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MC 23.25 newPC build Video breaking needs help and some questions?
Ekpen:
--- Quote from: mwillems on July 31, 2017, 06:30:11 pm ---I'm pretty confused about how your endpoints are connected to your server; are the TVs functioning as monitors for the server? Or are you streaming via the network? Maybe it would help to draw a connection/network diagram?
In the streaming case, the video cards are irrelevant (as noted above), it's just a function of CPU usage for transcoding (if necessary) and network usage for transmission.
If you're directly connected via HDMi than it's baffling that you're having problems. The video output in MC for linux is more like red october standard than red october HQ, it can happily run on even very low-end systems. For example I use MC for linux for video on an intel compute stick with integrated graphics, and have no issues with buffering or frame drops at 1080p. My guess is that you almost certainly have an issue with your linux graphics configuration (or possibly your older video cards aren't well supported by the nvidia drivers anymore, they do drop support eventually).
It's hard to know because you're using kind of old components in your new system; I'm not sure what the minimum specs are for MC for Linux video. Your CPU launched 7 years ago, and the video cards are nearly 10 years old. Graphics cards in particular have come a long way in the last ten years. For example, I think based on benchmarks, the integrated graphics on a modern high end intel CPU will outperform one or both your video cards, and a single two-year-old midpriced nvidia card would outperform both your video cards almost three-to-one:
https://www.videocardbenchmark.net/gpu.php?gpu=Intel+Iris+Pro+580&id=3481
https://www.videocardbenchmark.net/gpu.php?gpu=Intel+HD+620&id=3592
https://www.videocardbenchmark.net/gpu.php?gpu=Intel+HD+6000&id=3120
https://www.videocardbenchmark.net/gpu.php?gpu=GeForce+9800+GX2
https://www.videocardbenchmark.net/gpu.php?gpu=GeForce+GTX+960&id=3114
--- End quote ---
Your response needs replying to immediately.
My cpu is intel 990 X with 3.47 ghz SSE x 12, meaning 12 treads.
The GPU is the GTX 9800 GX2 with 2048 meg of memory. I have 2 on this new PC in SLI mode.
The current driver is 340.102 released by Nvidia February 2017. The first driver that was detected at 1st boot, first time was the Nvidia driver. I checked the Nvidia site to make sure the driver is current and appropriate.
All Nvidia cards have new drivers, I was surprise to find out Nvidia has updated the drivers on their cards so that they can play most new games.
Did I forget to state that the motherboard is Gigabyte G1 Assassins, an XL type Gaming motherboard.
I thought I was going to set my neighborhood on fire the first time I cranked it up.
Here is an aside:
first time, I powered it on, luckily I had opened the case and I noticed liquid dripping from the Corsair pump. I then quickly shut it off, took it to FrozenCpu.com.
The guy who opened the PC was shocked, when he saw that it had 2 GTX 9800 GX2 and more in shock when he saw it had G1 Assassin motherboard with 24 gig of memory. He stared at me, and asked me "What are you trying to do with this build and why did I build it? My response was I build it with anger, I have not built a PC in ten years. He then smiled. Lucky we got a liquid cooling with longer pvc hose.
Enough of the specs.
On my Asus Windows server running MC , 23.0xxx, The AMD R9 gpu does not have much power compared to the Nvidia, yet buffering and audio issues were fixed by adjusting cpu and gpu ques in Madvr.
The PC is very quiet and the only software I have on this new PC is MC and it is going to have only MC.
PC via the cpu and gpu process the video one way or the other, when requests are made via the network, sends the info to the clients, in this case the Sony tvs, Samsung tvs etc.
My complain is not about the quality of the video, but the video and audio blending together.
In my first post regarding this issue, I asked if some one has experience configuring the Nvidia X server with the 340.102 driver. There are choices there. I wrote about Aliases etc. Someone with Nvidia knowledge, please help.
I think the card needs to be configured for it to work properly. I have not touched the setting, waiting for advice from forum members that are familiar with this type of hard ware.
Remember this is a Gaming mobo, designed for gaming, it should not have difficulty displaying 1080P videos over the network.
My network if not too slow, 100 down/10 up. and my wifi router is Netgear. The Asus has been set up for years and the 4 external libraries have been used to serve music and videos for almost three years on the Asus PC.
All tvs in the house connect to the Asus via the network wired. Only on rare occasion I actually would connect an HDMI to the server either to test and play with 3D offerings or just watch a new movie that is added to the library. Even Gizmo, Eos and JRemote can connect from anywhere to the Asus with no buffering 90%-95% of the time.
The point I am trying to clear up is this: During movie play back, there is buffering and that results in audio not being in syc with movie. Frames could be dropping when played over the network.
May be there is a memory leak some where, or something is broken in the chain. Something needs to be tweaked for it to play nicely over DLNA.
Please investigate these issues. One of the fun in this hobby is to be able to watch movies and play audio on the go without issues, assuming there are no network problems.
Thanks.
George.
Thanks.
George
I did a few days ago audio analysis of audio on videos.
I have tried two ways of watching movies.
1: I have a Samsung 40 incher 4k attached directly to the new server. Within Samsung there is a way to still use the smart hub to get to the "Contents", then pick a movie or concert of choice.
My test early A.M today was "Belle". It buffered right from the beginning to the end almost every two minutes displaying loading. When this happens, audio is messed up, at times screen tears.
Is this software not designed to be played over a server or DLNA? if so, it should play smoothly.
It is not playing smoothly.
Test 2: Upstairs, after upgrading to 23.0.28, I tried to load up " Car Wash", Celine Dion.. A new Day has come, Bee Gees One night only, Lionel Richie Live in Paris, all exhibited Audio not insych probably due to buffering.
Don't you think the cpu and gpu still needs to prepare the info and send the info through the pipeline?
We need to investigate why audio is breaking real bad at the Sony end. The Sony tvs 3 of them are connected to AIWA surround Sound processor via toslink.
The Samsung here connected to the new server via HDMI.
Ekpen:
--- Quote from: Awesome Donkey on July 31, 2017, 02:46:15 pm ---Television support isn't available on Linux or Mac. In fact, I'm not sure it's really doable outside of the Windows platform (according to past posts here on the forums).
If I recall correctly the GeForce 9800 GX2 is a dual-GPU with 2x512MB of VRAM. And you're using two of these cards? That's quad-SLI as there's two GPUs on each card.
Even though you have 2GB of overall VRAM with all four GPUs, you still only have 512MB USABLE OVERALL VRAM since that's how much VRAM each GPU has. GPU VRAM doesn't scale or "add up" (e.g. 512MB + 512MB + 512MB + 512MB = 2GB) this way when using SLI or CrossFireX. An example being say you have two 8GB video cards in SLI which you'd think would equal 16GB of memory, right? No, it's not scaled like that so it's still only 8GB regardless of how many GPUs you have. I could get more technical, but that's the basic way of understanding it. So it's reporting the right amount of VRAM.
What Linux distro are you using? Have you instead of using the Nvidia proprietary drivers tried the open-source Nouveau drivers? Might work better for an older GPU like that.
I'm not going to lie, I've heard SLI on Linux can be a pain in the rear. Quad-SLI using two dual-GPU cards on Linux? Probably just asking for trouble. Honestly I'd replace them for a single card solution, like the GeForce GTX 1050 or even the 1060 (assuming you can find one thanks to the darn cryptocurrency mining craze).
--- End quote ---
Thanks for the explanation. You seem to be the only person as of yet that knows more about the card.
It used to be Nvidia's flagship card in those days. It got detected easily and the Nvidia prime listed all info on card... simple. My next build needs a newer card. I am waiting for new release of cards from Nvidia to complete the build. This will be a backup Ubuntu again.
I am using Ubuntu 1704.64 bit. I saw the open source listed, but the GTX 9800 GX2 driver was updated Feb 2017.
It looks like the open source driver.. nouveau is old. I tried it briefly for ten minutes, video it displayed was not impressive. In anyway I might try it again.
Really I have no issue with this driver except the buffering and audio not in syc with video.
There are a few settings I am not familiar with, because of this I just left everything As is in the config.
I thought those gamers and Nvidia diehards on our forum will be able to guide me.
I am happy with the driver, picture is good, just needing a little tweaking similar to what we can do with Madvr on the video area.
Using a PC locally with an HDMI cable or rather watching a movie local via cable HDMI is not the same as watching same movie over the network, and not all tv makes handle this aspect the same. There are some movies, Samsung JU UN40, 65, 75 inch 7100 series can not load and play some movies over the network, but Sony Xbr 850C, 930D and maybe others will breeze through those movies.
I can testify to this, because I have both types of TV used via the network at home.
Also, Samsung can only play 3D local via HDMI, and it plays 3D movies so sharp, but you ask it to play the same 3D movies over the network, you are wasting your time. On the other hand, throw anything to a 4K Sony tv, 3D is a breeze, both local and via the network.
I will be waiting for the big guys, Bob, Matt, Hendriks to throw in their towels t see if they can make MC linux more playable on the network.
Thanks again.
George
Ekpen:
--- Quote from: blgentry on July 31, 2017, 03:17:09 pm ---If you are watching video on your Sony TV via the network, then the video card in your machine isn't being used for anything. The TV is pulling the data over the network and rendering it in the TV's display.
I suspect that your network connection to the newly built PC is slower than the old one. It's also possible that you are transcoding video from PC to TV and that this causes too much CPU utilization on the new PC. Try looking at the CPU utilization on the PC while watching a movie on the Sony.
If you actually want to use your video card to do rendering, then you should connect the new PC's HDMI output to your TV directly. Which almost certainly means that the PC needs to be close to the TV.
Brian.
--- End quote ---
I am still struggling to fix the issues I reported several days ago.
My problem is not video, but audio issues either skipping or buffering, with these issues, it looks like it was the video having problems but in reality it was not.
The image the Nvidia cards spit out is astonishing, looks like 3D. The PC runs very cool, you would think it will be loud , NO very quiet.
Here is what I just found out:
MC windows 23 xxx, any version, Device setting - there is a slider setting or adjust that controls "more skip" or "more responsiveness", but looking at the Linux version it does not have it.
This may or may not have anything to do with this issue, I do not know.
More important, is the fact that I pulled out 4 external RAID boxes that were attached to the Windows server and attached them to the Ubuntu 17.04 server, then I did import, by setting up import rules.
Under the import rules, I remember selecting "Analyse audio in Video".
I have to import almost 1500 mkv files. Watching the import goes on, I noticed the audio analysis for video went by so fast, I am starting to have doubts about the audio analysis for video mechanism. Note-- this is a clean setup and install of MC, libraries are external.
Today, I found out that some movies play very well... audio blending with video with either no skipping or buffering, while some videos will not play smooth at all.
I will like the developers to take a look at this again.
Is there any way to have a menu to do batch audio in video analysis by folder of choice?
It looks like asking MC to analyse 1500 movies that were already analysed in a different PC is problematic. Some files are skipped and others do not analyse very well.
With his new migration from Windows to Ubuntu 17.04, this is the only issues regarding skipping and or buffering that I have encountered, please I will need your help and suggestion.
Thanks.
George
bob:
Would you enable the "compression" files in your detailed file view and see if you can find something in common with the mkvs that play smoothly and the ones that don't?
Also, have you enabled the process priority feature on your user account that was implemented in MC 23.0.25?
Ekpen:
--- Quote from: bob on August 07, 2017, 11:50:47 am ---Would you enable the "compression" files in your detailed file view and see if you can find something in common with the mkvs that play smoothly and the ones that don't?
Also, have you enabled the process priority feature on your user account that was implemented in MC 23.0.25?
--- End quote ---
Sorry for the long delay in replying. Our internet service was down for days. (Modem has to be replaced).
I missed out on this 23.0.25 write up, because that was the exact time I was taking down Windows server and migrating to Ubuntu. I know I read something about it, now I can not find 23.025 listed so that I can go back and read more about it.
Also you wrote about "compression files" in my detailed file view... I am unable to find this info.
I can not locate it under Linux.
I have tried to restore the windows settings in my earlier attempts to migrate, but now decided to start with a clean slate to eliminate corruption. In order words, Ubuntu server does not have anything migrated from MC for Windows.
Could you please post or repost the special write up regarding process priority on 23.0.25.
Also, I have tried to install 23.0.32-2 (STRETCH). It finally installed, with a message to remove. When I tried to load it up, It just froze on me. I got a segment fault message.
I am now back on 23.0.28 with all my mkvs and Flac libraries back
Another notation .. In Windows startup.. MC goes to Theater view, but in Linux though I have configured it to load at OS start up, it does not. I will think it will act like its Windows version.
Thanks.
George.
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