Sage Recording missing bits

[bleve]

I am pretty new to SageTv and I am confused about something that happened today.

My wife selected to record Good Morning America so she could catch a segment about a missing scene from "Desperate Housewives".

When she went back to view the show it recorded the entire show except that when it got to where it was going to show the missing scene, I know I will get flack about this, the segment was missing. That is GMA played all the way up until the anouncer said here is the missing scene, then it picked up again a later point after this segment was over.

Needless to say, my wife was pretty upset. There was some comments made about, "now why didn't we buy a Tivo?", and such. Could the network do something to stop the recording of this one part by inadvertantly sending a signal or something? I don't know, I just thought this was very strange and now I am worried that this may not be a feasible solution over Tivo.

-BL

[stanger89]

Is there a red spot in the time bar when that happened or did it just go black?

[bleve]

No red spot. It just plays and they anounce that here is the scene...., then it picks up right after. No blank area. Sort of like it stopped recording just for that one piece then started again.

-BL

[stanger89]

If you look at the file(s) on the HDD is it broken into multiple pieces?

[Opus4]

I can't resist... if the recorded file is all in one piece, did they just do a joke about a missing scene & then didn't actually show anything?

BTW: if you view the Recording Details for the show, the info box in the lower right should list all the file segments near the bottom. (You may have to scroll down a bit.)

- Andy

[bleve]

I knew someone would not be able to resist

Anyway, it is in two segments and yes, right where one segment ends and the other starts is right where the missing bits are?

How does SageTv decide where to stop and start a segment? Do you lose info when this happens?

-BL

[stanger89]

Sage doesn't "decide" to split the files, a split file indicates that there was a problem of some sort. However even if it is split, if there isn't any red in the progress bar, that indicates that there wasn't any appreciable delay between the end of the first and the start of the second.

I think I have to go with Andy on this, despite the odd coincidence, it sounds like it was a bit of a prank on GMA's part.

The other thing to check (for curiosity's sake) is if the "current" time from the GMA broadcast jives with the playback time, ie that before the break you were at say 29min into the show, and it was 8:29, and after the break it was 31 min in and 8:31 in the broadcast.

[Opus4]

Originally Posted by bleve

I knew someone would not be able to resist

Yeah, well it reminded me of the Tonight Show (w/Johnny Carson) segment where they said that some sound effects company was recording nature sounds & left the tape running in the woods while they went to lunch. When they got back, a tree had fallen nearby, so they could finally answer the qestion: "If a tree falls in the woods & no one is around to hear it, does it still make noise?" ... it was followed by a long period of silence as everyone intently listened to a blank tape, until someone in the audience yelled: "Help! I've fallen and I can't get up!".

Anyway, it is in two segments and yes, right where one segment ends and the other starts is right where the missing bits are?

How does SageTv decide where to stop and start a segment? Do you lose info when this happens?

Unless there was a recording glitch at that moment... what file system are you using? I think that FAT32 still has a file size limit of around 2GB (?), so if that is what you are using, it will have to split the files as the shows are recorded. NTFS can have much larger files so that the recordings stay in a single file.

- Andy

[bleve]

I am using ntfs and noticed that several shows are split. This particular show first split at 1.32gb and then there is 2.18gb on the second file. There are several other shows split, so what type of glitch would cause such split?

I think the missing scene piece was rather small. Probably just several seconds of video. No way of telling now.

-BL

[Opus4]

I don't know all the possible reasons why a recording might get split & there really isn't one single answer that I know of. There could be throughput issues on the drive, driver problems for the encoder, conflict problems between the encoder and other hardware on the system, and so on.

I would at least check that the partition is using a 64K cluster size, that your encoder's drivers are up to date, & that the system device info doesn't show any conflicts. Also check whether the encoder's IRQ is shared with some other hardware.

Maybe other people have additional ideas.

- Andy

[buzzerbee]

Originally Posted by Opus4

Maybe other people have additional ideas.

- Andy

!!

you might want to check your hardware drivers. I had this same issue for a while with the hauppage 250. turned out there was a driver issue and that there's a fix using a certain driver

here's part of the emailed solution from lasy august. the drivers fixed it for me:

"I looked over the log files and the reason it's creating a new file is because the capture card stopped producing data. Sage checks the file every so often and if it's not getting bigger then it restarts the recording and creates a new file. So it might be something with the card. You already did the drivers and the hard drive you are using is NTFS. I'm going to have to talk with the developer a little more about this one. One thing to try, even though this is for PVR-350's, is in your Sage.properties file there is this line, "mmc/encoders/1642691032/never_stop_encoding=false", change it to true to see what happens.

Another thing to try using a different Video Decoder. Try downloading the trial Elecard decoder and selecting it in Sage. http://www.elecard.com Make sure Sage is closed when installing the Elecard decoder.

If none of these work, then try these beta drivers for the PVR-250.
http://forums.freytechnologies.com/f...&threadid=5879
Follow my previous directions to get rid of the old drivers.

One way to find out if it's the capture card that is bad is to use the WinTV application. See if it does the same thing.

George"

[bleve]

Thanks buzzerbee, I will try the properties change.

[buzzerbee]

Originally Posted by bleve

Thanks buzzerbee, I will try the properties change.

just to be clear.. the *beta* drivers is what I've been using for a year and it fixed my problems