STB Firewire (IEEE-1394) Support

[sundansx]

Are you using the latest version of the firewire.zip on greenbutton? I think timmmoore was having lockup problems with the old streaming drivers

[govgeek]

Just wanted to say I've jumped into the mix - read and followed timmmoore and spaceghosts excelent documentation and files and got her going first try. Only issue now is after the 4 second channel change the channel stutters hard. I can pause and start it again and it will be smooth for about 15 seconds, then will stutter to a crawl and either lockup hard or bluescreen the pc.
My system:
Dell 400sc, 2.8ghz, 512mg dual channel 3200, 2x160gig maxtor 8 meg cache
9800pro 128meg, and Win xp pro
pvr-150 installed but not selected in sage (just working soley with firewire for now)

The test graph appears to play smooth as butter.
for sage running the tuner to nvidia ts to cyberlink muxer to mpg2dump (I think thats what it's called).
I haven't played with ac3 yet, is that chosen in an ini or in graphedit?

Also, if it hasn't been mentioned yet, you guys are doing an incredible job working with this, up until I saw these threads, I never imagined I'd be pvr'ing my firewire!

[Diginerd]

Hmm, my last post didn't make it..

Ok, I was having some stuttering problems which I tracked down to a badly fragmented and mis-formatted drive.

It was find for SD stuff but with HD it really was having a hard time. The bit that was driving me nuts was that it was very inconsistant. It would work one second and then not at all.

I solved the problem by bothering to read and follow instructions.. :-)

Reformatted as NTFS, 64K clusters and all has been peachy since.

To do that you have to format from the command line as the GUI won't let you pick this combination unless you have a dinky little drive.

I also solved my video not scaling problem by swapping to the cyberlink video decoder inside Sage..

Overall I'm at an all time high of WAF points right now.. :-)

Thanks again everyone.

[gtd885a]

Originally Posted by Diginerd

Reformatted as NTFS, 64K clusters and all has been peachy since...To do that you have to format from the command line as the GUI won't let you pick this combination unless you have a dinky little drive.

My drive is formatted NTFS w/ 64k clusters, but I have OS and storage on the same physical drive (different partitions). I think the OS is formatted with default cluster size. I'm open to reformatting, or even using separate drives if that would help.

Originally Posted by Diginerd

Overall I'm at an all time high of WAF points right now.. :-)

I think I'm at an all-time low She missed the season finale of one of her shows.

Anyway, do want to say thanks to everyone who's had a hand in getting this far. This will be beautiful once it's working!

TIA

[Diginerd]

Hmm, you're configured like I am.. Drives the same way.

Wat's your graph look like?

I'm using the regular MPEG-2 Demultiplexer, Cyberlink MPEG MUXer, and I'm not sure which dump filter I'm using...

Also in sage are you sure that you're using a DVXA compatable decoder in Sage?

Also, what's the output resolution you are running your card at? My plasma is actually an EDTV one, so I'm running at 854@480. If you are running at a higher output resolution you may be running into performace limitations that I'm not. I'd suspect CPU or your graphics card as the bottle neck, as my rig has no issues with the files. It handles recording and playback of 1080i with on the fly scaling for playback wwith nary a glitch..

[sundansx]

What filter graph are people using the play the resulting mpg files with? I have tried the following using zoomplayer. Each time I get studdering. This happens on both of my machines (both pretty powerful-AXP2800+,ATI9800pro; AXP2200+,nVidia5700LE).
Filesource->Microsoft splitter->nVidia Video Decoder->OverlayMixer
->nVidia Audio Decoder(spdif)->Waveout

Filesource->Oper Source Splitter->nVidia Video Decoder->OverlayMixer
->nVidia Audio Decoder(spdif)->Waveout
Filesource->Elcard Demux->nVidia Video Decoder->OverlayMixer
->nVidia Audio Decoder(spdif)->Waveout

Also tried Intervideo WinDVD 6 codecs without luck.

[turak]

Has anyone that has had the audio render problem managed to solve it? I've tried installing AC3Filter, demoting sage splitter, setting huge delays in SGraphRecorder...nothing seems to work. Every media player that I've tried plays the mpegs fine except for sagetv. For some reason it did manage to playback Lost tonight and it looked great. This is driving me insane.

[gtd885a]

Well, I'm ALMOST working...

Each time I messed with it, I got more unstable. So, I just decided to reinstall (again).

One thing I noticed was that I think I had an old version of the Cyberlink mpeg muxer (just found it on google somewhere). This time, I installed the trial version of Cyberlink PowerCinema to get the filter. The other thing I did differently was to get the modified drivers from DisabledTrucker (the link) as mentioned in TimMoore's firewire readme. I think this helped a lot (although I thought it was wrong at first because it wouldn't let me install the Panasonic tuner, just the Motorola 6200, which is what I have).

Then, in Sage, I had to set my audio renderer to Nvidia nForce Audio (my mobo is NF7-S). All the others caused audio errors or bad skipping. For mpeg2 video decoder filter, I picked the Cyberlink Video/SP decoder (this was the only one that worked - and I don't have the Intervideo filters installed).

Anyway, I am mostly working. I still get some skipping sometimes, but my CPU doesn't ever get pegged, and usually, pausing for a few seconds fixes it. I have noticed that if I actually do "Close file" before changing channels, I don't get the skipping. If I change from one HD channel to another, it almost always skips/hiccups. Also, if I hit record before watching, it seems to be fine.

With this setup, I got an audio playback error message one time, but I'm not sure why, and I haven't seen it since.

Anyway... thanks again to everyone and I will keep playing with it (after ghosting my OS of course) and report back.

[govgeek]

gtd885a - I have pretty much the exact same problem but worse. Whenever I switch channels on HD it skips hard and gets progressively worse. Pausing will clear it up for 10-30 seconds, but then it comes back and freezes. I can then change channels and it will start again and skip. Going back to the first channel I started on seems to work better - it's almost like it's having a hard time properly changing from the original dump.mpg to a new one. I've tried different drives and messed around for hours with graphedit (I even tried switching around with Nvidia HDTV demux - which seems more stable to me but same problems). I noticed when it does lock up that sgraphrecorder hits %50 cpu (on a hyperthread 2.8). I am so close to being able to use this I can taste it - I have what looks to be an awesome hdtv pvr for about 30 seconds.
Any suggestions from anyone at all would be most appreciated.

Also, anyone who is not experiencing the skipping/lockups, could you please list what your using in graphedit and if your using catalyst drivers, what version you have?
Thanks!

[ftlee]

Has anyone tried to do this using Windows XP x64 Edition? Is there a 64-bit driver available or does the 32-bit work?

Thanks,

Frank

[turak]

It looks like the next beta will have support for TS files. Maybe that will help with the audio renderer errors. See this thread for more info.

[timmmoore]

I am using MCE rather than SageTV but I have spent a lot of time playing with various filters:
1. NVIDIA HDTV demux has problems if you switch channels (esp between SD and HD channels), stopping and restarting the graph after switching channels and giving time for the stream to settle before stopping and starting works.
2. NVIDIA TS Info parser and MS MPEG2 demux works and handles channel change without needing to stop/start the graph. But I find I do not get recordings that I can seek with (note this is within MCE so YMMV)
3. Using MS MPEG2 demux, and MS PSI Parser and some code (the MS demux handles MPEP2 TS but needs code to configure it), works without probelm and generates recordings that seek.
4. NVIDIA audio decoder handles HD streams without problem but plays SD streams fast, the video clocks to it and so also plays fast
5. AC3 0.70b works correctly with HD and SD channels.
6. Later versions of AC3 do not work, same problem as NVIDIA audio decoder
7. NVIDIA video decoder works fine
8. Panasonic meistrm.sys causes reliablity problems on stopping/starting of the graph. Using avcstrm.sys instead of meistrm.sys works reliabily. There is a meistb.inf file around that configures avcstrm.sys.
9. Once you get an error, you need to reboot. I have found once there is a problem, even unplugging and plugging the STB and closing the graph program doesn't fix the problem a reboot is required.
10. I used to use Tuner -> NVIDIA TS info -> MS MPEG2 demux -> StreamBufferSink; StreamBufferSource -> NVIDIA Video decoder -> VMR, -> AC3 -> directsound (SPDIF)
this was very reliable
I now use
Tuner -> MS MPEG2 demux -> MS PSI Parser, StreamBufferSink; StreamBufferSource -> NVIDIA Video decoder -> VMR, -> AC3 -> directsound (SPDIF)
and some code to configure the MS MPEG2 demux. I am still working to get this reliable but its looking good as long as do start the graph in exactly the correct order.
I use StreamBufferSink/StreamBufferSource because it generates dvr-ms files that MCE uses but in testing I skip these and join the graphs without these.

[ftlee]

timmmoore,

You can use MCE to do the capturing? Can you play "live" TV via the Firewire cable in MCE?

Frank

[turak]

Originally Posted by timmmoore

3. Using MS MPEG2 demux, and MS PSI Parser and some code (the MS demux handles MPEP2 TS but needs code to configure it), works without probelm and generates recordings that seek.
.

What is the code you speak of? I've tried several combinations of filters. Currently I using DFA's original recomendation:
Tuner->Nvidia TS info parser->MS MPEG2 Demux->Cyberlink mux->cyberlink dump

The files seem to play fine in any media player except for SageTV. With SageTV I get audio renderer errors. For some reason HD shows on ABC seem to work fine.

[ghostlobster]

Has anyone tried using timmoore's channel changing app with a Scientific Atlanta box? There's something weird about the commands needed for this box to change channels that prevents it from actually changing the channels. I've worked with him over on TGB, but we've reached the end of the rope with it there. The box is accepting the command, but it's not doing anything with it. Can anyone with any insight into the SA3250HD box shed some light on what could be going on? I can record just fine with it over firewire, by the way. Thanks!
Ghostlobster

[timmmoore]

Originally Posted by ftlee

timmmoore,

You can use MCE to do the capturing? Can you play "live" TV via the Firewire cable in MCE?

Frank

I can change channel over firewire for MCE and record over firewire driven by MCE recording and then play back those recordings within MCE but I can't do livetv. Once I get all the issues with by current MCE/firewire integration sorted out, livetv is next on my list.

[timmmoore]

Originally Posted by turak

What is the code you speak of? I've tried several combinations of filters. Currently I using DFA's original recomendation:
Tuner->Nvidia TS info parser->MS MPEG2 Demux->Cyberlink mux->cyberlink dump

The files seem to play fine in any media player except for SageTV. With SageTV I get audio renderer errors. For some reason HD shows on ABC seem to work fine.

I wrote a program for MCE. It creates its own graph manually in code rather than loading a .grf file from graphedt. There are several reasons: I want to use MS MPEG2 demux directly rather than the NVIDIA TS info parser but to make the MS MPEG2 demux handle MPEG2TS streams you need to write code to create output pins, specify their media type, and program which PIDs go to which output pins. I found doing that fixes a bunch of issues with seeking, but the seeking issue could just be with the dvr-ms files that MCE uses rather than the MPEG files you use with SageTV.
Also since I am writing to dvr-ms files, the StreamBufferSink needs code to configure the output file name, I also look for and find the recording that MCE makes and then I copy the attributes such as Title, actors, etc. from the MCE recording to mine and then move the file into the MCE recorded TV directory where MCE picks it up as if it is its own recording.
In terms of audio renderering I had a few problems. I tried with the NVIDIA TS info parser and with just the MPEG2 demux. My cable provider ships audio as a private PID type, this specifies it is a Dolby AC3 encoding from what I can work out but there is some difference between HD and SD programs in what is in the audio stream. I found all MPEG2 audio decoders I tried handled the HD stream without problem but most had problems with the SD streams, mostly played 2-3 times faster than expected. I see this whether I use the NVIDIS TS parser which sets the media type for audio itself or whether I set the media type myself. However, I have found 1 audio decoder than handles this - the AC3 filter version 0.70b but no other versions of this decoder.
Is there a way to specify the audio render in SageTV, try forcing it to use the 0.70b version of AC3 filter.

[turak]

Originally Posted by timmmoore

I wrote a program for MCE. It creates its own graph manually in code rather than loading a .grf file from graphedt. There are several reasons: I want to use MS MPEG2 demux directly rather than the NVIDIA TS info parser but to make the MS MPEG2 demux handle MPEG2TS streams you need to write code to create output pins, specify their media type, and program which PIDs go to which output pins. I found doing that fixes a bunch of issues with seeking, but the seeking issue could just be with the dvr-ms files that MCE uses rather than the MPEG files you use with SageTV.
Also since I am writing to dvr-ms files, the StreamBufferSink needs code to configure the output file name, I also look for and find the recording that MCE makes and then I copy the attributes such as Title, actors, etc. from the MCE recording to mine and then move the file into the MCE recorded TV directory where MCE picks it up as if it is its own recording.
In terms of audio renderering I had a few problems. I tried with the NVIDIA TS info parser and with just the MPEG2 demux. My cable provider ships audio as a private PID type, this specifies it is a Dolby AC3 encoding from what I can work out but there is some difference between HD and SD programs in what is in the audio stream. I found all MPEG2 audio decoders I tried handled the HD stream without problem but most had problems with the SD streams, mostly played 2-3 times faster than expected. I see this whether I use the NVIDIS TS parser which sets the media type for audio itself or whether I set the media type myself. However, I have found 1 audio decoder than handles this - the AC3 filter version 0.70b but no other versions of this decoder.
Is there a way to specify the audio render in SageTV, try forcing it to use the 0.70b version of AC3 filter.

You can specify the audio renderer in sagetv, but for some reason AC3Filter does not show up in the list. I could probably promote AC3 Filter to be the default audio decoder and set SageTV to use default. I need to check to see if AC3 Filter can be set to do SPDIF pass through.

[ftlee]

timmmoore,

Are you willing to share the code? I also use MCE and would love to be able to use it instead of SageTV.

Frank

[timmmoore]

Originally Posted by ftlee

timmmoore,

Are you willing to share the code? I also use MCE and would love to be able to use it instead of SageTV.

Frank

Its posted on www.thegreenbutton.com in the firewire.zip that contains channel.exe. The readme.tx in the zip file explains how to set it up for MCE.

Note: Are people aware there is a channelw.exe as well in the firewire.zip. This has the same behavour as channel.exe but doesn't open a cmd window to run.