Audio silent only on LiveTV/Recorded TV

[rosemary]

Well, this is darn peculiar. I bit the bullet and upgraded to Windows 7 (32bit, from Vista).

Now I'm running into a couple of strange problems. The first one is that imported videos play back just fine, with full audio. So far none have failed.

But any Live TV or SageTV recordings are silent. However, if I play the file outside of sage, using something like Media Player Classic, it plays back with full audio. I ran it through graphstudio and got the following:

[pre]
--------------------------------------------------
Filters
--------------------------------------------------
1. File Source (Async.)
File: E:\SageTV Recordings\NHLHockey-WashingtonCapitalsatChicagoBlackhawks-1159427-0.mpg
2. MPEG-2 Demultiplexer
3. Microsoft DTV-DVD Audio Decoder
4. Microsoft DTV-DVD Video Decoder
5. Default DirectSound Device
6. Video Renderer

--------------------------------------------------
Connections
--------------------------------------------------
1. [File Source (Async.)]/(Output) -> [MPEG-2 Demultiplexer]/(MPEG-2 Stream)
2. [MPEG-2 Demultiplexer]/(AC-3) -> [Microsoft DTV-DVD Audio Decoder]/(XForm In)
3. [MPEG-2 Demultiplexer]/(Video) -> [Microsoft DTV-DVD Video Decoder]/(Video Input)
4. [Microsoft DTV-DVD Audio Decoder]/(XFrom Out) -> [Default DirectSound Device]/(Audio Input pin (rendered))
5. [Microsoft DTV-DVD Video Decoder]/(Video Output 1) -> [Video Renderer]/(VMR Input0)
[/pre]

I've tried every option I can find for audio in the detailed setup under Video/Audio and it makes no difference.

The second problem, likely unrelated but who knows: in LiveTV and recordings, it double letterboxes the videos. So playing a 16x9 HDTV recording on my 16x9 tv, I get letterboxing on the top/bottom and left/right. But again, it only does it on Live TV and sagetv recordings. It does not do this to imported videos.

And no, it's not an aspect ratio setting either on the tv or in sagetv. The aspect ratio setting on both is staying the same (FULL/Source aka "no resizing, stretching or zooming" on both).

Thanks in advance to anyone who can help solve the wackiness.

[pgrillo]

are you using sagemc? i had a similar problem for weeks. SageTV playback does not provide an audio volume slider in the viewer.

i dropped back to base SageTV and noticed the volume was set to the far left (off). I set it to max. sound came back. returned to sagetv, all is well.

don't know how the volume got turned off - don't know if this is relevant to you.

[rosemary]

Yes, I am using SageMC. And I'm familiar with the problem you are talking about. It would often happen when one of my imported files would get an audio error. I solved it by adding a key to my remote to crank up the native sage volume.

But that's not what's happening here, as the audio is only silent in live tv and sagetv recordings. I can navigate to an imported file and it plays fine. Switch to livetv and it's silent. Repeat. Once the bug you're talking about occurs (at least, if we're talking about the same one), it affects all videos played in sage.

Thanks, though!

[Savage1701]

Something like that happened to me; this is what I got for advice and it worked:

Win 7 no sound fix

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Seems that Win7 has changed the DirectSound interface somehow. The net effect is that Sage 'loses' the state of the system sound level.

So changing the sound level in the system does not alter the Sage sound level.

This worked for me when using nornal 2 channel output from Sage.

1. Sound 'Level' in Sage.

The Sage sound level bar shows 0 (Changing the system level does not change it)

Use the mouse or keyboard to move this to 100% - in sage - you may still not have any sound.

2. Change the AC3 filter to 'WaveOut' - NOT DirectSound
A. Exit Sage
B. Run c:\program files\sagetv\tagetv\ac3config.exe
C. Change to system Tab and select Default Audio Render - 'Use wave out by default'.
D. Click OK
E. Restart Sage - hopefully the sound now works.

[rosemary]

Thank you for the reply. But, again, isn't this the same thing I described in my second post? If I'm reading you right, you're also referring to the same bug that pgrillo posted. The one that affects all videos. My problem affects only LiveTV and SageTV recordings. Imported videos work fine. I can switch back and forth and the former will be silent and the latter work fine.

[Savage1701]

Actually, mine only affects HD-PVR ones, not ones made off an analog cable tuner card or any of my ATSC OTA tuners. That's why I thought it might be relevant.

I wish you the best on solving your sound problems.

[rosemary]

Well, I wiped out the sage.properties, and that actually fixed the weird stretching problem (which did, in fact, affect a few of my imported videos, just not most of them). Still no audio, though.

[Chia74]

Hello rosemary,

I have some good news. (Well, good for me, hopefully good for you too.) I had the same problem. One thing you didn't mention below was your setup, so I'll quote mine (to some degree anyway):

Intel C2D 8400
4GB RAM
Windows 7 Ultimate 32bit
SageTV 6.6.2.218
SageMC 6.3.9a
<blah blah blah>
Tuner1: Hauppauge HVR-1800 (2 tuners, 1 OTA digital, 1 analog)
Tuner2: Hauppauge PVR-150 (Coax F-type connection - standard cable)

For the HVR-1800 I'm using SVideo to connect the analog tuner to my external STB (Rogers in Canada). I'm using LM Remote Keymap as my MCE IR Blaster controller (excellent product - cheap and works with multiple PVR vendors - Sage, Media Portal, GB-PVR, Beyond TV, etc).

So, most of that is not important (but is handy for others with the same problem in the future to find this thread). The most important part is that everything was working correctly with Windows 7 EXCEPT there was no audio from the analog sources while recording or watching liveTV. Again, this was only affecting analog sources (OTA worked fine). This affected both my Hauppauge tuners, even though one was using SVideo (and a RCA -> mini stereo jack cable for audio plugged directly into the HVR-1800) and the other was using standard coax cable with the internal tuner of the PVR-150 card. So, I opened a ticket with Sage TV and this was their response:

Unfortunately we don't support Windows 7 at this time, but we are working on
adding support.

You can try these updated files from this link.
http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=43579

You will just need to make sure that Sage and the service are closed when
updating your Sage files, and you can make a backup of the original ones as
well.

Well, this worked like a charm. I made sure to grab all the files from Update 10 (the two links in the first post) including the updated files attached to post #256, followed the instructions, restarted Sage, and voila! Audio on my analog captures.

I'm now 90% of the way toward replacing Beyond TV with Sage TV. I just have some tweaking to do to my frontend client HTPC setup and I'll present it for approval to the "board of directors" (IE, the wife and kids).

Cheers from the cold,

G.

[rosemary]

Thanks for the reply!

Unfortunately, as I said back at the beginning, the recorded file itself plays outside of SageTV (in various media players) with no problem. So it's not an OS-level or tuner-level problem.

Edit: Oh, and FYI, I don't have any analog sources. Only digital OTA and imported videos.

[Chia74]

Rosemary,

You may want to consider trying this update anyway as part of it is an update to the directshow drivers used with Windows 7. I don't know if that will fix your audio problems, but it may.

Just my 2 cents.

G.

[rosemary]

Thanks, but that didn't help.