Two HD Recordings, no sound on one

[ryanlantzy]

Hi,

I have SageTV 6.4 installed on Windows Vista (32bit). I have a ATi HD3200 integrated graphics card, a Hauppauge HVR-1600 and HVR-1800. The machine is a AMD Phenom X4 with 4GB ram.

I'm using my Realtek Directsound Digital Output as the audio render and AC3filter as the MPEG 2 Audio decoder.

I've noticed a problem that occurs occasionally. When I'm recording two programs on HD channels, occasionally the one recording will record with no sound. So far the three times I've noticed it it was an ABC HD program. It actually might happen with just one recording.

I've even had it happen where I'm watching say NBCHD on one tuner, and the second tuner is recording two programs in succession on ABCHD. If I notice the first program on ABCHD has no sound (by switching to that channel) and I stop and restart it, confirming the audio works, when it goes to the 2nd recording on ABCHD, it will again not record the audio.

Any Ideas?

[ryanlantzy]

Another note. I tried playing the MPEG2 recordings on another computer. The ones that don't have sound are the same way on other computers.

Something must be up when it's doing the recording. It's my understanding that the filter and decoder settings in the Sage TV Setup page do not control how things are recorded, only how they are played back.

Could it be something with sage that is causing the audio to not be captured in the QAM MPG2 stream?

[alfi33]

Can you tell if it's always the same tuner that has the problem?

If you play the recording with no sound outside of Sage or on a different computer, does it still have no sound?

[ryanlantzy]

Originally Posted by alfi33

Can you tell if it's always the same tuner that has the problem?

Well, seeing as one tuner is busy recording another channel, I know the other tuner (when it does it) stays the same. That is, it doesn't work, then it does work, all using the same tuner.

How do I tell which tuner is being used when it does it?

If you play the recording with no sound outside of Sage or on a different computer, does it still have no sound?

Outside of sage and/or a different computer yields the same results. no sound, consistently on that same file.

Also, I noticed something last night. I don't have to be recording another show for it to happen. I tuned to Jimmy Kimmel on ABC HD (mind you this is over Clear QAM from my cable company) and got no sound. Nothing else was being recorded. I stopped the playback, and restarted and then the sound was fine. This only ever seems to happen on ABC HD. Another note, the sound NEVER comes back on during a recording once it's off. I have to stop the recording and quit viewing the channel (to release the tuner I suppose) then restart it, and then it works fine.

[ryanlantzy]

I am now unable to hear the sound when watching ABCHD on both tuner cards, and it happens all the time.

AC3filter is showing no audio input, but my home theater receiver somehow detects the Dolby Digital (DPL) stream.

I believe it is a recording/encoding problem because the recorded files have no sound no matter where I play them.

NBCHD, PBSHD, CBSHD, and FOXHD all work perfectly.

Can anyone suggest some things to look into?

[ryanlantzy]

Get this... In the options menu when the show is playing (ones with no audio on ABCHD) there is an option "Audio Language." When I select "#2 eng AC3" the audio magically works!

"#1 eng AC3" is silent. My guess is that it some encoding error on the local station's part.

I went back and tried it on previous recordings with no sound and, viola! sound works!

The weird thing was, up until a few weeks ago, some recordings would have sound, some wouldn't. So whenever they switched the channels around last week, they must have got something wrong.

Weird thing is, my QAM enabled Vizio TV seems to find the "real" audio channel just fine.

[razrsharpe]

I had almost the exact same issue. Except mine would happen with the local FOX affialiate via the HDHR from OTA. Same symptoms though... the default audio stream contained nothing and there was a second audio stream with the correct audio.

The problem first happened when I upgraded to 6.4.8 (about the same time your first post happened actually...). I downgraded to 6.3.10 and it seemed to go away but it came back. I then upgraded to 6.5.3 and the latest HDHR drivers and the problem hasn't come back sense.

I'm not positive that it was the broadcasts fault. It could be that Sage and/or the tuner's drivers are not initializing the stream properly. After improper initialization the correct audio gets thrown into the non-default audio stream (Stream 2).

I would suggest making a backup of your setup and then installing the latest 6.5 beta and the latest drivers for your tuners. I would do a clean install (copying only your wiz.bin and wiz.bak files) and reconfigure everything else. This seemed to work for me

[ryanlantzy]

Originally Posted by razrsharpe

I had almost the exact same issue. Except mine would happen with the local FOX affialiate via the HDHR from OTA. Same symptoms though... the default audio stream contained nothing and there was a second audio stream with the correct audio.

The problem first happened when I upgraded to 6.4.8 (about the same time your first post happened actually...). I downgraded to 6.3.10 and it seemed to go away but it came back. I then upgraded to 6.5.3 and the latest HDHR drivers and the problem hasn't come back sense.

I would suggest making a backup of your setup and then installing the latest 6.5 beta and the latest drivers for your tuners. I would do a clean install (copying only your wiz.bin and wiz.bak files) and reconfigure everything else. This seemed to work for me

I upgraded to 6.5 when it was released the other day and this has NOT resolved my issue.

Anymore ideas? Anyone?

[stefam]

Hello,
I just did a clean install of Sage on a WHS with 64kb clusters.

Everythig used to work, but now I am experiencing a probelm that may be the same as the OP.

Any HD scheduled recording that happens while watching live TV seems to have no sound. Even if I play the files through media-player. There's just no audio at all.

Using an HD-Homerun. Any ideas?

-Mike

[razrsharpe]

Originally Posted by stefam

Any HD scheduled recording that happens while watching live TV seems to have no sound. Even if I play the files through media-player. There's just no audio at all.

OTA or Cable (QAM)?
All stations or only some?

If you play the file in MPlayer or VLC is there more than audio track in the file (go to the drop down menus... in VLC... Audio -> Audio Track)? You can do this in Sage too actually. Press options while the video is playing if there is more than one audio track Sage will have an Audio Options menu item. My problem is occasionally the main audio track will end up on the secondary audio stream. On affected recordings I just choose the secondary track and am good to go. Makes it a pain for compressing but such is life.

[razrsharpe]

Originally Posted by ryanlantzy

I upgraded to 6.5 when it was released the other day and this has NOT resolved my issue.

Anymore ideas? Anyone?

It didn't solve the issue I was having either.... In the sage.properties file for the server I changed the delay_to_wait_after_tuning property to 1000 for my 4 HDHR tuners. I did this about 10 days ago. So far so good. My thinking is that the stream is not getting initialized properly somewhere in the line... (original broadcast from the station, the HDHR, the drivers, the computer, Sage) and that setting the delay to 1000 ms (1 sec) will give everything time to do all the necessary handshaking.

See this forum thread too: http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=40102

[stefam]

Thanks for the tip. I've changed the settings. Let see if Martha really speaks today....

-Mike

[ryanlantzy]

The delay setting did not work for me. Any other suggestions?

[razrsharpe]

Originally Posted by ryanlantzy

The delay setting did not work for me. Any other suggestions?

ya it didn't work for me either (it seemed to for awhile but it has since stopped working again).... one thing i have noticed is that if i record 2 back to back shows on fox (say terminator and dollhouse on friday night). The last 2 weeks terminator's (recorded first) main audio track is on the second (non default) track and dollhouse's (recorded second) gets recorded correctly with only one audio track.... so i still think it is an initialization problem somewhere I'm just not sure where... i may submit the issue to sage support and see what they say... but i am pretty much lost just like you

[razrsharpe]

Originally Posted by razrsharpe

I had almost the exact same issue. Except mine would happen with the local FOX affialiate via the HDHR from OTA. Same symptoms though... the default audio stream contained nothing and there was a second audio stream with the correct audio.

So this finally annoyed me enough to try and fix it. I sent support requests to Silicondust and SageTV. Silicondust says it is a problem in Sage because they are responsible for figuring out the audio stream and writing the .mpg headers. I agree. Sage is working on a beta that is supposed to fix this issue. See response from them below:

I talked to our developers more about this and we're actually finishing up a
rewrite of our digital TV processing code and this is one of the things
specifically that'll be fixed in it (the primary audio stream will always be
put on the same MPEG track; so even if FOX moves it, SageTV will put it back
in the right place). So for now you'll have to deal with the workarounds;
but in about a month or so we should probably have that new code out in a
beta.

Cheers,


SageTV Support Team
SageTV, LLC
betatest@sagetv.com
http://www.sagetv.com/

One of the things they asked me about was if there was audio in the padding on the default audio track (i default to 1min of padding on all my recordings). There was. As a test I went through and removed ALL my padding for FOX (the affected channel) to see if that makes any difference (we'll know soon).

EDIT: Removing the padding has fixed the multiple audio track issue. It is still being mislabeled but I only get the one stream...

[Zervun]

so what was the workaround?

Was it delay_to_wait_after_tuning?

I'm having this issue and it is driving me nuts. I'll do the workaround now, if there is one.

[razrsharpe]

Originally Posted by Zervun

so what was the workaround?

Was it delay_to_wait_after_tuning?

I'm having this issue and it is driving me nuts. I'll do the workaround now, if there is one.

Removing the recording padding (set = 0 min in favorite recording settings) seems to have fixed the issue... well i no longer get 2 audio streams. The stream is still being mislabeled as AC3 2.0 (rather then AC3 5.1) but i only get the one stream.

The delay_to_wait_after_tuning had no effect

[Zervun]

Incidently, I just tested out a no audio recording with the latest release and it plays properly through the extender -

[ryanlantzy]

This is still a problem in SageTV 6.6.

Have they identified any other workarounds?

[ryanlantzy]

Originally Posted by ryanlantzy

This is still a problem in SageTV 6.6.

Have they identified any other workarounds?

Bump.