Single hour/multiple files

[Seek2034]

I have NO CLUE as to what to search for to find this topic as my previous searches have come up empty on the multiple file issue. I have two pvr150's and one pvr500 in a system and while I get the common corrupted "timeline" problem with the playback bar not moving in realtime or being stuck at 0:00 as the file continues to play, I have not found any mention of a show being broken up into different files/blocks. It could be 30 seconds in one file, 15 minutes in the next, then 5 minutes, 6 minutes, 33 minutes or whatever. For whatever reason, SageTV decides that it wants to randomly break the files up so they cannot be played back without loading each one into Media Player. I have tried it on an old install of Windows on a 40GB harddrive (OS drive) with the older drivers that were the first to work decent with the newer PVR500's and a fresh install on a spare 250GB drive with the latest Hauppauge drivers. Both give me the same problems on ALL tuners (looking at which broken shows were recorded on what). Frequently, shows are only broken up into 2 files, but more have happened.

I'm using SageTV 5 I believe, the last that was available to me before they decided to limit how far we can upgrade from original purchase. No additional client installs or anything. AMD 1700+/512MB ram/WinXP that does nothing but act as a recorder/playback machine using the SageTV audio/video decoders. So whats the verdict? I'm sure there's a solution somewhere.

[GKusnick]

Originally Posted by Seek2034

For whatever reason, SageTV decides that it wants to randomly break the files up so they cannot be played back without loading each one into Media Player.

This usually indicates a problem with your capture device. You lost your signal, or your disk filled up, or something else happened to interrupt the capture, and Sage had to restart it with a new file. Your best bet for diagnosing it is to enable debug logging and see what kinds of error messages show up in the log.

Sage knows when a recording spans multiple files, and (unlike WMP) will automatically play them all in order when you watch that recording in Sage so you don't have to queue them up manually (although there may be gaps in the playback where one file ends and the next one starts).

[Taddeusz]

Have you applied the registry fix to correct the timeline problem?

[matt91]

I applied the registry fix after seeing this issue too (the timeline problem). I also make sure that other apps weren't left open on my server, since another post suggested that high CPU usage during recording might upset things.

All has been well for the last couple of weeks since I did this.

Just my 2 cents....

[Seek2034]

Channels 2-7 still suck on the 500 compared to the 150's (the 500 was replaced a couple months ago with the newer chip, don't remember the specifics on brands and versions of the card - a, b, c, etc) but the 150's also appear to have the same problem randomly. Like I said, nothing else is on the server except VNC and an active anti virus program that doesn't do full scans. Viewing performance logs, there is nothing that sticks out for the processor, pages/sec, memory usage, or disk queues during these problems and it occurs on both of my two 250GB drives in that system.

I'm going to attempt to run the new install of Windows again (on one of the 250gb drives) and look for the registry fix. This fix was NOT available with the drivers that previously worked that were/are installed on the 40GB's operating system. IIRC, I went back to the 40 because the fresh install had very choppy video in SageTV while it worked perfect in DScaler.

[Seek2034]

Back with the fresh install/newest drivers (timestamp on the driver itself is from 2006?) and ALL SIX recordings from last night got broken up into multiple files. The picture quality of each is excellent (all were above channel 10) but they are broken up and jerky. % Disk time was graphed as <30%, cpu <10%, 256MB ram free out of the 512 in that machine. I don't think its a hardware problem being that the current files on Hauppauge's site are AWFUL but there's still the possibility of a different motherboard fixing this - not that I want to have to spend MORE money just to get these capture cards working.

Anyone have a certain older driver that works well? I can't find anything with working links on Google. What about opinions on a different manufacturer's dual tuner card?

Edit:
Forgot to install the Via Latency patch. Jerkiness is fixed. Anyways, didn't there used to be a way to make a tuner only record certain channels, but have a different tuner record others? I'd like to do this to make the 500 only record 8+ as 2-7 are all extremely fuzzy.