windows 10. It has been my observation that Win 10 is a heavier disk user than previous Windows OS were, and performs much better in general on an SSD. Although My Win 7 NPVR PC is still running on HDD, I record my NPVR programs onto a secondary, external USB HDD, which works great here.

For example, I noticed that my Win 10 laptop performed much faster after I swapped in a SSD. But if your PC is now running fine on HDD while hosting the NPVR service, that is probably not necessary since you moved the recording folder to a secondary drive.

It is a good practice in general to place your PC's media content on a secondary drive that is not being constantly accessed by the OS. Better data throughput that way.

[NumberFive]

The data rate for recordings is usually very low, ususlly something like 5 to 10 Mbps for HD and less for SD. A HDD shouldn't be having issues with that, and the OS should be taking care of it even if the disk is busy.

I'm not suggesting the solution hasn't worked, but it seems like there's something more fundamentally wrong to be causing lost data in the recordings.

[tinstaafl]

The data rate for recordings is usually very low, ususlly something like 5 to 10 Mbps for HD and less for SD.  A HDD shouldn't be having issues with that, and the OS should be taking care of it even if the disk is busy.

I'm not suggesting the solution hasn't worked, but it seems like there's something more fundamentally wrong to be causing lost data in the recordings.

I cannot argue with that.

This thread is probably going along the lines of "it happened to me too", although everyone actually has a different root problem and solution. There's going to be many causes of playback issues.

But the benefit of a thread like this is that some potential solutions can be presented for consideration, that may have worked for others. There is no one-size-fits-all answer, so you just have to get under the hood and play detective for yourself.

[NumberFive]

You're absolutely right, there's definitely value in documenting these things as you never know who it will help out in the future by giving them options and leads to explore.