Video Jitter anyone? [Solved]

[fearingsept]

I have been experiencing some video jitter for quite sometime now. It may have to do with a hardware performance issue with my hybrid/core but I thought I would bring it up to see if anyone else has this problem.
I am still running 7.10, now on 32 bit.
When I play video sometimes it will pause for a few seconds and the video and audio will jitter and sync back up. I have tried to solve this problem lately thinking I just did not have a powerful enough core or that it might be because I was running the 64bit version of LinuxMCE.
I think its my core because it seems to happen on both my MD’s and I remember it happening on my core at some point as well.

Right now my core has 4gigs of Ram DDR3200 running an AMD 939 3800 duel core processor.
I just added a WD 1Tb sata drive along my other 2 hard drives which are 250Gb sata and 160Gb sata.
I did notice that my core hard drives seem to be running a little hot so I have ordered a hard drive cooler for one of the drives and some new case fans to better improve circulation. I am hoping that I can resolve this video issue since it really irritates my wife when watching a dvd or a movie ripped to the core.
Usually when it happens I hear "Why can't we watch this dvd on the dvd player like regular people" So to resolve this would be nice.

[Techstyle]

I have a similar system to yours running 0710 i386 and do not have the same issue.

Athlon 64x2 5000
2 Gb RAM
Nvidia 6050
PVR150
3 drives - 200Gb IDE, 450Gb SATA, 1TB SATA

I do have a stutter similar to what you are suggesting on both of My MD's.  They are Athlon XP 2600's with 768Mb RAM and Nvidia Geforce 440MX.  No local drives Netbooted (obviously), 100Mbit LAN cards.

[colinjones]

you really shouldn't have that issue.... and if it is happening on your MDs as well then it isn't your core hardware unless it is related to the disk and/or network subsystems.

I would start by putting such a file on another system (a PC, NAS, or something else) and adding that to your LMCE network. Once scanned in, ask one of your MDs to play the media.... this eliminates the core as the MD connects directly to the PC/NAS and reads the video from there. If the problem stops then it is likely your HDD in some way given that the network is not involved in replay on the core, from the core.

What format is the HDD on the core? Its not ntfs is it? And the problem continued even after a rebuild?

[fearingsept]

Thats a good idea, I do have one other computer running windows connected to the network and I made the c dive sharable with the LMCE data structure. I could try using that as place to store a video file and see if I get any delay.

All of my hard drive formats on my core are ext3. Could a crappy network switch or NIC cause something like this potentially? I notice when I am ripping something to my core from the core MD or on one of my other MD's that I am not really able to watch any media until the rip is complete. I have no drives in any of my MD's I do have a hard drive I could install into the laptop I am using for an MD. That might be a good way to test if I save data directly there.

Maybe next time I copy a movie to the core I will pick one of the other drives available and see if I notice if my preformance changes. Right now I am copying everything to my 1Tb drive.

[colinjones]

I didn't feel that the networking would be the issue as you seem to be saying you still get this issue on your core when playing media from your core... in which case the network isn't being used at all. Is this the symptom you are seeing? If so, then ignore networking for now, if not, then yes it could be related to networking....

[fearingsept]

I have not used my core to play media for some time now since I started using MD's but I had thought this was an issue on the core before if I remember correctly. I may try playing something on the core just to make sure.

It happens randomly though and sometimes it will not happen at all. For example if I watch the same movie twice it might happen the first time I watch it on one scene in and then if I go back and play the movie or scene again it will play just fine. I was thinking that maybe it was heat related.. I noticed lately that my hard drives are very hot. Like almost to hot to touch. My core does not have any kind of external heat sensor on the hard drives so I really don't know how hot they are. So... tomorrow I am expecting my a hard drive cooler as well as some extra fans. I am hoping that it is a heat related issue and that fixes it.

I really don't know how much heat has to do with preformace but I figured it would be good to fix.

[colinjones]

check the core first then.... another option is to plug a HDD into your MD directly, add it and play media locally.

yes heat is always good to eliminate... causes a range of random issues...!

[Zaerc]

...
I noticed lately that my hard drives are very hot. Like almost to hot to touch.
...

Ouch, that is definitely NOT good!

[fearingsept]

I just got done installing 3 new case fans and a HD Cooler. I think my wife is going to leave me now. But I think that should help keep the heat down.

[fearingsept]

In case anyone was curious as to the status of this.. it seems that adding the fans and cooler dramatically helped.
Apparently my hard drives were overheating. I have not had any lag since, though my core is much louder now. I need to get a fan controller.

[pigdog]

Hi,

When you buy a fan controller don't forget to tell the wife that "it was on sale" then it'll be OK.

If you can throw something in about the colour matching then you'll really be OK.

Cheers.

[fearingsept]

thats a good call. I will do that.

[Techstyle]

You could also say "Computer parts are like shoe's, you can never have enough"