Stutter in playback

[mpking]

So I've been using GB-PVR for the last month or so. Output has been great. (I bought the WINTV-MCE-500 and the NVIDA decoders.)

Last week my recordings has some stutters in them, but since I was playing some computer games at the time, I thought that was it. (Enemy Territory if your wondering which one)

Anyways, the Stutter was with Video only. Audio was fine. It was like the Video would pause, then go really fast to catch up, or just skip to the right frame. It would only pause for a second or two. It would stutter several times a minute.

So today I watch LiveTV (in preview Mode) The Stutter was there as well! Crap! Now I've got a problem.

So I read a bunch of the articles. I've read about the quartz.dll. I haven't done that yet.

I've read that the selection of the decoders has alot to do with this. I verify that my NVIDA decoder is selected in all pertinent screens.

I open up lastgraph in the GBPVR directory.

It says it's using the Intervideo Video Decoder. Surprise!

So how do I change this?

BTW, I have no idea if this is the actual problem, since I haven't looked at the last graph before, since everything worked perfect.

BTW, I pulled up the Video Render Properties

I noticed that whenever the Stutter happened, the Jitter Counter would go up.



Here's the Lastgraph.

[mpking]

Well, things only get better.

I pulled up a video that I had recorded before the stuttering. (Usually I delete them after I watch them, but this one was for the Fiance)

It stuttered.

I restarted it. It still stuttered, but in different places. The places that stuttered before, didn't stutter.

Now I'm just lost

[ejeffers]

What are your specs?

[mikenl]

To use the Nvidia codecs, uninstall the intervideo ones or, change the merit of the nvidia codecs so it is preferred over the intervideo ones.
You can do this with for instance Radlight filter manager.

[danIrl]

Did you check the fragmentation on your harddrive? I had a similar problem during playback, if I was recording at the same time. Turned out the disk was heavily fragmented and could not cope with playing/recording.

Now I schedule defrag once a week.

Once thing to rule out anyhow.

[mpking]

P4 2.0Gz
XP Pro SP2
768 Megs of RAM
Maxtor 80GB PATA (System Drive)
Toshiba Deskstar 250GB PATA (Live TV buffer and Mediafiles)
SB Live Audigy(with LiveDrive)
Hauppuage WinTV-MCE-500

Disk was defragmented a few days ago.


I'm not thinking that it's a Harddrive thing, because when I watch the Video in Filtermanager, it stutters there as well.

I will try changing the merit of the decoder later this afternoon.

Could this be heat related? I haven't had thermal problems on this particular computer, but I have had them before.

MB temp is 90F, CPU Temp is 93F(120F after recordeing a couple of hours of video)

The 250GB is new. I thought I had it in for a week before the stutter, but I might be wrong.

I ran HDTune http://www.hdtune.com/ on it

My 80GB had a average throughput of 47MB/s with a 15ms seek time
My 250GB had an average throughput of 57MB/s with a 12ms seek time.
Both are in UDMA 5 Mode, and the Bus is at ATA-100. (Guess my MB doesn't do ATA-133)

It also said my 80GB was running at 19C and the 250GB was running at 30C

I've also tried the new Hauppauge drivers (after I started this thread) that were release Feb 3rd (3.1B I had used 3.1A previously)

No change.

[brettc]

I have just started using GB-PVR w/ my new Theater 550 based card and am also noticing playback stuttering. I have hardly started to trouble shoot but I thought I'd post to say you aren't alone. The stuttering I am referring to is during playback of live TV while in timeshift mode, though I haven't tested for it in any other situation.

I did notice that my drive was seriously fragmented, so I did a defrag and that did not fix it. I still see that the live TV buffer file has quite a lot of fragments even immediately after a defrag. I don't remember exactly the numbers, but it was ballpark over 300 fragments for less than 5 min of recorded tv buffer.

My next 2 troubleshooting steps, in no particular order are:
1) See if my recorded shows (not while watching) show stutters, and if so, does it stutter at different places each viewing. (thanks for the idea mpking)
2) See if it sutters in preview mode (vs timeshift mode).

[pens18aj]

I have been noticing the same thing when I play them with my MVP's. I tried different drivers thinking it is when it is recording and no luck. I have 1-pvr150 and 1-pvr500. P4 1.7Ghz-1Gb ram. Nvidia decoder VRM9. I happens if I record one show or 3 shows at a time gbpvr 95.16 :confused:

[mpking]

Finally found the problem.

Apparently in the last few weeks a program I had installed put some kind off autoupdate utility. Every 30 to 40 seconds, it would spike the CPU to 100%.

It wasn't showing up in taskmanager.

It did however, show up in Sysinternal process explorer. I'm unsure what utiltity it was, since it was running as a services.

What I did do was go and wipe out all autostarting programs, and disabled something like 10 services.

CPU idles at 1% now, as opposed to 30% with spikes to 100%. Too bad normal taskmanager didn't show these spikes. (They were running as "System" Processes, and they don't count in task manager.)

[thebruce]

mpking,
could you share what that utility/program was, so the rest of us can watch out for it?