Problems playing back a show: can't skip or seek

[horseflesh]

I use a Fusion 5 PCI HD tuner in my Sage installation. Smooth sailing for the most part, but I have found a strange problem.

There is ONE show that, though it records, has playback issues. (The show is Jericho on CBS, recorded as an mpeg-2 file.)

I can begin playback, but if I attempt to skip ahead, the show immediately begins playing from the very beginning again. If I open the .mpg file in another player, like Media Player Classic, it's fine and I can seek/skip freely.

This happens with the Nvidia decoder and the Sage decoder.

I don't know if the bitstream from my affiliate is screwy or what, but the fact that Sage can't properly play back something it recorded -- that an an external program can -- seems to indicate a deficiency in its playback feature.

Any suggestions for workarounds?

[Surtr]

Hrm, I have the exact same problem with a recording of Desperate Housewives from last weekend (Yeah, give me crap; it's my wife's recording). This was recorded on sage 5.04 on a PVR-150.

[horseflesh]

I've had a little more experience since my last post, including finding a workaround.

It seems like my Jericho problem was coincidental... because since the 2 bad recordings of it, I have had a problem CSI and a problem NUMB3RS. Interestingly, they are all CBS shows though...

With these latest bad files, not even Media Player Classic could play 'em though, so I had to find a way to fix them. Which I think I did.

Step 1: Convert .mpg (program stream) to .ts (transport stream). Use Mpeg Streamclip (free) from http://www.squared5.com/. (If you don't have the QuickTime MPEG-2 decoder installed, it will complain, but the conversion process will still work.)

The program may tell you to run the Fix Timecode command. I did. <shrug>

Step 2: Scrub the .ts file you made with Mpeg2Repair (free) from http://users.adelphia.net/~mwilczyn/mpeg2/. It will spit out a copy.

(BTW NullPacketStripper, also from this site, is the ideal tool for rejoining split-up .ts files. Handy.)

At this point, you can rename the fixed .ts file back to .mpg and drop it back into your Sage video directory and it should play fine. (That doesn't make it a real MPG file, but Sage doesn't seem to care.)

Step 3:
Change your Sage.properties to turn off program stream recording, so if you need to fix a .ts file in the future you can skip the mpg->ts conversion step.

Warning:
I literally JUST did this and it is possible that the fixed file may be screwed up somehow, but the first couple of minutes looked OK. But the fixed file is a few hundred MB bigger, so something has changed...

YMMV, HTH.

Whatever the underlying problem is, Fusion drivers or Sage, I hope it gets fixed. This doesn't have to happen often to be very annoying.

[jkohn]

I saw this with a recording of "The Nine" on ABC a while back. Any attempt to skip forwards/backward and it would start over from 0:00 and then start just playing the first few seconds of the show in an infinite loop. So we thought we were going to have to watch it with commercials which is bad enough, but then about 45:00 into the show the recording froze up.

What's strange is that Lost recorded just fine before it.

At the time I had SageTV configured to record TS instead of PS files, so thinking that may have played a part I've sinced switched it back to recording PS files.

BTW I'm using a VBOX 150 so it's not a Fusion problem it's SageTV.

I've since upgraded to the v6 beta, and haven't seen another one of these problem recordings yet but it's only been a few days.

[horseflesh]

I first had the problem with PS files, not TS, but I really have no idea if that is a factor or not. I suspect that it's a problem with OTA reception in general... if you get dropouts the recorded show could get corrupted. The mpg2 decoder should be robust enough to handle it... but I guess it's not.

[ozfiles]

I've had this problem with programs recorded on both pvr-250 and Divco fusion Dual

You can repair the file by opening it up in VideoReDo and choosing Tools> Quicksteam Fix.

[CanadianEh]

Same problem occurred last evening for me. The only thing to note was that I was doing a mass-copy of files off the PVR to a USB drive, stressing out my I/O. I'm able to watch through the preview of VideoReDo.. the above fix didn't seem to work for me.

Anyway, SageTV 6.0.11........

[chairmanmao]

I've run into this problem about six times in the last month. I haven't tried any of the possible fixes outlined here, but I will (thanx for them).

I haven't noticed any pattern to when the recordings get munged up so that you can't skip forward. It's always the same result, though: click skip forward and you restart playback from time zero.

And as the earlier poster said...it is very annoying.

- Mark

[blade]

Originally Posted by chairmanmao

I've run into this problem about six times in the last month. I haven't tried any of the possible fixes outlined here, but I will (thanx for them).

I haven't noticed any pattern to when the recordings get munged up so that you can't skip forward. It's always the same result, though: click skip forward and you restart playback from time zero.

And as the earlier poster said...it is very annoying.

- Mark

You didn't mention what capture card you're using. The problem can occur on SD recordings when using a pvr150 or 500. There is an easy fix for this.

If you're using another card then I have no clue.

[chairmanmao]

Sorry, I should have mentioned that: my capture card is an ATI Wonder Elite (550 chipset).

- Mark

[jkohn]

Well I can confirm this problem still exists in 6.0b13, just tried to watch a recording of Lost and it had the same issue. I'm going to try the repair process mentioned above, hopefully it will work or my wife is going to be very PO'd....

[rschiffman]

Originally Posted by blade

You didn't mention what capture card you're using. The problem can occur on SD recordings when using a pvr150 or 500. There is an easy fix for this.

If you're using another card then I have no clue.

Where do I find the easy fix? I'm having the same problem on a pvr150.

[blade]

Originally Posted by rschiffman

Where do I find the easy fix? I'm having the same problem on a pvr150.

Post #12 of this thread fixed it for myself and apparently many if not everyone else that's tried it. Hopefully it will work for you as well.

[rschiffman]

Thank you for the quick response. It saved a lot of hunting.