STB Firewire (IEEE-1394) Support

[gtd885a]

Sweeeeet... Wait, did I miss 3.09? Anyway, giving it a go, also.

[gtd885a]

Well, my initial reaction is positive. It seems that one of my audio bugs is gone. Using just the Tuner to Dump filter, I no longer have to pick an analog channel first and then tune to the channel I really wanted to go to (i.e. HD, etc.). I can tune directly into whatever channel I want to watch and it picks up the audio!

However, I have to press stop before each channel change or it locks up.

Also, I increased my timings in SGR and Sage and now Cyberlink filter seems to pick up the correct aspect ratio!!! Yeah!!!

I seem to have some jerkiness in the video playback, but that may be due to the Tuner to Dump setup. I'll probably try my old graph again and see how well it works.

Of course, this is after playing with it for 30 minutes or less, but so far, so good (or, not bad at least).

Edit: Ok, apparently the jerky video was because I was using VMR9. Switched it back and the video is back to normal, but now Cyberlink filter gives wrong aspect ratio again.

Ah well, it's a step in the right direction. Depending on how well it is working for others, I might start with a clean load again.

[Naylia]

Initial reaction is also good...i just glanced at a few HD channels this morning

Video: SageTV Mpeg Decoder
Audio: SageTV Audio Decoder

Results:
Stuttering when viewing HD (both sound and video)
Channel change worked "ok" -explain later

Video: Nvidia PureVideo Decoder
Audio: Nvidia Audio Decoder

Results:
HD Picture looked great
No sound
Channel change worked "ok" -explain later

Video: Nvidia PureVideo Decoder
Audio: SageTV Audio Decoder

Results:
HD Picture looked great
Sound is great - both SD and HD channels
Channel change worked "ok" -explain later

so....channel change...
Well, it will always changed channel for me, but for some reason some channels only come in if they are the first channel watched after sleeping, they do not like being changed to. I haven't tried the stop/change thingy that may fix it (similar to sleeping). Mine doesn't actually lock up, it just seems to record black. 5Cd channels make it lock up for about a minute before it recovers.

I think I'll try playing with timings to see if that helps the channel change, I think I had a slightly different timing setting when playing with 3.07 and the # of channels that worked well was higher.

Video settings were: Overlay and most everything else default setup

I'll try VMR9 and VMR9 FSE tonight

[Shredder5655]

Edit:

I can get it setup properly using the Toshiba DVHS Device unit. I can now get video using GRPH EDIT and sound. It also plays on VLC LAn Player, but still the two same problems as with the old computer.

THe video freezes up and gets many artifacting devices when watching certain HD Channels, and it still won't play in Sage TV ...

I just don't get what I'm doing wrong. The only setting I could think of in Sage that might be wrong, is that it stated 'Live TV' as False for the properties on the SGRaph Recorder device..

Could that have something to do with it?

[Naylia]

I suspect that maybe you do not have exactly the same filter chain in graphedit and vlc as Sage does when displaying the video. Have you built a graph all the way through to a renderer instead of a dump file? This can help you figure out which filters you need to choose in Sage.

I also find ZoomPlayer can also be useful because it will give you the details of the graph it is using to play a certain file. So if you can get it to work there then you want to try to set up the same filters in Sage.

Do you get freezing and artifacts watching HD channels in VLC? If so your cpu/vid card may not be powerful enoguh for HD at whatever resolution you are using.

[Naylia]

Using 3.0.11. Tonight went rather well. Show at 8 and a show at 11 both recorded correctly and play back well. It'll be interesting to see how Sunday night goes when I have three or 4 back to back shows so channel changing will be thrown in.

Problem for me now seems that while playback is good, both VMR9 and VMR9FSE working...but FF/RW just restart playback

The other thing is that I have nine conflicts tommorrow evening ...woe is me...what to do? Makes me contemplate getting a pvr-500 and having three tuners Then when I get an hdtv i can get a fusion card and have two analog an hd ota and a hd cable backup

[Naylia]

I can't seem to FF/RW on my .TS files from my Moto 6200

Edit: played around some more and it's actually weirder than that. This is the exact opposite of what I would expect by the way....

- While recording the show I can FF/RW and FF2/RW2 perfectly.
- If I am playing back an old recording (if the old recording even plays) then FF/RW and FF2/RW2 pretty much always restart playback from the beginning.
- If you stop a file and come back it does not remember location.
- If I start recording a show and then quit and then go back into it in the same time slot, I can only FF/RW properly in the newer section, any attempt to do it in the older part of the recording has same effect as old recording above.
- Also I have one show that I watched recorded and timeshifted and such while recording and now Sage won't playback it at all..just get static and the stopped screen.
- Both test files work fine in other programs that playback .TS


What blows my mind is that they work fine while recording and then have trouble during playback later

[gtd885a]

I'm experiencing different problems. Since just after my last post, I have totally lost sound in Sage and can't get it back no matter what. However, when I play in Media Player, etc., all of my recordings have sound and play back fine. I can play live video from VLC and it has sound, basically everything but Sage.

When I render the recorded files using graphedit, it uses Nvidia for video (and the Nvidia tray icon shows up in the lower right, which it never does in Sage even if I use Nvidia filter - which makes me think it's not using the right one) and uses AC3 directly to Default Directsound. When I play this graph (for an HD recording), the video is perfect, much better than it has ever been in Sage.

I think it might be time to reload again, if I can find the time (who need sleep, right?).

[eobiont]

Audio for me is still broken in 3.0.11. I did a clean install from a bare drive and still no audio for hdtv recordings. I am saving PS files - not TS, because I want to edit them later and wabt to use show analyer etc.

Anyway I figured out what to do to fix this problem.

First dowload and install AC3 filter version .070 (not 1.01 or 1.02)
Now install Sage Beta 3.05
Now makw a backup of the SageTV folder from Program Files/SageTV
Install Sage 3.0.11
Copy the AC3 ax file from ProgramFiles\AC3 over the top of the one in Program Files\SageTV

Also copy the 3.05 versions of files mpeg*.ax from the backup you made (SageTV\Common) into the 3.0.11 versions. The 3.05 are July 25, the 3.011 versions are Sept 20.

Anyway, it worked for me ymmv.

[Naylia]

I'm tempted to try TS to PS again, it just means I have to roll back to a prior version of nvidia decoders, when I try to connect the latest Nvidia Demux to the Cyberlink mux it blue screens. That used to work fine for me on a prior version 1.00.62 from nvidia.

[eobiont]

I just set up from a totally reinstalld system, and am using the NVidia filter from the demo download. The Cyberlink MUX I am using is from the Cyberlink VCR II demo. They are working well on my system.

I am having one lingering problem. If I am watching HDTV live, and the program finishes and a new one starts, my video freezes. Say I'm watching a program over firewire, but not recording it (only with the live TV buffer or whatever), when the program completes, SGR retunes the STB to the same channel and Sage video freezes up. I can still interact with the interface, and can switch to a different channel and switch back, and then everything is ok.

I think it could be a problem with SGR letting Sage know that there is video ready to go a little too early. I remember that there is a delay value somewhere, but now I can't find it.

I have traced the audio problem down to AC3 filter. Once I had it working by deactivating the filter in the Sgae directory and installing the 070 version of AC3, I got sound. Then I installed a independant version of 1.01 and that again broke the audio. So the problem might be an incompatibility with the graph I am using to record and AC3 1.01. I am using the suggested graph -- tuner->nvidia parser-> MPEG2 demuxer->cyberlink muxer -> SBDADump.

[gtd885a]

Are you talking about the in "TuningDelay" in SGraphRecorder.ini? There's also the delay in Sage.properties "videoframe/network_encoding_to_playback_delay". (Sorry if these weren't what you were talking about - just trying to help)

I think one of my problems is the same as what you are experiencing, but mine will also change channels to a different channel in addition to hanging up, because the channel change usually gets screwed up (i.e. instead of changing to 123 it will change to 12 or 23 or 1, etc.).

I thought maybe changing the "always_tune" parameter (can't remember exact name) to false might help, but it still does it (i.e. "tunes" to the same channel it's already on and therefore screws up).

[Naylia]

are you using firewire channel changing? i find that makes the channel change much more reliable than an ir blaster...also if you want to use ir, get a mini-emitter extension that plugs into the blaster and you stick on your cable box...also much more reliable

[gtd885a]

The audio thing is annoying because that was the one thing I thought was fixed. I don't remember exactly when it stopped working for me, but it was working (with 3.0.11) at one point. Of course, I had AC3 0.70 installed, then installed 3.05, and then 3.0.11. Then I think I uninstalled AC3 0.70, but I'm pretty sure my audio was still working after that (maybe until I restarted, I can't remember).

I'm using firewire channel changing, and it works fairly well 3/4 of the time. But it doesn't work very well when it tries to tune into a channel it's already on. I wish there was a way to turn that behavior off.

Edit : I just reinstalled AC3 0.07b and reinstalled 3.05 and I'm running again, well enough for now at least. We'll se how many of my old problems are still there.

[Naylia]

Try setting mmc/always_tune_channel=false if it doens't like changing itself to the same channel it's already on.


So...my .TS files look and sound beautiful in VLC, and work horribly in Sage So I guess I have a recorder that works at least. Since VLC decodes natively (i don't think it uses direct show filters) all that tells me is that my recordings are proper TS files. So tonight I'm going to try to get ZP to build flawless graphs for me so I can figure out which decoders/renderers and then set Sage up the same way.

[smccauslin]

I'd like to set up Sage to change channels via firewire. I'll admit I haven't been through every post in this thread but I've been through most. Spaceghost's post (message #335) step 11 explains how to do it but I'd have to go through the video capturing setup too and I'm only interested in just changing channels.

If there is a way to change channels without setting up video capture too, could someone point me in the right direction?

Many thanks!

[Naylia]

You'll need the exetuner plugin for Sage...that's somewhere else on the site...maybe in the customizations section.

Go to http://www.thegreenbutton.com/commun...04152#bm132994 to download firewire.zip

Then...
-Connect the firewire from your STB to your PC while the PC is turned off.
-Turn on PC
-Should have new detected hardware when you boot into windows
-Cancel all the dialog boxes
-Goto Device Manger
-Diable any 'unknown devices'
-Disable AV/C Tuner (this is the recording device, since you arent' using might as well disable)

-Run the installer included in firewire.zip
-You probably only need to install the Command Line Apps and the Drivers

-Check to make sure the drivers installed correctly, if they didn't try a manual install in Device Manager of the AV/C Panel and choose to use the drivers in the directory you selected in the firewire installer

-Open command line
-goto the folder you installed the drivers/apps in
-Run "channel -v"
-Find the id attached to AV/C Panel
-Run "channel 'id#' 'channel'

So my AV/C Panel ID is 2 so to goto channel 12 i type

channel 2 12

and that should pretty much do it

oh and then set up exe tuner to point to channel.exe 'id#' an you should be good to go

[aperry]

You might want to also use three digits (or four) for your channel number. On my cable box, the Motorola 6412, if you put in only two digits, there is a pause before it changes channels. If you do three digits, it tunes right away.

So, my command line for the above would be:

channel 2 012

[Naylia]

i believe that the default setting for channel.exe is to send a three digit number

[aperry]

You may be right, I just put it there to be sure.