Sagetv Beta 2.2.2 audio sync problem

[cummings66]

On this beta which I am evaluating in order to determine whether or not I want to buy SageTV I have an intermittant problem with the audio on LiveTv not being in sync. It can sometimes be out almost half a second at worst.

I am using the beta because the 2.1 version would lock up almost every time I used FF or Rew, sometimes when I stopped playback. The beta has almost completely fixed those issues and I'm impressed with it so far, but because I have maybe a week left of testing I'd like to see if I can get the audio sync fixed. It does not seem to matter whether or not I use the hardware option or not, beyond the fact that the monitor will display video when I turn off the hardware part, and the CPU load will go up to somewhere around 10 - 20 %. I'm guessing that the hardware decoding option doesn't really disable the TV out decoding, but I'm not sure about that.

My system is a P4 2.5 Gig based on the Asus P4PE motherboard with 1 gig of Micron Ram. I am using a Maxtor 160 gig HD, not SATA. Nothing is overclocked. I have a PVR-350 and am using the video out with hardware encoding enabled, gives me anywhere from 0 to 2 % cpu usage by sagetv. My video card is an FX5900 128MB VIVO from chaintech. I am using all the latest drivers as of 2 days ago. All this runs on XP Pro with SP2.

If I've overlooked something somebody needs to know to help I'd be glad to post that. So, other than the audio being out of sync it is the most reliable program I've run and I hope this can be fixed. Suggestions?

[Opus4]

You might want to specify how things are connected for input & output for video & audio. (You mentioned using the 350's TV-out... how about the audio out?) Also, how do you have the video & audio configured in Detailed Setups's Video & Audio tabs?

- Andy

[cummings66]

It is hooked up using composite video and audio from my GI 650 to the AV input on the PVR-650. The outputs are composite and audio out to the stereo, the internal sound card is not hooked up to the stereo. I can hear the audio from the shows on my computer if I have those speakers on, so it is somehow getting to them and I assumed that it was supposed to be mirrored via the system audio as well?

The tabs are now at the system default settings because it's not better or worse, I had tried all the options with no noticeable changes in other words. What those exact options were/are I would have to post back after work because I don't have access from here, but I seem to recall I could select intervideo audio codec or system default. The problem seems to be worse if I use DVD Standard quality rather than great if that makes any difference.

There might have been one other codec available as well, maybe one for the card? I think I remember selecting on installation those Hauppage ones for both video and audio.

[cummings66]

OK, Sage crashed big time on me and I had to start from scratch again, the saved sage.properties and wiz.bin seemed to have issues with my channel listings. The crash/lockup of the computer occured when I switched from the composite 2 input to the tuner to watch channel 38, it changed then locked up. Upon rebooting the program acted like it does on a clean install and I had to choose everything all over again.

The odd thing is that the old sage.properties was 90k and the new one is over 600k. I'm not sure why it grew so large.

But, back to the audio problem which exists. I have for the decoders a sage one and the Hauppage Intervideo one. Both of them have issues with the audio not being in sync, although the audio one has a plain mpeg choice as well.

I am using the 350 out to tv as well as the audio out from the PTV-350.

[Opus4]

Since you are using the auto + video out of the 350, that card should be handling all of the decoding. Those other settings are for the software decoders & have nothing to do with the 350 -- in fact, you can turn off software decoding completely by going to Detailed Setup -> Multimedia -> enable Hardware Decoding Only.

I don't know enough about the 350 to know why its own decoder might be getting the viedo & audio out of sync, but someone else just commented on it too in this thread.

Your properties file probably got quite large because there is now a bunch of junk in it from the crash. I would delete the old properties file & its backup and start again. The 350 just doesn't seem stable on a lot of systems, though some people have said they had better luck after adding extra cooling for the card.

- Andy