sagedct update coming soon hopefully

[jarredduq]

Originally Posted by KryptoNyte

Have you checked the signal levels on your Ceton tuner to make sure the issue isn't with the incoming service?

It happens on both the ceton and Silicondust tuners. My signal strength and quality are good. This only occurs if I use the ffmpeg option. If I use the dump option I don't get dropouts, but I will get occasional recordings that won't play without re-muxing them through video redo.

[KryptoNyte]

Maybe post up a screenshot of your SNR and signal strength on the Ceton Device.

Who is your cable service provider? Charter?

[hufnagel]

guess maybe it's time I fork over a donation, since it looks like this latest update cures all the ills I have with 2.6

[jarredduq]

Originally Posted by KryptoNyte

Maybe post up a screenshot of your SNR and signal strength on the Ceton Device.

Who is your cable service provider? Charter?

Comcast
Signal strength is 12.9dBmV SNR is 37.1dB

[KryptoNyte]

Actually, it appears that your signal strength is slightly out of Ceton's recommended range (-12 to +12, with 0 as ideal). Is it possible that this could be contributing to the sound dropouts and such? The problem that your having there is similar to a problem that I've experienced when the signal is intermittently poor - including having to Quickstream fix with VideoRedo.

Do these bad recordings ever experience video pixilation when played with VLC?

[KryptoNyte]

Looks like you also have the Prime, so what are your signal levels on that device?

[jarredduq]

Originally Posted by KryptoNyte

Actually, it appears that your signal strength is slightly out of Ceton's recommended range (-12 to +12, with 0 as ideal). Is it possible that this could be contributing to the sound dropouts and such? The problem that your having there is similar to a problem that I've experienced when the signal is intermittently poor - including having to Quickstream fix with VideoRedo.

Do these bad recordings ever experience video pixilation when played with VLC?

I moved one of my prime tuners to the new prime encoder 1.01 and left the other 2 on SageDCT and made several recordings. The ones made via SageDCT 2.73 have dropouts and the ones made with the new encoder do not have any dropouts.

The bad recordings have issues when playing on Vlc as well. I ordered another HDPrime and I'm going to retire my ceton tuner and SageDCT. 7 tuners is nice, but 6 will do...

[jarredduq]

Originally Posted by KryptoNyte

Looks like you also have the Prime, so what are your signal levels on that device?

The prime utility says 100% signal/100% quality.

[waynedunham]

Originally Posted by Deacon Crusher

2.7.2. is 2.7.0.2 and new release is 2.7.3 (or 2.7.0.3) if you find it that way, interchangeable.

And yes, if you have a working 2.7.2 install then stop the sagedct service and copy the 4 dll files into the directory where the previous versions already are (if I remember correctly they aren't all a match by name) and then start the service and you are done.

Good luck.

Wayne, really curious to hear the results of your head to head experiment.

I wish I had something good to report. A couple days after getting ffmpeg recordings working on the 2nd machine I rebooted it and after that ffmpeg would not work any more. I would get 0 byte files using the test tab on SageDCT and SageTV would throw error alerts and finally missed recording alerts for anything I tired to record using ffmpeg in the latest version of SageDCT.
I have no idea why. So I'm back to the same show/time recordings recorded at the same time on both servers being the same. Either all good, or bad.

Just within the last couple days I did find something interesting. Those recordings that were completely unplayable in SageTV (worked in VLC on all machines and WMP on my main machine, but not WMP on either of the servers) would play if I used SageTVs built in conversion utility.
I tried several different conversion settings and they all would play. A slight oddity though. On both machines the entire Sunday night last week on Fox would not play. Running them through the conversion utility on my original server would play, but with in addition to the normal soundtrack there was what I would call the "audio books" track. i.e. "Peter plays poker with his friends in his basement".
On the old server that entire nights recordings did that. On the second server all but one of the converted recordings played normally with the last one having the extra track.

This kind of tracks with another oddity I see with the unplayable recordings. If you call up the properties of the file in Windows Explorer and look at the details tab the audio and video portions are blank. Playable recordings in SageTV have those items populated with the proper info.
So I "think" SageTV cannot figure out the information and that is why it it freezes and eventually drops back out.

[phelme]

Originally Posted by jarredduq

I moved one of my prime tuners to the new prime encoder 1.01 and left the other 2 on SageDCT and made several recordings. The ones made via SageDCT 2.73 have dropouts and the ones made with the new encoder do not have any dropouts.

This has been my experience as well. As much as I give endless thanks for Andy's work on SageDCT and how it got us all through a couple years (I hope you all were donors!), the Prime Encoder appears to be a cleaner solution.

[nyplayer]

Originally Posted by phelme

This has been my experience as well. As much as I give endless thanks for Andy's work on SageDCT and how it got us all through a couple years (I hope you all were donors!), the Prime Encoder appears to be a cleaner solution.

I agree that is why I use the Prime Encoder also with my DLNA enabled HD Homerun OTA tuners. The way SageTv muxes to mpg totally messes up certain recordings. And if you choose not to encode to mpg then you get some unplayable TS files.

[KryptoNyte]

Originally Posted by phelme

This has been my experience as well. As much as I give endless thanks for Andy's work on SageDCT and how it got us all through a couple years (I hope you all were donors!), the Prime Encoder appears to be a cleaner solution ...

... unless the user is using a Ceton tuner of course.

[jarredduq]

I switched over from 1 4-tuner ceton to two hdhomerun prime tuners once comcast told me the second cable card was free.

Again, not knocking SageDCT, as it worked well for a long time until comcast made changes to their streams. The new hdhomerun encoder works great. I would say I only get a pixelation glitch on 1 out of 30 recordings, compared with 29 out of 30 with SageDCT.

Just to note it wasn't the fault of the ceton tuner, as I got the same glitches using SageDCT with the hdhomerun tuners as well.

[Telecore]

I was running two HDHR Prime's with SageDCT a couple of years back. No matter what I did (installing Intel NIC card, changing networks settings, etc) I would always get some minor glitches, even though this was on a gigabit LAN. I switched to a Ceton 6 PCIe card with SageDCT and have been glitch free with SageDCT for a while now.

[KryptoNyte]

Originally Posted by Telecore

I was running two HDHR Prime's with SageDCT a couple of years back. No matter what I did (installing Intel NIC card, changing networks settings, etc) I would always get some minor glitches, even though this was on a gigabit LAN. I switched to a Ceton 6 PCIe card with SageDCT and have been glitch free with SageDCT for a while now.

Did you apply the updated SageDCT files mentioned in this thread? If so, was there any improvement, or perhaps no improvement was necessary?

Using just one device (and just one cablecard), plugged directly into the motherboard, that's a good system for 6 tuners. I noticed this other end user is getting a lot of partial green-screen flashes with the HDHomeRun's, which I rarely if ever get with the Ceton (pcie 4-tuner).

[Telecore]

I did apply the latest update but can't really tell if there's an improvement as it was already working well. I used to get green flashes with the HDHR's but no more. I also retired my ATSC HDHR's and started using an Avermedia PCIe dual ATSC tuner instead. My experience is that "inside the box" (PCIe) is better than outside the box (HDHR Prime - ethernet).

[nyplayer]

Originally Posted by Telecore

I did apply the latest update but can't really tell if there's an improvement as it was already working well. I used to get green flashes with the HDHR's but no more. I also retired my ATSC HDHR's and started using an Avermedia PCIe dual ATSC tuner instead. My experience is that "inside the box" (PCIe) is better than outside the box (HDHR Prime - ethernet).

I found the opposite outside the box HDHR Prime is better also with the soon to be released HD HR DVR which will record DRM that only WMC can do currently that will make an unbeatable combo unless the PCIe Tuners can come up with something similar. Plus if the Server ever takes a motherboard hit etc.. The HD Homerun primes can still be used. You would need a backup PC with PCIe to use internal cards.

[KryptoNyte]

Originally Posted by Telecore

I did apply the latest update but can't really tell if there's an improvement as it was already working well. I used to get green flashes with the HDHR's but no more. I also retired my ATSC HDHR's and started using an Avermedia PCIe dual ATSC tuner instead. My experience is that "inside the box" (PCIe) is better than outside the box (HDHR Prime - ethernet).

Thx.

[JustFred]

How do we contact Andy? Long ago I made a donation, but never got around to downloading 2.7.2. With the Comcast problems I've been having lately, I'm seriously motivated to get the full 2.7.3 pkg. Problem is, I can't d/l 2.7.3 from his site (and 2.7.2 is gone). I tried sending email via the link on his blog, but it bounced. Any suggestions about how I can get the files or contact Andy?

[FriscoJohn]

JustFred,

This is how I did it. First register as a user on www.babgvant.com then click the "Donate" button which is to the upper right of the opening screen of www.babgvant.com homepage. Clicking the "Donate" button takes you to a Paypal page where you can contribute your $5.00.

Hope this helps.

Edit: Oops, too quick on the draw. Re-reading your post I see that you already donated and are, presumably, a registered user of the Andy's website. Try this, click on the "Downloads" link on the homepage then look at the left of the Downloads' screen where it says "Browse Folders". There should be a SageTV folder under that and under the SageTV folder should be one named "Limited Access". That is where the download for SageDCT 2.7.3 is. I downloaded it without problems a couple of weeks ago.

If you don't have the Limited Access folder under the SageTV folder then something got glitched and you don't have full access, in which case only Andy can fix it.

Good luck.