PlaybackException after a few days.

[hchucky]

I recently made the jump from a 5900xt to a 6600xt video card. I also updgraded the video drivers to FW 71.24 and the NVIDIA encoders to version 1.00.67. Everything was working fine...the upgrades cleared up my tearing issues and improved PQ but I also created a problem. About once or twice a week Sage will give me a PlaybackException when I attempt to playback a recording. The only way to return Sage to normal operation is to restart the client. Once restarted the recordings play fine until the issue resurfaces a few days later.

FWIW the exact error msg is: There was a Playback Error in playback. Details: sage.PlaybackException:ERROR(-4,0x80040217): There was a problem rendering the video portion of the content for playback.

In the past when I've had or seen simular issues things either worked or they didn't. I can't recall seeing an instance where it has been intermittent.
Before I started to chase my tail on this one I thought I would solicit some imput from the group. I know there are a few folks out there experimenting with the 6600GT and NVIDA DVD Decoders.

BTW running 2.2.2 Beta with Cayars16 STV - long live cayars

HC

[nielm]

DirectX Errors gives: No combination of intermediate filters could be found to make the connection.
(translation: could not make the connections between video and MPEG2 decoder and renderer)

I get that sometimes... Sometimes it needs an OS reboot... Sometimes resetting everything in the Video section to 'default' helps...

On my client system it went away when I had to reinstall windows recently (networking subsystem died!), so I am blaming some wierd DirectX internal config/corruption problem... I still get it on my server, but don't feel like doing a reinstall yet...

[WhollyMindless]

My server just developed this problem a few days after installing 2.2.7 release.
Id been running 2.1for a month or so with no issues.

In my case, reboot or cold restart didn't solve it.

I'll mess around some more.

[WhollyMindless]

ok I found that if I disable the nvdia codec (use haup codec) it works like a champ.

Does anyone know what the nvidia codec expiration looks like with Sage?

Wholly

[robertmcox]

Got this one too!

AFAIK, the problem appears to have arrived when my NVidia codec trial expired and I purchased a license. My thoughts are that the trial version unlocks all features for 45 days or whatever, but when you purchase, you have a choice of silver, gold, or platinum. As I don't have/need surround sound, etc., I chose silver. I think this is a NVidia bug.

I observe that choosing any codec other than NVidia and Sage works fine. If I exit and restart Sage, everything is fine for a few days.

[hchucky]

I'm still having this issue as well. The wife is getting after me to get it fixed so I've posted on avsforum. Hopefully this will turn up some solutions otherwise I maybe forced to abandon the Nvidia Decoder or rebuild the entire box from scratch and hope I get lucky.

If anybody in this form has any ideas I'd be happy to try them out but so far all I hear of is more people having the same issue and no solutions.

Here is the link to my post on avsforum:
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...hreadid=524694

HC

[ToxMox]

I've got a weird feeling this has something to do with having both TheaterTek and the Nvidia DVD decoder installed at the same time. I noticed in Radlight filter manager that the Nvidia Video Decoder that was registered was the one installed by TheaterTek since I installed TheaterTek (or at least the patches) after I installed the Nvidia DVD Decoder.
So I reinstalled the Nvidia Video Decoder and now that one is showing up as the registered one. Maybe this will have some sort of impact.

On a side note. Am I a complete idiot when trying to use GraphEdit to try and see what codecs Sage is using during playback? I try to connect to a graph already running in an application and the list is empty and refresh didn't make a difference.

[hchucky]

Well I did run a lic copy of TT shortly after version 2 came out. In an effort to focus on getting Sage optimized I uninstalled TT after Nvidia came out with a newer version of the decoder than was shipping with TT at the time.

I have not run TT since but maybe there are reminants still there somewhere causing problems. It's for reasons like this that I am contemplating a complete reinstall.

HC

[1972]

I have the same problems when I play MPEG's through my Hauppauge's 350 video output which are 29 fps (downloaded videoclips) in stead of 25 fps. For some reason my Hauppauge card only recognizes 'PAL' fps and not NTSC recorded MPEG's.

(By the way I live in the Netherlands, so the ussage of PAL is normal over here )

[spaceghost]

I get this sometimes too. I have the Nvidia decoders (trial) installed and not sure if they have expired yet. I also do not use the Nvidia decoders inside of Sage. I do notice the files with those errors are REALLY small (like a max of 16Mb)...if I open them up into WMP, I get audio only...no video.

Last night I purchased the Nvidia decoders so hopefully that will help.

Oh, I am using the Nvidia TS Info Parser for capturing HD thru the FW of my STB. And those files are the only ones I get that error with. Maybe it was expired and I won't have any more problems since I just purchased the real deal.

[Drinyth]

Originally Posted by WhollyMindless

My server just developed this problem a few days after installing 2.2.7 release.
Id been running 2.1for a month or so with no issues.

In my case, reboot or cold restart didn't solve it.

I'll mess around some more.

I get the same thing here too. Never had a problem with 2.1 (which I ran for probably a couple months), but after upgrading to 2.2.7 I get this quite frequently. I'm interested to hear of any solutions to this problem. Thanks!

[chadwolcott]

I too have had this problem for a couple weeks now and had to revert to intervideo decoders

[ToxMox]

I switched Sage to Overlay and changed the Nvidia Decoder settings to be all Overlay and am using the real quartz.dll for now. No FF/RW bug, no PlaybackException errors in 6 and a half days of uptime and the picture looks great and cpu usage is nice and low.
Only downside that I can find is no real transparency on the OSD.

I figure I'll keep running like this until all these VMR9/Stutter FF/RW bug/playbackexception stuff is all worked out. I hardly realize the transparency is gone after almost a week now.

[Drinyth]

Originally Posted by chadwolcott

I too have had this problem for a couple weeks now and had to revert to intervideo decoders

But the intervideo decoders are so icky compared to the nVidia ones.

I didn't have any issues with my nVidia decoders with 2.1. I have a retail copy of the decoder and not the trial. I guess I could try reinstalling them to see if that helps at all (although I'm doubtful).

[Drinyth]

Originally Posted by ToxMox

I switched Sage to Overlay and changed the Nvidia Decoder settings to be all Overlay and am using the real quartz.dll for now. No FF/RW bug, no PlaybackException errors in 6 and a half days of uptime and the picture looks great and cpu usage is nice and low.
Only downside that I can find is no real transparency on the OSD.

I figure I'll keep running like this until all these VMR9/Stutter FF/RW bug/playbackexception stuff is all worked out. I hardly realize the transparency is gone after almost a week now.

Hmmm. I don't remember if I saved a copy of the original quartz.dll. Did 2.2.7 fix the ff/rw stuttering?

I'd run in overlay if I could, but doing so gives my picture these black lines on the left and right portions of my picture "squishing" everything horizontally. The only way I can run my nVidia decoders and have it look right is in VMR9 mode.

[ToxMox]

No 2.2.7 didn't fix it but the problem doesn't happen in overlay. Why not adjust the horizontal zoom to correct for the squishing?

[Drinyth]

I've tried adjusting the horizontal values, but can't get the picture to go back outwards. I can get it to go further inwards, but not the other way.

[hchucky]

I appears I was able to find a work around to the problem I was having (see first post on this thread). I could not find a way to actually fix the problem so what I did was write two scripts, one that closes the client and one that opens it. I just scheduled them to run early in the morning, like 3am when no one is watching.

I've been automatically restarting the client every evening for a couple of weeks now and have not experienced one playback exception.

If anyone wants to give them a shot listed below are the contents of the scripts. Just create two new bat or cmd files with the content listed below and place them in your SageTV folder.

Script to stop:
@echo off
echo Shutting Down Sage...
SendMessage.exe SageClientApp SageWin -m 1258 -W 0 89
ping localhost > null
SendMessage.exe SageClientApp SageWin 16 0 0

Script to Start:
@echo off
echo Starting Sage...
start SageTVClient.exe
ping localhost -n 30 > null
SendMessage.exe SageClientApp SageWin -m 1258 -W 0 27

Enjoy!
HC

Thank Andy for the SendMessage Tips!!

[InsertHere]

ok, I must be lame. I can't get those scripts to work.

Having the same problem mentioned in the first post, this sounds like a good workaround for me.

Every time I run those scripts I just get the window showing all the options for Sendmessage. Click OK, 2 seconds later the same screen returns. Click OK, and it's gone. Nothing happened though. Tried replacing the values in the script with different things, but I'm not exactly a scripting guru so nothing works.

Little help?

[InsertHere]

Nevermind. Did a little more digging and found what I needed:
http://www.freytechnologies.com/2_pa...wsMessages.txt

I'm not using the client, that was throwing me.

Thanks!