A little rough

Deusxmachina · 2008-04-01, 07:43 PM

kayak4ever Wrote:One thing that helped my picture is when I run comskip after the recording. Otherwise, I get the sound out of sync if I watch a recorded show at the same time that the tuners are recording either one or two shows.

Are the recordings on the same drive, or even worse same partition, as the live tv cache folder? Just wondering if maybe the hard drive input/output is maxing out. Multiple shows flow a lot better for me after putting the live TV cache on its own drive (C Smile

. I tossed in my old 40gb drive for the C: drive to keep Windows and GBPVR separate from all recordings.

gh_speedyg · 2008-04-02, 06:30 PM

wtg Wrote:A couple things to clarify. In your first post it sounded to me like your complaint was about the visual quality of the recording, not so much it's playback, where now it sounds like the playback got worse. Is that right? And if so, did the quality at least look better with the direct.ini changes?
Also, it sounds like it's just live tv that's causing the trouble, right? Your recordings otherwise appear and playback fine? And are you using preview mode of live tv or timeshifted? You should try them both and see if there's a difference.

Yeah, the visual quality has a sort of "digital" look to it and there is some slight ghosting when I'm watching tv (live tv or timeshifted) It's pretty much with all of my recordings, but It doesn't seem to do it with other files, like dvd rips or tv show rips that I've made from dvds. And to clarify, when I used the "High Quality" settings and coppied them over the "Live TV" settings, the picture actually got worse.

wtg Wrote:Finally, have you tried other decoders? Some definitely work better than others, and you should change your settings to something other than "System Default" if you haven't already, if only to be clear about what you're testing.

I have tried all of the decoders on my list:
Cyberlink/SP Video
Intervideo nonCSS Video Decoder for Hauppage
MPEG Video Decoder
MPV Decoder Filer (this one I'm using currently)
Nero Video Decoder
System Default

Now, these say for playback, so I wasn't sure if they effected livetv or not, but I did try them all, with pretty much the same results.

Deusxmachina Wrote:Are the recordings on the same drive, or even worse same partition, as the live tv cache folder? Just wondering if maybe the hard drive input/output is maxing out. Multiple shows flow a lot better for me after putting the live TV cache on its own drive (C. I tossed in my old 40gb drive for the C: drive to keep Windows and GBPVR separate from all recordings.

GBPVR is on Drive C: with my OS and the recordings and temp files are on Drive D:. Should these be changed?

elite · 2008-04-02, 08:14 PM

gh_speedyg Wrote:GBPVR is on Drive C: with my OS and the recordings and temp files are on Drive D:. Should these be changed?

I think you have it right - to be clear:

C: OS & GBPVR
D: recordings and live tv temp files

How does the picture look outside of GBPVR? WMP, VLC - i.e. is the issue in the recording or in the decoder?

wtg · 2008-04-02, 10:02 PM

If your DVD rips are to mpg or you have other mpgs that playback fine, it sounds like it's the recording quality you have an issue with, not so much the playback. What TV card do you have?

At least for the Hauppauge devices the recording quality is controlled by the settings in direct.ini and then the hardware-based encoder of the card. Gbpvr provides the card the quality setting, but the work is all done by your hardware. You'll see the same results no matter what software you use.

The ghosting you're seeing is likely a result of multiple-path reception - the primary signal and a reflection being picked up by your antenna. Depending on your location this can be corrected sometimes by moving your antenna or a directional antenna, and if you search the web for multipath reception you'll probably find other more sophisticated solutions.

Since it sounds like you have an analog signal I'm not entirely sure what you mean by 'digital' look unless you mean static, which can also be antenna related or can come from a variety of other sources like improper grounding or RF interference.

Deusxmachina · 2008-04-02, 11:27 PM

gh_speedyg Wrote:GBPVR is on Drive C: with my OS and the recordings and temp files are on Drive D:. Should these be changed?

I didn't get fully smooth "multiple files being used at the same time" while watching live TV until I put the Live TV cache folder on a completely separate drive from recorded files. That's with HD, though, which uses more bandwidth.

I originally had live TV cache folder on one partition and recordings on another partition (same drive), but it tended to stutter when doing multiple things. Works a lot better now with Live TV cache folder on one drive (in my case, C: along with Windows and other programs), and all recordings on other drives.

If you have the temp cache folder for Live TV on D: AND have the final recordings on D:, yeah, could be the cause of some stuttering when recording and watching something else at the same time.

gh_speedyg · 2008-04-03, 02:10 AM

wtg Wrote:If your DVD rips are to mpg or you have other mpgs that playback fine, it sounds like it's the recording quality you have an issue with, not so much the playback. What TV card do you have?

My dvd rips are all avi files, divx or xvid. I don't normally keep mpegs cause of the size. Card is a pvr-150

wtg Wrote:At least for the Hauppauge devices the recording quality is controlled by the settings in direct.ini and then the hardware-based encoder of the card. Gbpvr provides the card the quality setting, but the work is all done by your hardware. You'll see the same results no matter what software you use.

Like I said, when I changed the direct.ini file, the picture got worse, not better.

wtg Wrote:The ghosting you're seeing is likely a result of multiple-path reception - the primary signal and a reflection being picked up by your antenna. Depending on your location this can be corrected sometimes by moving your antenna or a directional antenna, and if you search the web for multipath reception you'll probably find other more sophisticated solutions.

I have digital cable, stb fed to the pvr150 through s-video

wtg Wrote:Since it sounds like you have an analog signal I'm not entirely sure what you mean by 'digital' look unless you mean static, which can also be antenna related or can come from a variety of other sources like improper grounding or RF interference.

When I say digital look, I mean like a cheap LCD tb looks when your watching a hockey game. Slightly choppy with slight ghosting around people when they move (also colour is slightly off.

Deusxmachina Wrote:If you have the temp cache folder for Live TV on D: AND have the final recordings on D:, yeah, could be the cause of some stuttering when recording and watching something else at the same time.

My problem occurs when watching live tv while nothing else is happeniing, no recording, no other apps running.

wtg · 2008-04-03, 04:08 AM

gh_speedyg Wrote:My dvd rips are all avi files, divx or xvid. I don't normally keep mpegs cause of the size. Card is a pvr-150

I'm pretty sure avis use whatever the system directshow default is, regardless of the setting for mpeg playback in gbpvr. So, smooth playback of an avi doesn't tell you anything about your mpeg decoder playback.

gh_speedyg Wrote:Like I said, when I changed the direct.ini file, the picture got worse, not better.

So if it was changed correctly, you should get the same results with playback of a High quality recording. Do you? I believe the only difference between a high quality recording and timeshift playback (with Live TV set to HQ in direct.ini) is the filter gbpvr uses for reading the file. It has to use it's own parser to read the file while it's being written to. This does introduce a little more overhead I believe, but it still seems like your PC should have enough muscle.

gh_speedyg Wrote:I have digital cable, stb fed to the pvr150 through s-video

The pvr-150 only records analog, regardless of whether the source is a digital box or not. The fact that you're not using an antenna does mean the ghosting isn't a multipath problem. It's the connection between your stb and pvr. You could try replacing the cable, but it may very well be a grounding issue. Make sure both the pc and stb are using grounded outlets, and check them to make sure they're grounded properly. Try the stb output direct to the TV too to see if the cable provides a good picture. And perhaps check the recording quality of the pvr off of a coax connection or some other source.

gh_speedyg Wrote:When I say digital look, I mean like a cheap LCD tb looks when your watching a hockey game. Slightly choppy with slight ghosting around people when they move (also colour is slightly off.

The Hauppauge tweak tool can be used to adjust colour and some other settings, improving the picture quite a bit. If nothing else works, it's probably worth looking into.