PVR250 Video Bad During Long Recordings

[sshapiro63]

Hey Folks,

I have found that my PVR250 video starts distorting after recording about 1.5 to 2 hours. I get random "blocks" appearing throughout the video. Shorter recordings have no problems.

Anybody know the cause and a fix?

Thanks,

Steve

[ben_gb]

Hi,

I get this too. It seems to happen on mine after 2 hours and 9 minutes. From then on every recording is messed up, with jitters, pixelation or just a frozen frame.

Are you using the Sage Client to playback?

I think it might be this that is the problem, because if I play the files on my TV server using Windows Media Player they seem to be OK (and playing them with with the SageTV running on the server also appears to be OK). Can you check your files with WMP or with the local SageTV (if you are running a client/server configuration) to see if your files are OK.

Hopefully this narrows it down. I emailed support about this too.

Regards,
Ben

[sshapiro63]

Yeah, I noticed that when I was recording a movie about a month ago the SageClient image started to break up/distort after about 2 hours but the SageTV system looked fine when viewing the same scenes.

If it turns out to be a Sage issue and it can't be fixed quickly I might move to either Snapstream or MythTV.

[mlbdude]

Fortunately it is not happening to all of us :) I have recorded hundreds of hours - lots of movies over 2 hours some even 3 hours long - and have never seen that. I would have to guess it is more of a Hauppauge driver issue and will follow you to any application. If you read the SHS forums users have reported this problem with the later beta drivers.

[sshapiro63]

I guess it could be driver issue but I don't understand why the SageTV would not show the video corruption but SageClient does?

[mlbdude]

Are you using different video decoders between the two systems? If it is only showing on one (the client) then it is probably not the 250's drivers but something on that machine.

[Narflex]

What version of Windows are your clients running on and what version of DirectX? And what kind of network do you have?

[Narflex]

Also, what file system is the client formatted with? I don't mean the video drives...the mean disk the client uses for the OS?

[ben_gb]

Hi,

I've been emailing Jeff about this separately.

It looks like the problem is something to do with playing back programs which are over 4GB in size, because the time is starts occurring changes depending on the quality you are using. EG at 2GB/hour, the pixelation starts happening at about 2 hours and 10 mins, but if you play back a program recorded at 3GB/hour, it starts occuring at around 1 hour 40 mins.

However, so far we haven't been able to work out what exactly is causing the problem, other than it's something to do with running through SageClient (I even get the problem when I run SageClient on the TV server), so it might be down to network drivers or something in that area.

Jeff suggested I post here to see if anyone is using the same motherboards. I'm using a Shuttle XPC SB51G motherboard, using the onboard network adaptor.

sshapiro63 (and anyone else seeing this problem) out of interest what motherboards are you using for your server and client? Do you also see the corruption starting at different times if you record at different qualities?

Also, I found using the NVDVD decoders gave a much worse jerky output than switching to the Elecard decoders.

Cheers,
Ben

[Narflex]

Ben,

When you ran SageTVClient on the same machine as the server, did you try either of the two following addresses:

localhost
127.0.0.1

If not, please do.

But I'm mostly interested to see if the other people on this thread were also using Shuttle mobos.

[ben_gb]

Hi Jeff,

I used the 127.0.0.1 address.

Regards,
Ben

[Narflex]

What about the Shuttle mobos from other people?

[mediahome]

I too am seeing that problem with the 1.4.8 beta. All of a sudden the video starts to stutter, blocks in the video, bad lipsync, etc. The recording is OK on the server but the problem occurs on two different Sage Clients. One is on an ASUS A7V266-E Athlon system and the other is on an Intel D850GB Pentium 4 based system. Sorry to say - it does not appear to be unique to Shuttle MOBO's.

Let me know if I can be of more help troubleshooting this.

Matt

[Narflex]

I finally replicated this problem yesterday. I'll be looking into it today, I'm very curious to see what's causing it.

[robogeek]

Friday night I had to work so I recorded the football game and postgame show. A little more than 2 hours into the recording I started to see the pixelation/artifacts and blocks in the recording. Once they started, they seemed to popup almost constantly and in fairly large patches on the screen. The postgame show was recorded on the same channel but on my second PVR-250 tuner and didn't show any of these problems. I know it wasn't a bad broadcast because the game ran over the 3 hour recording period of the first recording so the postgame show recording still had part of the football game except it didn't have the pixelation and artifacts that were visible at the end of the first recording. The recordings were set to 2GB/hour so it seems to correspond to the >4GB file issue mentioned earlier in the thread.

I've deleted the recordings :( And it didn't occur to me at the time to do some additional tests to try to narrow the problem a little more. I probably should've tried playing the file back in WMP and PowerDVD to verify if it really is a bad recording or just a playback issue with SageTV. I'll schedule another recording at higher quality to try to reproduce the results and let you know what I find.

Here's the SageTV server hardware:

ECS K7S5A Pro v5 motherboard, AMD Athlon XP 2000+, 256MB RAM, with 2 PVR-250's, a Promise ATA/100 controller, a cheap Savage4 AGP graphics card, and about 810GB of hard disk storage on the Promise and integrated IDE controllers.

Here's the SageTVClient HTPC hardware:

MACH4 P3XE-MVB motherboard, Celeron P4 1.7GHz, 512MB RAM, DVCR card, Radeon 7000 AGP graphics card, and 40GB hard drive on integrated IDE controller.

[insomniac]

I saw this issue for the first time on my machine today too..

pvr250 v15

for reference: the mobo is a intel 845 chipset

I.

Originally posted by Narflex
I finally replicated this problem yesterday. I'll be looking into it today, I'm very curious to see what's causing it.

[Narflex]

PROBLEM HAS BEEN RESOLVED!!!!

Took me awhile, but I eventually tracked it down and fixed it for RC2. The bug was in the software...BUT it was in Microsoft's code. There was bug in one of the DirectShow BaseClasses that I found which made mistakes when printing out the value a number if it was larger than 2^32 (4GB). The DShow BaseClasses are actually one of the things M$ gives you the code for believe it or not. So I was easily able to correct the bug (and specifically blame it on them by finding it in their source). :)

Anyhoo....problem's fixed now. :) Stream on!

[sshapiro63]

Jeff,

You are the king! Will you please run for governor in California. I want to vote for you.


Steve

[jmeeks]

Now that, is funny! :rofl:

[Xleon]

Anyhoo....problem's fixed now

Nice one !!

BUT........

You wouldn't stand a chance against Arnie :rolleyes2

[mediahome]

Great! I look forward to RC2 so that I can move the server to my office and run Sage Client on a barebones (quiet) HTPC in the family room.

[sshapiro63]

I downloaded the latest beta, RC2, and the problem does appear to be fixed! I recorded a long movie; Tora Tora Tora, and it looks fine from beginning to end when viewed via SageClient.