[obxterra]

Just on SD tv feed I see jerkness (dropped frames?) and occasional lag in audio sync. DVD playback is perfect, could it be the pvr software recording live?


Running a AIW x1800xl card with 5.13 catalyst drivers. Also hade this with the 5.12 drivers.


AMD Athlon 64 x2 4200

ASUS A8N - SLI Premium

2 Gb PC3200

2 - Samsung Spinpoint SATA drives

Win XP Pro SP2


I can't seem to find any optimization suggestions searching this forum.


Thanks

 

[walford]

The Microsoft MCE OS had a lot of problems recording when the first AMD X2 chips were released which turned out to be an AMC XP driver problem so I suggest installing the latest XP X2 driver from the AMD Web site.

What Decoder are you using if the NVIDIA make sure that the de-interlacing control is not set to to "Smart" set it to "Video" or "Automatic"

Also make sure that your tuner card, audio card and your graphics card are not sharing the same IRQ.

What Make and Model of Tuner card are you using?

I assume that you have checked to be sure that you are using the latest drives from you Tuner Card and Audio card manufacturers Website.

 

[obxterra]

Sorry, I did leave out some important details.


AMD Driver appears to be the latest (1.2.2.2) I had updated this from 1.2.2.0. I had been using the "Cool & Quiet" feature, but disabled it thinking that might be th problem.


I'm assuming the decoders are ATI, haven't installed anything yet other than the stock ATI stuff. I had the same issue with Catalyst 5.10, 5.12. and now 5.13.


The tuner and graphics are both ressdent on the same All-In- Wonder card from ATI. I hav just checked and found no IRQ conflicts.


I had also loaded the latest driver for the on-board AC-97 audio.


Looked but couldn't find any settings in the Catalyst control center or TV setup that would seem to effect Resolution is set at 1280X720 60hertz for a Samsung HLN 5065W.


Any suggestions will be much appeciated.

 

[walford]

Sorry I missed that you had the AIW version of the 1800.

What happens with recorded TV?

What is the CPU utilizaion when watching Live TV? Are their any other process using a lot of CPU power?

You might actually try turning off one CPU using your BIOS and again seing what the CPU utilization is?

 

[obxterra]

Thanks for sticking with me on this.


I checked CPU usage: ranged from 3 to 11 %, would say an average of 5%


I tried couple of brief recordings at what I thought was default "Native" (mpg?). strange thing was unable to play those back. Set the recorder to avi and it worked. CPU use was about the same during recording but during pllayback it was more loke 15%. Picture quality was great and at frst seemed normal but it did start getting jerky and the audio syn got terrible. It seeed to get worse the longer I played it back.


I was unable to disable the second core, couldn't find a setting in the Bios for that.


Could it be my HDD's, I'm not familar with SATA drives. I have DMA enabled on the IDE channels "if available" but couldn't a setting like that for SATA.


I'm really at a loss as to what is up. Also use my HTPC for online games ( the reason I went for overkill on this machine), mainly BF2 which now crashes before even starting a game. Just goes back to the descktop after I log in.

 

[walford]

Many users with an Avermedia A180 HDTV tuner have had trouble with SATA drives where the SATA controller is using the SiI3112 chip. There is a thread in this fourm about that problem. However, I have seen no reference to any other tuners such as your software encoder having similiar troubles.


You can select a process in task manager right click and set the CPU affinity to just one CPU, you might try it for MMC encoding softrware.

 

[obxterra]

Set the CPU affinity to one CPU, don't see a difference yet


One thing that sems strange, sd over cable seems to be alright. So it's down to Directv feedd from s-video only.


I'll check the SATA drive discussion to see if anything seems to apply.

 

[obxterra]

Found that the affinity fix wouldn't stick. Changed on restarting the app or computer. Found the fix for that in the ARS Technica forum. I would post the link to those instructions but wassn't sure if posting a link to another forum was alright. If anyone is interested either PM me or let me know if that's permitted here.


Can't tell yet whether that's the fix I need, but I do appreciate you pointing me in that direction. It has apparently caused similar problems for others.


Nope: not the fix I'm looking for, but I can see in Task Manager that only one core is being used.


Still looking for an answer on multiple forums.

 

[obxterra]

I believe my problem is centered around my SATA drives. I've spent most of the day eliminating my RAM as the issue. I also reviewed all ATI Catalyst and MMC settings, and reaffirmed that all drivers were latest and no IRQ sharing or conflicts. In test my system the only odd result regards the transfer rate of my drives. From what I've read I believe I should benchmark (sisoft sandra 2005 pro) more than 467 KBps. I know Ican't get the full rating for these driives, but shouldn't I get more performance out of them than this?


Anyone have any good tweaks for HDD's? Samsung SpinPoint SATA II drives.

 

[walford]

Check your SATA onboard or separate controller to see if it has the Silicon Image chip I mentioned in my previous post since it may be the cause of the problem. It appears that the problem with the SI chip has to do with the size of the buffer being passed to the drives since that may vary with different tuners. If you have an old IDE drive floating arounnd that you can put in the system you could confirm that it is or is not a SATA drive problem.

 

[obxterra]

Sorry didn't see your post, spent the lst 24 eliminating other posibilities. Just finished an 8 hour run of memtest86 wiht no errors, but did find that the Bios had selected the wrong voltage for the memory 2.6 instad of 2.75


There are two sets of SATA connectors on the mobo one set is SI RAID, the other is nVidia, the cables are conneted to the NVidia side with no RAiD. SI Raid is disabled in the BIOS. I also removed the ASUS nVidia drivers that I had upgraded to 6.65 and replaced them with 6.70 from the NVidia site.


Nothing I've done over the last four days or so has changed one darn thing.


But I have sure tweaked the heck out of it.


That sort of does bring me bgack to the drivs wwhih I have a etensivy tested. I may have put the wrong numbers on one of these forums.


Read speed 115 mbs (pretty decent)

Write speed 46mbs (bad)


So there is something here that would seem significant, I believe those numbers should be more near equal.


Any idea how to change the buffer bandwidth or how to "equalize "t hese speeds?

 

[obxterra]

Well it's been five days of working on this and I have now completely eliminated any hardware or driver issues, even stress tested my RAM for eight hours with 0 errors, benchmarked and tested my HDD's confirming they are running DMA.


But I still have the picture stutter, jerkiness and adio sync problem on TV only, recirding with this system is useless. I've even had lockups running TV with 5%CPU usge and only 367 meg of ram in use according to Task Manager.


Temps are averaging 32C for both CPU and Mobo, 61C on the ATI Card. Cannot find a logical reason this system won't work right. Finally called ATI support, they're closed through Jan. 2.


Anyone have any other ideas?

 

[walford]

Do you have an old IDE drive around that you can connect to your IDE bus and try to use for recording video. IF you do and it works then you know you have a SATA SI congroller chip problem if it does not work then you can eliminate SATA as the cause of your problems.

 

[miketech]

obxterra, your on-board sound device can still be an issue. Can you disable it and test the SD feed? It would be better if you had a decent soundcard laying around to test.

 

[obxterra]

Ain't it a wonder, the answer to most problems is always the last place you look.


Miketech: you nailed it, solid, disabled the onboard sound in the Bios, rebooted and watched silky smooth video, not that good a lip reading though. Wonder why it was apparent in DVD?


Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you both for stickin' with me on this.


Issue solved, now to find a decent audio card that won't conflct with the video card. Are there any specifically reccomended for ATI cards?

 

[walford]

Congradulations MikeTech on spotting the problem I had failed to notice the Autio Sync prolbem in the OPs first post and had failed to ask if there were any audio problems.

Some of the onbaord audio chips have had new drivers in the last several months and the OP shoould check for these updated drivers since they have solved similiar problems for other users.

 

[miketech]

Glad to hear you're making some progress.

You can look at the chainteck card for cheap. If you don't game, stay away from the Audigy cards.


I use Soundstorm on my main HTPC and TB Montego DDL on my room system....

 

[obxterra]

Update: went with the HDA Mystik 7.1 card. Still have the problem. Card is on a separate IRQ no conflicts, on-board audio disabled. If I disable the new sound card, the stutter disappears.


I've uninstalled, cleaned and reinstalled the CCC5.13 and MCC 9.10, to no avail.


Waiting on ATI Tech Support to come up with an answer.


Also, before the last re-install of drivers and software I could make it settle down by changing refresh rates periodically. Weird!


Can't correct it that way now.

 

[walford]

Well at least you know that the sound card/drivers or your DVD decoder audio settings appear to be the source of the settings. Are you just using nomal stereo output from the sound card.

If you still suspect the SATA drives and if you have the ability to disable Native Command Queing(NCQ) wither with the SATA controller or possibly a jumper on the drives you might try that. Howeveri doubt this is the problem but it has solved other users problems with SATA drives.

 

[obxterra]

Just posted another thread regarding Sage or BY. Do you think trying these out might give an different result?


just using SPDIF pass through to receiver amp.