Poor "Client" Performance

[hollow5555]

I recently set up an NPVR server. It's an AMD dual core 2ghz pc with 4gb of ram and a 1TB hard drive running Windows 7. It's connected to my home network via 100mb wired ethernet. I also set up a second NPVR pc that is configured as a client to the NPVR server. It is an Intel dual core 1.8ghz pc with 2.5gb of ram and a 160bg hard drive also running Windows 7.

The client connects to the server fine. I can see the tv guide and all of the recorded programs. When I attempt to play a recorded video, however, it all falls down. The performance playing the video is poor at best. It often lags and then speeds up to catch up. Audio is frequently out of sync, and skipping ahead or back in the video can cause a lag of anywhere from 5 to 30 seconds. When I play the videos locally on the server (connected to a tv) it plays fine, but the client performance is terrible to the point of being practically unusable.

Does anyone know a way to boost performance? Is there a configuration I may have missed or is the hardware I picked just not up to snuff (though playing the video with WMP via windows share on the same machine is fine).

[johnsonx42]

that is certainly very poor performance, and definitely not expected given your hardware specs (nor even with much lesser hardware). My first guess would be some sort of network configuration problem, maybe a network adapter not auto-negotiating with the switch properly, or a bad switch, bad cable, it's hard to say. what device(s) do you have between the server and the client?

[lovemyram4x4]

Since you can play it in WMP it's less likely a network issue, I'd lean toward a codec problem in NPVR.

[pBS]

yea, what's the video hardware on the client? it's more about the video card than the processor...
that's most likely where your issues are...copy a video to the client and play it locally from client video library..if it plays ok then it probably is network issue..

[johnsonx42]

playing a file over the network using windows file sharing is a different situation than streaming the file from the NPVR server. a lot more bi-directional network communication goes on, and it's a lot more sensitive to latencey. exactly the sort of situation that would be fouled up by one of the network issues I mentioned. I'm not saying I'm sure that's it, but it's where I'd start looking giving the symptoms.

the client side video card and decoders also need a look.

[jcjefferies]

You dont mention if you are playing SD or HD, the video card. The hardware should have no problem playing SD as I have been using 8 year old 2Ghz P4 as my client over 54 MHZ Wi-Fi until recently. If your video card supports DxVA you should have do problem with HD. It is probably a good idea to post the settings on the Decoders page.

[stustunz]

Open take manager
while playing video verses when not playing video
take note of cpu usage
npvr cpu cycles a
network traffic
report back

what video card does the machine have

[Reddwarf]

I'v also noticed that client performance is poor in 2.2.6, was much better in previous release.

[hollow5555]

The videos are being recorded in SD since they're coming from a comcast STB. The network is 100mb and the client is a single hop from the server with a DLink 24 port 100mb switch between them. Both client and server have ffmpeg installed. I've also tried a Wireless-N network adapter in the client (connected to my home network at 150mb) and I get the same performance issues.

The video card in the client may be an issue. It's the integrated Intel 82XXX series video card. I have a few video cards laying around that I can try and see if that makes things any better (various ATI FireMV, ATI Radeon, and GeForce cards).

I will post screenshots of the decoders page when I get home tonite. Is there anything else I should include? Any logs? Other screenshots?

Thanks in advance!

[hollow5555]

Before I left for work I tried the GeForce card in there. It's a card I've previously used without issue in a GBPVR box. The performance issues are the same. I've tried both wired and wireless and have the same issue.

As I said, I have ffdshow on both the client and server, so perhaps it's a decoder issue?