Video/Audio Issues

[Norm258]

Hi all, new to SageTV but not to Linux - I'm an old hack with it.

I've installed SageTV and Placeshifter. I was able to set up my source HD-PVR with spdif input no problem. I'm not getting any audio out though. I use spdif output as well. Where would I set up audio output?

More annoying for me is that when I'm in live tv and the OSD pops up it flashes repeatedly until the video stops and I get an Exception. I'm using NVIDIA driver 180.22. Should I perhaps downgrade to the standard 173 version?

I've run Mythtv up until now but I need to get something that is more family acceptable so SageTV is it. HD-PVR functions in Mythtv with audio etc.

Can I use an external channel change program? I use an executable 'changechan' program that works over firewire to my STB.

Thanks for any help or pointers.

Norm

[bcjenkins]

Caveat: I don't use Linux for playback, everything is extenders.

In my experience the HDPVR audio input for SPDIF produces stuttering audio for me.

There is a generic tuner under development by another forum member which has been working well for me. It hasn't been released anywhere yet, so I will send him a note on this. And there is also this:

http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/down...do=file&id=232

B

[Norm258]

Ok solved a few of my issues.

I now get perfect video and audio while viewing livetv and my HD-PVR. The issue was my hd-pvr firmware that was causing the crashing.

I found I had a config file in my .mplayer directory that was causing the audio to break and added entries to get me 720p cleanly.

The issue I still have is the OSD and other overlaying on the video. It flashes very quickly and won't stay on screen. Anyone experience this? Not sure yet what the cure will be.

Still looking on how to use a channel changing script to get my HD-PVR to change channels and to eventually get lirc working.

Looking good so far

Norm

[Norm258]

Whats working:
* Channel changing with firewire!
* spdif audio in HD-PVR, spdif audio out
* excellent video
* all other features

Whats not working:
* OSD is the biggest problem right now. Any blending between the video and menus does not work. When Sage tries to display something on the screen with the video I get the following in the log:
Wed 1/28 8:18:04.561 Ignoring resize command because it exceeds video dimensions rect=java.awt.Rectangle[x=0,y=0,width=1280,height=720] videoDim=java.awt.Dimension[width=0,height=0]
Wed 1/28 8:18:05.281 Execute media command 17
Wed 1/28 8:18:05.292 Ignoring resize command because it exceeds video dimensions rect=java.awt.Rectangle[x=0,y=0,width=1280,height=720] videoDim=java.awt.Dimension[width=0,height=0]

My Setup:
AMD dual-core 5000+ (2.6Ghz)
2Gb RAM
Nvidia 8400GS (driver version 173)
HD-PVR connected to an SA4250HD cable box
Firewire to cable box for channel changing
7.1 surround sound card (c-media chip)
optical out to Logitech THX speakers
Ubuntu 8.10.

Norm

[marschmc]

Norm and anyone else with experience-

I am building a similar setup (Ubuntu 8.10, HD-PVR w/ spdif audio in, SA4250HD) and I was wondering, can you provide detailed steps for getting the HD-PVR, spdif in, and firewire channel changing working in Ubuntu?

Are there any on-line howto's that you followed?

Are you running 32-bit or 64-bit? (I would like to run 64-bit)

Any other pointers that you or anyone else can provide?

I have been doing a lot of searching and reading in the forums but your setup sounds very similar to my ultimate goal.

Thanks,
Mike

[Norm258]

I'll try and write something up. Been doing this a long time so I want to make sure I don't just breeze over the 'gotcha's'.

I did not find any readme's that were specific. I used the forums here to search and read. I also came in with a bunch of knowledge from 4+ years using MythTV on Linux.

I figured out how to get the OSD stuff working too - you have to add opengl=true into the SageTvProperties file in .sagetv. BUT that left me with a lot of read errors from the decoder so not sure yet if that is the final solution.

Norm

[marcusjohn]

Thanks for the opengl=true. It solved my flashing problem and it gave me really nice looking menus. But I had to turn on the 3d option in the placeshifter menu.

What I really want to know is, how did you find out about the opengl option? I have been looking at these boards for months and I never seen that option described.

thanks once again.

John.

[marschmc]

Originally Posted by Norm258

I'll try and write something up. Been doing this a long time so I want to make sure I don't just breeze over the 'gotcha's'.

OK thanks. Also, did you use 32-bit or 64-bit Ubuntu?

[Norm258]

I"m using 32-bit - I don't find much of a speed difference between the two and there are more codecs available for 32-bit.

The opengl= clue was found by searching the forums -- I think I just went page by page until I saw something that looked like it might apply - and followed another link inside of it LOL

I have also had to add the following line to my .mplyaer/config file:
lavdopts=threads=2:fast=1:skiploopfilter="all"

Without it I get dropped frames and decode errors, etc. I'm going to play with it some more to see if I can still improve the video a bit more. I knew about this one from transcoded bluray disks -

Norm

[marschmc]

Norm-

I got my machine setup today with the HD-PVR but I can't seem to figure out how to change the channel on the sa4250HD via firewire.

Can you tell me what you did?

Here is what I have done so far:

* I installed libavc1394-dev, libraw1394-dev and libiec61883-dev
* I set linux/enable_firewire_capture=true in Sage.properties

I can now see my firewire connected boxes as potential video sources but I cannot find any mechanism for just changing the channels using the firewire.

I have done a lot of searching but have not yet found an answer.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Mike


P.S. The system is Ubuntu 8.10 Server 32-bit running SageTV 6.5.8

[Norm258]

Hi there -- I use the ExtTunerPlugin found here in the forums and then modified the ext-command-tuner-remotes.cfg to have:
Remote 1, /usr/bin/changechan %s;sleep 5

Although its for ir blasters changing the setting above to changechan means you can change channels.

Changechan is taken from Mythtv in the contrib directory - its the sa3250ch channel changer.

Norm

[marschmc]

Originally Posted by Norm258

Hi there -- I use the ExtTunerPlugin found here in the forums and then modified the ext-command-tuner-remotes.cfg to have:
Remote 1, /usr/bin/changechan %s;sleep 5

Although its for ir blasters changing the setting above to changechan means you can change channels.

Changechan is taken from Mythtv in the contrib directory - its the sa3250ch channel changer.

Norm

Thanks for the help Norm! I really appreciate it.

I think I am closer. I can now select the external channel changer when I configure video sources but if I try to watch live TV, Sage server dies and must be restarted.

I get a hs_err_pid.log file that contains the following header:
# An unexpected error has been detected by HotSpot Virtual Machine:
#
# SIGSEGV (0xb) at pc=0xb7de29b9, pid=7791, tid=2578332560
#
# Java VM: Java HotSpot(TM) Server VM (1.5.0_16-b02 mixed mode)
# Problematic frame:
# C [libc.so.6+0x3f9b9] _IO_vfprintf+0x29

I tried both Java 1.6 & 1.5. and I used the ExtTunerPlugin found here:
http://admin.freytechnologies.com/fo...do=file&id=235

Did you run into this? Did you use a different version of ExtTunerPlugin?

Thanks again,
Mike

[Norm258]

Can you use the program from the command line to change channels?

I didn't run into this problem so I don't think I can help there.

[marschmc]

Originally Posted by Norm258

Can you use the program from the command line to change channels?

I didn't run into this problem so I don't think I can help there.

Yes, if I:
sudo /usr/bin/changechan 737

the box changes to channel 737.

I have also tried setting linux/enable_firewire_capture in Sage.properties to both true and false with no change.

Thanks for the help,
Mike

[Norm258]

Well you should not have to sudo for that command. Move the compiled file into /usr/bin and make sure its chmod 770 and part of group users.

FYI the firewire selection in Sage is only for streaming over firewire - doesn't do anything for the channel change script.

Norm

[marschmc]

Originally Posted by Norm258

Well you should not have to sudo for that command. Move the compiled file into /usr/bin and make sure its chmod 770 and part of group users.

FYI the firewire selection in Sage is only for streaming over firewire - doesn't do anything for the channel change script.

Norm

The permissions on /dev/raw1394 was the problem. I adjusted the permissions and now I don't need sudo but the problem persists. If I set up a video source with the external channel change, the server dies as soon as I try to watch it.

Have you had any luck getting the IR blaster on the HD-PVR to do channel changing?

If I still can't get anywhere soon, I may have to break down and switch to Windows but that requires buying a Windows license and a Windows OS neither of which I want to do...

[Norm258]

You will get it. It works well without buying codecs and the like on windows.

I haven't tried the ir blaster but apparently the other thread on hd-pvr posted a patch to the hd-pvr driver that activates it.

I have an external ir transceiver which I haven't had much luck getting to work outside of Sage.

I would prefer the ir transceiver too because it is faster.

There should be a log in /opt/sagetv/server called ext-command-tuner.log - does it contain any errors?

Norm

[marschmc]

Norm-

Thanks for the help and encouragement.

Firewire channel changing is now working for me. I will document what I did here in case anyone else runs into this problem.

System details:
Ubuntu 8.10 Server 32-bit
SageTV 6.5.8 beta
HD-PVR
SA4250HD cable box
HD200 Extender

The ExtTunerPlugin code found at these two locations from Stuckless and TravisTodd did not work for me:
http://admin.freytechnologies.com/fo...do=file&id=235
http://forums.sage.tv/forums/showthread.php?t=33528

If I compiled and used ExtTunerPlugin.so from either of these, the server process would die if I tried to watch TV.

I found what appears to be newer code from Stuckless here:
http://code.google.com/p/customsagetv/source/checkout

This code worked without crashing Sage. Unfortunately, it was sending one channel digit at a time so my box's channel would end up being whatever was the last channel digit entered. Looking at ExtTunerPlugin.c, it appeared that if I changed the CanMacroTune function to return 1 instead of 0 that it would use TravisTodd's MacroTune funtion and send all 3 channel digits at once. After I did this, it worked as expected.

One thing I noticed is that if I don't put a preceding 0 before two digit channels, it doesn't change channels. Also, I cannot put a preceding 0 before three digit channel changes or an "enter" after them which means the cable box waits a couple of seconds before actually changing channels as it waits for a possible fourth digit (eventhough all of my channels are 3 digits or less).

I will have to look at the code and see if I can address this second issue by prepending a 0 to the front of the channel number. This would significantly speed up channel changes. Also, I am a new Sage user so I don't know but Sage may even have a setting somewhere to prepend digits at the application level.

Now all I have to do is get it all working with my second box. I may just make a second channel changer plugin with a different name with a different /usr/bin/command with my second box's firewire details unless someone knows of a slicker way to do it.

I would like to thanks Norm258 for the support and Stuckless and TravisTodd for the code.

-Mike