Recording problem with Plextor PX-TV402U. Video frame gets stuck

[follower]

Still no go. I am using Sage 2.1 and I have just updated the Plextor drivers. Still I am getting Audio Sync problems. Sometimes it is off a bit, and sometimes it is off a lot.


Follower---

[follower]

Support recommended updating my Plextor Driver (did it already) and install the latest beta. I upgraded over the weekend and when recording on the Plextor my audio is still out of sync. This is NOT on every show but it is happening on about 30% of the shows. It also seems like it when I am recording in DIVX (I need to sample more). Any other help you guys can offer??? I need help!

[korben_dallas]

Can you post your PC spec's ? Hardware, OS, codecs, etc.

[Tony414]

I am also having this same problem. Only with mine the audio and video freeze!

[follower]

My current system:

Windows XP Professional SP2
Athon 2500 256MB
Harddrives: 120, 160, 250, 250, 300
Gforce 5500 w/tvout
LiteOn 4x DVDr/rw
Plextor ConvertX PX-TV402U
Hauppauge PVR250
Actisys 200L

It happens mainly on the recording DIVX- It seems to be very random.\

Thanks in advance

Follower

[korben_dallas]

Well the only thing any of us have in common is the ConvertX, so..

It hasn't happened to me in a few months, but from my recollection it was always part of the way through the recorded show.. never at the very beginning.

How about you guys?

[follower]

I can see it right at the beginning. It is so annoying. Sometimes it is only a bit out of sync which is watchable but I feel as if something is not quite right.

It does not seem to get any worse throughout the 1/2 hour show. It seems to happen mostly on divx recordings (Medium I was testing). I did not try the other encodings yet. I do have an Actisys. Maybe that is causing some problems.

follower

[korben_dallas]

I doubt the Actisys could be causing it. I have a StreamZap remote, which is USB, along with the USB Plextor, USB Keyboard, and USB mouse.

What you are describing, the audio & video being out of sync, only happened to me twice. The video frame getting stuck while audio continued is what happened to me a number of times, albeit not recently.

I've rebuilt my PC so many times I've lost count, but I'm wondering if a clean install of XP Pro SP2 had some USB 2.0 fixes/updates that solved the problem.

Do you remember if you were using SageTV (LiveTV or watching a recording) while the affected show was being recorded? Or were you doing something on your PC at the time the affected show was being recorded?

[follower]

Do you remember if you were using SageTV (LiveTV or watching a recording) while the affected show was being recorded? Or were you doing something on your PC at the time the affected show was being recorded?


I was just watching a recording. I would have it tape all night log then sort by date and looked which ones were recorded on the Plextor. About 10%ish were out of sync. I was not doing anything during the recordings.

Thanks for helping

Follower

[korben_dallas]

Go to Device Manager. View > Devices by Connection. Find the USB Host Controller where your Plextor is connected. Get the properties of that USB Controller. What does the bandwidth say? (see attachment)

[follower]

I will check this when I get home. Is there a way to change this?

Follower...

[follower]

My Plextor is part of a MB USB hub. It has 10% allocated. I have been talking with the Support folks at Frey. They stated that the Plextor driver had an error. I have an RF Mouse/Keyboard combo (Gyration) that they asked me to unplug.

>>>>==== Follower ====>>==--

[follower]

I removed the USB RF Gyration Mouse/Keyboard from my USB2.0 on the motherboard. I also went to Device Manager (thanks korben_dallas for the idea )and looked at the Motherboard's USB Hub settings. There was a tab about Power Saving (hinted by Frey Support). There was a "Use this device for Power Savings" or something like that. This was checked so I unchecked this as well.

SageTV has been up now for 15 hours. I hope it "hangs" together... scratch that, I hope it stays up!

>>>>=== follower ===>>>=---

[Dargason]

Gee, I wish I'd found this thread before I ordered my ConvertX bundle last week...

I'm a new SageTV user, still doing the trial period thing, and I've encountered this problem (or something like it) at least 3 times in less than a week. The first time the video froze and the audio kept playing, but I thought it was because I had been doing some web browsing while it was recording. The second time was a recording done at night while I was sleeping. I went to watch the show the next day and found that the audio was about 0.5 seconds behind the video. There were other recordings (on the same channel) immediately before that didn't have the same problem... The third time the recording was so badly corrupted that SageTV gave me an error and wouldn't continue at all.

So last night I uninstalled a whole bunch of software (most of which couldn't have been a problem, but it was time to clean house anyway) including the video drivers and some old multimedia software like WinTV and ATI MMC. Of course it's still too early to know if this had any effect. I also switched to the client/server mode of Sage.

Based on what I've learned in this thread, I plan to:

- make sure I have the latest Plextor drivers installed (I think I did that when I installed SageTV, but I'll check)
- check the USB hub power and bandwidth settings.

Anything else I can do? Should I upgrade my SageTV to the beta version? My system is as follows:

Athlon XP 2500+ (runs a bit less than 10% when recording)
ATI All-in-wonder 9700 Pro (using TV-out on this)
HD: 40GB (system, some video) + 250GB
512MB RAM
Plextor PX-TV402U (The ONLY USB device on my system)
Lite-on IR SK-7551 IR wireless keyboard
Win2K SP4 with the latest upgrades
SageTV 2.1

Thanks,
Mike

[korben_dallas]

Sounds like a good plan. Is there another USB hub you can plug it into (move it from front to back or ???).

[Dargason]

Ok, I upgraded the plextor drivers, and check the USB stuff (it was fine).

I set it up to record about 10 1/2-hour long shows back-to-back, then I left the computer alone all afternoon. The good news is that it didn't lock up. The back news is that the audio synch got progressively worse with each program, until the video was about a half second ahead of the video for the last show.

So I changed the recording quality to "Great" from "DivX certified home theatre high quality" and I've set it up to record about 8 hours of programming tonight. I also switched to a different USB port...

[korben_dallas]

Tell you what.. I'll do the same thing. I am wondering if the reason I don't see the problem anymore is because I don't consecutively record many shows, and none with a DivX profile.

I'll check the SageTV recording schedule and see if there is a late night where I can schedule multiple recordings without interfering w/ my normal shows.

[Dargason]

Well, something is really screwed up now... I checked a few of the recordings that were made last night, and all of them result in a complete crash of SageTV client -- I tried opening one with Windows Media Player and it couldn't read it either. Trying to watch live TV resulted in a crash too.

I changed the recording quality back to the DivX Certified HT High Quality and that still works.

[Dargason]

I reinstalled the old Plextor drivers, reinstalled SageTV, reinstalled Java, and a bunch of other crap, but I still can't get it to work for the "standard" recording qualities -- "great", "DVD Extended Play", "DVD Standard Play" etc... If I try to use them, the application crashes immediately and says "abnormal program execution".

Any suggestions?

[korben_dallas]

mind attaching your .properties files to this thread?