No sound when recording 2 channels at once

[Axeman]

Occationally I will record a show and there is no sound in the recording. Today my wife noticed that this happens when we record 2 shows at the same time. One show will have sound the other will not. Any ideas as to why?

Sitting here thinking about it maybe the second card is not processing the sound correctly.

I have a pvr250 and a pvr150 (not mce). I am not sure which one is the primary card and which is secondary. Their description in the hardware manager does not tell me which is which.

Anyone have a similar problem that they fixed?

Thanks

[Para]

Check the recording detail "encoded by" listing for the recordings with no sound. Are they all from the same capture device? Check some other recordings (with sound) and see if that capture device has made any "good" recordings.

Then you can check the individual device(s) by going into 'setup wizard', selecting the device you want to check, choose 'channel setup' in the source details page and then select 'view'. You should get a small preview with sound in the upper right hand corner of your screen. You can check reception for each channel and each capture device in this manner.

I have had issues requiring comparing capture cards and this has been one way to do it somewhat quickly.

[mlbdude]

If it keeps happening it is probably the 150. Check out the beta drivers Hauppauge has posted.

http://www.hauppauge.com/pages/suppo...rt_pvr150.html

[Axeman]

I went into the setup menu and tried both video cards on various channels. One card (the 150 most likely) would not play any sound on some channels. I downloaded the beta drivers and installed them and the problem is fixed.

Thanks to both of you for your help.

Axeman

[Ctrl-Z]

Originally Posted by Axeman

I went into the setup menu and tried both video cards on various channels. One card (the 150 most likely) would not play any sound on some channels. I downloaded the beta drivers and installed them and the problem is fixed.

Thanks to both of you for your help.

Axeman

I have the same problem with the PVR 150 not having sound on some channels. Unfortunately the beta drivers did not work for me, instead they caused the loss of audio for all channels. I now need a way to force SageTV to use my other tuner (PVR USB2) as the primary tuner.

[Para]

Have you tried changing the encoder merit in the sage.properties file? (page 178 in the 2.1 manual)

looks like:
mmc/encoders/XXX/encoder_merit=
(where XXX is the encoder number and is different for each encoder) entering a higher merit number for the usb encoder should make it the primary encoder. The 150 (with a lower merit number) should then only be used when the system needs two encoders. At least that is the way I understand it.

edit:
oh yeah...Backup first :-)

[Ctrl-Z]

Thanks Para for the encoder_merit information. I had two such entries in my Sage.properties (makes sense as I have 2 tuners) and each one was set to "0". I assigned one of those to "1" and it seemed to have convinced SageTV to use the PVR USB2 for LiveTV HOWEVER that selection seems to be channel dependent! Just changing the channel (in my case to channel 21) and I get no sound and a check of the Source Details in Source Wizard Summary shows that the faulty PVR 150 is being used for LiveTV again. There was nothing happening at that point that Sage should have changed encoders. This is just crazy.

[Para]

Very strange/interesting. I wonder if Sage swaps tuners when changing channels for some reason? I guess that is one for tech support..

Just one other thing to check would be how the PVR150 is receiving the channels audio signal. I have had some problems with low signal strength (or whatever) causing the 150 to jump back and forth between stereo and mono reception. If you find that the 150 is not working in Sage but can get audio in WinTV, check the audio properties in WinTV for that channel. If it shows the reception as mono, it could be a signal strength issue. There are some things that can be tried to correct that problem if you find it. IMO The 150's seem to be a little more particular about their signal than some of the other Hauppauge cards.

[Ctrl-Z]

As best I can understand it, SageTV will pick the higher merit encoder for LiveTV and Recording if all else is equal. Unfortunately there seems to be an indeterminable amount of variables that cause it to pick the other encoder. Perhaps because SageTV is always in some fashion or another recording one channel, simply changing to another channel often changes the encoder.

The fault lies in the Huappuage drivers for the PVR-150 (and the 500). Maybe it affects only certain hardware revisions. It does seem that the encoder isn't doing a good job of tuning in audio for low strength channels. Many have reported the new beta drivers fix it but they don't work for me. My only solution at this point is to disable to the PVR-150 and get by with one tuner while I wait for another Hauppauge driver revision.

[peakpc]

I have two 150 MCE cards and if they are both recording sometimes one of the shows will not have sound on it. So I am going to try and load any new drivers for the card and see if that works. Both are internal cards.

We have a new computer so I don't think it has anything to do with that. We are running 2 gigs of memory and 2.8 ghz.

Anyway, I was reading this thread and thought I would post my own woes. I was wondering if my sound card was going nuts.

PeakPc