RehabMan

[RehabMan]

[quote=Reinout]

I’m trying to perfect the recording to a network drive aswell.  So far the iscsi path has worked very good for me. There is only one disadvantage when using more than one MCE computers in the house. As iscsi was never intended to be used by more than one initiator at once, you don’t see any updates on files from another machine, i.e. when MCE  A has recorded something to the iscsi target, MCE B can’t see it unless it disconnects and reconnects again to the target. Not ideal!

Now I’m trying to overcome this bij using a cluster filesystem (virtually VMWare, VirtualBox), so that multiple instances of connecting to the target will have “live” updates when a recording has been made or deleted.

The problem is that the whole clustering filesystem is totally new to me.

Can you tell me if your setup can provide me with a solution to my described problem?

thanks in advance

[/quote]

Actually, I’m surprised you didn’t end up with a corrupt file system allowing multiple initiators to connect to a single target.  To me it is like having multiple computers connect to the same HDD via SATA (assuming that was physically possible, which it is not).  The file system needs to be designed from the outset to allow multiple clients manipulating file system structures simultaneously.  NTFS is not such a file system.  You’re better off setting up a separate target for each initiator, and using SMB sharing on the client if you need to share that content with other PCs.

I don’t know anything about file systems that might support simultaneous access to the physical media, so I can’t help you there…

[RehabMan]

That is interesting… thanks for the reply.  I think I’ll try setting the recording drive to the iSCSI target on my WHS 2011 box for my main HTPC just to see how it goes. There’s nothing on TV right now that I’d really miss if something went poorly, and I’m thinking problems are more likely with live tv anyway.  And if it goes well, it allows for some different possibilities for my HTPCs… (ie. getting rid of HDD spinners on the HTPCs entirely).

[RehabMan]

[quote=Aaron Ledger]

It won’t be cheap, but the i7-3770T is only 45W TDP w/HD4000 and there’s also the i7-3770S which is 65W TDP. Pretty amazing parts for TDP considering they match i3 SNB and beat i3 Clarkdale though they are more expensive.

[/quote]

i3-2100T SNB is 35W TDP.  So not quite a “match” at 45W.

But still amazing. 

[RehabMan]

Unless you’re doing some kind of post-processing on recordings (removing commercials, or transcoding for mobile devices), recording is mostly I/O bound.  That is, it is neither CPU or GPU intensive.  Your GPU gets used during playback of content.  While recording content the GPU is likely idle, and the CPU is pretty much waiting to shuffle data from one I/O path to the other (tuner card/network -> hard disk).

My main HTPC uses a i3-2100T and I have a couple of other HTPCs that are running a Pentium G620T, and all systems work great.

[RehabMan]

There is just strangeness with Media Center dealing with (HDMI) resolution negotiation.  Sometimes I wish there was an option to force WMC to not use FSE (full screen exclusive) mode and just behave like a normal full screen application on the desktop (as far as I know, there is no such option), because it does seem the Windows 7 desktop does not have the issues that WMC does.

I have the HDMI detective and it fixed a lot of problems when turning the TV on/off while WMC is running (ie. set a music playlist, turn tv off, go to change it, so turn tv on, problems…).  But the HDMI detective didn’t seem to solve some of the problems when WMC comes out of sleep mode (black screen, wrong resolution).

So I have my Harmony remote automatically close WMC before putting the system to sleep, and have it automatically restart WMC when waking the system up.  This avoids 99.9% of the problems (I’m not going to say it is perfect, but it is close).  It is not quite as “clean” when the system starts up (you see the WMC splash screen), but it generally works…

[RehabMan]

There are other reasons to go with low wattage parts — not necessarily economic.  In particular, it is easier to keep lower wattage parts cool, which can help keep the system quiet.  Whether your particular situation requires that depends on where your equipment is located, your sensitivity to noise, and your desire to have a quiet system…

Something to think about…

[RehabMan]

I see this with my Ceton4 too.  Same thing — warnings, sometimes several in a row, but ultimately the program records just fine.

A reg hack to adjust the timeout would be nice, but I’m not aware of one.

Or… Ceton could just make things tune a little quicker!   Come to think of it, I don’t recall this problem happening with the earlier Ceton firmware — I think it was an update drivers/firmware (this spring) that started causing it.

[RehabMan]

I installed LAV splitter + audio (no LAV video codec)… and… it worked!  No more drift and bitstreaming is working.  Have yet to actually try something with subs, but according to graphstudio, DirectVobSub is loading so it should work.

Had one little problem with an audio decoder (supporting only stereo) from Remote Potato (a recent addition to my HTPC in the last few days) loading instead of the LAV audio decoder.  For now, I unregistered that audio decoder.  Will have to see if that has broken AC3 decoding for Remote Potato and if so figure out the real answer (I would imagine… reducing its merit).

Thanks for all the ideas and hope my trial-and-error helps somebody else in the future.

[RehabMan]

Tried to use just the LAV splitter.  As stated above, I got it to work with DirectVobSub, but unfortunately, could not get HD audio bitstreaming.  For some reason everything was being down mixed to stereo LPCM when played from WMC or WMP.  Strangely, if I loaded the file in graphstudio and ran the graph, it did correctly bitstream.  WMC and WMP must be doing something funny with the graph after its built… something that kills bitstreaming using combination of LAV splitter + ffdshow audio.

Now trying LAV audio as it seems to support HDMI audio bitstreaming…  We’ll see.

I also tried recoding the video stream as h264 (using Handbrake, then remux w/ mkvmerge), but the same audio drift was apparent.  Pretty amazing though… I think that without an A/B test no PQ degradation could be noticed… and h264 seems to be better accelerated than is VC1 on Sandy Bridge (at least HD 2k in Core i3-2100T).

[RehabMan]

Thanks for that.  I didn’t see an option to post anyway, but perhaps I was not really looking for it.

On the subject of filters, I’m going to give the LAV filters a try.  Originally, I tried to use shark007 to switch to the LAV splitter, but couldn’t get DirectVobSub to load.  This time, I uninstalled shark007 (I really don’t like codec packs like shark007 anyway), found the download for LAV, and installed them manually.  They worked (with subs) on my test machine (a laptop I use for trying out experimental stuff before setting it loose on my HTPC).

I don’t know if they will fix my sync issue, but I’ll give it a try later today…

[RehabMan]

I tried to author a much more elaborate response, but it got rejected as spam for some unknown reason.

I’ll try to be brief.  I used mkvmerge as well.  I’m aware of the fps issue and MediaInfo shows 23.976.  On top of that, seeking into the movie works, so it would seem to me that the audio and video are interleaved correctly.

At any rate, I’ve got other ideas to try, and when I get a chance I’ll try those ideas and some of the ones suggested here.

[RehabMan]

Using MKVmerge from the mkvtoolnix suite… so same as you.  I got my Harry Potter series in a box set (HD-DVD) and backed them up last summer, so I was using “4.2.0”… I’m thinking of remuxing with the current version and seeing what happens.  I definitely know about the FPS issue…  But these are VC-1 and MediaInfo correctly shows 23.976.  I probably did have to set it to 24000/1001 when I originally ran mmg (mkvmerge GUI).

My thoughts on it so far:

Since it is TrueHD and I’m bitstreaming, it seems to me the player needs to keep the video in sync with the audio (because the audio is being handled externally bit-for-bit… there is no opportunity to slow down or speed up (stretch or shrink) the audio to match the video frame).

I’m not really sure how the media pipeline works in DirectShow, but either the splitter component or the video decoder component has to be responsible for skipping a video frame should the video start falling behind the audio.

I wonder if this problem isn’t related to the SNB clock being not quite exact with respect to 23.967 (well actually, 24000/1001).

I may try recoding the video as h264 just to see if I have similar issues with drift (keep the TrueHD audio untouched).

I really don’t think there is a muxing problem w/ respect to sync because when I seek into the movie at any point, the sync problem corrects itself (then later falls behind).  If there was some kind of sync problem from the get-go (say if the video really was 24fps on disc), you would think that as you seek further and further into the movie, the AV-sync would get more and more off…

But heck… I’m just an old washed up C++ programmer who has not had any real media programming experience, so I’m just guessing…

I haven’t had time to look at this issue, so really haven’t tried a lot of the suggestions and ideas of my own, but I hope to soon.

[RehabMan]

I’ll play around with a different splitter and see if that makes a difference…  One problem that has been holding me up really using a different splitter is that it seems only Haali supports DirectVobSub (vsfilter) for subtitles.  At least that was what I saw in graphstudio upon setting things up for either LAV or MPC-HC MKV splitter.  Haven’t tried the SMM splitter yet.  Is there some trick to getting DirectVobSub to load with the other splitters?

A couple of nights ago, we watched Avatar extended edition (almost 3 hours long) and there was no drift between audio/video.  A bit different than my Harry Potter HD-DVDs, Avatar was a backup MKV from Bluray.  AVC video not VC-1.  And DTS-HD MA audio instead of Dolby TrueHD.  Nice to know that at least one MKV was a satisfactory experience though…

[RehabMan]

Another idea I had:

– Remux into different container?  On the downside I haven’t found too many containers (with decent tools, and splitters) that can handle the HD audio formats.

[RehabMan]

I just realized I probably should have posted this to ‘the red button’ forum.  Mods, feel free to move it if you want.

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