Occasional freezes ?

The place for discussion about the 4-channel WinterHill DATV Receiver
G4WIM
Posts: 379
Joined: Thu Jan 29, 2015 8:36 pm

Occasional freezes ?

Post by G4WIM » Fri Apr 09, 2021 9:25 pm

I'm very pleased with Winterhill and use it for both satellite and terrestrial use however I have noticed a small problem which may be network related ?

I run WH in remotely and monitor all 4 rx's on a PC but from time to time if I tune one or more rx's to the same signal sometimes one of the rx's will stop while the others keep going ok.

Could this be a network conjestion problem or VLC resource issue on the monitoring PC ?

I'm running Windows 10 64 bit with 32GB ram with a i9 10900 processor at 5.2GHz plus RTX3070 GPU and 2 x 4k monitors so I wouldn't think its a resource problem as the CPU and GPU usage are fairly low.

73 Tim

G4EWJ
Posts: 1358
Joined: Wed Feb 17, 2010 10:11 am

Re: Occasional freezes ?

Post by G4EWJ » Fri Apr 09, 2021 10:04 pm

Hi Tim,

I wouldn't have thought that it's a resources problem with that PC. The system shouldn't have any problem receiving four beacons.

I assume you're using whpcviewer. When it freezes on VLC, does the packet count on the 4 line info screen also freeze? Does the PIC LED stop flashing, if there's nothing on the other receiver in that NIM? Are the two same frequency signals being received on the same NIM?

Try closing whpcviewer and start VLC independently. Open network stream to udp://@:9941 etc.

Try right-clicking the VLC window, TOOLS, CODEC, STATISTICS to see if any data is coming in.

Brian

G4EWJ
Posts: 1358
Joined: Wed Feb 17, 2010 10:11 am

Re: Occasional freezes ?

Post by G4EWJ » Fri Apr 09, 2021 11:38 pm

. . . and when the video freezes, does the title bar stop updating?

Brian

G4WIM
Posts: 379
Joined: Thu Jan 29, 2015 8:36 pm

Re: Occasional freezes ?

Post by G4WIM » Sat Apr 10, 2021 7:37 am

Hi Brian

I should have mentioned that yes I'm using whpcviewer and when VLC freezes the terminal command prompt rx status window continues to update so I suspect its VLC related.

After a few seconds sometimes a little longer VLC continues to play again ok - seems to affect a random number of rx's sometimes none, then one then all of them.

Very infrequently I'll get a completely white screen as though the whole pc has crashed but it comes back after a few seconds. I'm wondering if it might be nvidia gpu driver related - or this could be an unrelated issue.

I'll take a closer look and report back.

EDIT

When I run 4 instances of beacon decode it's fine thus I suspect it might be my marginal H265 encoding - indeed the test I was doing was decoding my local transmission on 2409.75 with a ll 4 rx's plus an external minitiouner to determine how smooth my encoding was - looks as though it's still not quite right as WH struggles to decode it.

I'm using OBS recodring output to Pluto FW 0303 with conservative video settings and about 15% null packets

Thanks Tim

G4EWJ
Posts: 1358
Joined: Wed Feb 17, 2010 10:11 am

Re: Occasional freezes ?

Post by G4EWJ » Sat Apr 10, 2021 10:15 am

You could try turning off hardware decoding in VLC.

Right-click, TOOLS, PREFERENCES, INPUT / CODECS.

Brian

g0mjw
Posts: 2329
Joined: Sat Sep 20, 2014 9:15 am

Re: Occasional freezes ?

Post by g0mjw » Sat Apr 10, 2021 1:55 pm

With such an under-powered PC it is surprising anything works at all :)

I suggest this might be a software issues with VLC running multiple instances trying to share the same hardware. Perhaps try running several VLCs playing back H265 recordings to eliminate there being a network issue. There may be a problem in Winterhill but I have not seen it do this. It even works via WiFi.

Mike

G4WIM
Posts: 379
Joined: Thu Jan 29, 2015 8:36 pm

Re: Occasional freezes ?

Post by G4WIM » Sat Apr 10, 2021 2:54 pm

Hi Mike,

knowing what a resource hog Windows is and running OBS I figured I'd build a PC which would just 'loaf' along no matter what I throw at it. Managed to get a RTX3070 at rrp !!

Anyway I'm almost 100% certain it's an encoder problem on my tx as I can set all 4 rx's to decode the same H265 station with no problems while running OBS and whpcrx, quicktune, whrxcommander and a couple of browser windows with CPU usage at 18% and GPU at 40%.

Still searching for the 'ideal' encoder solution maybe F1EJP might be the silver bullet.

Regards Tim

G7JTT
Posts: 338
Joined: Fri Jun 10, 2016 5:05 pm

Re: Occasional freezes ?

Post by G7JTT » Sun Apr 11, 2021 11:21 am

Although I've still not built my WH I get similar freezing and VLC locking up/crashing on some H265 signals. I have the RTX 2060 and find that turning HW decode off in VLC helps but not always, so I wonder if it's a codec issue that the RTX boards don't like ?

73 John G7JTT

G4WIM
Posts: 379
Joined: Thu Jan 29, 2015 8:36 pm

Re: Occasional freezes ?

Post by G4WIM » Sun Apr 11, 2021 9:17 pm

Hi John

funnily enough I was testing my H265 transmission today and immediately I set WH to decode it the whole PC crashed - not the first time I've had this and am beginning to suspect the RTX nvidia drivers.

I'm going to run WH on another PC which uses a GTX1050 GPU and see if I have the same problems.

73 Tim

G4FKK
Posts: 135
Joined: Sun May 05, 2019 12:15 pm

Re: Occasional freezes ?

Post by G4FKK » Tue May 25, 2021 8:54 am

I don't know whether this is related but, after having used WH for some weeks now, I've noticed that occasionally one of the VLC windows will disappear for no immediately apparent reason. It can be any of the windows and, so far, it happens when I'm not in the shack so haven't seen whether it puts up any distress messages. My setup is using AnyHub on the WH and whpcviewer on the PC. Windoze 10 Professional, 64bit, Intel i5 and wired network connection. Quick Tune running in 4 receiver Auto Tune (Hold) mode.

Whpcviewer's status display indicates everything normal as far as it's concerned. Restarting whpcviewer fixes the issue until it decides to misbehave again. As I say, it's an occasional and apparently random effect. Mostly everything is fine for days on end.

All the best,

Martin - G4FKK

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