[scarecrow420]

Interesting krusty... I guess i was thinking it was more that comskip/MCEBuddy type programs were hitting the "drive" hard enough that other activity on the same drive is suffering. But yes it could also be that it is only contention over our WTV file. Using a custom extension on this file (since we are remuxing to TS anyway) would be a good move

[ijourneaux]

I have turned down the performance of Comskip about as far as I can go using the playnice settings, but playnice is only really useful when you are running into a CPU limitation not when it is a Disk IO limitation, so I am not sure that is the solution. Playnice allows you to specify over what time frame Playnice is supposed to be used (in my case 6pm-12am) and how much CPU time to free up.

As far as I can tell Comskip just monitors the main recording folder and it should not look in the TempSWMC folder so that should not be the issue.

It would seem that scarecrow420 thought of moving the TempSWMC folder to a different drive would be the best solution. Ideally this would be configured in the ServerWMC config panel but I will try using mklink approach to see if it makes a difference.

[krustyreturns]

I don't understand, if comskip doesn't look in the tempswmc folder why would moving the folder make any difference?

[Dilligaf]

I don't understand, if comskip doesn't look in the tempswmc folder why would moving the folder make any difference?

I think that assuming it's a drive throughput/speed issue then separate drives will overcome this bottleneck

[krustyreturns]

Ah. It will be an interesting experiment then.

[ijourneaux]

I don't understand, if comskip doesn't look in the tempswmc folder why would moving the folder make any difference?

Comskip is processing the recordings that are configured within WMC. Those kick off as each recording ends. I have set Comskip to process one recording at a time and not to process recording as they are being made.

I created the link folder for TempWMC last night and will monitor for performance issues. Last night seemed to be good but there were only a couple of recording made. Tues and Thursday are the nights when there are more recording activity so they will be better tests.

[krustyreturns]

So you sym linked to a different disk drive, very curious if this solves the problem too. If it does, we need to know because there are other features of swmc that need to be tested to see if they work in this mode.

[ijourneaux]

I ran several checks last night and the ServerWMC files seemed to be correctly created into the symlink'ed folder on a different drive.
The process of symlinking as was described by scarecrow420 but needed a couple of minor extra steps

Assuming D: is the recordedTV drive where tempSWMC is normally located and E: is the new drive for for tempSWMC

Create the new folder on the new drive
md e:\TempSWMC

d:
cd "\RecordedTV"
ren TempSWMC to TempSWMCold
mklink /D TempSWMC E:\TempSWMC

mklink will not work if the folder you want to symlink already exists on the drive.

Ian

[ijourneaux]

Rather than continue the discussion in the other thread, I thought I would bring it back here where we had a long and very valuable discussion. The symlink approach worked very well for me as long as I was windows only. Now that I am using OpenElec on one of the remote TVs, if I use a symlink to move the TempSWMC folder to a different drive, I can not access the TempSWMC folder from OpenElec thus no LiveTV. I think I have tried every combination of permissions, etc to no avail.

scarecrow420 comments in the other thread that "SMB it typically wont follow symlinks unless you set the SMB options". Obviously I haven't found the way to set the SMB options correctly.

I ended up having to remove the symlink and leave the TempSWMC folder in the same folder/drive as the Recorded TV folder.

When recording from multiple tuners, and watching LiveTV, drive throughput/speed can likely become an issue.

[krustyreturns]

You can try just making a remux folder - that just holds your TS files - on your speedier drive and keep tempswmc where you have it now and see if that fixes your stutter problem. Your remux folder needs to be shared so that your openelec can get to it, but no simlink needed. See RemuxCustomFolderUNC in the settings file

[scarecrow420]

also you might note what i said was, I havent found a way to set the SMB optoins with windows sharing so im not sure you CAN make it so symlinks can be followed. as krusty says, you dont need to use symlinks though

[ijourneaux]

Scarecrow Sorry for misquoting you. It wasn't intentional.

Will look at using RemuxCustomFolderUNC.

I will make sure to report back.

Thanks again Guys. Your support for ServerWMC is greatly appreciated.
Ian

PS that was simple. Already implemented and tested on both system. Now to watch for glitches

[ijourneaux]

So I implemented this a couple of days ago. And have been paying close attention to the glitches in the playback. The glitches only occur when watching live TV.The playback stops for a couple of seconds (maybe less) then picks up as if nothing had happened.

I am probably being picky but I don't see this happening when watching the HDHomeRun tuners directly.

[krustyreturns]

Any chance its the processor on the server being overloaded? Or a network problem?

[ijourneaux]

Network isn't the issue as ServerWMC and Kodi on on the same machine. I have another Kodi system that accesses the ServerWMC over the network. There are glitches there as well but I can't eliminate the network as the cause. I can only use wifi (AC) as I can't run a netwrok cable to that computer.

But really the problem I want to solve is on the main HTPC that has both Kodi and ServerWMC

Looking at CPU usage in Task manager doesn't indicate there is anything happening that would account the glitches. At this point the load on the drive isn't very high as there is usually only one recording at a time.