STB Firewire (IEEE-1394) Support

[HDTVidiot]

Hi everyone,
First, thanks for this great resource; I've got a SA 4250HD STB feeding Sage via 1394 working (with SGraphRecorder and the Tim Moore/ExDeus drivers)! My capture graph is AV/C direct to the SBDARecorderDump (dumping a TS stream); the mechanics of all this work well. (And let me just say that Sage ROCKS! A breath of fresh air after the torture of MCE!)

BUT. I have a problem with the quality of the streams captured over 1394: the broadcast networks (SD) and the HDTV channels (1080i) both work great, while SD cable channels yield very poor quality TS streams. I know the problem is not CPU/system speed (3gHz system, 7200 rpm SATA-2 drive, cpu usage at about 5% during capture) or playback, as I am diagnosing this by using graphedt to grab the TS stream direct to a file (just running my SGraphRecorder graph manually), and checking the files with MPEG2Repair.

Here are some example results:

1080i HDTV capture:
File Size Processed: 161.10 MB, Play Time: 00h:03m:06s
1920 x 1080, 29.97 fps (25.23 fps Telecine), 65.00 Mbps (6.58 Mbps Average).
Average Video Quality: 31.85 KB/Frame, 0.13 Bits/Pixel.
AC3 Audio: 3/2 Channels (L, C, R, SL, SR) + LFE, 48.0 kHz, 384 kbps.
Dialog Normalization: -27.0 dB, Center Mix Level: -3.0 dB, Surround Mix Level: -3.0 dB
7 of 4717 video frames found with errors.
3 of 5843 audio frames found with errors.
58715 corrupted video bytes in file.
0.200200 seconds of video timestamp gaps.
0.096000 seconds of audio timestamp gaps.
** Viewing impression: just as good as CableCard (in a Sony LCD TV), better than the STB's component out; no difference post-MPEG2Repair

Broadcast SD on the broadcast HDTV channel (720p, boxed):
File Size Processed: 329.41 MB, Play Time: 00h:03m:11s
1280 x 720, 59.94 fps, 19.00 Mbps (13.42 Mbps Average).
Average Video Quality: 27.32 KB/Frame, 0.24 Bits/Pixel.
AC3 Audio: 2/0 Channels (L, R), 48.0 kHz, 448 kbps.
Dialog Normalization: -25.0 dB
5 of 11499 video frames found with errors.
2 of 5992 audio frames found with errors.
58816 corrupted video bytes in file.
0.016689 seconds of video timestamp gaps.
0.063989 seconds of audio timestamp gaps.
** Viewing impression: equal to CableCard, but with dot crawl on the top few lines; no difference post-MPEG2Repair (I can live with the dot crawl!)

Broadcast SD on the SD broadcast channel (SD):
File Size Processed: 219.85 MB, Play Time: 00h:14m:44s
640 x 480, 29.97 fps, 15.00 Mbps (1.80 Mbps Average).
Average Video Quality: 7.77 KB/Frame, 0.21 Bits/Pixel.
AC3 Audio: 2/0 Channels (L, R), 48.0 kHz, 192 kbps.
Dialog Normalization: -27.0 dB
1 of 25021 video frames found with errors.
0 of 27647 audio frames found with errors.
48 corrupted video bytes in file.
0.000000 seconds of video timestamp gaps.
0.000000 seconds of audio timestamp gaps.
** Viewing impression: equal to CableCard, but with dot crawl on the top few lines; no difference post-MPEG2Repair

SD cable channel (SD, encrypted on the wire but no 5C):
File Size Processed: 45.02 MB, Play Time: 00h:02m:02s
544 x 480, 29.97 fps, 15.00 Mbps (2.70 Mbps Average).
Average Video Quality: 10.84 KB/Frame, 0.34 Bits/Pixel.
AC3 Audio: 2/0 Channels (L, R), 48.0 kHz, 192 kbps.
Dialog Normalization: -27.0 dB
91 of 3716 video frames found with errors.
48 of 3822 audio frames found with errors.
305150 corrupted video bytes in file.
95446.421450 seconds of video timestamp gaps.
4.320022 seconds of audio timestamp gaps.
** Viewing impression: unwatchable b/c of the jumps and freezes; CableCard shows this channel well, and the STB component out looks fine. (An analog capture is fine, but relatively low quality.) Post MPEG2Repair, the result is watchable, but with frequent extreme pixelation. All of this applies, and the stats are similar, with other SD cable channels that are not encrypted on the wire -- the encryption doesn't seem to be the problem.


Given that the HDTV stream requires the most bandwith of the bunch but still yields a very low error rate, and that the broadcast channels are also fine, I think this must be a cable problem of insufficient bandwidth in the TS originating with them, not a STB problem, nor a 1394 stack problem, etc. I assume too that the STB (and my Sony TV/CableCard) must have far better error handling in the MPEG2 TS stream processing, so that the errors have less impact on picture quality (most importantly clock-regen like MPEG2Repair, but also less pixelation).

Can anybody give me any pointers about how to get more info to go back to the cable co (Cablevision in CT) with? They don't support computer capture of the 1394 TS, so I would appreciate any pointers to data I should grab from the STB diagnostic pages.

[EDIT: System is running XP32 Pro SP2; 1394 card is NEC-based with native MSFT drivers with the KB885222 patch applied; the playback test on the system was via the Nvidia PureVideo filters, version .223, which both perform and look better than the other codecs I have on this system.]

Thanks very much in advance! (And thanks to everyone who has made this great system possible!!!)
-frank

[HDTVidiot]

One other thought: does anyone know of a DirectShow filter that does what MPEG2Repair does, or at least some repair/re-clocking? A filter like that would go a long way to making the unwatchable SD cable channels work well enough over FW....

Thanks again,
-frank

[HDTVidiot]

So I remembered that I had a guide to the SA diagnostic pages, and I went through the STB diagnostics to look for MPEG errors.

Surprise, surprise: the STB is reporting a strong signal on all channels (35-36 dB S/N ratio, strenght at -3 to +3 dBmV), and absolutely zero errors on the MPEG stats. The digital comms channel reports a very low level of corrected errors, and no uncorrectable errors.

So.

Not sure what to make of this: does the STB do extra processing on the TS out the FW port? (Problem in the STB TS remux for the PIDs of the current channel? [The TS captures from the STB carry only a single channel's worth of PIDs, one video, one audio.]) Problem in the hacked driver (tape driver hacked to support STB's)? Or problem in the WinXP 1394 stack? (But why would it inflict errors on low bandwidth streams, but pass high bandwidth streams super clean?) Or....???

This all kind of sucks as the subscription cable channels are unwatchable and I have no way to go back to the cable co, as they don't support grabbing the TS from 1394.... I wonder what a TV with a 1394 in connector would show?

-frank

[guho]

I speculate it is due to data overruns on the firewire port. You can check by using a mac, use AVCVideoCap to capture to a local disk. If that is flawless HD, you can see the limitations of this PC driver.

I went through the same thing when developing my mac sagetv network encoder. I scheduled a visit by the cable company due to dropouts over firewire. Then I fixed the software to be more efficient and cancelled the cable guy. Now there are no more overruns and I get flawless captures.

Originally Posted by HDTVidiot

So I remembered that I had a guide to the SA diagnostic pages, and I went through the STB diagnostics to look for MPEG errors.

Surprise, surprise: the STB is reporting a strong signal on all channels (35-36 dB S/N ratio, strenght at -3 to +3 dBmV), and absolutely zero errors on the MPEG stats. The digital comms channel reports a very low level of corrected errors, and no uncorrectable errors.

So.

Not sure what to make of this: does the STB do extra processing on the TS out the FW port? (Problem in the STB TS remux for the PIDs of the current channel? [The TS captures from the STB carry only a single channel's worth of PIDs, one video, one audio.]) Problem in the hacked driver (tape driver hacked to support STB's)? Or problem in the WinXP 1394 stack? (But why would it inflict errors on low bandwidth streams, but pass high bandwidth streams super clean?) Or....???

This all kind of sucks as the subscription cable channels are unwatchable and I have no way to go back to the cable co, as they don't support grabbing the TS from 1394.... I wonder what a TV with a 1394 in connector would show?

-frank

[bonoman]

Are there any recommendations about which STBs are the best to use? I live in the Twin Cities, MN and called Charter today about getting a box that has 1394 on it. They basically said I could go in to the local office and choose which one I needed (since the phone rep could barely say firewire).

So I'm curious if anyone can recommend a particular one to use for this from Charter or maybe the one with the easier setup overall (including channel changing over 1394). Also wonder if anyone knows if the Twin Cities has had 5C turned on...I only saw a post from Rochestor.

TIA!

[xred]

Has anyone in this thread tried using the Unibrain 1394 stack vs. the Microsoft one? I believe the MS 1394 stack development is maintenance only, whereas the Unibrain firewire drivers & video stack are still being actively supported. I used the unibrain drivers some years ago for supporting DV video capture (not the same as MPEG TS I know....) and gthey worked very well

[emverham]

Ok Comcast in Ann Arbor is switching totally to digital so my PVR-150 is useless unless I use the s-video. I have a Motorola DCT6200 cable box and have firewire channel changing and video recording all setup and working. The problem is that I can't tune the 5c encrypted channels. So I want to use s-video to record video from my DCT6200, but how do I tell SageTV that I want to use the external TV tuner (firewire)? There are options for DirectTV serial control and USB-UIRT but not the external firewire tuner. I swear I had this working in a previous version of SageTV. I have SageTV 6.3.5.

[ke6guj]

Not sure what you are asking, but it seems like are using your existing STB with firewire tuning/recording (but can't tune the 5C channels) and want to be able to set up the 150 to tune in those 5C channels (but need a way to get Sage to change the channel on the STB).

If that is the case, you can't share the STB for both firewire recording of the non-5C channels and 150/s-video recording of the 5C channels.

Now if you want to get a second STB and set it up to be used on only the 150, you can use this guide, http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/down...do=file&id=157 , to set it up so that you can control the external STB with firewire channel changing.

[HDTVidiot]

Originally Posted by xred

Has anyone in this thread tried using the Unibrain 1394 stack vs. the Microsoft one? I believe the MS 1394 stack development is maintenance only, whereas the Unibrain firewire drivers & video stack are still being actively supported. I used the unibrain drivers some years ago for supporting DV video capture (not the same as MPEG TS I know....) and gthey worked very well

I looked at the Uni driver stack quite a bit, and while it's a great stack (very efficient, excellent for both industrial video and disk use), it does not have the higher-level componenets needed for this application. This sort of video use is in the realm of "AV/C", and the actual device driver uses lower level drivers (AV/C tuner, AV/C panel, AV/C stream, 61883, etc.) installed above the firewire stack to accomplish device use/control. My understanding is that all of these MSFT-supplied drivers require the use of the MSFT 1394 stack, and they are thus incompatible with the Uni (and other) stacks. (That's why Unibrain gives you a handy tool to switch back and forth to the MSFT 1394 stack.)

It is tempting to write a driver for STBs to the Uni stack, but as a freeware or open source project, there would be no revenue to pay the royalty charges. And, the AV/C general parts are fairly complex, and even the AV/C standards are hard to get.

The right solution to all these problems is to get S-A (Cisco) and the other STB providers to provide software drivers that would actually enable the mandated 1394 ports to work. (Or, barring that, at least provide the details needed to write a proper high-level driver so that we could use the ports.) Unfortunately, that tramples on the CableCo's STB recorder market, so don't hold your breath....

-frank

[evilpenguin]

Just curious, has anyone been able to make a graph that converts TS->PS on the fly? I tied using a bunch of the Sage filters, but I just couldn't get the pins to match up.

[polen]

Originally Posted by evilpenguin

Just curious, has anyone been able to make a graph that converts TS->PS on the fly? I tied using a bunch of the Sage filters, but I just couldn't get the pins to match up.

I use the STV-HD100 so,

I second this, we need a new graph filter to convert the TS to PS. I tried one of the old graphs with Nvidia TS paser - MPEG Demultiplexer - Cyberlink Muxer - SBDARecorderDump and it works for SD content, but breaks down when HD content is sent through it.

It seems that the Transport Stream we are getting from the firewire setup is not 100% complient with SageTV, but SageTV seems to like Program Streams, since this is what's used for DVDs, not to mention PS is supposed to take less disk space too. Correct me if I'm wrong.

We could also keep TS, but would be great to have a filter which cleans the stream to be more suitable for SageTV.

What would really be nice if SageTV would provide a DirectShow filter to either cleanup the TS to the way they want the stream to be or a TS to PS converter.

-Polen

[guho]

I find SageTV works flawlessly with transport stream files. They have to be good quality though. When recording on the PC off a cable box, the files are of insufficient quality. From the cable box via a Macintosh, they are clean and almost flawless (modulo noise from the cable system of course) and SageTV has no issues. I can seek, play, jump around, no problems HD or SD. So I do not think wanting to convert to PS will make your issue go away.

Originally Posted by polen

I use the STV-HD100 so,

I second this, we need a new graph filter to convert the TS to PS. I tried one of the old graphs with Nvidia TS paser - MPEG Demultiplexer - Cyberlink Muxer - SBDARecorderDump and it works for SD content, but breaks down when HD content is sent through it.

It seems that the Transport Stream we are getting from the firewire setup is not 100% complient with SageTV, but SageTV seems to like Program Streams, since this is what's used for DVDs, not to mention PS is supposed to take less disk space too. Correct me if I'm wrong.

We could also keep TS, but would be great to have a filter which cleans the stream to be more suitable for SageTV.

What would really be nice if SageTV would provide a DirectShow filter to either cleanup the TS to the way they want the stream to be or a TS to PS converter.

-Polen

[spaceghost]

Wow,
3 years later and this thread is still going!

[polen]

Originally Posted by spaceghost

Wow,
3 years later and this thread is still going!

haha, yeah, but know that the HD component capture is soon coming out, I'll be moving to it and removing the firewire capture, which works great on SageTV PC Clients, just not so good on the STV-HD100.

-Polen

[PhillJones]

Originally Posted by polen

haha, yeah, but know that the HD component capture is soon coming out, I'll be moving to it and removing the firewire capture, which works great on SageTV PC Clients, just not so good on the STV-HD100.

-Polen

That would be perfect if it was affordable, I could record all my channels.

A couple of months back, CBS became encrypted. Since then, CBS makes my sage hang

Luckily, most of mine and the wife's shows are on ABC and NBC.

[krazie-t]

Hello, I have a Motorola DCT6200 set top box connected via firewire to my Windows XP pro pc. The firewire port is active and enabled, because I recorded a couple of channels with CapDVHS as a test. I want to just watch live tv(SD and HD) on SAGETV, I dont want to record, but if I have to follow entire instructions I will. I have been following the instructions by: SPaceGhost and his tutorial: How to set up Sage to record from a firewire port on a Set Top Box rev 4-25-05.pdf I'm stuck on Step 6. Configuring Graphedit. Build a new graph that you will use with SGR / SageTV I have made my test graph and pressed played and It worked, and displayed whats coming from FW. Now when I make my official graph using: Motorola AV/C Tuner Device--->Nvidia TS Info Parser-->Mpeg2-Demultiplexer--->Cyberlink MPEG Muxer--->MPEG2Dump I then press [B]Play button[B] and I get an error message: "This graph cant play. Insufficient system resources exist to complete the requested service. (return code: 0x800705aa) I am stuck...Everything was going fine till this part, I'm not sure if I really need to do all of this because I just want to watch live tv in sagetv and thats all. But if I have to, can someone please help me, what do I need or am I doing something wrong, thank you very much, greatly appreciate it.

[ke6guj]

LiveTV is a recording, no way around that.

I just rebuilt my Sage box with a 6200, and that graph is way too complicated. Mine goes from Motorola AV/C Tuner Device > dump.ts . Thats it. Follow the directions in this post, http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/show...513#post125513 and you should be all set.

[evilpenguin]

Check out this post for more up-to-date directions...

http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/show...postcount=1350

[krazie-t]

Evilpenguin... I dont have the file: SBDARecorderDump I remember the graphedit needs it, what should I do?

[ke6guj]

I'm not sure what exactly where SBDARecorderDump gets installed, but did you register all the files (or run the batch files) that are mentioned in the PDF?