Examples of glitches in SageTV recordings & PVR-250 (what causes this?)

[jimbobuk]

I've put up some example images of the kind of glitches i keep getting... I've done everything now... got the board on its own IRQ slot... following SHS forum discussion on the pvr-250 drivers i've rolled back the drivers to different ones.. I've got images of the glitch before and after the rollback.. all the same...

My hdd is getting fragmented again (up to 50% file fragmentation) until i can watch everything i can't reformat with bigger clusters...

I did ask before about the kind of memory buffering SageTV does with its recording... is this not a possible solution to any harddrive fragmentation caused glitches (not that I'm saying these are caused by that) ... if you had a big enough watch and record buffer to seperately contain 2minutes or more of video then surely any harddrive would have enough time to seek around and store it all..

Anyways these are all on a post on SHS forum.. here..

http://www.shspvr.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=15097#15097

The images are all stored here

http://www.btinternet.com/~jimtreats/tvcard/

Files of interest to this being

news1.jpg ; news2.jpg ; news3.jpg
eastendersA1.jpg ; eastendersA2.jpg ; eastendersA3.jpg
eastendersB1.jpg ; eastendersB2.jpg

which are the frames before and after the glitch (1&3) and the glitch frame (2)

[Narflex]

What quality setting are you using?

[jimbobuk]

DVD standard

There are at least a few others who have similar problems it appears to be a driver/firmware issue... you got any ideas?!?

[mlbdude]

I also have this issue. I also get audio chirping and skips on occasion.

[jimbobuk]

audio can be affected to me, mostly though its just visual stutter...

a guy on shs has put up some mpeg clips of the problem

http://www.shspvr.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2439

exactly the same as mine.. not looked at them at the frame level yet but that is what i get... you can judge how annoying it is from those grabs... i'd put my own grabs up if i could get the software that came with the card to cut up mpegs properly...

[Narflex]

If you're getting audio chirping, then use Hauppauge's latest driver. I know for 99% certainty that it'll fix that (no one's proved that wrong yet).

I also get the video glitches like you mention. I used to never get them. I think they're only on the iVAC15 cards, and not the iVAC16 cards. But I definitely could be wrong. I also think ghosting is a problem that was mainly on the iVAC16 cards and not on the iVAC15 cards.

Has anybody come up with a technique to identify the glitches in the stream, and then to repair them? It annoys me enough that I'd add that to the code to fix it if someone knew how.

[mlbdude]

Well, Narflex, I am using the latest drivers from Hauppauges website and I have the iVAC16 card - two in fact. I have both the chirping and video glitches. Jumping around to different forums about the Hauppauge card it definately looks like a Hauppauge driver/firmware problem. Some people suggested using the .sys file from the MCE 1.17 drivers (I am trying that now and will report later if it works). Maybe if you have some contacts at Hauppauge you can get some more information on the issue?

[SHS]

That what has beening Address
Video ghosting.
384kbps audio bug so that it works properly that few user are seeing.
Audio Stuttering on channel change.
SVCD output mode.
Teletext and Closed Caption.
PAL/SECAM Audio/Video Issues.
YUV Color Converter.
etc, etc, etc.

[jimbobuk]

any timeline on when these things and the new drivers will be out... how long is it between drivers usually.. and how long has it been!?!?

[mlbdude]

Well I tried out the MCE 1.17 drivers last night. I think they may have actually fixed the video glitches. But my sound glitches are still persistent. I am starting to wonder if it is not my sound card (sound blaster live). I am going to try out the onboard sound soon as well as move some PCI cards around.

Thanks!

[SHS]

Well you want try getting new one check the forum

[jimbobuk]

mlbdude.. keep an eye on it... these glitches have gone away for me for days at a time before.. and then happen again many times within 5 minutes... i will try hunting these drivers down tho.. saw a link somewhere and never downloaded it...

[robogeek]

Not sure if this is the exact same problem you guys are having, but a couple of months ago I installed a 200Gb hard drive (along with a Promise ATA133 card) and afterward I noticed bad audio stuttering playing MP3s and bad video stuttering in WinDVR TV application for my nVidia Personal Cinema TV tuner.

I tried updating the firmware on the Promise card and tried the latest drivers, but nothing worked. I removed the Promise card and the stuttering went away. I had to update the motherboard BIOS to use the 200Gb drive with the onboard IDE controller, but no more stuttering. I believe that the PCI latency of the Promise card was causing an extended delay on the PCI bus which prevented the video and audio from using the PCI bus in a timely manner. I also tried a utility called PowerStrip v3.40 which allows manual adjusting of PCI latency settings from within Windows, but it didn't help...if you're curious about what your PCI latency settings are for the various PCI/AGP devices in your system, give PowerStrip a shot:

http://www.entechtaiwan.com/ps.htm

It's shareware and has a nag countdown splash screen, but if it works for you, it may be a tolerable nuisance.

--robogeek

[jimbobuk]

I already use powerstrip to get 1:1 pixel mapping out of my panasonic projector... hmm i'll look into this I did wonder about the use of a RAID card in the system but without major rejigging I can't really use anything else... my test in a 450 machine will have a paltry amount of hdd space (unless i try to make it record to a network machine on another machine!?) any higher and i'll need to use a promise card to install a bigger hdd

How often were your video glitches.. mine varies, and not everyone with the problem have raid cards, tho agreed they could all be suffering a similar PCI based problem ...

As SHS pointed out a few posts back, though not perhaps as clearly as it could be.. there are newer drivers that SHS himself has sourced at his pvr forum..

http://www.shspvr.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2678

I've got these installed and have done a days recording.. I will be watching these later and keeping an eye out for any glitches.. hopefully they'll be none.. hopefully over time if not none they'll be much more infrequent...

Anyone else with video glitches I'd recommend looking at the thread and trying them out... luckily hauppauge driver reinstalls seem to be possible so long as you dont try running Sage with no problems.. tho after doing it once last week my tuner was in NTSC mode bizarely and i got to hear what nicam stereo sounded like decoded as DBX stereo i assume.. pretty funny sounding...

[jimbobuk]

where are these PCI timer checks hidden... i've not had a long look but i'm not sure where to look

[jimbobuk]

I can only find the latency checks/values for my graphics card, NOT anything else... its at 248 at the moment... its alterable but i dont know what i'm doing

The new drivers haven't fixed my problems... maybe the raid controller isn't helping.. tho as its onboard i'd hope it was the same as IDE onboard.. probably not though... i bet complete disabling of the raid controller is required to get it working.. i have 4 hdds, and 2 optical drives.. thats why all 4 hdds are on raid leaving normal controller for my optical drives... another system may help but as i've mentioned without using a raid card it can't access BIG hdds

[robogeek]

With regard to the frequency of my video glitches, mine varied as well. But it was very often, even while only watching TV...and was even more so when ever I tried to do anything else on the computer. Browsing the internet, checking email, etc. would cause constant video stuttering. The audio from the WinDVR never stuttered, but the MP3s from Winamp also stuttered frequently while doing other things. With an Athlon 1600XP with 1Gb RAM and 120Gb WD 7200RPM hard drive, these things shouldn't happen

I should say for the record though, these problems were experienced before I had the pleasure of using SageTV and SageRecorder with a different TV Tuner. My nVidia Personal Cinema doesn't have a hardware encoder so I was stuck with WinDVR. Now I use a Creative DVCR and when my new system arrives, I'll be playing with the 2 PVR-250's I got.

The latency tweaks in PowerStrip are found by right clicking the PowerStrip icon in the system tray, Options-->Adapter Information. Then, next to the adapter name near the top of the window are little up/down scroll buttons. Use these buttons to scroll through the list of addon cards (PCI and AGP) as well as the devices integrated into the motherboard.

Generally, the high bandwidth/timing critical devices (graphics cards, IDE, and RAID) will have high latency values. This means they can hog the PCI bus for a longer period of time forcing other devices to wait. Messing with the latency settings should be a last resort...I would first make sure your graphics, RAID, and other device drivers are current. Messing with the latency settings (usually only if you set them too low) can cause the system to freeze or generate other errors or odd behavior. Why else would they have made it so difficult for us to change these settings It would also be advisable to write down on paper what your original latency setting is for each card you modify...just in case.

Some of the latency values for my devices:

Realtek Ethernet controller: 32
Ensoniq Video device (my Creative DVCR): 248
PCChips Audio device: 0 (not configurable on my system)
PCChips IDE controller: 128
NVIDIA GeForce2 MX/MX400: 128
SiS Universal serial bus (USB): 32

I didn't change all of these settings from their defaults and the ones I didn't mention, were greyed out and not configurable. I think the only changes I made were to the TV Tuner and the nVidia card...I raised the TV Tuner (Ensoniq Video device) from 64 to 248. And I lowered the nVidia card from 248 to 128. This helps to ensure that the Tuner card gets more time on the PCI bus if it needs it.

If your machine freezes and you have to reset or if Windows reboots itself due to an error, PowerStrip will ask you if you want to revert to the default settings on the next reboot. So don't worry too much if you run into problems, you can choose to use the default adapter settings on the next boot if your tweaks caused a major failure.

Do some poking around on google also...you may find some better information regarding PCI latency. Page 6 and 7 of this PDF document explains PCI latency and a problem with the VIA Ali chipset:

http://www.ofgb.org/reference/Comput...0transfers.pdf

--robogeek

[robogeek]

I forgot to mention...to change the Latency value for a device in Adapter Information part of PowerStrip, you have to uncheck the Read-only box.

Also, if you make a change, you must hit the Apply button immediately to make the change stick. If you make a change, go to another device, make another change, then hit apply, only the device that you just changed will actually be saved. The first one will have lost the setting after you scroll to another device. Or in other words, you can make as many changes to the various settings for a device, but you must hit the Apply button to save the settings before you move to another device or the settings will revert back.

--robogeek

[jimbobuk]

thanks .. may have to have a look in a bit