Unusual Video Playback Problems-Activemovie

[skyeclad]

I've been using Sage for about a month with little-to-no playback issues. Actually it was the reason why I went with Sage over GBPVR to begin with!

Anyway, just 2 nights ago I was just finished watching video on the server and my wife fired up the HD Extender. I noticed that the CPU and the PC was locked up. I ended up having to restart the PC.

When it returned the Extender was working perfectly but I couldn't watch any LiveTV or Recorded shows without the swirling circle of death but no video.

Anyway, yesterday I played around and here is what I discovered:

1. LiveTV/Recorded MPG shows will not play well with any codec. I either get a dislocated ActiveMovie screen which ultimately crashes sagetv or a playback error message.
2. Online Videos/DVD Movies play fine! (Transcoded?)
3. MP4 videos play fine(Sagetv Player)
4. LiveTV/Recorded MPG's can be watched with no issues with VLC.

Here is what I tried so far.

1. Restore point a couple of days back. - No help.
2. Reinstalled SageTV - Messy to do(because I didn't back up my files beforehand) and ultimately I kept my original Properties and Wiz.bin(thanks to recycle can restoration) so I don't know how much this helped anyway. Initially I went through the setup process and I was getting the same problems viewing livetv when setting up my tuners even with a blank properties file.
3. Changed Overlay/VMR9/Codec settings-different problems but no playback
4. Submitted a ticket.

Any advice would be appreciated!

[Opus4]

You said you tried a blank properties file, but are you sure you tried the correct one? If using service mode or a client, the UI would be using SageClient.properties.

- Andy

[skyeclad]

Actually I uninstalled Sage, deleted it's directory and reinstalled to another directory on a new drive so I believe that all properties files should have been freshly created. I tried to set-up sage and when I got to the tuner page, it tried to show me the live video. I got nothing so I moved on to the video properties page and it was unable to show me any video either, spinning circle only. My assumption then was that a blank properties file wasn't going to help either so I copied over the original properties file(making adjustments to change the paths to the new location) and the wiz.bin file from the old install.

[skyeclad]

Can any of you smart guys help a brother out?

[skyeclad]

Well, I think the problem *might* have been sorted out. I'm not sure though as I only had a couple of minutes to test it.

Last night I reverted to an earlier restore point but that was a mistake. Once the PC rebooted I had problems completing the restore forcing me to go to safe mode to complete it. Then when I finally got XP up and running SageTV wouldn't run an all due to missing files AND I couldn't uninstall it or re-install it either.

SOOO I reverted the previous restore and resigned myself to wait for Sage Support to get back to me. They didn't respond yesterday at all but maybe their busy after the holiday. Anyway, I fired up STV and miraculously I was able to view a previous recording! I tried another and it worked too! STILL I'm not 100% sure everything is back the way it's supposed to be yet until I have more time to check tonight. Maybe the restore did something after all .

[Polypro]

Could it be hardware related? Any new drivers get installed?

P

[skyeclad]

I'm not sure what was the cause because I couldn't set a proper restore point. The only new hardware/drivers that were added was a Logitech Webcam but Sagetv was working afterwards. Then out of nowhere, Sage playback is broken for LiveTV and Recordings but not for DVD's and Online Videos.

Right now it's working albeit I'm getting an almost blurry reaction to high speed movements on the PDVD7 codecs. I'm guessing this is a deinterlacing issue but I do like the PDVD7 codec as it uses very little system resources(@20%-30% CPU). Unfortunately, the blurriness/micro-stuttering is to annoying so I use the Intervideo codec which is much smoother although at a cost of 60% CPU.