31 replies to this topic

[jmtheo]

Hi,
I'm having problems with PS3MS since upgrading my PC and it is doing my head in!
Everything is perfect until I try to stream 1080P mkv's with subs. I use mencoder and a minute or so in I get unbearable stutter.

Here's my PC spec:
i5 2400 3.1Ghz CPU
gigabyte GA-H77-D3H MB
8GB RAM
Netgear DGN3500 gigabit modem/router
No dedicated graphics card
Gigabit LAN to PS3

PS3MS says my theoretical network speed is 512MB/s and the streamed movie bitrates never go above 150MB/s in the worst of cases, so I'm 99.9% sure the network is not the issue. Something else to add, it will stutter even when the bitrate is only ~15MB/s.

I have noticed however that the CPU usage maxes out, which I think is the problem. I thought my new PC would have more than enough power to transcode. What's going on here?
Please help me before my head explodes! :S

Edited by jmtheo, 22 May 2012 - 04:35 PM.

[jmtheo]

No one can help?

[myrantz]

jmtheo, on 23 May 2012 - 10:37 AM, said:

No one can help?

Don't really know enough about PS3 to help   Do you mean you transcode on the fly and send it over to the PS3?

Can you post screenshots of the taskmanager (CPU, memory, and the CPU held by your running tasks)....

A minute or so and it stutters suggests there is a buffering issue,  mencoder doing things slower than your playback PS3. Not enough info to go on atm.




Does it work if you turn off subs?

[DR.ZOIDBERG]

Use Serviio

[jmtheo]

Thanks for the replies!

Yeah, I'm transcoding on the fly. I'm at work so I can't take a screen grab just now.

Without the subs it is flawless even on the 'lossless' setting (it is probably just remuxing in these cases, not transcoding). For the record, I haven't tried lowering the PS3MS quality settings drastically other than to (25,1,1) (5,1,2) and (25,1,2). The lower settings did slightly reduce the bitrate, but it only just delayed the onset of the stutter. I don't want to have low quality settings because for me that defeats the purpose and I thought my new PC would handle the job.

With subs, the PS3MS's in-built buffer is always reading low useage and the PC's CPU is maxed. I have 8GB of RAM so memory doesn't seem to be the issue. I've noted that it peaks at about 3GB of RAM and +90% CPU useage while PS3MS is transcoding with subs. Also at this time the java.exe app is using ~750,000 K of memory in the 'processes' tab of task manager.

It seems like it could be a buffering issue. I have my buffer set to the default 400MB (also the maximum), but it doesn't look like it even buffers that amount...

I think I'll give serviio a go also, provided it does subs within mkvs...

Edited by jmtheo, 23 May 2012 - 03:57 PM.

[myrantz]

jmtheo, on 23 May 2012 - 03:33 PM, said:

It seems like it could be a buffering issue. I have my buffer set to the default 400MB (also the maximum), but it doesn't look like it even buffers that amount...

On hindsight a simple tool like task manager isn't good enough to test that.. To quickly test if it's a buffering problem - when you notice stuttering, pause, wait say a minute, and continue. Is the stuttering still there?

I am not sure if PS3MS does this, but can you see the printouts from mencoder (assuming that's part of a linux app call mplayer?).. Maybe that will give you some clue.

jmtheo, on 23 May 2012 - 03:33 PM, said:

I think I'll give serviio a go also, provided it does subs within mkvs...

Do what the doc suggested... And hope that works...

[jmtheo]

I don't know how to view mencoder printouts unfortunately.

When I pause and then continue it plays smoothly for a short time but then the stutter returns. Does this seem to indicate a buffering issue?

It appears Serviio doesn't let you use subs embedded in mkvs

[myrantz]

jmtheo, on 23 May 2012 - 05:17 PM, said:

I don't know how to view mencoder printouts unfortunately.

what about the mencoder options used? Any way to find out?

jmtheo, on 23 May 2012 - 05:17 PM, said:

When I pause and then continue it plays smoothly for a short time but then the stutter returns. Does this seem to indicate a buffering issue?

How long did you pause? And how quick after you unpause before it stutters? As for your question, don't have a clue . Anything with mencoder, maybe I can help, but otherwise I'd be clueless   Hopefully others more experienced with PS3MS can chime in.

That machine should really be good enough to transcode on the fly. But then again it obviously can't.

All the drivers for your new PC are up to date? No yellow icon thingy on any of the critical m/b drivers? If that gigabit onboard network is from Realtek, and you are using Windows 7, you may want to roll that back  and use the old one that came with the motherboard instead. (you can always update to the latest again if this don't fix the issue)..

Hopefully somebody else will know the issue, try google ...

[jmtheo]

Mencoder is using multicore support (4 cores) according to the PS3MS GUI, does that help? I really don't know much about the back end of these things...

Basically the longer I pause the longer it plays smooth, but it has a limit of about 15 mins smooth play before the buffer appears to empty again.

The network is Atheron (correct?) and the driver is up to date, also the PS3MS GUI reports a nice connection speed of 512MB/s.

As far as google goes..... do you know how many hours I have trawled and still no clear answer? Too many....

I've found a couple tweaks I'm going to try, but I'm not confident...

[MrJoshua]

Try this mate, I have had a remotely similar problem before.. No harm in trying the following.

• Transcoding Settings -> MEncoder -> Disable "Switch to tsMuxeR..." (don't save).
  
• Play the video.
  
• Transcoding Settings -> MEncoder -> Re-enable "Switch to tsMuxeR..." (don't save).

Let me know if it helps..

Cheers Josh

[myrantz]

jmtheo, on 23 May 2012 - 06:08 PM, said:

Mencoder is using multicore support (4 cores) according to the PS3MS GUI, does that help? I really don't know much about the back end of these things...

What's the specs of your old machine again? And the HDD you're using now. Are the videos stored on a local HDD or off a NAS? Are you using the same version of PS3MS as before?

What you're saying seems to suggest that mencoder is not quick enough to transcode subtitles for realtime playback.  But I don't really know why .

BTW, is it because PS3 can't play MKV files? Why not just embed the subs to the video straight away and play it afterwards?

If you are using Windows 7, there is a pretty powerful application call Performance Monitor. You can try running that and maybe it can pick up something.

Edited by myrantz, 23 May 2012 - 11:54 PM.

[jmtheo]

Thanks Josh, I'll try your tip when I can.

My old PC was a Dell system, 5 years old and I'm not sure what was inside I know it was a single core AMD Athlon CPU...

New setup is playing movies from a local HDD (secondary drive installed internally) and yes I'm using the same version of PS3MS, but I had issues with my last PC too, that's why I spent the dough and upgraded thinking that better specs would solve my issues

Last night I tried a couple tweaks I found after hours of net trawling and none changed a thing except editing the PS3MS custom transcode parameters to force multithread decoding with mencoder. This lowered my CPU usage to 65-75% across all 4 cores (used windows 7 performance monitor to check), down from the +90% previously. In a state of glee I ran (might've even skipped a little ) to the theatre room only to be shot down by again seeing choppy playback. I checked the PS3MS tanscode buffer again after the MT change and it still empties down to barely nothing, maybe 900,000 bytes... To top off my frustration, my wife is now giving me the third degree for spending too much time buggering around trying to fix this

I might just give in and use something like mkv2vob to hardcode my movies with subs... trouble is, sometimes I don't know the movie has subs until I already get settled and have started watching (ie The Thing prequel)... This is where a perfectly functioning PS3MS would save the day

[myrantz]

jmtheo, on 24 May 2012 - 10:38 AM, said:

My old PC was a Dell system, 5 years old and I'm not sure what was inside I know it was a single core AMD Athlon CPU...

New setup is playing movies from a local HDD (secondary drive installed internally) and yes I'm using the same version of PS3MS, but I had issues with my last PC too, that's why I spent the dough and upgraded thinking that better specs would solve my issues

Last night I tried a couple tweaks I found after hours of net trawling and none changed a thing except editing the PS3MS custom transcode parameters to force multithread decoding with mencoder. This lowered my CPU usage to 65-75% across all 4 cores (used windows 7 performance monitor to check), down from the +90% previously. In a state of glee I ran (might've even skipped a little ) to the theatre room only to be shot down by again seeing choppy playback. I checked the PS3MS tanscode buffer again after the MT change and it still empties down to barely nothing, maybe 900,000 bytes... To top off my frustration, my wife is now giving me the third degree for spending too much time buggering around trying to fix this

I might just give in and use something like mkv2vob to hardcode my movies with subs... trouble is, sometimes I don't know the movie has subs until I already get settled and have started watching (ie The Thing prequel)... This is where a perfectly functioning PS3MS would save the day

I use mythtv, no such problems ...

The computer CPU (you have 4) in a sense have 3 states:

1/ idle (CPU is not doing anything)
2/ wait (CPU is not doing anything as it's waiting for something)
3/ busy (CPU is doing smoething)

While it may seem your CPU is hard at work, it may actually be hard at work doing 2 (i.e. hard at work doing nothing). Perfmon may well be able to work out what/where the bottleneck is, but I have never used it enough to explain to you how... I

If you can, and I'm assuming you're using DLNA on your PS3.. See if you can find any other DLNA severs that can do real time transcoding.. I believe Twonky can do this, but their documentation is horrendous! There must be something other than PS3MS that can do what you want to do ...

Good luck...

[jmtheo]

I think I've fixed it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I used this java heap size fix...

http://www.ps3medias...&p=38484#p38969

I could only test playback quickly last night, so it's possible the stutter is just delayed until later in the film... I saw no signs of it though, so it looks promising!

My uneducated theory is that the CPU was dumping info too fast for the java side of things to handle, so increasing the memory or 'buffer' of java to 2048MB instead of the default 768MB allowed that info to be processed and not rejected thus allowing the PS3MS transcode buffer to work properly.

It's still not 100% confirmed, needs more testing over the weekend, but I'm feeling good about it

Yeah boy!

[myrantz]

jmtheo, on 25 May 2012 - 10:20 AM, said:

It's still not 100% confirmed, needs more testing over the weekend, but I'm feeling good about it

Yeah boy!

Nice work! jit for the weekend ...

[jmtheo]

Aaarrrggghhh!

The tweaks haven't worked...

I give up. I'll be using PS3 media server for its tsmuxer capabilities only. Movies with subs will need hardcoding unfortunately, until a better option comes around... Or f***ing PS3MS works again...

I've wasted so much time and money and strained my marriage... I'm really pissed off that a brand new beefy PC can't handle mencoder...

WTF am I doing wrong here???

[myrantz]

jmtheo, on 29 May 2012 - 10:29 AM, said:

WTF am I doing wrong here???

The age old mistake of computers, trying to fix something that isn't broken... If you can see if you can downgrade the network drivers to the original, other than sorry I can't help much ...

maybe even try a diff version of mencoder?

I use Windows 7 but honestly don't mess around with it that much....

[davep]

Similar to your other attempt, but slightly different values - worth a shot

http://joepcremers.c...mkv-stuttering/

Edited by davep, 29 May 2012 - 10:55 AM.

[jmtheo]

davep, on 29 May 2012 - 10:43 AM, said:

Similar to your other attempt, but slightly different values - worth a shot

http://joepcremers.c...mkv-stuttering/

Thanks, but I've honestly had it with PS3MS at the moment... The thought of more tinkering just makes me feel all pissed off inside... lol

[rfa]

Sorry to hijack the thread, but my PS3 isn't showing up in PS3 media server.

WMP player shows (that is the computer realises the computer is on) but won't see the PS3.

It worked yesterday...

PS3 is wired to router, laptop is wifi

[jmtheo]

Happy to report that I've solved my problem! (This time for sure...)

After taking a break to recoup, I hit up google again and I stumbled upon a few random threads that mentioned overheating can cause CPUs to throttle, so I got myself a copy of Speedfan to check my temps and low and behold... After all this it was a bloody hardware issue! The PC builder didn't secure the CPU fan/heatsink correctly and it wasn't in contact to allow heat transfer. Basically, my CPU was hitting +90C, +70C at idle, and throttling its processing to self preserve. Resecuring the fan/heatsink did the trick and now I'm sitting at ~30C idle, ~50C under load and not a stutter in sight! Mencoder CPU usage is hovering around 30% instead of 99% and everything is looking good

So, note to others: Be sure to rule out hardware problems before you go insane and contemplate topping yourself!

Edited by jmtheo, 18 June 2012 - 10:45 AM.

[myrantz]

Doh.. Didn't thought of that.. Out of curiosity, who do up your PC?

[Chopsus]

I had similar issues and it turned out the the WD Green 1.5 TB drive was on the way out - nasty cheap things they are

[jmtheo]

myrantz, on 18 June 2012 - 10:49 AM, said:

Doh.. Didn't thought of that.. Out of curiosity, who do up your PC?

I can't believe I didn't check the hardware earlier, but I guess I assumed a new build would be all good

A place here in Perth called Netplus built it. Really good price, and everything bar the CPU fan was done correctly. I'll let them off this time as it's possible it could have come loose in transit, but I'll make sure I let them know and if I use them again I'll be checking the build...

[myrantz]

jmtheo, on 18 June 2012 - 11:36 AM, said:

A place here in Perth called Netplus built it. Really good price, and everything bar the CPU fan was done correctly.

She gave me a $9 discount..

D'oh. I was hoping it wasn't Netplus ... Had a new machine built there last Friday. And I also thought they did a great job. But so far over the entire weekend just couldn't get a simple 4x1TB RAID5 to build! Will check the temps later when I get back, JIC...

Are you using the stock Intel cooler or an after market one? (If after market, was any thermal paste used?) I used a after market cooler, but the thermal paste unused.. I'm thinking maybe they used their own, and give me this for spare, but now I'm worried maybe they didn't use any thermal paste at all ...

BTW, although the temps look good, just re-securing the cooler may not work.. Depending on the condition of the thermal paste you may need to reapply?