DVBViewer Recorder: Network encoder

[Mark SS]

God knows what it is about these setups but everyone seems to get such wildly varying results with various makes. I've got a TT card with CAM and its been perfectly stable for a year, apart from after a re-install where it ended up sharing an IRQ with the video card.

Tempted by the Blackgold card because of the multiple tuners but the FireDTV does seem to be well regarded.

[Whitey]

One of my TT cards just decided to stop working one day and I could never get it to work again, did all the usual thing to getting it working again but nothing worked.

I've had a FireDTV unit for years and it's been great with any software I've tried it with.

The Blackgold looks interesting and a good price but does it have two DVB-S2 tuners or one DVB-S2 and one DVB-S? Can you access all the tuners with DVBViewer at once?

Whitey

[SyrA]

wooow... StephanM ....you close the graf way to soon. The decoding and tuning doesnt have a chance to get started. The graf gets closed within 2-4 s. on my setup. I would say it takes my setup about 6-7 seconds to create graf and start decoding.

Make it configurable or dependent on the restart time param?

edit: Should i be able to use the recordingservice after this improvment, or am i forced to use the standalone recorder?

[StephaneM]

Originally Posted by SyrA

wooow... StephanM ....you close the graf way to soon. The decoding and tuning doesnt have a chance to get started. The graf gets closed within 2-4 s. on my setup. I would say it takes my setup about 6-7 seconds to create graf and start decoding.

Ok, as I don't have any soft cam plugins, I can only rely on the DVBViewer logs : I do see the PID being filtered even when closing the graph right after the recording start.

Make it configurable or dependent on the restart time param?

Yes, I'll include the close graph within the "is the recording started?" code branch (after the "restart" delay so to speak)

Should i be able to use the recordingservice after this improvment, or am i forced to use the standalone recorder?

It should work with both. That is I see PID being filtered when using the service or the standalone recorder. However some plugins may not work with the service.

Regards,
Stéphane.

[SyrA]

Ok, ill do some testing using both versions of your emminent program.

If i could use it in servicemode that would be truely great!

Question:
You use the com interface of dvbviewer, right? So starting 2 instaces of dvbviewer wouldnt be a good idea when using your program? If that would be possible you could use 2 instances of dvbviewer for decoding diffrent channels using softcam. (I have tried this when issueing manual recordings and it does work, using dvbviewer2.exe and dvbviewer.exe installed in diffrent directories)

[StephaneM]

Originally Posted by SyrA

You use the com interface of dvbviewer, right? So starting 2 instaces of dvbviewer wouldnt be a good idea when using your program?

Yes I use the COM Interface. So I can't use two instance of DVBViewer (in fact when service mode is running you can't even launch a 2nd instance)

If that would be possible you could use 2 instances of dvbviewer for decoding diffrent channels using softcam. (I have tried this when issueing manual recordings and it does work, using dvbviewer2.exe and dvbviewer.exe installed in diffrent directories)

It may work without using multiple instance, depends on the plugin I guess. Mark SS succeeded in using NDSCam plugin to record two channels at the same time with the same DVBViewer instance so...

Regards,
Stéphane.

[Whitey]

I have uploaded a DVBViewer log, Recording Service log and a sagetv log for you to compare. I hope it helps to solve my problem!

Whitey

[Mark SS]

Thought it worth mentioning that my channel change speeds were pretty good using NDSCam. Maybe 10 seconds for the first but after that approx 5 seconds, certainly acceptable for me.

Whitey - Just wondering why you're using the DVBViewer plugin rather than native sage support if you're not using a softcam? TT3200+Dragon has been very reliable for me to date.

[Whitey]

Originally Posted by Mark SS

Thought it worth mentioning that my channel change speeds were pretty good using NDSCam. Maybe 10 seconds for the first but after that approx 5 seconds, certainly acceptable for me.

Whitey - Just wondering why you're using the DVBViewer plugin rather than native sage support if you're not using a softcam? TT3200+Dragon has been very reliable for me to date.

Beacuse I have a DVB-C FireDTV too which won't work with sage and UK cable. I also have a DVB-S FireDTV and a TT3200. I'm interested in using a softcam if it can card share. I gave it go and NDSCam worked but when decrypting two channels the viewed channel became very jerky. What version are you using? I tried 0.0.0.5

Whitey

[SyrA]

Yes, I'll include the close graph within the "is the recording started?" code branch (after the "restart" delay so to speak)

ohh...im so intrested in the new version...hurry hurry

[StephaneM]

Originally Posted by SyrA

ohh...im so intrested in the new version...hurry hurry

I just released version 1.5 that include that changes as well as some other goodies.

Regards,
Stéphane.

[StephaneM]

Originally Posted by Whitey

I have uploaded a DVBViewer log, Recording Service log and a sagetv log for you to compare. I hope it helps to solve my problem!

Not really . From what I'm seeing here all seems fine, except that it seems that my plugin report a recording file size of 0 bytes when it should not (as your recording seems really to start within 5 secs).

I made some research about this: is it possible that Windows doesn't return the correct file size to my plugin? But I cannot find any hints that would say so (a common pitfall so to speak).

So use the new 1.5 version, it features a real time monitor, when you use this monitor you can view in real time what is going on in the Recorder. Especially you'll see the "GET_FILE_SIZE" SageTV calls and the response of the Recorder (you can't see this in the trace files). As SageTV can issue a lot of "GET_FILE_SIZE" calls, the monitor will act like crazy until the file size reach 512 KB, when it reach 512KB the GET_FILE_SIZE stop being traced (otherwise it can do some nasting during playback).

So you'll be able to compare the returned file size and the file size on your disk. If there is a difference : try to turn off the SmartBuffer feature of DVBViewer, if it still doesn't resolve the problem try to remove any Windows disk write back cache.

Regards,
Stéphane.

[SyrA]

OMG, it tuned a encrypted channel using service mode.....Im SO HAPPY !

Thank you SOOO much!

[PeterC]

I have just set the recorder up and everything looks to be working ok on the Sage server but my MVPs wont play the mpg files.

Are there any recommended settings that might help with the MVP?

[StephaneM]

Originally Posted by PeterC

Are there any recommended settings that might help with the MVP?

You can try to use TS format instead. Also in DVBViewer you can try to use the "DVD Packet Size" option (Options / Recorder) though I never tried it personally and always used TS format.

Regards,
Stéphane.

[Whitey]

Installed and set-up the muti-encoder version yesterday but I could only get channels from one encoder. I installed it as per instructions, made one encoder 127.0.01:9090 and the other 127.0.0.1:9091 (cable & satellite) and successfully added them to sage using the same epg (xmltv source). When I first tried I only got the cable channels, when I uninstalled and tried again I only got the satellite channels. Have I missed something somewhere? Do I have to change anything in DVBViewer?

When using the single encoder version I mixed the satellite and cable channels and I could view both no problem

Thanks

Whitey

[StephaneM]

Originally Posted by Whitey

Installed and set-up the muti-encoder version yesterday but I could only get channels from one encoder. I installed it as per instructions, made one encoder 127.0.01:9090 and the other 127.0.0.1:9091 (cable & satellite)

First : there is nothing special to do in DVBViewer. With multiple tuners, you create the network encoders as separate channel subsets. For instance create one encoder for all terrestrial channels and one encoder for all satellite chanels (if you have one DVB-T card and one DVB-S card for one satellite)

SageTV can then use two sources. As the source does have different channel subset you will certainly have to use two lineups: because some channels are differents.

A quick sample :

* On encoder 9090 (terrestrial): you have channel A (number 1), channel B (number 2), channel C (number 3)

* On encoder 9091 (satellite): you have channel A (number 1), channel D (number 2), channel E (number 3)

In SageTV you'll have to use two lineups:

* For encoder 9090 (terrestrial):
- Channel A, ID = 0001, Number = 1 (the ID is usually created by the XMLTV tools, with my Importer the XMLTV ID is used to create this ID)
- Channel B, ID = 0002, Number = 2
- Channel C, ID = 0003, Number = 3

* For encoder 9091 (satellite):
- Channel A, ID = 0001, Number = 1 (IDs is the same as encoder 9090 lineup because this is the same channel => same network, same programs on a different broadcast source)
- Channel D, ID = 0004, Number = 2 (even if the channel number is the same as Channel B, this is not a problem for SageTV)
- Channel E, ID = 0005, Number = 3

The in SageTV guide you'll have those channels:

- Channel A (can be tuned on 9090 or 9091: SageTV will choose the tuner based on tuner availability)
- Channel B (tuned on 9090)
- Channel C (tuned on 9090)
- Channel D (tuned on 9091)
- Channel E (tuned on 9091)

Regards,
Stéphane.

[PeterC]

I have one DVB-S card and two dual DVB-T cards.
Will I need to create four seperate network encoders for the DVB-T cards so that Sage will handle recording conflicts correctly?

[StephaneM]

Originally Posted by PeterC

I have one DVB-S card and two dual DVB-T cards.
Will I need to create four seperate network encoders for the DVB-T cards so that Sage will handle recording conflicts correctly?

You'll need to create five encoders:

* One for Satellite
* Four for Terrestrial, for those encoders, you'll have to use the exact same channel selection. I'd suggest you to make one encoders with the config utility and selecting the channels, then create the other three without selecting the channels and copy/paste the channels lineups from the XML file directly : C:\ProgramData\LM Gestion\DVBViewer Recorder\recorders.xml for Windows Vista or C:\Documents And Settings\All Users\Application Data\LM Gestion\DVBViewer Recorder\recorders.xml for Windows XP), you simply have to copy the "<channel>" nodes for your first DVB-T encoder to the other three.

Regards,
Stéphane.

[Mark SS]

Originally Posted by PeterC

I have one DVB-S card and two dual DVB-T cards.
Will I need to create four seperate network encoders for the DVB-T cards so that Sage will handle recording conflicts correctly?

The builtin DVBT support works very well. If you can I'd suggest using that for your DVBT cards and DVBViewer/Plugin for DVBS. That said, built in DVBS support works well for me as well, I'm using the plugin to take advantage of MDAPI.