No audio/Strange behavior

[walts81]

Is anyone else expriencing this? On some of my recordings, there is no audio. If I turn it up really loud, there is a high-pitched beep that occurs every couple seconds. My first thought was that it was one of my tuner cards (I have 3 installed). But I tested each one on the "color calibration" screens and each one had audio. It didn't do this with any previous versions of Sage. I recently did a complete re-install of XP and fresh installed 2.2.5, then this started happening (maybe 1 out of every 6-8 recordings).

[Crazedz]

Had something similar to this just happen on my system no audio in a recording i tried doing a live viewing on the tuner as well and no audio their either. My other tuner was still working fine. I ended up having to shutdown sagetv and restart it to get audio back. Edit: This was on my PVR 250 card the Yuan was still working fine.

Posted a bug report about it we'll see what they make of it.

[sharker]

I am having this problem also. Sometimes (which makes it difficult to troubleshoot) I have no audio on my recorded shows. This is driving me crazy, because when I check the two tuners (H. PVR150 and USB2) in Color Calibration, they both play back audio fine. When I hit record while one is recording Live TV, and switch the channel, same thing, no audio problem. I thought everything was fine when last night I went ot watch Smallville...and no audio.

Sage wrote me back asking if the something else had used the USB bus, since that is supposedly one of the causes of dropped audio. There isn't anything else in the USB2 card to which the tuner is attached. The USB 1.0 hub that I have on the comuter also did not have anything start or stop either.

My question for the group is, does this imply that it is a Hauppauge PVR-USB2 issue and has nothing to do with Sage?

Also, I have seen threads here and there regarding no audio, so I wonder if it is a wide spread problem that is being ignored due to the much more common stuttering or quality issues. Who else is having problems, and if its a lot of people, then lets try to figure out if its hardware or software.

[bebanovich]

I had this problem for the first time last night. I am using 2.2.6 with PVR-150 PCI, so I don't think it's a USB problem for me. The weird thing is that only Alias recorded w/o audio and everything before and since was fine. My wife is really not happy about missing Alias, though.

[dcampano]

I am having this same problem too, and I am using a PVR-500. Therefore, I don't think it has to be a software issue. I have lots of programs that record great, but some of them end up having No Audio! Definately doesn't help on the wife approval factor!

[walts81]

Well, I uninstalled the beta and went back to 2.1
Now, it's happening with 2.1 as well. It never did this before. So I'm guessing the beta has left something behind that's caused this. I know it's not hardware, because I have Snapstream's BTV installed and it works fine. I'm not happy with BTV though because their client is useless, so I'd much rather use Sage, but I can't if it isn't going to record audio.

[doncote0]

Sounds like problems that I experienced with multiple Blackbirds (Roslyn's).

You may want to try this:

To prevent unnecessary steps check this first: Make sure your system is not muted and sagtv shows a volume level in green.

1. download the version of sagetv desired if you haven't already done so
2. make copies of sagetv.properties, wiz.bin from the sagetv folder
3. Shutdown all SageTV UI and SageTVService
4. Disable SageTV Sservice (SageTV As A service to "Disable")
5. Go to java.com and download and install the latest java software (get it now)

NOTE: If you are asked to restart, before selecting "Yes" make sure that SageTV or SageTVService will not autostart upon system restart (disable using msconfig) and then restart. After restart, use system edit and return the start to normal.

6. If you are using a custom stv (for example, one with weather reports), check the install instructions for that stv and ensure that any new java installation has files updated in the lib\ext directory. It might be prudent to only have these files in one (the newest) lib\ext directory if multiple plugins are installed.
7. Install SageTV using the setup from the version you want to use.

a. If your setup only allows a modify or repair, then select the repair. Do not select to automatically load sage upon finish.
b. If you are asked to restart, select "NO". Replace the existing sagetv.properties and wiz.bin with the backups.
c. Set SageTVService control Use SageTV As A Service to "Enable"

8. Restart
9. Enter SageTV and check all of your settings. If you see an option to "Use system volume" to control the SageTV volume select "Disable".
10. Make sure your system is not on mute.
11. If you use a DVD mpeg video decoder, open the DVD program and ensure that the volume is not muted or set at zero.
12. If you made any changes to the settings, shutdown the sagetv service, and exit SageTV UI. Restart SageTV and verify that the changes have been saved.
13. Initially test your installation by going to live TV viewing from the guide. If no audio is heard, exit the viewing and try another channel using the guide.

a. If you have audio after trying another channel, try the previous channel as well.
b. If you do not have audio on any channel or the first channel doesn't work, make sure that your audio settings are set correctly in the detail setup and then stop the SageTVSerice and SageTV UI. Restart SageTV UI, SageTVService and try again from 13 above. You can also try a previous recording to verify that you have sound and video, before trying again from 13 above.

14. Test by making small recordings with all recorders simultaneously.

a. Schedule 5 minute recordings at the same time using all recorders
b. After the recordings complete, check all recordings for video/audio
c. Schedule more 5 minute recordings with each recorder but stagger the start and stop times by one minute.
d. After all recordings complete, check all recordings for video/audio
e. If you have more than one recorder, watch tv on one, while doing simultaneous 5 minute recordings with the other(s).
f. After all recordings complete, check all recordings for video/audio. Then view TV from the guide and check audio.
g. If you really want to test more, you can try recording with all recorders using either the same start time with different end times or different start times with the same end time.

15. If everything works, the problem may be related to a issue with the powercfg. Turn off standby and hibernate and see if the problem goes away. If so, verify that the problem returns once you change back to your preferred power savings configuration.

If you have the latest ATI DVD decoder in, search this forum for forcing the ATI enhancements on both video and audio.

[walts81]

Thanks for the diagnosing suggestions. I do have multiple Roslyns, but what's weird is that I've had this setup for over a year and I just started experiencing problems recently. It's hard to diagnose because the audio disappearing seems to be completely random.

[doncote0]

Yeah I have multiple Roslyns and the problem comes and goes.

I noticed that Sage uses java plugin's a lot and I have more than one plugin installed. I wonder if that could cause any issues.

I'll test it, but I believe that the main issue is either multi-tasking or powercfg issues.

The pathway for sound recording seems to either fail upon start and then stay failed (since it's success is assumed) or it simply reports that it is active when it isn't (the other card's communication gets confused as a positive report for the card that has audio issues). It is further complicated by the fact that it will record "noise" instead of the correct audio stream (beep beep beep when volume is turned up). This "noise" is probably always recorded but not heard since you would have to turn the volume up a lot to detect it.

I noticed it usually happens either during or immediately after a recording session with multiple Roslyn's, and that it doesn't occur every time (see powercfg).

You may also want to do a search for the Directx 9.0C (quartz.dll) file that was a major issue on my system (Windows XP SP2 issue).

Quartz.dll fix

I think I will be contacting Sage soon to see if I can get a discount on a Plextor unit and then move one of the Roslyn's to a different PC.

I'm curious, do you have a ATI based video card as your main video card?

[Chris3577]

I am having the same problem also.. I have had two recordings in the last couple of weeks that had no audio.. But all my other recordings were fine. I am running PVR 350 with Windows XP SP2. I am going to keep a eye on this topic to see if this gets resolved.

Thanks,
Chris

[Dr Squish]

I had the same problem as described here but I manage to solve it (well okay for 3+ days thus far, knocking on wood). My config is XP SP2 with latest drivers and patches, with a PVR-350 + 2 PVR-USB2 on a AMD XP 2500+ system with nForce2 chipset. Nothing else on USB2 chain except a wireless keyboard+mouse which is rarely used. I was getting recordings with no audio, but this only started happening after I had added a 2nd PVR-USB2 unit. At first I thought it was randomly screwing up until I checked the encoder used for the bad recording. In all cases, it was USB #2 (the PVR-USB2 I just added) which dropped the audio. Not sure this is relevant or not but this recently added 2nd PVR-USB2 unit is a model 949 whereas the original PVR-USB2 unit is a 941. Both have latest drivers.

During the process of fixing my system I:

1) updated my runtime Java to the latest rev (Java 2 Platform Standard Edition Runtime Environment Version 5.0, dir name: jre1.5.0_02),
2) made sure to update the new Java dir with the jars in lib\ext dir, (if using DigiCasa EPG plugin)
and
3) then updated to latest version of SageTV 2.2.7

which seems to of fixed my problems (knocking on wood). I'll reply back if it starts screwing up again, but so far all is ok.

[RedR]

Bump... I am having this problem too. I haven't had time to dig for I just figured out one of my four tuners are not recording audio. As a quick test I set all four tuners to record and walked through watching each. I haven't narrowed it down to what Hauppauge card is the problem, but one didn't have any audio. I'll test more tonight. I am running Java 1.5.0_02 and SageTV 2.2.RC6 with WinXP SP2 and havent done the quartz.dll fix.

[RedR]

Update for my audio problem...
Turned out to be the PVR-250 I believe. I stepped back the driver version to: pvr_2.0.24.23025
Seemed to have solved my problem.

Hope that helps,
RedR