Sage 7 or HDPVR Bug?

[broconne]

I have recently installed an HDPVR on my Sage7 Server. Previously, I had just been using Silicon Dust HDHRs which have worked well. I am seeing a bug, and I don't know if it is a Sage 7 Beta issue or an HDPVR issue.

On some of my recordings, when it starts I get no audio and the video is at 1/2 to 3/4 speed. If I skip forward 15 seconds, the recording skips to the very end of the time bar, but starts playing from the begging and plays with normal audio and video. Which is fine, except now I can no longer skip around in the media file?

Anyone else seen this behavior? Is this an HDPVR issue or a Sage issue?

[Striker:WG]

based on the number of us using HDPVR's and nobody else piping up saying they're experiencing it, I would say its an issue specific to your system or HDPVR.

I can honestly say that my HDPVR is working amazingly better since making the switch to version 7.

-Striker-

[MrD]

I've seen similar issues... but for my it's glitchy and changing the channel away and back to the same channel resolves the issue.

I figure is it a sync issue with the video / audio streams.

[BrianDC]

What firmware are you running on your HDPVR? I realize that there is some voodoo to the HDPVR and I'm not exactally recommending that you flash upgrade your HDPVR, however the firmware info on your HDPVR may be helpful to see if you are running a seriously old version, or a bleeding edge version that may have a new issues that we haven't seen before.

Personally, I just updated to Sage7 last night, and so far everything looks good, however I'm sure I'll hear from the wife the first time something doesn't work as expected.

[teedublu]

The latest version driver 1.5.7.0 has been out for a while now and is recommended. Firmware is embedded in the driver. To make double sure the firmware has loaded, repower the HDPVR (when the computer is full up).

Blank/tape off the IR eye. Don't run the Hauppaugge remote IR.exe software.
I'd avoid trying SPDIF audio until you've got things working smoothly. STB issues can cause SPDIF audio to be problematic (not just the audio....)

The blaster seems to be ok, if you don't have an alternative. Download the latest version (recent CD didn't have the latest).

Use Arcsoft decoder for playing back H.264. Overlay Renderer is the safest (most reliable), so start there first.

TW

[jarredduq]

Originally Posted by BrianDC

What firmware are you running on your HDPVR? I realize that there is some voodoo to the HDPVR and I'm not exactally recommending that you flash upgrade your HDPVR, however the firmware info on your HDPVR may be helpful to see if you are running a seriously old version, or a bleeding edge version that may have a new issues that we haven't seen before.

Personally, I just updated to Sage7 last night, and so far everything looks good, however I'm sure I'll hear from the wife the first time something doesn't work as expected.

Is there a way to tell what firmware is running on the HDPVR?

[MrD]

If you plug into a linux os with the HD-PVR driver enabled it will tell you what firmware is running.

[ehfortin]

Hi,

I have the exact same problem. Since july 24th, I would say that about 50-60% of my recording are having this issue. I just reverted back to 1.5.6.1 as it may have appears after installing driver 1.5.7. I'm still not sure however as I also upgraded SageTV7 to 7.0.12 or something like that at the same time. I've upgraded STV7 to latest beta without more success so that's why I'm now reverting the HDPVR driver.

I'll let you know if its better, hopefully later today (I've programmed about 6 new recording to see if things are better).

Anybody else had a similar problem and fixed it? Post your experience, it may help us.

Thank you.

ehfortin

[broconne]

At least on mine, it felt more like a Sage7 bug than a HDPVR bug. Well, I suppose it could have been an HDPVR bug. As I said, all the content is there - however, Sage just skips to the end and sage will play it all back after it skips the timebar to the end. I just can't fastforward or skip forward at that point.

I opened a bug report - but have not heard back. Don't know if that is standard for the beta bugs.

[ehfortin]

Now running on driver 1.5.6.1 for the last 6 hours... Recorded 6 show. Have 3 doing the same as before (no audio for some time at beginning of the show which is either slower/faster (not sure which one) then usual (seems like kind of accelerated).

Sometime it can start working after using the 10 seconds forward. Some time, it will either go to the end of the file or come back to the beginning without fixing the issue (if I keep doing 10 seconds forward). If I do a 3 minutes forward, it can help most of the time.

I tried converting these file to MKV. For the video, it works fine. For the audio, it is not in sync at all (a few seconds to over 30-45 seconds delay). So... it is not a way to fix this.

It seems that the corrupted files are missing a part of the audio. This does not make sense to me as I was under the impression that the HDPVR is the one combining the whole thing in a single stream so... SGTV7 would only be copying the result to the disks (so it can't be part of the problem). If, contrary to my belief, SGTV7 is actually getting video and audio separately or has any impact on the created file, then maybe it could come from it.

Any idea?

Note that with driver 1.5.6.1, I got some recording error as well (no signal) which I didn't got in the last few weeks with driver 1.5.7 so it seems to be better for this. As I also got the no-audio for a few sec problem with both, there is no point in letting 1.5.6.1 further so I will switch back to 1.5.7.

ehfortin

[ehfortin]

Hi,

I'm now testing the same version of SageTV and of the HDPVR driver on another computer. This one is way slower then the original one but... up to now, it has not skipped a beat. I'm trying some recording tonight and tomorrow and I'll see what the result. One thing is sure, I was able to surf from channel to channel without having the audio issue, which was not possible with the faster/better server. I was thinking maybe there is something that is too fast to start under V7.0.15 when recording which is now correct on a slower server (we are comparing a Q9400 against an Atom D330... when I say lot slower, I mean it)? However, I saw numerous other signature saying that they are running on very fast machine as well and they didn't report that problem.

Now, the strange thing with the slower computer is that I can't do the playback of a file that is recording at the same time. Actually, I can but after some time (anywhere from 40-50 seconds up to a few minutes) it just freeze the image and... the recording. It may be related to my NAS as well which has been changed lately to Unraid. I have to do some testing around it to establish if there is a link or if the same thing would happen on a local disk but I'm not there yet. The corrupted audio track was more important to diagnose and fix.

So, I'll let you know later tomorrow. It won't be a solution but I'll see if there is something I can isolate or not.

ehfortin

[ehfortin]

The problem doesn't seems to appear on the second computer. I've done 2-3 recording today and they are all fine. I'll let it that way for a few days and increase my recording rate (will record useless shows, just to create more files) and will let you know.

BTW, what is your setup? Mine was on Windows XP. The testing I'm doing right now is on Windows Server 2003 (I didn't had another Windows XP running). It is the same HDPVR and I'm using the same SageTV (7.0.15) and HDPVR driver (1.5.7). So, expect for the OS, everything else is configured the same. Recordings are stored on the same NAS as well.

Anybody else had this problem and did some testing to fix it?

Thanks

ehfortin

[ehfortin]

Hi,

Well, 8 new recording since yestereday and... no sign of the problem yet. I'm starting to think my SageTV server will stay on the atom box as it is working great. The down side is that if I want to be able to convert files or run comskip... this machine is too underpowered to really think about it. I've tried a single convert and... all the threads were running at 100% so... SageTV was pretty much unusable.

Comskip may work if I limit it to a single thread (the Atom D330 has 4 thread). Will have to test it while doing playback and recording to see the effects on other activities.

If somebody find out what can be the problem for the audio, I would appreciate to know about it.

Thank you.

ehfortin

[ehfortin]

Hi,

Now that beta 7.0.16 is out, I've installed it and put back my HDPVR on my original server. Since, I've recorded 8 shows and I have no problem with the audio not working with slow/fast motion as per original description of broconne.

So, could it be a problem with SageTV itself that is now fixed? I had this problem with beta 7.0.12 and 7.0.15. I'll keep an eye on my recordings for the next few days and hope it will continue working correctly. I'll post my result in a few days or as soon as I get the same problem.

MrD and broconne, let us know once you upgrade to this latest beta if you have the same results as I got with my first day of testing with it.

Thanks.

ehfortin