[mrfrankmrfrank]

Hey Krusty, hope all is well.  It's been awhile but I helped you debug some issues a couple of years ago and have donated to your paypal in the past.  Thanks again for your continued efforts.  

I've typically avoided streaming active recordings for years now as it just never seemed to work for me.  My household got in the habit of "we'll watch it when its done recording"  Lately I've had some time to try and diagnose why the active recording streaming has been pretty rough for me.

Firstly I realized I had comskip scanning not only the active recording file but the tempswmc files.  I have since disabled the tempswmc directory entirely as well as instructed comskip to wait until the file is done growing in the main recorded tv folder.

So tonight I tried to watch an active recording and what currently happens (and this is hard to describe)... The video plays perfectly fine however it seems to .... skip frames.  That's the best way to describe it... it looks like something is playing at 15fps.   So I decided to look at the kodi stats and it shows the video file playing is 120fps.  

I would wager that for whatever reason kodi playing and or thinking the stream is 120fps is the cause of this "dropped frame effect"

I can provide a log, I'm unsure if i need to enable advanced debug or something, just let me know.  Thanks.

[mrfrankmrfrank]

Code:

2018/04/17 19:19:33.273 Remux::ctor> input settings:
2018/04/17 19:19:33.273 > Search packet data for detailed stream info on all streams: False
2018/04/17 19:19:33.273 > Process only audio streams: False
2018/04/17 19:19:33.273 > Drop all video streams from output if found: False
2018/04/17 19:19:33.274 Remux::Start> Starting descriptor scan...
2018/04/17 19:19:33.274 Remux::FindDescriptors> Forcing detailed stream info analysis: False
2018/04/17 19:19:33.274 Remux::FindDescriptors> Scanning wtv for streams...
2018/04/17 19:19:33.274 Parse> Guid: 0 took 0.00 sec, it was attempted 0 times
2018/04/17 19:19:33.274 Parse> Next 4 Guids: 0.00 sec, 0.00 sec, 0.00 sec, 0.00 sec,
2018/04/17 19:19:33.274 Parse> Language 'eng' for stream Id 83
2018/04/17 19:19:33.292 WaitUntilTrueOrTimeout> remux data found
2018/04/17 19:19:33.293 Parse> Total Descriptor parse time: 0.02 sec
2018/04/17 19:19:33.293 Pass Type: 'Descriptor':
2018/04/17 19:19:33.293 > WtvToPesDemuxer:arse> total guid headers processed: 892 (Min:500 - Max:2,000)
2018/04/17 19:19:33.293 > WtvToPesDemuxer:arse> total data packets processed: 201
2018/04/17 19:19:33.293 Remux::FindDescriptors> wtv scanned (0.02 sec), Streams found:
2018/04/17 19:19:33.293 > Audio: ID:83 (eng) ac3 5.1 48000 Hz 384 kb/s
2018/04/17 19:19:33.293 > Video: ID:84 h264 High-3.2 1280x720p fps: 60000/1001 (PTS_not_mono)
2018/04/17 19:19:33.293 > SubTitle: ID:85 ClosedCaption
2018/04/17 19:19:33.293 Remux::FindDescriptors> Output streams:
2018/04/17 19:19:33.293 > Audio: ID:83 (eng) ac3 5.1 48000 Hz 384 kb/s
2018/04/17 19:19:33.293 > Video: ID:84 h264 High-3.2 1280x720p fps: 60000/1001 (PTS_not_mono)
2018/04/17 19:19:33.293 Remux::FindDescriptors> ended successfully.
2018/04/17 19:19:33.293 GetLinearStream> Stream used: ID:83 (eng) ac3 5.1 48000 Hz 384 kb/s
2018/04/17 19:19:33.293 Remux::Start> Starting data remux...
2018/04/17 19:19:33.294 VideoStreamDescriptor> generating DTS for codec: 'h264'
2018/04/17 19:19:33.306 WriteChunk> first output file write occurred
2018/04/17 19:19:33.342 RemuxStream> 'ts' file created, size: 1,605,632 in 0.15 sec

It is my understanding that 60000/1001 is 60fps.  I believe that is what live tv typically is?  wonder why it shows this here and yet kodi is playing at 120

[krustyreturns]

The excerpt of the log you posted looks like everything is as it should be.  If the program has been recording for say, 10 minutes, and then you start watching do you see the problem you describe right way?  Or do you have to watch it for a while?

[mrfrankmrfrank]

Thanks for getting back to me Krusty.  I know for a fact that the actual show we watched reflected in that log had been recording for approximately 20 minutes and the issues with playback were immediate.  I am running on an nvidia shield at 4k resolution (unsure if relevant)

I understand at some point this may lead more to a "kodi" issue than a serverwmc issue, but I just found it odd that completed recordings play perfectly fine and that it was the active recordings displaying this behavior.  I think I will attempt to play an active recording in emby perhaps and see if the behavior is the same.

[krustyreturns]

Do watch live tv?  Because the exact same should be happening there, since serverwmc handles them nearly identically.  Consider posting your serverwmc log on pastebin.com and putting a link to it here.  If it is too large, just restart it before you post the log, since I just want to see how you have it configured.

[mrfrankmrfrank]

We do on occasion watch live tv.  That has always been hit or miss too.  I'll run some tests today and post the log soon.  Thanks again krusty.

[mrfrankmrfrank]

Just started some testing, started watching an active recording that had been recording for over 30 minutes.  As i started the video i checked the kodi info screen to see it was playing at 120fps still, however the video seemed quite smooth.  5 straight minutes of playback were perfectly fine, however then it derailed hard and started to lag / skip / stutter / drop frames appearance.  I stopped playback and went into kodi settings and enabled "sync playback to display" just to see the effect.  Resumed watching the active recording and the video is playing at 59.9 fps.  I'm 4 minutes into playing it this way with perfect playback.

Ultimately I don't believe I'd want sync playback to display 24/7 as it may affect movie playback and disables audio passthrough.  We'll have to see what is making kodi think an active recording stream is 120fps content.