Client PC with local ATSC tuner

[David]

ati mux seems to be working fine too.

[sub]

Great.

[wtg]

Sub,

I tried out the Cyberlink mux this evening with disappointing results.

The playback stutters and repeats horribly on my machine, playing about 4-5 seconds and then repeating the last 2 or 3 secs, and the continues that way indefinitely. The recordings themselves are fine because changing the mux to something else resulted in fine playback, but again changing it back to the Cyberlink mux gave the same result with playback.

Any thoughts?

[sub]

Sub,

I tried out the Cyberlink mux this evening with disappointing results.

Bummer. Its possible David has just got lucky. We'll wait and see how others get on.

Just be clear though, are you comments about playing back the recordings on server? Even though this thread mentions "client pc" in the title, the discussion (in my head at least) moved to recording using the Cyberlink mux to get a .mpg file. Getting that to happen smoothly was my desire for this patch - not too concerned about any client pc related issues at this stage.

The playback stutters and repeats horribly on my machine, playing about 4-5 seconds and then repeating the last 2 or 3 secs, and the continues that way indefinitely. The recordings themselves are fine because changing the mux to something else resulted in fine playback, but again changing it back to the Cyberlink mux gave the same result with playback.

Its a little unclear to me what you mean. The mux is only used during recording, not during playback. Changing the mux should have no effect on playback.

Can you please confirm if the recordings look ok or broken on the server?

[wtg]

Bummer. Its possible David has just got lucky. We'll wait and see how others get on.

Just be clear though, are you comments about playing back the recordings on server? Even though this thread mentions "client pc" in the title, the discussion (in my head at least) moved to recording using the Cyberlink mux to get a .mpg file. Getting that to happen smoothly was my desire for this patch - not too concerned about any client pc related issues at this stage.

Playback on the server only.

Its a little unclear to me what you mean. The mux is only used during recording, not during playback. Changing the mux should have no effect on playback.

Can you please confirm if the recordings look poked on the server?

I know, I know - the mux shouldn't affect playback. Or at least, that's what I thought I knew. But I tried it several times... if I played back a recording with the Cyberlink Mux configured the stutter occurred. I was testing playback while an HD recording was in-progress, so perhaps it's just the fact that it was in use, but whatever the case with it configured I was getting stuttering and repeating. When I went back to the TS Mux or DVR-MS, playback was fine. I did it a few times because it didn't make sense to me.

I'll try the ATI mux next. I never liked the results of it in the past but perhaps I'll get lucky like David.

Thanks,
Tim

[sub]

Bugger. Oh well, I tried.

[David]

I noticed that my cpu was running pretty high for a bit while recording to mpg format. It did drop back down to about 18% shortly after. I thought it might have to do with the mux, but it didn't impact recording for me. I already have plans to upgrade my gbpvr box with significantly more power, so it didn't bother me too much.

[wtg]

Ok, I did some more testing.

First of all - and maybe this is all it takes to explain my peculiar results - I was actually recording HD QAM, not ATSC. Sorry if your changes were ATSC specific and I'm introducing confusion.

However, I did some more testing and the stuttering and repeating only occurs when I try to playback the in-progress recording. It's fine if I playback something else while the recording is going on. Perhaps that explains how the mux is introducing a playback problem.

Also, I switched to the ATI mux and got the same exact result that I got with the Cyberlink one. So whatever the trouble is, it's not specific to the Cyberlink mux.

As a point of reference, the DVR-MS mux works fine for me, and the TS mux is pretty good except it's timeline is problematic when watching stuff in-progress.

[sub]

It'd be interesting to know if the Cyberlink mux recordings work fine if you play them after the recording has completed.

When you play in-progress .mpg recordings, it uses the 'GB-PVR Parser' filter instead of the Microsoft Demultiplexer for parsing the MPEG2 stream. Its possible this filter isnt coping well with these high bitrate HD files. I've never tried this filter with HD files, so this is possibly in need of a few tweaks.

It would be good if you could check the Cyberlink recordings when the recording completes. If they appear to record ok, indicating the problem is limited to playback while recording is still in-progress then I can look into testing the GBPVR Parser with HD .mpg files (and probably increase it's internal buffer sizes).

[wtg]

The Cyberlink .mpgs playback fine once the recording is complete. It is just playback of the in-progress recordings that is the problem.