Black screen with audio

[zefross]

Hello,

I am evaluating SageTV V6 and am having a problem playing back any type of previously saved video (avi, divx, dvd on hard drive, etc.) I can hear the audio, but the screen is black. I have the Hauppage WinTV-PVR-150 installed correctly (connected to DirecTV receiver via S-Video connection) and I can see live TV via the WinTV 2000 application. In addition, I can view live tv via the SageTV console, as well as record live tv and view the playback via the SageTV console.

On the SageTV website there are three tips for this exact issue - two don't apply, but I can't for the life of me figure out how to "change the overlay surface" for my video card. Could this be the issue? Is it possible that my video card is not up to spec?

Here are my hardware specs:

XP Pro SP2 patched as of yesterday
512 MB RAM
P4 1300 MHz
Hauppage WinTV-PVR-150
Nvidia GeForce2 MX
DirecTV Satellite Receiver connected to PVR via S Video

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Ron

[mike1961]

Ron - welcome to Sage. To start - you said you are having trouble playing back any previously saved video. Are you saying you saved the video in Sage and if so does this mean you were able to view it while it was recording? Or are you referring to an imported video which was recorded outside of Sage?

If you are referring to a video recorded outside of Sage (and even if it was recorded in Sage) start by trying to play it with another player such as Windows Media Player and let us know if that works. We have to figure out if the problem is with recording or playback so that will determine exactly where the problem is.

Regarding the "overlay" setting you are mentioning, I think they are referring to the Setup. Personally, when troubleshooting I would not start with that setting but instead try using DEFAULT. Go into Detailed Setup, Video/Audio and set your Video Renderer and Audio Renderer to DEFAULT.

(EDITED: I reread your post and it seems like you can view the recordings in Sage. If so, then you are not having a problem playing back any type of previously saved video as per your post. You are not having a problem playing back videos recorded directly in Sage). Still, try setting the renderers to DEFAULT and see if that fixes the problem.

For what it's worth - several times a week when I watch a video in Sage and flip between those Sage Recordings in MPEG2 format and then go to watch something in Imported Videos in MPEG4 and back and forth, I too will see nothing but BLACK and hear sound also. It's very annoying and happens several times a week. I'm not sure what is causing it but my solution has always been to QUIT out of Sage and go back in again. Frankly, I think Sage has bugs in it but it's so loaded with features that in spite of the problems - I love Sage and I'm hoping future versions will remove some of these bugs and increase stability. Also, sometimes instead of it showing black I get an EXCEPTION ERROR and again my solution is the same, I need to quit SageClient and go back in again and all is then fine.

Mike

[zefross]

Thanks Mike,

I could not view video recorded outside of Sage but Sage recordings worked fine. I checked the type of video that Sage was recording and it was .mpeg while the others that would not play were .avi or .divx. So, I tried playing them in WMP and could not. Turns out I did not have the codecs. I downloaded the codecs and now I can see and hear the video! However the audio is out of sync and that is what I am working on now.

Thanks again for your reply.

Ron

[evictorio]

Hi, i have a similar kind of problem, Everything works perfecttly, exept that i can't play imported avi files, they play fine on other media players exept on sagetv.

What can i do.

thanks in advance

Ed