Recording Quality, where has it gone?

[Lao Pan]

Unless Your US Digital transmissions work in a very different way to the UK Freeview Digital that we have here, I would say that a mux is the same as a frequency - we have 6 muxes here each of which has 4 to about 20 TV and Radio Channels (4 on the HD Mux) When you tune to the frequency with one tuner NPVR takes that mix of all those channels, splits off the ones that you have asked it to record or watch live and discards the rest. So in my case All 4 HD Channels are sent over USB2 all of the time that the Tuner is active. I have in the past recorded 3 of the HD channels on one tuner without loss of quality.
Obviously your CPU and Ram should be sufficient - could be disk in out.

If I have miss understood how the US Digital TV Works - I am sure someone from your side of the big pond will correct me.

[martint123]

kiss of death?

Maybe - just in case I ran one - took a while :eek:

Code:

10:03:18 JkDefrag v3.36
10:03:18 Date: 2011/12/13
10:03:18 Windows version: v5.1 build 2600 Service Pack 2
10:03:18 NtfsDisableLastAccessUpdate is inactive, using LastAccessTime for SpaceHogs.
10:03:18 Processing 'j:'
10:03:18 Opening volume '\\?\Volume{4a9bcc5a-85b0-11de-89a0-806d6172696f}' at mountpoint 'j:'
10:03:18 Input mask: j:\*
10:03:28 Phase 1: Analyze
10:03:28 This is an NTFS disk.
10:03:44 Phase 2: Defragment
18:45:39 Phase 3: Fixup
19:22:58 Zone 1: Fast Optimize
19:23:03 Zone 2: Fast Optimize
19:23:09 Zone 3: Fast Optimize
19:54:02 Phase 3: Fixup
20:22:27 Finished.
20:22:27 - Total disk space: 1500299264000 bytes (1397.2626 gigabytes), 366284000 clusters
20:22:27 - Bytes per cluster: 4096 bytes
20:22:27 - Number of files: 4426
20:22:27 - Number of directories: 293
20:22:27 - Total size of analyzed items: 1033873182720 bytes (962.8694 gigabytes), 252410445 clusters
20:22:27 - Number of fragmented items: 71 (1.5046% of all items)
20:22:27 - Total size of fragmented items: 120098152448 bytes, 29320838 clusters, 11.6163% of all items, 8.0049% of disk
20:22:27 - Free disk space: 276175634432 bytes, 67425692 clusters, 18.4080% of disk

[OTAjunkie]

Wow!
Actually, my 250gig hd is partitioned 150/100 W7/XP dual boot with apps on each and all recordings,vid/audiofiles and Temp directory is on another 2TB drive.
I run chkdsk first on the 150gb (20min) and then defrag it (20min?). I don't bother with the libraries it's the OS and apps that can cause glitches.

[ACTCMS]

Maybe - just in case I ran one - took a while :eek:

Now you've done the painful bit, you'll probably find that running a daily "Analyse, defragment and fast optimisation" will take 5-10 minutes at the most...

Alex

[OTAjunkie]

I use scheduled tasks to #1.bat : restart and check disk with repair switch. Then #2.bat : defrag with fix switch.

#1
echo y > confirm.txt
chkdsk /r < confirm.txt
shutdown -r

#2
defrag c: /f

I start #1 at 2AM and then #2 at 4AM every 4th Saturday(unless it's raining)

[TVHelp]

I had the impression that the signal strength (logged in Nrecord.log) had decreased, so I assumed that this happened when the card kicked in the second tuner. If then the signal strength becomes too low you can have pixelisation and other interrupts (noise) in the datastream.

So to clear this up: In what way is the quality poor TVHelp? Blurry? Noisy?

Problem is streaks of blurry pixels, and sometimes audio interrupts as well. This does not occur when a second tuner is used, but rather when a single tuner is used for two recordings at one time. Signal is fine when I force it onto another tuner by removing half the channels from one tuner. Thereby only allowing multiple recording on one tuner if it is the exact smae channel - i.e. the overlap between shows. I could also add that the worst signal problems seem to come with a channel that seems to be sending a compressed signal (maybe it is h.264).

[TVHelp]

Now you've done the painful bit, you'll probably find that running a daily "Analyse, defragment and fast optimisation" will take 5-10 minutes at the most...

Alex

I do run the standard windows weekly defrag on all my drives...

[sub]

With a digital tuner, there is no difference in quality of a recording if you're recording one or multiple shows from a single tuner. It has no effect on signal quality or anything like that.

Maybe post some screenshots so we can see what you mean.

[TVHelp]

I have noticed that the quality does seem to degrade suddenly, maybe after several hours of recording the same channel. Also, I have found that restarting the recording services seems to clear up that particular type of issue. That said, I was thinking I would set a schedule to automatically restart the recording services at a certain time - I generally leave my computer up, allowing it to sleep and wake up as needed, but I don't think that initiates an actual restart of the service. Can anyone tell me the exact name of the service so I can set a schedule for restarting it?

[TVHelp]

With a digital tuner, there is no difference in quality of a recording if you're recording one or multiple shows from a single tuner. It has no effect on signal quality or anything like that.

Maybe post some screenshots so we can see what you mean.

Here is a screenshot of one of the worst. It is difficult to catch smaller ones in a screenshot, as they last maybe a second but occur every few minutes. This should give you an idea, however.