*** PLEASE READ FIX BELOW ***

 

I have an issue where when my system resume from s3 sleep it will stutter while playing WMC recorded video or live tv.  The screen video jumps every 4-5 seconds or so. If I do a reboot, it will function fine as long as I don't use s3 sleep.

If this is occurring  I have checked CPU utilization and it is between 10-20% while playing.  Hard drive activity looks low.  I do get a bit of breakup in sound every now and then.

If I play video with XBMC or use other applications everything works fine. It is only when I use WMC that I get the stutter.

Config:

P965 Motherboard with E6600
4gb memory
2 Raid 1 750GB Hard Disk
2 Raid 1 2GB Hard Disks
Corsiar 620HX power supply
Nvidia GT430 or 8800GTS video card

I have tried:

Updating or using older video and audio drivers.
Shutting down all unused services
Power Management PCIx power savings OFF
Switching video cards from Nvidia 8800GTS to GT430
Moving Ceton (only card in system) from one PCIx slot to another
Updated to Windows 7 SP1 RC (restored back after no change)
Installed 2nd set of hard drives to separate OS and video storage
Disabled onboard RealTek network card
System at most current and last BIOS available
Modifying S3 bios setting related to video
Updated Intel SATA Raid drivers, tried older ones.
Removed Ceton drivers from system

Things I have yet to try.

Record some video and then remove Ceton card, then test S3 WMC video play
Move video card to 2nd 16x PCIe slot, even though motherboard manual says to use the primary one with only 1 video card
Try non protected video playback in another identical system with same motherboard, same 4gb memory and a Nvidia 8600GTS video card
Move Ceton card over to 2nd system and try there, will have to move alot of things around to test this.

I have opened a case with Ceton and they are trying to help.  I have also tried their latest beta firmware and drivers.

 

 

 

Could use some help here. I have isolated my problem to ehshell and the WMC player.  Anytime I return from s3 sleep my WMC will stutter both video and sound.  It is always consistent, and happens every 4-5 seconds and lasts until I reboot the system.  This happens on Live TV and recorded TV.   This happens on two very similar x64 Windows 7 systems with the same motherboards and memory.  This happens on a system with the Ceton card, and one without.  If I use an extender after reboot it works great, it I try and use it after S3 sleep I get network issues. 

If I fresh boot and play the video with WMC, it plays fine on  BOTH systems.  If I put either system to sleep and then play the video with WMC, I get the stutter.  If I use Windows Media Player to play the video, it ALWAYS works without stutter even after S3 sleep resume.  I have no other issues with these systems. 

I was going to swap my Ceton between systems, but since my problem happens on both, there is no need.  There is SOMETHING happening with WMC after S3 sleep that causes a stutter.   My only other option at this point is to try an ATI video card.

 Anyone else have any suggestions?

 

** LIVE TV or recorded after S3 sleep NEVER played fine **

 

Found out something else tonight. If I play live or recorded tv after a reboot all works well.  If I play recorded tv after s3 sleep, it will play fine.  If I play live TV after sleep, I get network issues and poor quality video.

 So to watch live tv with an extender, I start recording it, then go back and tell it to play after it gets a few minutes ahead.

 There is a link here as to what is causing the problem, but I don't know enough of how WMC works to figure it out.

 Trying to keep this documented, tried all below without any change

I have un-installed all services packs and hotfixes
Used 411 ctl D, all looks ok here
Convert to DVRMS
Several Windows S3 hotfixes

I would like to get into the Nvidia Advanced config to see if I can find anything there.

I am also reloading system with AHCI instead of raid 1. 

 

 No luck with AHCI config, reset the system back to raid.

 Went and purchase an ATI 4550.  Spent most of the night trying to get HDCP to work over HDMI.  What worked fine (mostly) with NVIDIA never worked for ATI. 

This was a fresh install of Windows 7, with the same hardware that worked with NVIDIA GT 430.

On top of this, after s3, resume from sleep... remember that issue that I have that started it all.  It still exists on the ATI card.  

Time to hang up my hat on this one.  Since recorded media works fine though extenders, I will set this up to not use live TV, and to only play back though xbox extenders.  

 Setup of these systems is still a LOT of work, I think this is a bug with WMC, since it is the only item that is impacted on my system after resume from s3 sleep.

I've had this same problem since upgrading from Vista to Windows 7 x64 and I haven't found a cure for it yet. I researched this over a year ago and found that it's a known bug in Windows 7. Perhaps the first Service Pack will provide the solution.

 There must be some sort of service or application that I can re-start that would allow this to work. 

 I did try the RC Windows 7 SP1 and it did not fix my issue.

That's bad news. Now it looks like my poor computer will never get some sleep.

Tried loading Windows 7 32bit today.  Same problem.

Also  loaded "alleged" final release of Windows 7 SP1.  Same issue.

Wish I could find a solution to this, as I have two systems that do the same thing.  I really don't want to swap motherboards, but it might be my only choice.

 Did some more testing tonight with the Microsoft Performance Toolkit tool Xperf.

The only results that I see are with ehshell.exe process.  With a fresh reboot, the CPU utilization of this process is smooth.  After resume from s3 sleep, there are spikes in processor utilization at the same time I see the stutter in the video.  This spike is less than 10% of one of the CPU's, but it causes an un-watchable picture.

 I have noticed that I have the same issue watching live TV on the local system or remotely via extender.  It works fine until a reboot is done, then I get jumps and pauses on the system.

 Will continue to troubleshoot the processes.

This issue has been resolved, and the solution may help others.  My problem showed up after S3 sleep, but the same problem can happen even without sleep depending on your motherboard, processor, bios combination.

Stutters in local video playback, live TV playback, extender playback are all now working.  I continue to test.

More to come.

Hello all,
I had the pleasure of receiving and supporting black's support case for this issue. After much back and forth working together to gather the required traces and data we were able to narrow this down to being caused by a timing / sync issue. While it'll be nearly impossible to do this level of troubleshooting on your own, the basics are that on certain chipsets, CPU, BIOS configurations the timing mechanism that Windows Media Center uses can drift and as the decoder tries to compensate and stay in sync it may drop frames. This is actually somewhat considered by design. There was also an Extender portion to this issue which was likely caused by secure communications between WMC and MCX not being able to sync properly. While WMC and WMP share much of the same video pipeline, WMC has additional changes that enable more TV support. It's somewhat more sensitive to timing issues.

Here is a brief example of the timing and dropped frames from the trace:

Video Presenter\Dropped
Trace  Process   Thread    Group     Elapsed (ms)  Dropped
0      00000D6C  00000804  001B70C0  2580          3     
 
1      00000D6C  00000804  001B70C0  4437          3     
2      00000D6C  00000804  001B70C0  4452          3     
3      00000D6C  00000804  001B70C0  4466          2     
 
4      00000D6C  00000804  001B70C0  6294          3     
5      00000D6C  00000804  001B70C0  6309          3     
6      00000D6C  00000804  001B70C0  6323          2     
 
7      00000D6C  00000804  001B70C0  8137          3     
8      00000D6C  00000804  001B70C0  8152          3     
9      00000D6C  00000804  001B70C0  8166          2     
 
10     00000D6C  00000804  001B70C0  10132         3     
11     00000D6C  00000804  001B70C0  10147         3     
12     00000D6C  00000804  001B70C0  10161         3     

As you can see 8 or 9 frames every ~2s. This may affect both x86 and x64. If you experience this sort of issue you will likely want to verify the RTC, HPET, PPM, SpeedStep, Memory, and CPU settings in your BIOS. You may also want to verify that the High Performance power profile is enabled. You can also use http://live.sysinternals.com/Clockres.exe from an elevated command prompt to determine whether you're experiencing an unusual timing change after S3. Cold boot, run clock res and note the times, enter S3 and resume and note the times again. Finally run with WMC open and note the times.

Maximum timer interval: 15.625 ms <-- expected
Minimum timer interval: 0.500 ms
Current timer interval: 7.813 ms <-- not so much

If this fails to resolve your issue then you may want to try and change your BCD.

1. Start, type cmd, right click, Run as Administrator.
2. Type bcdedit /set useplatformclock true and press enter.
3. Type bcdedit /enum and press enter.
4. Verify that useplatformclock is on/true.
5. Restart the computer then test playback behavior.

This sort of timing issue has reared its ugly head before here are some additional resources with more detail and are somewhat related:
http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en/w7itpromedia/thread/8bf3e1fb-84eb-4ddd-9de3-f4f9cba94302
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/896256
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/327809

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2005/09/02/459952.aspx
http://blogs.technet.com/b/perfguru/archive/2008/02/18/explanation-for-the-usepmtimer-switch-in-the-boot-ini.aspx

The one thing to keep in mind here is that pre 7/2008 the switch was /usepmtimer, it is now /useplatformclock and the procedure is done through bcdedit as boot.ini has been deprecated.

That about sums it up. If you have any questions don't hesitate to reply to this thread.

Thanks for the full update Cory.

This is a TRUE fix for one of the causes of stutter with WMC; other than purchasing another motherboard.  Put the fix in place reboot, and the stutter is gone.

Not sure how to best get this info out there other than post it here.

 

 

black88mx6

Thanks for the full update Cory.

This is a TRUE fix for one of the causes of stutter with WMC; other than purchasing another motherboard.  Put the fix in place reboot, and the stutter is gone.

Not sure how to best get this info out there other than post it here. 

I believe I am experiencing a problem which may be caused by the same timing issues described by Corey.  I have been trying to reliably play hd recorded tv in media center that is stored on my WHS.  I determined some time ago that it is not a network issue.  Then I discovered the migrator process issue here:  http://thegreenbutton.com/forums/p/84344/421496.aspx#421496    This cleaned up the WHS end but I would still get stuttered playback sometimes.  I have now discovered that I only have the problem after the w7 media center system resumes from sleep.  If I reboot, playback over network from whs works perfectly.  So this sounds very similar to what you experienced. What therefore is the fix?  I'm not sure I understand what Corey is suggesting.  Do I need to investigate all my Bios parameters and uncover timing issues or are the steps for changing the BCD suggested by Corey the best approach?  Please explain how you resolved your problem. I am running 7MC 32 bit on a i3 ASUS mb. Thanks,

    

Some system boards may be able to fix this with BIOS, if you are unable to fix in BIOS, then you can try the following Windows 7 workaround.

1. Start, type cmd, right click, Run as Administrator.
2. Type bcdedit /set useplatformclock true and press enter.
3. Type bcdedit /enum and press enter.
4. Verify that useplatformclock is on/true.
5. Restart the computer then test playback behavior.

I would also test if playback of the file locally works after S3 sleep.