Upgraded to .98.08 - now video is very choppy when starting LiveTV

[sgilani]

Hi,

Just upgraded to .98.08 ... I only use timeshift mode, and in the previous version everything worked nicely.. Now, when I first start timeshift mode and then after I change channels, the video is extremely choppy for about 3-4 seconds.. then its fine, and then jittery for a second or two and then finally nice and stable.

I've fiddled with the preplay delay, disabled plugins, different decoders.. nothing seems to make it work. It does seem to work fine in live preview mode however. Maybe something has changed in the Parser filter or something? Just a guess...

Logs attached.. anyone have an idea of what could be going wrong?

[cginzel]

just a quick note. i've had that same behavior now for some number of versions when starting a recording. it's almost like its hiccuping as it gets started.

[bone]

Same here I thought it was something on my end, but it's very choppy.

[Brian_W]

Just something most people don't think about, do you defrag your drives regularly? Constantly writing and delting video files to the HD can produce extremely fragmented drives. Just a thought.

Brian

[sgilani]

Yep, I defragged just to make sure that wasn't the case.. I never had this issue in any previous version.. so I'm pretty sure my system is up to it.. something must have changed to cause this odd behavior..

[Brian_W]

My only other suggestion is to play with your audio/video decoders. I am running .98 with no problems at all. Decoders can definitely kill the entire experience if you have a bad combination.

Brian

[sgilani]

I tried DScaler decoders.. the problem is still there, but it behaves a bit differently.. lol I don't know how to explain it.. it is definitely better with DScaler but it still has the freezing problem. (was using nVidia Purevideo before).. I'm hooked up to a SDTV.. nothing looks better than Purevideo, DScaler comes closest but deinterlacing isnt as good.. everything else looks horrible (tickers smear across the screen etc)

Something definitely changed in this version.. sub, do you have any idea what change might have caused this?

[Brian_W]

DScaler requires a lot of cpu horsepower versus Nvidia. I use Nvidia myself and have absolutely no problems. I still need to tweak my resolutions and such as I get slight jaggies during a lot of screen motion, but not bad at all. What video card are you using? Have you checked out this thread:

http://forums.nextpvr.com/showthread.php?t=18464

It gives the necessary steps to get max performance out of the nvidia decoders with video cards that support hardware deinterlacing and such.

Have you looked at your cpu usage during playback to see if there is a correlation between your choppiness and high cpu usage?

Brian

[sub]

Something definitely changed in this version.. sub, do you have any idea what change might have caused this?

Nothing springs to mind. You could try the patch from post#7 of this thread: http://forums.nextpvr.com/showthread.php?t=19532

[sgilani]

Thanks sub! I'll give it a try

Brian_W: Yep, I have the PureVideo drivers tweaked up.. my card's only an FX5200 but it gets the job done.

When the freezing / choppiness occurs, CPU usage plummets down to 4% - 8%.. then when the freezing stops it's back up to 65% (for DScaler.. with nvidia it's around 40% but same issue happens)

I would expect a drop in CPU usage since the decoders aren't being used for a second or two.. but CPU usage is around 20% during the channel change. Then the new channel appears, and thats when CPU drops to almost nothing.

It almost seems like the buffer file isn't being filled up quickly enough, and then as GBPVR catches up things run smoothly again.. I'll give the patch a try