STB Firewire (IEEE-1394) Support

[scoful]

I'm trying to make the HD jump but am having some problems. I'm using a DCT-6200 with firewire. I was able to successfully connect to it through GraphEdit and view output. I can also change the channel with Timm Moore's utilities.
I think my problem is when setting up the dump file for Sage. I don't have the Cyberlink Muxer - I downloaded the CyberLink TV package someone suggested, but it doesn't appear to have the muxer. I did try setting it up for direct output - cable box input straight to mpeg2 dump. This did successfully create a playable file, but Sage won't use it. I managed to use a Nero muxer, but Sage doesn't appear to like it either. I am not running in service mode (though I would prefer to again once I get this running if that's possible).

When I debug Sgraph I see a lot of GET_FILE_SIZE and Sage Hangs. An MPGBUF file is being generated but I don't see an actually MPG file being generated.

I guess I'm also curious why you have to Demux and then turn around and Mux the file - is this just to be able to change the quality or is it also so the file can be viewed while recording?

4:43 PM - Apparently the problem I was having was actually just the channel setup - previewing doesn't work there for some reason. So to summarize what I got working:

Direct dump to MPEG2Dump from the Motorola DCT-6200 (Very Simple filter - only 2 Directshow Filters!)
So far, the best performing MPEG decoder has been from Elecard. Tried the internal Sage Decode, Intervideo (WinDVD and Hauppauge non-css) and Nvidia Purevideo. They all had bad jitter problems and stalls (except the Purevideo which just showed a black screen).
I'm pretty sure there's no way to adjust quality this way, but it looks really good.

Does anybody know if you can set up the filter with a Divx conversion in the process? I don't know if it could happen real time or not, but that would certainly save a lot of disk space.

-Update- I've been playing with this some more - my Dshow filter goes straight from the Motorla to an MPEG2 Dump file and will play back after some delay if I set the source up without any tuning controls (no epg setup). If I change channels manually, I seem to have to issue a Stop from the Sage remote - probably a problem with stream resolution change?

[heffe2001]

Originally Posted by deria

Well, I downloaded a tool called Mpeg2Repair. Its a Windows based program that let me select the input file, the output file, and then have it "fix errors". It was really light on information about what it did, but it DID render the file playable for me.

Perhaps you should try the same thing on your unplayable files. I got it from:

http://users.adelphia.net/~mwilczyn/mpeg2repair/

Noticed I had left one of my favorites on from a channel that I thought was 5c'ed, and tried to watch it. Black screen, then got an error from sage about the video portion, WMP basically the same. Ran this on it, and now it works. Apparently something has gone screwy since say 6.0.16, but once I run it through this program, my '5c'ed' channels appear (I say appear) to be working fine...

Looks like it's getting this error fixed with this program:

MPEG2Repair: X:\SageTV.PVR\StarTrekEnterprise-ShadowsofPJem-7000733-0.mpg


Sequence Frame 0(14-P) / Time 0:00:00 :
Error: Packet at file offset 159717 has no TS Sync Byte

Sequence Frame 100548(3-B) / Time 0:55:54 :
AudioWarning: Timestamp gap of 1.983978 sec. ending at file offset 5686471760

Sequence Frame 107812(8-P) / Time 0:59:57 :
VideoError: Invalid Huffman code in non-intra MPEG2 block. MBA=1014(864,128)
Additional error(s) detected.  Increase VerboseLogLevel in INI file for details.
FileInfo: Last video errors span 75 bytes at file offset 6121592757

Sequence Frame 107813(8-P) / Time 0:59:57 :
Info: End of MPEG2 sequence

Sequence Summary:

File Size Processed: 5.70 GB, Play Time: 00h:59m:55s
1920 x 1080, 29.97 fps, 25.00 Mbps (12.83 Mbps Average).
Average Video Quality: 52.25 KB/Frame, 0.21 Bits/Pixel.
AC3 Audio: 3/2 Channels (L, C, R, SL, SR) + LFE, 48.0 kHz, 384 kbps.
Dialog Normalization: -28.0 dB, Center Mix Level: -3.0 dB, Surround Mix Level: -3.0 dB
1 of 107813 video frames found with errors.
0 of 112356 audio frames found with errors.
75 corrupted video bytes in file.
0.000000 seconds of video timestamp gaps.
1.983978 seconds of audio timestamp gaps.

End of Log

[heffe2001]

Originally Posted by salsbst

I worked around this by unregistering tssplitter.ax from sagetv\common, so that the Nvidia Transport Demux kicks in instead. All my firewire recordings play back now.

Tried this just to see if it'd fix the problem with my recording mentioned above, no go. Plays fine after I run it through Mpeg2repair utility. This behavior happened either when I installed v 6.0.16 or 6.0.17, OR when I installed my HD Homerun (but it doesn't install any drivers or anything, just installs the stuff to capture from the HR).

[salsbst]

I think I had the wrong .ax file listed. I now believe it was unregistering stvmcspmpeg.ax that solved this for me.

BTW, mpeg2repair was an alternate solution for me, as well.

[abasu2003]

I'm trying to get my firewire up and running. Does the firestb.msi have to be installed on an MCE device? I keep on getting an error message that it does. All of the how to's refer to a zip file but I can't seem to find that zip file anymore. Anyone have it?

[UFGrayMatter]

Originally Posted by abasu2003

I'm trying to get my firewire up and running. Does the firestb.msi have to be installed on an MCE device? I keep on getting an error message that it does. All of the how to's refer to a zip file but I can't seem to find that zip file anymore. Anyone have it?

you can install it on a non mce using a command line to launch it. Unfortunately I don't have it handy - but there is hope ...anybody know that line?

[BobPhoenix]

Originally Posted by abasu2003

I'm trying to get my firewire up and running. Does the firestb.msi have to be installed on an MCE device? I keep on getting an error message that it does. All of the how to's refer to a zip file but I can't seem to find that zip file anymore. Anyone have it?

Look at this post for instructions.

[UFGrayMatter]

so i've gotten past the audio rendering error w/ lots of playing around, but i'm still not there.

I can go to Live TV and all is fine. But as soon as i change the channel - all hell breaks out. I get what looks like the old picture, w/ outlines of the new picture. This happens when I change the channel IN Sage or even just manually changing the STB.

???

Any ideas. This setup has been going on for over a month now.

Ryan

[inseattle]

In the SGraphRecorder ini file, there's a setting where you can increase the channel change delay. You could try increasing that value. I used to use a value of 1.5 seconds before but after I re-built my system, I had to increase it to 5 second in order to get reliable channel changes with Sage 5.0

There also an option to force it to unload the graph on channel changes, you could try enabling that (assuming it's not already enabled).

good luck.

Originally Posted by UFGrayMatter

so i've gotten past the audio rendering error w/ lots of playing around, but i'm still not there.

I can go to Live TV and all is fine. But as soon as i change the channel - all hell breaks out. I get what looks like the old picture, w/ outlines of the new picture. This happens when I change the channel IN Sage or even just manually changing the STB.

???

Any ideas. This setup has been going on for over a month now.

Ryan

[Wheemer]

I just set this up with my new SA3250... I'm getting constant hard reboots of my pc and the STB at random times.

I think maybe I should be using different filters, what is the best filer graph to use?

[heffe2001]

Tried that as well, but still no-go. Wonder if I need to install Purevideo on that PC, as it's only got the latest intervideo on it now (has a ATI video card with Avivo, which worsk better with teh intervideo). Or should I do that on the server as well?

Originally Posted by salsbst

I think I had the wrong .ax file listed. I now believe it was unregistering stvmcspmpeg.ax that solved this for me.

BTW, mpeg2repair was an alternate solution for me, as well.

[salsbst]

Originally Posted by heffe2001

Tried that as well, but still no-go. Wonder if I need to install Purevideo on that PC, as it's only got the latest intervideo on it now (has a ATI video card with Avivo, which worsk better with teh intervideo). Or should I do that on the server as well?

How does Graphedit render the file?

[heffe2001]

I'm at work right now, but if the weather gets any worse, I'm headed home, and can play around with it.

Just tried it via VNC, and gota Could not construct a graph from this file, with a return code of 0x80040265. I'm going to try to install the purevideo codecs and see if that helps out any.

I just tried to pull up my grf file for my HD capture, and it says that the filters I"ve chosen can't comunicate (or something to that effect). I'm going to try to re-set that up and see if I can get it working again. Odd thing is, some stuff still records from that filter set, but I have to use the mpeg fix program mentioned above to make them work.

*EDIT* Always helps if you shut down the network encoder before you try to use graphedit to pull up the graph your using . Going to try it again and see what happens.

*EDIT #2* Tried several things, but always the same results. If I happen to start the recording or show at the right time, it records and plays back fine, but most of the time now, it seems to start the file dump in the middle of a frame, and Sage seems to have a problem playing the file back. the mpeg fixer does fix the problem, but it's pretty much always the same one:

Sequence Frame 0(0-X) / Time 0:00:00 :
Error: Packet at file offset 376912 has no TS Sync Byte

Sequence Frame 867(2-I) / Time 0:00:28 :
VideoError: Invalid Huffman code in intra MPEG2 block. MBA=831(1776,96)
VideoError: Failed to decode macroblock at MBA=831(1776,96)
VideoError: Missing 7330 macroblocks in picture slice(s) at MBA=830(1760,96).
FileInfo: Last video errors span 73 bytes at file offset 60929975

and another one:

Sequence Frame 0(0-X) / Time 0:00:00 :
Error: Packet at file offset 186192 has no TS Sync Byte

Sequence Frame 86921(213-B) / Time 0:59:57 :
VideoError: Invalid frame_motion_type for macroblock. MBA=4897(1552,640)
VideoError: No start code at end of slice. MBA=4897(1552,640)
VideoError: Failed to decode macroblock at MBA=4897(1552,640)
VideoError: Missing 3264 macroblocks in picture slice(s) at MBA=4896(1536,640).
FileInfo: Last video errors span 4 bytes at file offset 4377482048

If the encoder could be coded to always start at the beginning of a frame, I think this would fix the problem.

[heffe2001]

Looks like the error I get (at the moment I'm using the dshow player for mpeg stuff), is:

VFW_E_INVALID_FILE_FORMAT The file format is invalid. 0x8004022F
So I'm guessing the header is getting munged up somehow, and that the mpeg repair utility fixes that. Does the network encoder do any sanity checking of the output it creates, or could it be patched to make sure it starts the file on the start of a frame, instead of the middle of one?

[scoful]

I have had my HD setup running (sort of) for about a month now. I have upgraded my video card and I'm now using Purevideo decoders.
Recordings play back fine.
The only problem I have remaining is that when I try to view and HD program live. It works great for about 20 minutes, then will start stuttering horribly until I stop playback and restart it (have set sgraphrecorder to unload the graph on stop and on channel change).

I have tried several different working graphs:

Motorola Tuner > Dump

Motorola Tuner > NVidia TS Info Parser> MPEG Demux > Cyberlink Muxer > Dump

Motorola Tuner > Nvidia TS Info Parser > Dump

I think I would prefer to use the simplest graph (simple=stable/low CPU overhead?) possible.

Is it possible this is a result of one of the directshow filters that Sage Uses?
Can I change the filters that Sage uses?

[willgill]

I had a very similar problem when I built my HTPC. Funny how my main PC with SageTV never did that. Both have STB Firewire setups.

Unfortunately I can't remember what resolved it.
Have you tried Overlay? Are you using NVidia PureVideo decoders in SageTV?
Have you tried disabling the usual anti-virus, anti-spyware, extra running programs?
I have simple STB Capture -> dump.ts It works very well and have no desire to jack with it.

[scoful]

Problem seems to have been due to the fact that I was running Sage as a service. When I had initially set it up I took it out of service mode to set it up - once it appeared to be working I turned service mode back on.
I am also running version 1.0.9 of sgraphrecorder. I was going to try to upgrade it to 1.0.10 but the download link is dead. Anybody know where this has gone?

[MeInMaui]

FYI

I have posted a guide for channel changing via firewire using the ExeMultiTuner plugin in the new Guides and Tutorials section of the Download area. You can jump to it here.

Hopefully this will help someone.

Aloha,
Mike

Edit: Updated download to rev 1.01
Changes: Corrected registry file contents in document and added exemultituner.reg to the zip file

[Ted@TNT]

Mike,

Let me be the first to say THANK YOU!! These were very helpful and it is working great!

You ROCK!

[UFGrayMatter]

Originally Posted by inseattle

In the SGraphRecorder ini file, there's a setting where you can increase the channel change delay. You could try increasing that value. I used to use a value of 1.5 seconds before but after I re-built my system, I had to increase it to 5 second in order to get reliable channel changes with Sage 5.0

There also an option to force it to unload the graph on channel changes, you could try enabling that (assuming it's not already enabled).

good luck.

Ok - great - seems like I can change channels now. Turning ON the unlaod graph on channel change seemed to do the trick.

here is my next question to everybody. I'm running a 3300+ Sempron w/ 1 GB Ram, w/ Firewire PCI Card to my STB. My Picture stutters, steps, is pixelated, BUT my CPU is low. I don't know what it is. Could it be filters? Anybody experience this and get rid of it w/ a better graph setup?

I'm dying to record 24 in HD!

thanks,
Ryan