Network encoder for DBOX 2 DVB set top boxes...

[potpiejimmy]

Hi!

This is a Sage network encoder for the widely-used DBOX 2 DVB-C/DVB-S
set top box.

It uses "ggrab" to digitally grab the video/audio data from the box by
using the streaming capabilities over the ethernet. I called it
"grabrecorder" (maybe it will work with different "grabbing" programs
(and maybe even other STBs) sometime in the future).

It automatically handles the tuning of channels, so you don't need
to configure a separate tuner plugin or anything.

Of course, you need to have a linux image on your box to use the
streaming features (Neutrino, not sure about Enigma).

For now, grabrecorder only records one audio-PID, because Sage doesn't
play mpegs correctly if it contains multiple audio tracks. It could
record all audio PIDs including AC3, of course, but I disabled it
because Sage didn't play it correctly, don't know why... I still need to
figure that out...
edit: as of Sage version 4.1.6, playing files with multiple audio tracks works fine.
Use -a to record all audio pids.

This is a first alpha version without any guarantees :-) But I'd
appreciate your feedback on this...

This is how you set it up:

Download the zip and extract it to a folder. Make sure you have your
system configured to resolve the host name "dbox" to your dbox's IP
address.
edit: Or use the -dh command line option to specify the
IP address.

Start grabrecorder.exe.

It should dump the channel list of your dbox to the console.

Shutdown sage & sage service and open the Sage.properties file. Add the
following lines after the last line that starts with mmc/encoders/...

mmc/encoders/12345/1/0/available_channels=
mmc/encoders/12345/1/0/brightness=130
mmc/encoders/12345/1/0/contrast=135
mmc/encoders/12345/1/0/device_name=
mmc/encoders/12345/1/0/hue=125
mmc/encoders/12345/1/0/last_channel=101
mmc/encoders/12345/1/0/provider_id=601
mmc/encoders/12345/1/0/saturation=105
mmc/encoders/12345/1/0/sharpness=170
mmc/encoders/12345/1/0/tuning_mode=
mmc/encoders/12345/1/0/tuning_plugin=
mmc/encoders/12345/1/0/tuning_plugin_port=0
mmc/encoders/12345/1/0/video_crossbar_index=0
mmc/encoders/12345/1/0/video_crossbar_type=6
mmc/encoders/12345/audio_capture_device_name=
mmc/encoders/12345/audio_capture_device_num=0
mmc/encoders/12345/audio_processor=
mmc/encoders/12345/capture_config=
mmc/encoders/12345/default_device_quality=Great
mmc/encoders/12345/device_class=
mmc/encoders/12345/encoder_merit=0
mmc/encoders/12345/encoding_host=127.0.0.1\:6970
mmc/encoders/12345/last_cross_index=0
mmc/encoders/12345/last_cross_type=6
mmc/encoders/12345/live_audio_input=
mmc/encoders/12345/multicast_host=
mmc/encoders/12345/never_stop_encoding=false
mmc/encoders/12345/video_capture_device_name=DBOX II GrabRecorder
mmc/encoders/12345/video_capture_device_num=0
mmc/encoders/12345/video_encoding_params=Great
mmc/encoders/12345/video_processor=

The number 12345 can be replaced by any number, but it must be unique,
so if it is already used, choose something different.

Start Sage and configure your new video source. Assign the channel
numbers according to your dbox's channel list.

Good luck!

/potpiejimmy

******* edit 2006/01/20 *******

Version 0.2

- use modified ggrab_mod to avoid 99% cpu usage problem (no reading from stdin)
- interrupt ggrab_mod using CTRL+C event instead of piped "q\r\n".

***************************

******* edit 2006/01/24 *******

Version 0.3

- fixed ggrab bug for audio grabbing
- fixed ggrab Pufferfehler bug
ggrab should work for all channels now :-)
- fixed bug grabrecorder terminating itself in some cases

***************************

******* edit 2006/01/25 *******

Version 0.4

- mod ggrab to support audio packet up to 16384 instead of 9000
- changed ggrab back to toggle sectionsd at startup
- removed sectionsd toggle at shutdown because it always produced a core dump
- added command line switches to grabrecorder for dbox host/ip and grabrecorder listening port
- added command line switch to record all available audio pids
- added command line switch to selectively record preferred pids by name

***************************

******* edit 2006/01/26 *******

Version 0.5

- start ggrab_mod with "above normal" priority
- added command line switch to lock dbox remote while recording

***************************

******* edit 2006/01/28 *******

Version 0.6

- do not use UDP streaming for ggrab by default
- optionally enable UDP streaming with command line option -udp

***************************

******* edit 2006/02/23 *******

Version 0.7

- support udrec TS streaming *)

*) Notes:
Specify -udp for udrec TS streaming!
Make sure your dbox is in SPTS mode!
Make sure you have Sage version 4.1.7 or later!
Use -patpmt to record PAT and PMT pids to make the resulting files complete and "VLC-playable" - Sage, however, may have problems with the PAT/PMT of some programs/channels. In this case, drop the -patpmt option. This will result in time-consuming file scans by sage, channel-surfing impossible, but recording should work.

edit 2006/02/24:
Version 0.7.1

- bugfix for spaces in filenames

***************************

******* edit 2006/03/27 *******

Version 0.9

- automatically switch box to SPTS mode while recording using udrec (-udp)
- new command line option -sr switches box to record mode while recording
- new command line option -np to start grabbing process in normal priority class instead of above-normal priority class

Note: It is recommended to have your box in PES mode by default and let grabrecorder switch the AVIA mode to SPTS only during recording. I would also recommend to use the -sr option so that the box is switched to record mode when recording (avoids accidentally switching to another channel on a different bouquet and you can see the dbox is recording on its OSD and LCD...). Hope you like the new version :)

edit 2007/05/13:
As of Sage 6.1, playing udrec-recorded ts files with pat and pmt works fine, so I would recommend using grabrecorder with the following options:

grabrecorder -udp -a -sr -patpmt

***************************
[Source: http://www.potpiejimmy.de/grabrecorder-0.9-src.zip]

[Alfiegerner]

I'd really like to try this :clap:

Make sure you have your
system configured to resolve the host name "dbox" to your dbox's IP
address.



Could you point in the right direction of how do this? I've had a look trhough my router config and can't see a way to make a name resolve to an ip address. Do I need to set up a dns server?

[potpiejimmy]

Could you point in the right direction of how do this? I've had a look trhough my router config and can't see a way to make a name resolve to an ip address. Do I need to set up a dns server?

Simply add a line like this:

192.168.0.202 dbox

to your c:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc\hosts file.

[Alfiegerner]

Okay thanks got it up and running now :thumb:

It works for me on most channels but ggrab doesn't seem able to stream from the dbox for certain channels. I've had this problem before with ggrab don't know what's wrong with it on these problem channels.

If I manually specify the ggrab options like so:

ggrab -host 192.168.1.110 -s 0 -e "" -p 2074 2073 -o "D:\Tv\TestFile.mpg"

I get the following output:

ptr:19178 lIn:19022 lOut:13672 len:200000
Pufferfehler SearchStreamID
m_fill_video: timeout waiting with all buffers filled

After somewhere between 5 and 10 seconds ggrab goes to 90% plus cpu and hangs at that.

I recorded a 10 meg file off one of these problem channels via a direct file recording on a shared pc folder to see if you can see what the problem is with it: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=5J6D93DE

As I have had problems using ggrab before I have toyed with the idea of using direct file recording as a means of getting the dbox integrated with sage. Do you think this would be a feasible path to follow? I was thinking of changing channels, setting and stopping recordings through the yweb http interface.

[potpiejimmy]

As I have had problems using ggrab before I have toyed with the idea of using direct file recording as a means of getting the dbox integrated with sage. Do you think this would be a feasible path to follow?


I was thinking about that, too... but there are two problems to solve and I just don't know how (maybe you have an idea):

1) With direct file recording, the file is opened by the dbox, but the recorded must be redirected to a file with a specific name. The file names are handled by Sage and are passed on to the network encoder which then must record to the given file name. Gotta find a way to assign a file name to each direct recording command...

2) Sage doesn't play the files correctly if they contain multiple audio tracks. Is there a way to specify a single audio-pid for direct-recording?


As for your ggrab Pufferfehler, I don't know what the problem is, but I will checkout the newest ggrab sources from the cvs and compile it. (Or have you already done this?) The problem is in the cbuffer.cpp and there is a log entry about a larger buffer, don't know how old the ggrab.exe is that I bundled with my zip.file. Maybe I can also increase some buffer sizes... will see...

[Alfiegerner]

Thanks for clarifying that for me. Those are tricky things to get around for direct file recording. When I get a chance I'll see if i can fathom anything from the tuxbox code.

I'm haven't tried compiling the ggrab source myself. I've just downloaded it now and will have a look at it - the latest version I found is from 2003 though from: http://www.menzebach.de/ggrab/

I'll have a tinker with it but I'm a novice at C/C++ so it may take me a while.

Are you familiar with udrec? I know from previous attempts at streaming from my dbox that for some reason udrec works where ggrab fails. Is it feasible to have udrec do the streaming rather than ggrab?

[potpiejimmy]

Are you familiar with udrec? I know from previous attempts at streaming from my dbox that for some reason udrec works where ggrab fails. Is it feasible to have udrec do the streaming rather than ggrab?


Actually udrec was my first choice. It would be great to use for streaming to TS files. I had it running and the result was Sage hanging using 99% cpu time. I took a while for me to find out that it's the missing PMT information in the TS files that Sage (and other media players, VLC for instance) didn't like. I haven't found a solution for it yet, and since udrec also doesn't multiplex mpegs, I had to switch to ggrab...

[Alfiegerner]

Ah, okay - that sounds like a tricky thing to discover. Thanks for letting me know. Back to working out what ggrab doesn't like ...

[potpiejimmy]

Seems 0.22a is the newest version, so recompiling from current CVS sources won't help, I guess.

Also had ggrab hang at 99% cpu usage today... it happened somewhere in the middle of a recording (it seems)... Going to have a closer look at the ggrab source code...

[Alfiegerner]

I've just dug up some investigations from the last time I looked at ggrab. It looks like its related to problems processing the audio stream. If i try and just grab video from one of my problem channels it works fine :

ggrab -host 192.168.1.110 -s 0 -e "" -p 081A -o "D:\Tv Project\temp.mpg"

Doing a scout about on some english forums I found this quote :"Some people have reported similar recording issues with channels that use high or low bitrates for audio."

Will have a look at the code later.

[potpiejimmy]

I haven't solved the Pufferfehler issue yet, but I fixed the 99% cpu usage problem by compiling and using my own ggrab_mod.exe that doesn't create a pthread to read from stdin. So at least ggrab exits when an error occurs.

You can find the new version 0.2 in my original posting.

I've also found a channel that doesn't record at all and always produces the streaming error. It is like you said related to the audio data, recording only the video pid works fine. Workin' on it....

[potpiejimmy]

:jump: Found and fixed the ggrab bug. Recording works fine now for ALL channels :)

[Alfiegerner]

WOW!!!!!

Tested (briefly) on all my problem channels and now recording perfectly.

Well done mate! This issue had been around so long I thought it might be unfixable. Will do some more testing now but in the meantime:

:clap: :jump: :thumb:

[Alfiegerner]

What can I say? so far - working absolutely flawlessly. i can't tell you how excited I am with this :jump:

Ready for the first feature request? I'm thinking about getting another dbox now. Ideally I'm thinking about running two grabrecorder.exe's and specifing which dbox address they stream from and what port each should listen on. What do you think?

Not that I mean to sound ungrateful - just getting large and greedy eyes :D

edit: Just ran into a couple of problems:

changing channels just now seemed to cause my dbox to crash. Have you ever had this? It might just be flaw in the image I'm using. I've heard that the neutrino nhttpd server can be a little flakey though. I'll see if i can replicate it on this and other images - even better, I'll find an image that I can't replicate it with :).

Also, have you ever seen an audio-sych problem using grabrecorder? Now and then I get the audio out of time with the video - tried it through other media players and still seen the audio delay so it looks like a ggrab issue.

I'll try and get some more info for you tomorrow on these. Great work to get us this far!

[potpiejimmy]

Not that I mean to sound ungrateful - just getting large and greedy eyes :D


:D No problem, I was going to implement a couple of command line switches including host names and ports anyway. Just wanted to fix that ggrab thing first...


edit: Just ran into a couple of problems:


Aah, it just occured to me I also changed some other lines of codes that I shouldn't have tampered with. I guess this could explain the instability when changing channels. Need to change that back to the original state...

Have you seen the audio-sync problem before version 0.3? Maybe it's also caused by my last changes. I haven't had a sync problem with my dbox (yet)....

[marneb17]

Aloha,
just wanted to let you know, that I am also interested. Right now my dbox2 is connected via svideo to one of my pvr150 and I created a batch file for the exetuner plugin, so that a http request is transmitted to the box for channel change.
The image I use automatically selects an english audio track, if one is transmitted. I would use your plugin, but then I could only record the first audio track, right?

What happens if all the apids are recorded? Maybe it's just something small. Because that, of course would be the perfect solution ;-)

Marneb

[Alfiegerner]

Have you seen the audio-sync problem before version 0.3? Maybe it's also caused by my last changes. I haven't had a sync problem with my dbox (yet)....

That's good to know - I'll have look tonight. I'm also going to to load the most stable image I can find. Any recommendations on an image?

[Alfiegerner]

Suggestion for you: can you set ggrab_mod to run in above normal or maybe even high priority? Occasionally I'm getting pixelated smearing in the image when other processes are running. If I increase the running ggrab_mod priority this fixes it.

[potpiejimmy]

Ready for the first feature request? I'm thinking about getting another dbox now. Ideally I'm thinking about running two grabrecorder.exe's and specifing which dbox address they stream from and what port each should listen on.

You can specify the dbox host name/ip address with the -dh option and the listening port for grabrecorder with the -p option.


changing channels just now seemed to cause my dbox to crash. Have you ever had this? It might just be flaw in the image I'm using. I've heard that the neutrino nhttpd server can be a little flakey though. I'll see if i can replicate it on this and other images - even better, I'll find an image that I can't replicate it with :).


Please check if it is fixed now with version 0.4.

[potpiejimmy]

The image I use automatically selects an english audio track, if one is transmitted. I would use your plugin, but then I could only record the first audio track, right?

What happens if all the apids are recorded? Maybe it's just something small. Because that, of course would be the perfect solution ;-)


Hi Marneb17,

I added a command line switch to grabrecorder that allows recording all available audio PIDs. I haven't found an audio-decoder (tried all kinds of decoders in Detailed Setup) that plays the files correctly with multiple audio tracks. Only the VideoLan player plays the files and offers the selection of the different tracks. Other players have problems, too, it seems they think there's only one audio track available and the audio is distorted (turn down the volume before you try to play a file :D ) The option is -a.

If you don't use -a to record all pids, you may now specify an audio-preference list of "PID"-names by using the -ap command line option. You can say, for example, -ap "englisch,English,dolby" and it will prefer the audio PID that is contained in the list.

[potpiejimmy]

Suggestion for you: can you set ggrab_mod to run in above normal or maybe even high priority? Occasionally I'm getting pixelated smearing in the image when other processes are running. If I increase the running ggrab_mod priority this fixes it.

Oh, that's a good idea, indeed. I can do that with the next version 0.5, no problem. I also having some picture distortions from time to time...

[Alfiegerner]

:clap: Thanks for the release mate - I'll happily try it out now.

I put a new image on the dbox and I haven't been able to recreate the audio synch problem since.

Another suggestion from another forum: This is something else to consider if increasing the priority of ggrab_mod doesn't cure all of the distorted image problems. Some guy talking about streaming from the dbox using wingrab (not a program I know) says: 'I usually use "Kill playback before streaming", or I get a few video errors here and there.' Might be something to keep in mind although I'm not sure how to achieve it yet.

update: yep all working well. Raising the priority to above normal for ggrab_mod seems to get rid of all my visual glitches so far.

[potpiejimmy]

Version 0.5 starts ggrab in "above_normal_priority_class" and features a new command line switch -lr to lock the dbox remote while recording :)

[marneb17]

If you don't use -a to record all pids, you may now specify an audio-preference list of "PID"-names by using the -ap command line option. You can say, for example, -ap "englisch,English,dolby" and it will prefer the audio PID that is contained in the list.

WOW, that is super!!!

[Alfiegerner]

0.5's looking good - no more image distortion for me in what I've tried so far. Not had a chance to have much of look but so far so good. :D

[garysbootlegs]

Many thanks for creating this great plugin, just managed to get it working with version 0.5. Does anyone else get jumps in the picture/sound every so often and noise on the picture sometimes? If i change the priority to High this seems to lower the amount of glitches but they still happen every so often.

Also are there any dbox settings which need to be changed? I.e. Turning spts on etc?

Thanks

[Alfiegerner]

Hi gary, good to see you here :) Did you get your xmltv stuff sorted out?

I'm not too hot on dbox settings but here are my thoughts:

I'm not sure why, but the video from ggrab seem seems to be much more easily distorted by signal quality then what you see if the dbox is connected direct to the tv. I guess the images have some other stuff to smooth out the video?

I'd focus on trying to get the SNR of your incoming signal as strong as possible (press red then blue on most images) by removing attenuators - I also found that removing any signal boosters also got me a better snr.

After getting my SNR up to a goodish level (its something like 61700) and with 0.5 release I'd say that for me the video quality is consistently spot on for the vast majority of channels - on one or two channels with a weaker signal I'm getting very occasional flutters.

When I get back tonight I'll experiment with stps settings etc.

[garysbootlegs]

Hi there yep all the xmltv stuff is working now, thanks again for all your help.

I really don't think it is a signal problem as there are no attenuators/boosters added and the SNR on the box is 64200 with a BER of 0. Also when using udrec with dboxwinserver it can record the stream perfectly (i only get a glitch once every 30minutes of so and its perfect quality when watching with bitcontrol) however with ggrab it seems to glitch every 30seconds or so.

Just out of interest could you let me know your settings heres mine.

Image - Latest Cryo Sportster Pro
Ucode - Ucode 14
Cam - Newcamd
SPTS - OFF at boot, OFF at recording start

[Alfiegerner]

Yep you're SNR and BER look damn fine ;). I've just made a post over at WOD about the best settings to use so hopefully some bright spark will give us a few tips.

edit: Okay checked my settings:

ucode 14
spts - was just on at recording start - just set it to be on at startup ...

Also in misc settings its tweaked to my nokia 2x box. Enx and philips watchdog off nokia watchdog on.

FWIW my setup involves a server and mvp client(s) So the dbox streams to the server and the server streams to the mvp. What's your setup like? If you're doing playback on the server I wonder if the cpu toll may be affecting it?

The only advice from WOD to clear up your video is to 'disbale tv playback when recording' - I think that might be dboxwinserver thing setting though rather than somethign we can set on the dbox.

[garysbootlegs]

Hi, i'm streaming from dbox to server and playing on the server. I'll try setting up a client.

Just out of interest whats the spec of your server/clients? My server is a Athlon XP2400, 512MB PC2100 RAM, 7200RPM ATA133 HD's.

Yeah i think the disable playback option was in some early images, it may also be there in the direct recording settings (i cant check as im not at home). This wont work though as the dbox doesnt actually start recording when streaming starts.

Maybe disable playback could be added in to the next version of grabrecorder?

Also is it possible to use udrec for the streaming? As this produces perfect mp2/mpv files in dboxwinserver.

[Alfiegerner]

Hi gary,

There's an issue with how udrec forms the TS files for sage to playback.

Actually udrec was my first choice. It would be great to use for streaming to TS files. I had it running and the result was Sage hanging using 99% cpu time. I took a while for me to find out that it's the missing PMT information in the TS files that Sage (and other media players, VLC for instance) didn't like. I haven't found a solution for it yet, and since udrec also doesn't multiplex mpegs, I had to switch to ggrab...

My server is athlon sempron 2800, 512 ram. The main client I use for playback is a hauppauge mvp extender - highly recommended by the way - looks great with the sage mc 16x9 stv.

So far working this setup's working really well for me. There was an issue earlier this morning when halfway through a program we got a sage exception on playback error. Apart from that 0.5 has worked excellently.

[potpiejimmy]

Check out version 0.6 to see if you have less video glitches. This version does not use UDP for streaming by default. If 0.5 worked fine or even better for you, use the command line option -udp to re-enable UDP streaming.

udrec also uses UDP, but has more sophisticated mechanisms to fix streaming errors than ggrab.

Good news: Latest Sage beta 4.1.6 supports playing files with multiple audio tracks :jump: and there will be an audio selection feature for playback in the future.

Anyway, I will also try to get Sage to have a look at those TS files produced by udrec to see if they can do anything about it. (Actually, Sage doesn't hang, it shows an ERROR -4,0x80004005: There was a problem rendering the video portion of the content for playback.)...

[garysbootlegs]

Just tried version 0.6 and it now works perfectly, no glitches or audio drop outs or anything. Thanks a lot for all your hard work potpiejimmy.

[Alfiegerner]

Yup, likewise thanks potpiejimmy, really appreciate your efforts here.

This has inspired me to get another box for sage as a capture card. I was going to get antother dbox but I in the end decided to spend a bit more money for a dreambox 500-c :D - looks really good and there's some solid neutrino images for it. Its meant to be a lot more reliable.

The dbox is great but for me it is definitely the weak link in my pvr chain. Sometimes I have to reboot it as it locks up and / or stops giving me a video image. I have it reboot every morning as part of cleanup script I run but it still now and then screws up. Do you guys suffer the same thing with your dboxes? It could just be my box but I've heard a lot of dbox owners saying the same thing

The first thing I'm going to do when I get the dreambox is flash it with a neutrino image and see if this plugin works well with it. It _should_, in theory,work the same as the dbox as the http commands are used and ggrab works exactly the same on it apparently.

I'll let you know how I get on with it. In the meantime, thanks again mate for this really great plugin we've got here :clap:

[Alfiegerner]

Just to let you know 0.6 is working really well for me. As a bonus, CPU usage seems to halve when not using the udp switch as well.

I've reverted to a stable version of sage now and will be using this as my main tuner for the next few days so I'll let you know it goes.

[Lucas]

This looks lke a really good way to add DVB-S to SageTV without using a capture card.:thumb:

Guys, it seems that Dbox2 is really popular in Germany....

Could you please post more info on it so that I could find one to buy?

A link to a site that sells them would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks

[marneb17]

Could you please post more info on it so that I could find one to buy?
A link to a site that sells them would be greatly appreciated!

The dbox 2 is not produced anymore. The best source would be ebay. But be aware that originally they have a different OS. Linux has to be installed which isn't all that easy. But with many ebay auctions linux is already installed.

Marneb

[garysbootlegs]

Yeah just make sure you buy a box that is in "debug mode" this means you can easily flash new images to the box.

[Lucas]

Great! Thanks guys.

[Alfiegerner]

Okay after trying this out for few days on my main setup I'm experiencing a few instabilities.

At various points ggrab seems to stop grabbing the video stream. The debug shows a steady "GET FILE SIZE n" but the actual file is not increasing in size and playback stops.

I'm also getting some Sage playback error messages from time to time. I haven't yet made a note of these but can do so - although these playback erros may be caused by issues with the mvp I am using.

My problem is how to debug what the problem(s) may be.

How are you finding this potpiejimmy, do you have these sorts of issues too? I am wondering if the instability is caused by my dbox rather than this plugin.


edited: had this morning off work so was able play with settings a bit.

Using udp is more stable for me - there are less (so far none ...) instances where ggrab just stopped grabbing the video stream.

After letting it run on live tv for a few hours I came back to find a error on playback message "playback. Details: ERROR (-3,0x80070005): There was a problem accessing the filesystem for capture".

I'm not sure why it would happen but it looks like sage had a problem accessing my video directory - which was unc mapped. I've tried mapping this directory directly now, i.e. D:\folder instead of \\machine\D, to see if this can clear it up.

[potpiejimmy]

Hmm yeah, I have never been all happy with the ggrab solution myself. I've also had ggrab stop streaming here and there, especially for long shows. Biggest problem is with shows that have a high data rate of > 9MBit. TCP streaming just wastes too much of the bandwidth and UDP streaming is not reliable enough with ggrab. That's why I have picture distortions for either UDP and TCP for those shows.

Udrec on the other hand records everything just fine, that's why I'm going to include udrec with my grabrecorder. It will use udrec when using the -udp switch and ggrab when not using -udp - that way people can choose what works best for them.

I'm currently working out the problems with the udrec TS files with a Sage developer... we're almost there. Just a few more problems to solve...

I don't have Sage playback errors, though. It's probably related to your unc mapped drive, like you said.

[Alfiegerner]

That's great news mate, thanks for keeping us informed.

[Alfiegerner]

Hey potpiejimmy, my dreambox has arrived and its pretty cool :D The problem is though that so far on the neutrino images I've tried with it neither ggrab or udrec work with it :bang: I will do some more investigation to see why udrec doesn't like it. Seeing as it uses a neutrino image I'm hoping I should be able to get it to work with some tweaking here and there.

One thing that does seem to work well with it and with a dbox too is wingrab (wingrabz for neutrino images and wingrabe for enigma images). You may already be familiar with it and the site i'm about to link to - but just in case ...

http://www.dbox2.info/download.php?catid=5#2.

So far has worked very well in my trials, although I haven't yet found a way to be able to control it through command line - I haven't found any docs or code for it yet . On that page there also other software (ngrab etc) that might be worth looking at.

[Alfiegerner]

Hi m8,

I've found some switches to control video playback on the dbox. Apologies if you are already aware of them. I have found turning off the video playback whilst recording improves streaming for me. Could be useful ...

control/zapto?startplayback
control/zapto?stopplayback
control/zapto?statusplayback

[sinin]

Actually udrec was my first choice. It would be great to use for streaming to TS files. I had it running and the result was Sage hanging using 99% cpu time. I took a while for me to find out that it's the missing PMT information in the TS files that Sage (and other media players, VLC for instance) didn't like. I haven't found a solution for it yet, and since udrec also doesn't multiplex mpegs, I had to switch to ggrab...

Hi Potpie.

I'm new on this board and was lead here in my quest to find a single media centre style application that can act a a central point for all media duties including watching and recording TV, AND using my DBox as a source for this job (although I would like to get a DVB-C card as well in the future). So far I'm looking at GBPVR, SageTV or MythTV, but I'm still along way for even setting up the home network to do this so this is still very much a "look-see" time for me.

Although I had the DBox for a while I'm only now just getting into recording and streaming. I experienced one of the issues I think you describe above after direct recording a program from the DBox to the PC that produces a TS file. VLC won’t play the file due to some incorrect header information.

However, on one of the other forums I regularly visit, it seems to me that this issue may now have been fixed and the fixes have been applied to the DBOX image CVS file so that new images create will not have this problem.

I don’t know if this is the same issue as you are experiencing so forgive my ignorance if it is not.

Problem playing TS Files with VLC

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Are you having Problems playing TS Files with VLC ?

Try this:
http://lvempeg.sourceforge.net/test/genpsi.exe or attached rar file to "repair" your TS files that you already have.

From now on it should work with all new Images (>CVS 16.01.2006).

The Issue was that metallica included neutrino (stream2file.cpp)
about 6 months ago to fix this issue but there was still belows fault in the routine so gmo18t fixed this issue today....

The guys at the Tuxboard included a new patch in the cvs (today) as the


Quote:
//-- PMT packet for at least 1 video and 1 audio stream --
//--------------------------------------------------------
static uint8_t pkt_pmt[] =
{
0x47, 0x4F, 0xFF, 0x10, 0x00, // HEADER-1
0x02, 0xB0, 0x17, // HEADER-2
0x04, 0x37, 0xE9, 0x00, 0x00, // HEADER-3
0xE0, 0x00, 0xF0, 0x00, // PMT-DATA
0x02, 0xE0, 0x00, 0xF0, 0x00, // (video stream 1)
0x03, 0xE0, 0x00, 0xF0, 0x00 // (audio stream 1)
};



should be


Code:
...
0x6D, 0x66, 0xE9, 0x00, 0x00, // HEADER-3
...


USAGE FOR GENPSI.EXE

Dos Window

C:\temp>genpsi.exe

usage: genpsi <tsfile-to-patch>

EDIT:
Please read here some interesting Add On for DirectDraw Players

[potpiejimmy]

Hi everybody,

sorry, I've been kinda busy in the last couple of weeks... :(

I just uploaded version 0.7 of grabrecorder (see my original posting). The good news: TS-recording with udrec works now (with Sage 4.1.7). The bad news: Sage doesn't like all programs/channels and pops up a playback error or hangs forever. There's also a problem with Sage when having the PAT/PMT included in the recorded files, that's why I added the -patpmt command line option to switch PAT/PMT on and off.

This leads us to three different types of recording, each of them having their pros and cons:

1) Recording without -udp (that is using ggrab)

+ works fine with all channels
+ dbox doesn't have to be in SPTS mode
+ playback starts almost immediately without problems for all recordings
- recording is not reliable, stops from time to time in the middle of the show
- sometimes ggrab hangs at 99% cpu
- glitches in the picture/problems with high data rates because TCP is used

2) Recording with -udp (udrec) AND -patpmt

+ most reliable recording using UDP and TS
+ no video glitches, no problems with high data rates
+ files are complete with PAT/PMT, playback in VideoLan player works great, even automatically detects the aspect ratio, the resulting files are just perfect
- dbox must be switched to SPTS mode
- Sage doesn't play most of the files and shows playback error because it doesn't like the PAT/PMT

3) Recording with -udp (udrec) but without -patpmt

+ most reliable recording using UDP and TS
+ no video glitches, no problems with high data rates
+ Sage plays most of the files, but takes its time to scan the files
- dbox must be switched to SPTS mode
- the resulting files lack PAT and PMT which makes them kind of incomplete, can't play them in VideoLan player, WMP works, however, most of the time
- playback doesn't start immediately and Sage hangs for minutes if the file is not long enough yet.



@sinin
Hi, thanks for your post. The trick was to pass the PAT (=0) and PMT pids to udrec via -ap. I'm not sure whether this is due to the patch you mentioned (I have the latest snapshot image installed) or not, but the files play perfectly in VLC now. Sage has problems, however, see above.


@alfiegerner
Sorry, almost forgot about your startplayback/stopplayback idea, could implement a command line option that invokes stopplayback when recording starts. On the other hand, stopping the playback is basically the same as hitting the standby-button on your dbox remote and since I usually have my dbox in standby while recording I didn't have the need for such an option. Don't you have your dbox in standby when recording?

Oh, any news on getting your dreambox to work with grabrecorder??

[Alfiegerner]

Brilliant, thanks for the release!

I didn't realise the dbox could record when in standby. That's a good tip.

I haven't yet found a way to use the dreambox with grabrecorder but I've been too busy lately to really play around.

I'll try this out later and let you know how I get on.

Is there anything I can help out with code-wise? Let me know if i can assist ...

[Alfiegerner]

Hey potpie, I've just had an idea regarding direct file recording. This is all the product idle speculation so don't worry if its a crap idea .

If you remember when we discussed direct file recording last we ran into the stumbling block of getting the network encoder to record to a particlar file name for sage to play:


1) With direct file recording, the file is opened by the dbox, but the recorded must be redirected to a file with a specific name. The file names are handled by Sage and are passed on to the network encoder which then must record to the given file name. Gotta find a way to assign a file name to each direct recording command...


Okay so I was thinking about ways we might use sym-links or shortcuts and couldn't think of a way to make it work on windows machines.

Then I remembered avisynth (http://www.avisynth.org/). Apologies if I'm telling you something you already know about but in case you don't, here goes. Avisynth is scripting engine used for video editing. Once installed you can create a filename called, say, sage_network_encoder.avs and have in it the folowing line:

DirectShowSource("c:\folder\myclip.mpg")

The file 'sage_network_encoder.avs' will then redirect you to your .mpg - this works for all the media players I've tried so I guess it would work for sage too ...? (might need to tweak properties to include '.avs' files ?)

If this _did_ work some sort of clean up process would be needed - as sage would only delete the .avs file we would need to implement a way of deleting the .mpg file. Maybe some sort of rsync scripting?

mmm .. just an idea ...

[potpiejimmy]

Hi alfie,

the problem is sage wants *.mpg files and I don't think it can handle .avs files or the DirectShowSource command - and there are other problems to solve like the cleanup as you mentioned. The question is: Why do you worry?? :) Now that udrec TS recording works, there is absolutely no difference between direct file recording and recording with udrec. The resulting data is the same and it should also be equally reliable. There's much more control over the recording process with udrec than with direct file recording. :thumb:

For me it's -udp and -patpmt. This way I get perfectly recorded files with all the original stream infos and everything, much better than the multiplexed MPG-PS streams. Only need to find out why Sage shows a playback error for most of the files, but as VLC playback with the latest Neutrino image works I'm very positive that it will eventually work with Sage, too. :) And until then I just watch the recorded files with any other media player.

:corn:

[Alfiegerner]

Hey potpie, yeah your right, too much fretting on my part :blush:

[Alfiegerner]

hey potpie, just trying it out now and I've ran into a snag. Sorry to hassle you with this ...

Basically I'm getting GET FILE SIZE 0 as udrec_mod isn't streaming.

Okay I took this output from the console:

Starting process udrec_mod -ts -host 192.168.1.125 -now -vp 258 -ap 259 -ap 1041 -ap 0 -o D:\TV Recordings\QuestionTime-1755735-0.mpg

If I pass these paramaters myself on the command line to udrec_mod it behaves as if I have given it a wrong paramter, i.e. the help list of switch statements comes up.

The problem is with the space in the directory path D:\TV Recordings\QuestionTime-1755735-0.mpg, so "D:\TV Recordings\QuestionTime-1755735-0.mpg" work fine.

eg

udrec_mod -ts -host 192.168.1.125 -now -vp 258 -ap 259 -ap 1041 -ap 0 -o "D:\TV Recordings\QuestionTime-1755735-0.mpg"

:dance:

[potpiejimmy]

Ooopsy... my fault :D Should have put those quotation marks around the file name... fixed it in 0.7.1 :)

[dave™]

Hi, was really looking forward to using this plugin as it is a feature i have looked forward to for a while, i have installed everything and added a few channels, although when i goto the EPG it is blank for every channel, if you try and watch the channel, it changes the channel on my dbox and plays it fine on the tv, but in SageTV all i get is NO SIGNAL, please help as i have been up for the last few hours goin mad trying to get this to work lol :bang:

I have tried all the basics.. e.g

SPTS mode, new neutrino image, even watching through the LIVE plugin for VLC on the yweb is working, so i don't get how SageTV cant pick it up.

Thanks for all replies in advance, hope to hear from you soon.

Keep up the good work on this project :) :thumb:

[Alfiegerner]

Can you grab a bit of debug for us?

We need to have look at the command to the grabbing program. In the grabrecorder console window see if you can isolate the line with 'udrec_mod' or 'grab_mod' in it. The best way to do this is to switch to a live tv channel and then press stop almost immediately. If you scroll up you should be able to see the command. You might have to be quick on the stop button though so it doesn't scroll too far.

Can you post the command to the grabbing program here?

edit: I forgot to say, the problem with the epg being blank is a seperate one. To fill the epg you need to manually import xmltv data. Have a read about and you should be fine.

[potpiejimmy]

Hi Dave,

it seems you're having two problems there, the missing EPG data and „no signal“. The retrieval/display of the EPG data is not related to the underlying encoder, it works independently from the actual video source. What kind of EPG source do you use (tvtv?) (what country are you in, btw?). What do you mean the EPG is blank, is that „No data“-programs or is the whole row in the EPG blank, because then you probably just have to wait a day or so until it gets populated with the shows.

Anyhow, if you can already change the channels thru grabrecorder then you're probably almost there. Just a few things to keep in mind:

1) You must enable SPTS mode ONLY when using the -udp option! When not using -udp, you must disable SPTS! (The next version of grabrecorder will automatically switch SPTS on and off in the DBOX, but until then, you have to set it up manually).

2) It takes a while until the first data is written to the files by the grabbing programs and until then, the „No signal“ box appears. Just wait a little longer, and the playback begins as soon as enough data is available. When not using -udp, it is much faster, playback starts after a few seconds, the „No signal“ box may not even appear at all, but with -udp (udrec) it takes much much longer (like 20 or 30 secs), so -udp is not really useful for live channel flipping (at the moment, will have a look at it).

3) For now, if you use -udp you should also use -patpmt to get valid files with PAT and PMT. The current Sage versions pops up an ERROR -4 when trying to play these files (most of them), but this should be fixed in the next Sage version (4.1.10, i guess).

Hope that helps :)
/potpiejimmy


P.S.: Oh! Alfiegerner was faster, hi Alfie :D yeah the command line would be helpful, too, if the problem remains :)

[dave™]

lol thanks for the help, i decided to do the xmltv bit first to see if i could get an epg, now when i finnished that, i clicked on watch now on a channel, and it worked!!!

Thanks guys, this is just what ive been looking for! (BTW i upgraded to the latest beta version as well)

[dave™]

did you ever find out what was causing ggrabmod to hang at 99% cpu, working perfectly except sometimes i come in to find it has crashed and not recorded anything :( lol

Keep up the good work :)

[dave™]

Let me start off by saying a big thank you for this encoder.

I have just bought sagetv and a remote just for this dbox network encoder :clap: :clap:


For some reason udp doesn't work at all with me, with PATPMT or not, and with SPTS mode enabled or not

I am happilly using tcp mode, (with SPTS mode on or off, i can't find the difference, in tcp mode anyway) although when it crashes at 99% cpu it is really annoying as it takes a awhile to end the task and get it restarted.

I have setup grabrecorder.exe as a windows service, which starts at the logon screen

But if i could just get some software that monitors the cpu usage and ends ggrab_mod if it reaches 95% or so, then the next time a channel is changed or something is starts to record, the grabrecorder.exe service will restart ggrab_mod.exe.......... but i have yet to find this software lol, so for now, it's 5 mins each time goin into the task manager


Any ideas??

Dave

[potpiejimmy]

Hi Dave,

sorry I kept you waiting so long for an answer... I still don't know what causes the ggrab process to hang at 99% cpu :( sorry. The only thing I could do for you was to add a command line switch -np that starts the ggrab process in "normal priority class" instead of above-normal priority which should make killing the process much easier when it hangs. Yeah, I know, it's not really a satisfying solution...

If you don't use Sage to watch Live-TV, you should really try to get -udp to work: Do you have a recent neutrino image on your box? With the new version 0.9 you should disable SPTS by default in your dbox settings. grabrecorder will activate SPTS when recording starts and deactivate when recording stops, which is more reliable than having your box in SPTS mode all the time. You should also use the -sr option.

You still can't use -patpmt, though, if you want to watch the recorded shows in Sage :(

[marneb17]

I tried the encoder again. First of all, the quality is, of cource, much better than the method I use right now, recording through the svideo of my pvr150.
Recording with udrec works great. I think the ggrab support is broken in version .9. I can see in the command window that the command that starts ggrab ends after the -o parameter.
But...
Since the "mpg"/ts files that are recorded aren't played back by sage very well, and don't work on the MVP extender, I looked at fixing them. After trying a lot, I found that projectx can demux the file and fixes the problems. But then i end up with two demuxed files. I muxed them in tmpg and the file played in sage and on the mvp!

So I set out to automate the process, and it was quite some work, but now it works.
The only problem I have now is LiveTV. I want Sage to use the Svideo Input when I specify nothing, but use thenetwork encoder when I record something in the future.
Here is what I thought of but didn't get to work: I thought setting the network encoder to the quality "digital" would help me. Then I could have the default recording quality set to "Best" and since the network encoder can't supply the quality "Best" it would record through the pvr150 but when I select "digital" as the recording quality then it would need to use the network encoder. But this does not work.
Does anybody have an idea to get this working?

Well, now I will explain how to demux and mux the file automatically:

I included my batch file but you have to edit it to make it fit your directories!!!!
These tools are needed:
ProjectX (http://rapidshare.de/files/17149845/ProjectX_090.4.00.zip.html)
mplex (attached to this post)
and touch (http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/gnuwin32/coreutils-5.3.0.exe?download) (included in coreutils)

I do not take responsibility if this batch will delete your harddrive...

First install projectx and coreutils.
Put mpex.exe in a directory

Edit the demuxmux.bat

Now you can test it with drag-and-dropping a recorded mpeg file on the bat file !!!MAKE A BACKUP OF THE FILE, BEFOREHAND!!! The original file will get deleted! After the process is done, the file should play in Sage.
If this works for you, then you can set up the automation.
If you have other recording devices than the dbox2 then setup an extra recording directory for the dbox. Through the line "forced_video_storage_path_prefix" If this is set then it will only write to video storage directories that begins with the string this property is set to.
You have to set this for every capture device. So that they write to different locations.
Next configure dirmon2 so that it will scan the dbox directory and process "mpg" files, "must not exist" -> "txt", and "wait until the target file is finished" must be checked.
And well that should be it.

[Alfiegerner]

Excellent work m8 :D Like you say, the only problem is how to get live tv. If we had a set up like mediaportal that would work fine: there you have 2 settings, 1 being encoder priority for live tv and the other being encoder priority for recorded tv. I don't know if it is possible to simulate this in sage ...

Hopefully soon we will be able to play these files back in sage. This still leaves a slight issue with the time it takes to start a recording but hopefully that could be overcome.

Potpie, 2 questions for you:

1) Do you think sage - particularly the mvp - will be able to play back the files recorded by udrec in time? I don't know what the technical problems are so have no idea how likely it is.

2) This is to do with the time it takes to start a recording when using -udp -patpmt - do you think the time could be reduced between selecting the channel and the file being recorded?

Just wondering how far we are from the best tv solution in the world :D.

[potpiejimmy]

Hi guys,

first of all, thank you marneb for this great tool to convert the recorded files on-the-fly after recording :) I had also checked out projectX to convert the recorded files but I never thought it would be feasible to have an automatic conversion... I'm quite impressed you really got it working with dirmon, the txt files, the storage_path_prefix thing, the time stamps - that must have been quite a bit of work :D

One question: Are you recording the files with or without -patpmt?? Because if I record WITHOUT -patpmt, all files play fine in Sage, I'm having no problem as long as I don't try to watch a file that has just started recording or watch Live-TV (in that case Sage hangs for some minutes until the file size is large enough). Don't these files (without -patpmt) play in MVP extender??



Recording with udrec works great. I think the ggrab support is broken in version .9. I can see in the command window that the command that starts ggrab ends after the -o parameter.


Ggrab support shouldn't be broken in 0.9 (is it??). The command line should end with "-o -", the last '-' meaning stdout (ggrab_mod pipes its data to grabrecorder unlike udrec_mod which opens the target file on its own).

:)


The only problem I have now is LiveTV. I want Sage to use the Svideo Input when I specify nothing, but use thenetwork encoder when I record something in the future.
Here is what I thought of but didn't get to work: I thought setting the network encoder to the quality "digital" would help me. Then I could have the default recording quality set to "Best" and since the network encoder can't supply the quality "Best" it would record through the pvr150 but when I select "digital" as the recording quality then it would need to use the network encoder. But this does not work.
Does anybody have an idea to get this working?



As far as I know it is not possible with Sage to setup different recording devices for Live-TV and favorites/recordings. Sage does not "ask" the devices whether they support a specific recording quality or not and select the appropriate device depending on that.

BUT HEY! IDEA :jump: I could use the recording quality to let my grabrecorder decide whether it should take ggrab or udrec. Since Live-TV works quite well using ggrab it could use ggrab in that case and udrec for recordings. What do you think??


/potpiejimmy

[potpiejimmy]

1) Do you think sage - particularly the mvp - will be able to play back the files recorded by udrec in time? I don't know what the technical problems are so have no idea how likely it is.


Hmmm,... until now I didn't know the files don't play in MVP extender, I don't use the MVP. All files play fine in Sage if I don't use -patpmt (just a slight delay of a few seconds when starting to play a file since Sage tries to find PAT PMT information).

As for -patpmt, the problem is that the PATPMT seems to contain information for all PIDs of the bouquet, not just the channel. In this case, the Sage decoder always takes the information from the channel with the lowest ID number. That's why playback only works for one specific channel in a satellite/cable bouquet and fails for all other channels with playback ERROR.


2) This is to do with the time it takes to start a recording when using -udp -patpmt - do you think the time could be reduced between selecting the channel and the file being recorded?


Well, actually the recording starts immediately, it just takes a while for the file to increase in size because of the memory buffer in udrec - and then Sage needs a good amount of data to finish its parsing for PATPMT. That's why it takes so long before one can actually start watching after the recording started. But again, this is only a problem for Live-TV or when trying to watch a file that has just started recording.

[Alfiegerner]

hey potpie,

I will try using the -udp without -patpmt tonight to see if it plays in the mvp. I like your idea about intelligently switching between ggrab and udrec - sounds gooooood. I know you're already thinking that there is a problem with the potential for ggrab to screw up on the live tv i.e. its reliability problems .... However, it sounds like the best solution to date - ggrab is so frustrating as its *nearly* completely usable.

[Alfiegerner]

As for -patpmt, the problem is that the PATPMT seems to contain information for all PIDs of the bouquet, not just the channel. In this case, the Sage decoder always takes the information from the channel with the lowest ID number. That's why playback only works for one specific channel in a satellite/cable bouquet and fails for all other channels with playback ERROR.



Ah okay, so if there was only one channel in the bouquet would that work okay in sage? I'll give that a go tonight.

[potpiejimmy]

Ah okay, so if there was only one channel in the bouquet would that work okay in sage? I'll give that a go tonight.

I'm afraid you can't change the bouquets... well maybe "bouquet" is the wrong word for it, I mean the group of digital channels that are transmitted in the same analog channel frequency, the "hard-coded bouquets", not the user-defined ones. :)

[Alfiegerner]

Damn ... i thought that sounded too easy :) Thanks for letting me know.

[DIBU]

Hmmm,... until now I didn't know the files don't play in MVP extender, I don't use the MVP. All files play fine in Sage if I don't use -patpmt (just a slight delay of a few seconds when starting to play a file since Sage tries to find PAT PMT information).

mvp will work with my dbox. :)

[marneb17]

I'm afraid you can't change the bouquets... well maybe "bouquet" is the wrong word for it, I mean the group of digital channels that are transmitted in the same analog channel frequency, the "hard-coded bouquets", not the user-defined ones. :)

I think the proper term is "transponder".

Hmmm,... until now I didn't know the files don't play in MVP extender, I don't use the MVP. All files play fine in Sage if I don't use -patpmt (just a slight delay of a few seconds when starting to play a file since Sage tries to find PAT PMT information).


Well, I will try again. I first tried without -patpmt and sage took quite some time and then iit started, but the mvp didn't play the file. I then tried with -patpmt and that just crashed my SageTVClient and the MVP wouldn't play the file. I think. VLC couldn't play the file either! But after the demuxmux it worked.
I will try again to see if the file will play without -patpmt. I will also try ggrab again, must have been me than. I saw that it looked strange and thought that it didn't work.

Anyway I have one problem right now, I think, and that is that the aspect ratio isn't kept after the demuxmux process. But I will look into it.

Marneb

[Berg]

I haven't yet found a way to use the dreambox with grabrecorder but I've been too busy lately to really play around.
...

Hello Alfiegerner,

I am consdering the purchase of a couple of Dreambox and was wondering if you had found a way to use Dreambox with Sage.

Thanks in advance. :clap:

[Alfiegerner]

Hello Alfiegerner,

I am consdering the purchase of a couple of Dreambox and was wondering if you had found a way to use Dreambox with Sage.

Thanks in advance. :clap:


Hi Berg,

I'm afraid to say not streaming the video directly.

However, I use a pvr-150 and am getting very good results from that. Video is totally fine quality throught the pvr-150. Channel changes are done via exe tuner plugin and a script which calls web-pages from the dreambox web-server. Every time you select a channel the exe tuner plugin passes the channel number as a paramater to a specified exe. This is where I needed to write a small app to call the correct web page to change the dreambox to the correct channel.

I would recommend the dreambox with sage as its very stable and produces a very good picture quality. If you need help setting it up let me know - you're welcome to the channel changing app I have as well, its rough and ready but it works :)

[crollorc]

hi,

im using sage 6.1.4 and trying to get my dbox2 working with this network encoder.

i can access the web interface on the dbox and have kicked off grabrecorder which seems to pick up all my channels.


C:\Program Files\SageTV\SageTV\grabrecorder>grabrecorder.exe -dh 192.168.2.5
** 2006 Sage GrabRecorder 0.9 for DBOX2 by Thorsten Liese **
Constructing process recorder.
Constructing neutrino recorder.
Reading channel list.
1 = 6a7010259 (RTE One)
2 = 6a701025a (RTE Two)
...
243 = 4a7010195 (Sky Movies 1)
244 = 4a7010196 (Sky Movies 8)
245 = 4a7010197 (Sky Movies 2)
246 = 4a7010198 (Sky News)
247 = 4a7010199 (Extreme Sports)
248 = 4a701019a (Paramount 2)
Constructing ggrab recorder.


ive also modified the properties file and tried to setup the new video source. however at that point i run into trouble. the channel listing only shows one channel and when i "view" it i get "no signal" and see the following grabrecorder output -

<<< GET_FILE_SIZE F:\sagetv\My Videos\DBOXIIGrabRecorderon1270016970SerialDigita
l-0.mpgbuf
Getting file size.
>>> 0


does anyone have any ideas on where ive gone wrong?

thanks for your help,

colm

[crollorc]

hiya,

the problem appears to be that the ggrab command produced doesnt work with the apid it uses -
Getting pids.
First PID (video): 1029
No preference audio PID found, using default.
Starting process ggrab_mod -p 0x405 0x75 -o -
when i try this on the command line i get a timeout error. whereas if i remove the 0x75 param it works.

ive tried the different grabrecorder params(-a, -ap english) but none of the ggrab commands produced work.

also, when i run the getpids web command -
http://dbox/control/zapto?getpids
manually it hangs.

is there a particular neutrino image i should be using? im on sportster 1.7+ ukos at present.

thanks for any help!

colm

[potpiejimmy]

Hi colm,

hmm, to be honest, i don't really know why ggrab won't work for you. Are you sure the getpids command hangs - what about getallpids, which is used by grabrecorder!? Have you managed to get ggrab to record anything at all, i mean video and audio together, not just the video? What about udrec recording (use -udp for grabrecorder), have you tried that?

Anywho - I've added a link to the source code for grabrecorder 0.9, see my original posting on page 1, maybe you can get it to work with the help of the source code, but I think you should try to manually get udrec_mod or ggrab_mod to record from your box first to see if recording works at all with one of those tools and in combination with your dbox image.

Sorry I can't be of better help :( Good luck! I appreciate to hear from if you get it to work :)

[crollorc]

thanks for your advice!

im currently updating my image from sportster pro 1.7 to 1.10. perhaps the get(all)pids zapto commands will work in the newer version!

by the way, i could get the sound working with ggrab but only if i worked out the audio pid via the dbox menu system and then used it in the ggrab command.

thanks again,

colm

[potpiejimmy]

:jump: Good news, everyone. Sage 6.1 plays TS-files with PAT and PMT, so you can start using the -patpmt option of grabrecorder (when using -udp) now.

[deanm]

hiya,

the problem appears to be that the ggrab command produced doesnt work with the apid it uses -

when i try this on the command line i get a timeout error. whereas if i remove the 0x75 param it works.

ive tried the different grabrecorder params(-a, -ap english) but none of the ggrab commands produced work.

also, when i run the getpids web command -

manually it hangs.

is there a particular neutrino image i should be using? im on sportster 1.7+ ukos at present.

thanks for any help!

colm

Hi Colm

Did you ever get this to work. I have the same Image as you and have the same problems.

ggrab works ok if I manualy add the pid info but nothing else works. The get all PIDs will lockup my Dbox.

Dean

[crollorc]

nope, i gave up in the end im afraid.

i finally assumed that the dbox sportster image im using is too buggy to get this working but i couldnt get later sportster images to pickup and decode my channels.

i plan to try again if i can find a newer sportster image which works reliably in ireland.

colm

[DIBU]

:jump: Good news, everyone. Sage 6.1 plays TS-files with PAT and PMT, so you can start using the -patpmt option of grabrecorder (when using -udp) now.


:( in the new version of sage it will not play the files with -udp and -patpmt for me :(

but when i record from the dbox with streamme..sage plays the ts-files without problems :confused: