[PVR-350] Audio out of sync

[1972]

Hello,

I have got sync problems between my video and audio signal on my TV.
I'm using the TV/audio output of my Hauppauge PVR-350 and tried with the "audio
delay" option to correct it, but that doesn't seem to work.

I looked around in this forum and saw that other people have simular problems,
but no solution was presented. Also in other forums people complain about this
PVR-350 problem.

I don't know what to do about it to fix it with SageTV. So I have some questions to other
PVR-350 users (who also use the TV-out of the card):

- What are your audio/video setting in SageTV?
- Is a 'audio delay' correction needed? (and does it work? I believe
that the decoding is done in the PVR-350 hardware and therefore
that it doesn't work.)
- Can heating of the card be a problem? (I have placed a 4x4 cm fan
on top of the cooling rib, so that shouldn't be a issue for me)


Thanks for any help!

[fieldeffect]

Yes, this is a problem, but it isn't specific to Sage, it's just the PVR-350. In answer to your questions:

- Best quality, using the hauppauge audio and video codecs when using the PVR-350 video out. Apart from that all default video and audio settings.

- Audio delay correction wouldn't help. That is for a situation where there is a fixed processing time difference between audio and video. Unfortunately the PVR-350 problem is variable. It gets more out of sync the longer it goes.

- Yes, heating of the card is at least part of (possibly all of) the problem. Cooling it helped me a little bit, stopping the serious crashes, but I still couldn't really stop the loss of audio sync. If you just use it as an input and use something else for the TV output it is fine (but kinda defeats the object of having a PVR-350

If like me you are unhappy with even the best standard video card TV outputs (and if you're used to a PVR-350 I guess you are), I would highly recommend the XCard. Similar/better quality to the PVR-350 TV out but with none of the stability problems (however almost as expensive as a PVR-350).

If you could somehow live with not having the UI on the TV you can also get astoundingly good video output from any cheap Matrox card that supports DVD-Max.

Nick.

[1972]

You seemed to be right. I tried Hauppauge's WinTV2000 and it also gives a delay between video and audio when watching live TV

The problem also with my system is that I have choosen a Epia M10000 motherboard (low powerusage), which only haves one PCI connector. By chosing the PVR-350 I hoped to have a great sollution on one card... not

[1972]

Hmmm, in some thread in the GBPVR forum I read that defraging the harddisk might reduce the sync problem. I'm gonna try this and keep you all informed....


[UPDATE:] No success....

[fieldeffect]

Didn't realise you were using an EPIA board, in which case scrap the XCard idea. It needs system CPU power to render the OSD, and on the M6000 I tested on this meant a 3 second lag between pressing a button and seeing a screen update.

As I see it you have two options if you want an all in one EPIA based box:

1. Put it in a big case and cool the living crap out of it, and hope that fixes the problem (I think it might, if I direct the airflow well and turn my fans up so high they sound like aircraft taking off I then only get the sync issue maybe once a week, as opposed to every couple of hours).

2. Hope that Sage include functionality in the next version to write the OSD onto the overlay surface, in which case you throw a cheap Matrox card in your Mini-ITX system and you have the best, cheapest output solution available. I really wish they did this. It would totally eliminate most people's output problems.

In the mean time, something I considered but never actually tried would be using a separate card fro TV input and just using the PVR-350 for TV Out (so it had less load and got less hot). The reason I didn't try is that it's an expensive experiment if it doesn't work

What case is your EPIA board in? When I had my PVR-350 in one of those little Travla cases it got VERY hot, like so hot that blowing extra air onto the PVR-350 would make little difference.

Nick

[cummings66]

Originally Posted by 1972

Hello,

I have got sync problems between my video and audio signal on my TV.
I'm using the TV/audio output of my Hauppauge PVR-350 and tried with the "audio
delay" option to correct it, but that doesn't seem to work.

There is absolutely nothing you can do to fix the problem if you continue to use hardware for the decoding. If you use your video card it will be fine, but then you might as well have bought a 150.

Call Hauppauge and complain. I called them again the other day, talked to Michael who I told my original audio sync problem to, asked him if they've made any progress on fixing it and guess what he told me?

He said this is the first they've heard of the problem, they RMA'd my first card in an attempt to fix this audio sync, by golly you'd think he would remembered what he said the first time. Call them up, tell them what's happening, tell them you know of others with the problem, tell them it happens with their software. Ask them to fix it. There is no other way, people must tell them it doesn't work.

Right now they have their heads stuck in the sand and won't acknowledge there is a problem. I think it's about time for a Class Action Lawsuit on this card, they're selling something that plainly doesn't work for most people.

[cummings66]

Originally Posted by fieldeffect

- Audio delay correction wouldn't help. That is for a situation where there is a fixed processing time difference between audio and video. Unfortunately the PVR-350 problem is variable. It gets more out of sync the longer it goes.

It won't work for a different reason. Those settings are for software decoding only, when you're using hardware decoding those settings have no effect at all.

But you are right in that the delay is variable. In fact I've noticed that it seems as if a person speaks really really fast the audio is always out of sync a lot, then when they slow down it resyncs. Almost like the hardware can't keep up with it all, too much load. My theory is the hardware design is flawed and they need more processor than what they have.

There is ONE person I am aware of here that says he has absolutely no problems at all, Insomiac (sp) is it. The only guy on the planet with this card using hardware decode with a 100% solid system with no problems with anything at all.

Look for his posts, I tried his solutions and they didn't work for me.

[1972]

Nick, thanks for your answer.

My case doesn't get hot. I placed 2 (silent) fans in it; one for the harddisk and another I placed on top of the PVR350 coolrip.

Yesterday evening I discovered that there is a risercard available with 2 PCI slots for the VIA Epia boards. Maybe I should try this and buy a (cheap) videocard and place it in the second slot. One with a MPEG2 decoder on it, so my CPU usage stays low, anyone has some good advice about which card to buy?

[1972]

Just wondering: has anyone played around with the recording quality to see if this increases/decreases the sync problem?

(I'm currently at my work, so I can't test it myself at the moment and the next two days I won't be at home)

[fieldeffect]

Originally Posted by 1972

Yesterday evening I discovered that there is a risercard available with 2 PCI slots for the VIA Epia boards. Maybe I should try this and buy a (cheap) videocard and place it in the second slot. One with a MPEG2 decoder on it, so my CPU usage stays low, anyone has some good advice about which card to buy?

XCard vs Matrox DVDMax card (with OSD on a separate monitor). As far as i'm aware (prepares for deluge of corrections) there isn't anything else with a hardware decoder that can be used this way. If there is then I want to try it

Nick.

[insomniac]

LIES!

I stated that I do get an audio sync problem that is easily corrected by a quick ffw or rrw. Although you could say that I do have no problems when I turn software mode off. But i sadly lose my spdif passthrough if I run in hardware mode....

For now, I am running hardware only so that I dont lose WAF..

Other than that, I would say that I learned from other people unfortunate situation w/ the PVR350 and prevailed

EDIT:
shortly after this post I decided to take the next/final step and run full hardware and run my sound from the 350 to my onboard sound(soundstorm). Im letting Nvidia handle the surround(not passthrough, but sounds great). Sending my audio from the spdif to the receiver.

Audio sync is gone. I have also noticed a clear menu speed increase when only running in hardware and not both.

Hate to say im rock solid, but if it gives others hope that it can be done, then so be it

I really dont think that it is a heat problem. It seems to me that it is a driver/chipset issue....

I.

Originally Posted by cummings66

It won't work for a different reason. Those settings are for software decoding only, when you're using hardware decoding those settings have no effect at all.

But you are right in that the delay is variable. In fact I've noticed that it seems as if a person speaks really really fast the audio is always out of sync a lot, then when they slow down it resyncs. Almost like the hardware can't keep up with it all, too much load. My theory is the hardware design is flawed and they need more processor than what they have.

There is ONE person I am aware of here that says he has absolutely no problems at all, Insomiac (sp) is it. The only guy on the planet with this card using hardware decode with a 100% solid system with no problems with anything at all.

Look for his posts, I tried his solutions and they didn't work for me.

[1972]

I found the problem which caused the audio/video delay: my Epia VIA M10000 motherboard!
I tried the PVR-350 on a MSI motherboard and I had no problems at all

So it must be the combination of the PVR-350 and my Epia motherboard, which I really do not understand. I'm gonna check if I have the latest BIOS etc. to see if something like that causes the problems in some way.

I keep you posted....

[fieldeffect]

You're right, that makes no sense at all

Any chance that it could be a temperature difference between the case that your EPIA board is in and the case your MSI board is in?

Nick

[insomniac]

I recall that my EPIA was very problematic in trying to use it as a fully functional HTPC. After making many attempts at making any and all configurations (during sagetv's infancy), I deemed it a peice of crap and promptly gave it to a family member as a "really cool, and small internet pc"

[1972]

Originally Posted by fieldeffect

You're right, that makes no sense at all

Any chance that it could be a temperature difference between the case that your EPIA board is in and the case your MSI board is in?

Nick

No, I have indeed a small case for my Epia system, but I placed two (silent) fans in it to get the case temperature around 30 degrees celsius and also placed a 40mm fan on top of the heatsink of the PVR-350 for a while (without succes).

[1972]

Originally Posted by insomniac

I recall that my EPIA was very problematic in trying to use it as a fully functional HTPC. After making many attempts at making any and all configurations (during sagetv's infancy), I deemed it a peice of crap and promptly gave it to a family member as a "really cool, and small internet pc"

Yeah, I can imagine that. A friend of mine also has a Epia M10000 and bought a PVR-250 with it, claiming he could use the onboard MPEG2 decoder of the EPIA. Some time back however we discovered that is is not a real MPEG2 decoder but somekind of chip that decreases the processor load on certain MPEG2 instructions, which a software decoder can use. You guess it, almost no software decoders do use those instructions (except PowerDVD 4) and only than processor load gets from 80-90% to 70-80%. No, in that way the PVR-350 TV out performs better with a processorload of aprox 8% (!)*

*and having the audio/sync problem

[insomniac]

without looking at your previous posts..are you running in hardware mode only?

[1972]

If you mean the PVR-350 TV-out mode: yes. I tried, like the friend of mine, the hardware accelleration of the M10000, but is uses too much processorload (see above).

But I have found the solution for the problem I have:

Updating the Epia BIOS from version 1.13 to 1.16 solved the audio/video out of sync issue.

(If someone could tell me what in the BIOS improved this, let me know, maybe this helps other people who also have this problem. The VIA site has no extra information about it.)

[fieldeffect]

Really? Cool!

You should spread this around in a few of the EPIA type threads, because there are probably a *lot* of people who know that heat is a cause of audio sync problems and (like us) assumed that their Mini-ITX problems were heat related.

After all your effort I hope you manage to get a stable system. I'm starting to view my days of using the PVR-350 TV out as the "bad old days". Since I stopped using it I haven't had a single crash.

Nick.

[cummings66]

Since I've stopped using hardware mode on the PVR-350 I haven't had a single problem either. Rock solid, but then the card is nothing more than a PVR150 now.

By the way, Hauppauge claims they have now never heard of the audio sync issues on their PVR350. Aren't you guys calling in when you have problems

Seriously, though, I doubt we'll ever see this issue fixed totally because nobody has the resources to test every motherboard/chipset combo to determine what works and what doesn't. Or even why it seems to not like some chipsets.