Arrrrgh.. another episode of 24 ruined.. no sound on livetv :( (PAL)

[jimbobuk]

I dont blame Sage for this.. I'm tempted to blame hauppauge and drivers etc... but i also wonder about setups..

Anyways its just got me thinking... i don't know how useful this would be to others but some sort of VU meter of the volume of the currently being processed audio... if it could be enabled in the properties file somewhere to appear in the menus... so every morning when I glance at the thing as i set it up.. I could have faith in that there was sound being picked up... or more importantly at a glance i could see there was no sound.. similarly a warning of no sound on the tv for an amount of time would also go down well...

It'd just hopefully prevent these problems in the future

[clavinniu]

Especially with that show. I can't wait for the next season. I plan on recording every episode, editing the commercials, and then burning to a DVD. 24 the Movie!!! Which episode? I got a few and an FTP server.

[jimbobuk]

Thanks... the way its on over here i can watch the episode repeating next sunday (two channels... one does one show, the other does the next show.. of cousre i am watching the one that is ahead.. but when things go wrong i can fall back onto the other channel the following week...)

Anyways come tomorrow i will have an integrated PVR with my satellite system.. i will have that doubling up on my important shows.. and will be deleting them whenever sage got it ok..

[justme]

Anyways come tomorrow i will have an integrated PVR with my satellite system.. i will have that doubling up on my important shows.. and will be deleting them whenever sage got it ok..

Yeah I have a Tivo recording some of my favorite as well as SageTv, even though SageTV has not had a bad recording in over 3 weeks. It still really stinks though, if it's a show you want to archive. Luckily alot of syndicated shows do like you describe two channels a week apart. I archive a lot of animae, and a bad recording of it can case me to have to what 2-3 months or more before the episode repeats, if ever.

The VU meter is a great idea. It could work alot like ZoneAlarm's internet activity monitor icon. Just set in the system tray and replace the regular SageTV icon. Maybe it could even alert you to when there is a problem with the video signal. I know my Tivo can tell static from a good channel reception, it will stop recording till the signal returns to save disk space.

[jimbobuk]

The thing is these audio problems seem to be fixed with a reboot... I wonder also if it'd be possible to have sage automatically do a capture card restart, the same as what happens when you do close it down and open it up again...

I got to thinking too last night about the possibilities of having transcoding for network clients.. I realise this is pretty major tho and quite frustrating.. I was even thinking about possibly having an interim transcode server.. so your main sage box is doing normally.. it serves tv at full rate to the 2nd server, which itself recieves the stream and transcodes it for ITS clients/client... dunno.. using a 2nd server would leave the main machine free to try and caress the hauppauge card into actually working and not glitching too often

[justme]

Over my head... As newer drivers have came along I've noticed increased stability, at least on NTSC. The poor PAL people seem to keep getting bad drivers from Hauppauge. Fortunately now with SageTV and a PVR250 driver from 3 monthes ago my machine is very solid. My advice to everyone is once you get a working driver setup, don't change it unless you REALLY need some new feature. As for PAL you have my sympathy and I hope Hauppage soon works out your drivers.

PS: On the capture card restart: I thought SageTV had a setting in the properties to reset the encoder after a set time.

[jimbobuk]

Just wanted to bring this back to the fore... i've had a few problems since of a similar kind...

it seems that if there is no sound on Sage startup (say the audio lead isn't plugged in, having had the computer "tidied") then there will be no audio when you reconnect the audio in.. if Sage/PVR-250 doesn't acquire the audio to begin with its left in a state with NO audio at all.. I lost a CSI episode to this the other day.. bit frustrating as I've seen most of the episodes now so most that come on i've already seen... so when its an episode you haven't seen its all the more frustrating...

anyways basically... aside from having Sage intelligently reacquire the stream between shows or something... what i really need is what i originally asked for.. a VU meter somewhere... in the guide, on the Sage icon whilst it sleeps!?! something that can help me verify that there is sound being recorded.. this is made worse by the fact that my main Sage server has no sound, i watch everything thru a client machine... as i've said before.. turning the machine on i dont turn the other machine on and so i have NO way of knowing if there is sound... most of the time it'll be fine but i never know if the wires have been disturbed such that it could cause a problem...

Again the thing is perhaps a warning at boot when its NOT detected sound or video... i doubt this is detectable tho, for the video anyhow.. perhaps its the hauppauge drivers..

Dont know whether this is suitable for adding to the studio release or a plain Sage feature... is it possible though!??