Recent Video & Audio Recording Glitches

[Mizpah]

I've been using SageTV 6 for a long time on the same TV Tuner (ATI PowerTheater 550 PCIex) card for a long time with no glitches. Recently the show I am recording have started having a mosaic of boxes in the video along with stuttering audio and loud pops.

For a long time I've been recording shows with the same setup: Vista Ultimate 32bit, AMD 64 X2 4400+ Proc, 2GB Ram, eVGA 8800GT, Creative X-Fi Platinum, and a 500GB SATA II hard drive, with no problems. When I started a video of a recorded show, about 15 minutes into the show the video begins to distort by having boxes appear all over. I would say pixels because it is like the image is pixelating, but these are a lot bigger than pixels. Then the audio will start to stutter and by the end of a half hour show the video signal is a mess and the audio is making loud pops.

I've recently installed divx and Dr. Divx to convert my mpegs into divx files. I don't know if that is exactly when my problem started but I know my recorded shows where fine before that. I've also updated my video driver to the latest stable version, and installed a new DX10 game, and that is about all the new things I've think I've done recently that may account for this.

So far, I've reinstalled SageTV to the latest and greatest version, reinstalled my audio driver and software. I also stopped Diskeeper from automatically defragging that partition I record to. After this the problem went away with a show I was recording. So I thought problem solved. But the next day, a show I recorded started the same boxy pixel thing about a fourth of the way in.

Next I'm going to reinstall the video driver, maybe go to a previous version, and install the latest Direct X. I have the latest drivers for my ATI TV Tuner, and since I had no problems before, I will reinstall the driver if everything else fails. I don't know if this is a codec problem, so I don't know if uninstalling Divx will help.

I'm posting this because, you guys are the experts, and I'm just a noob. It could be you have heard/seen this problem before and already know what I should do first. Any input is welcomed, because right now I can't record any of my favorite shows.
Thanks in advance.

[Mizpah]

OK, maybe this is the wrong place for help. . .

How about this, does anyone have any suggestions for ideal video and audio options (renderer, deinterlacing, decoders) that should be set? Mine are all set to default and as I said before I've never had this problem before, but maybe my solution is in these options?

Thanks again

[Tiki]

1. Is the problem appearing in the original MPEG recordings, or does the problem appear after conversion to DIVX?

2. I am not familiar with that Tuner card. Does it use a hardware or software encoder? If it is software it will be greatly affected by CPU usage from other tasks or programs you have running, so some new program (antivirus software, commercial processing, etc) that you may have added recently could be causing your problems.

3. If you have been using the same setup for a long time with no problems, it could be that you are just getting a bad signal from the cable company. I've had that happen to me where for a period of a few days or weeks I would get a lot of bad recordings because of something going on with the cable feed (maybe they were upgrading equipment or a line was damaged somewhere)? Does the problem happen a lot? Have you tried hooking the cable up directly to your TV when it is happening to be sure it isn't a problem with the signal?

4. I'm not sure how your card is capturing the signal (a-picking up a digital signal directly from cable or over the air antenna via coax, b-picking up an analog signal directly from cable or over the air antenna via coax, c-getting a signal from a cable or satellite box via coax, composite, or S-video, or d- something else). If (b) then the problem is probably somewhere is your equipment, but if (a) or (c), it could be just a bad signal from the cable, cable box, or antenna that is getting correctly recorded by your Sage Box.

[Mizpah]

Thanks for the reply, I was wondering if I had the right forum.

1. The problem is in the mpeg files. If I convert, the issue carries over.


2. I'm assuming it has a hardware encoder since its CPU usage is almost nothing when it is recording. Don't know if anything in the setup for SageTV needs to be changed to ensure that. . That's my biggest problem with this. I'm not sure if my problems could be fixed with changing some settings for encoding, decoders, and deinterlacing options.

3. Could be the signal. I recorded three shows this morning. The 2nd recording had the problem described before. The other two were fine. The only big difference is that the one with the problem was on a different channel. The two good ones were on the same channel. If memory serves me correctly, most of the time I have this problem with this particular channel. Doesn't seem to show up on the other TV (using Digital Box) Don't know if there is a way to fix this, though. . .

4. I'm using a direct analog signal through coaxial cable from my cable company. No TV around to connect to see if same problem. Used this for years, and no problems, before.

Thanks for the help again.

[Mizpah]

OK, did some more viewing of some affected shows always starts around commercials. I'm not using comskip or any other related program.

If it is the cable signal is there a way to fine tune it?

Also, my BIGGEST question now is where can I find a thorough and simple explanation for which deinterlacing technique to choose? Along those same lines, can anyone tell me how do I go about choosing the best video/audio decoder/ renderer combination. Is it random? Do I just pick and choose unless there is no problem, or is there a method?

If anyone can help, please let me know.