Connecting Digital Cable Box through FireWire

[wtg]

Dctrecord doesn't work for me for some reason, but CapDVHS works fine. I wish I knew why. It just says it cannot find a Firewire capture device.

I've got a lot of reading to do...

[dark_half]

I found dctrecorde earlier and had the same problem. The source is available on his home page and although I do not know anything about programing I poke around and it appears it is looking for a Panasonic tuner instead of motorola, Apparantly in the older drivers that is what it was called.

I can use CapDVHS which works fine but doesnt get it to work from within gbpvr which is what I was trying to do. I was just trying vlc because it was my first thought but maybe it will not work.

[wtg]

Dark_Half,

I'm interested in how you come along with VLC. Both it and CapDVHS are new to me but I've been playing with CapDVHS and I think I've found a way to get around it's lack of a command line support.

It can do scheduled recordings and saves it's settings in an INI, so I know I can write a program that'll change the channel, generate an INI file containing a scheduling request and then kick off CapDVHS in the background. I won't get a chance to work on it until next week (after Christmas) but once I verify that I can get the software recorder to call the app, I'll get started on it.

Just what I needed... another project.

[dark_half]

I am stuck using VLC and ExternalRecording plugin. Like I said above I can get GBPVR to launch VLC in the background the first time to do the capturing. I was using it to watch Live TV(timeshift) and using ExternalRecording plugin to pass the parameters I stated above to vlc. It seems close but in my case I can not find a way to stop vlc in a way that doesnt appear to require a reboot to get it to work a again. Using the ExternalRecording plugin passes the right file naming convention so that GBPVR can use it. Someone would need to find a way to gracefully stop VLC. I am no programmer so I do not know how to work with vlc any other way than passing commandline. If you can figure it out let me know.

All I did to set up ExternalRecording was to install the plugin and create another capture source like normal. Selected only the local hd channels that I know are not encrypted in the channel setup and selected the exe channel change option so that I could change channels using firewire. In the ExternalRecording plugin You specify and .exe and parameters to launch to start recording/preview and to stop.

[ubu]

All I am doing at this time is have the External Recording plugin launch vlc in the backgroung to capture the stream using this parameter

Code:

dshow://:dshow-vdev="Motorola AV/C Tuner Device":dshow-adev="":dshow-size="":no-dshow-config:no-dshow-tuner :sout=#duplicate{dst=std{access=file,mux=ps,url="{fullname}"}}

I set up a capture source using the external recording plugin and pointed the start recording and start preview to vlc with the above parameters. The problem I was having was that this would work the first time but any attempts after that failed requiring the computer to be restarted. I could not find a graceful way to stop vlc. I was just trying to use tskill. I can recreate the same problem from within vlc. If I start vlc, open capture device, direct show, under video device do a refresh and the select Motorola tuner(do not try to adjust any other settings this caused vlc to crash), and then hit ok it plays. If I stop it using the vlc gui I can start playing the stream as many times as I want with no problem. However if I just exit vlc without stopping I can not start another stream until I reboot.

I have not researched it much but it was not quickly clear to me how to gracefully stop vlc from a commandline.

To stop VLC from the command line you can use "vlc:quit" as the URL.

The External Recorder plugin should kill the VLC process when you select another channel or exit from live TV. Have you looked in the gbpvr.exe.log to see if there are any obvious error messages? From what you say, it sounds like VLC is getting killed but the dshow device is still "being used".

Which version of VLC are you using? Does upgrading to 0.8.6 help? You might post your problem on the VLC forums.

[goti]

I have been trying to get this to work myself for the last couple of days and have narrowed it down to what is being described in this thread from several months back.

http://forums.nextpvr.com/showthread.php?t=19344

I checked my log file and it shows the same results.

12/29/2006 7:32:06 PM.843 VERBOSE [5] ExternalRecorder[59817589]: enter stopRecording()
12/29/2006 7:32:06 PM.843 VERBOSE [5] ExternalRecorder[59817589]: stopProgram-Process.Kill()
12/29/2006 7:32:06 PM.859 VERBOSE [5] ExternalRecorder[59817589]: stopProgram-StopRecording('C:\Program Files\VideoLAN\VLC\vlc.exe','vlc:quit')

I can get the start/stop record commands to work all day long from the command line but I get one shot when using the external recorder. I have to reboot to get things working again.

Am I missing something here?

[ubu]

12/29/2006 7:32:06 PM.843 VERBOSE [5] ExternalRecorder[59817589]: enter stopRecording()
12/29/2006 7:32:06 PM.843 VERBOSE [5] ExternalRecorder[59817589]: stopProgram-Process.Kill()
12/29/2006 7:32:06 PM.859 VERBOSE [5] ExternalRecorder[59817589]: stopProgram-StopRecording('C:\Program Files\VideoLAN\VLC\vlc.exe','vlc:quit')

I can get the start/stop record commands to work all day long from the command line but I get one shot when using the external recorder. I have to reboot to get things working again.

Am I missing something here?

The log entries look fine. The first one is ExternalRecorder telling you that GB-PVR has called its stopRecording method. The second one is telling you that it found the vlc process and killed it. The third one is saying that it executed your "Stop Recording Executable" with the vlc:quit parameter. (Since it already killed the vlc process that was running, this should have no effect).

Earlier posts have indicated that vlc does, in fact, get terminated by ExternalRecorder. It's just that it won't start properly the next time it's called. Perhaps the dshow device not being released properly. So what does the VLC message log say? Have you tried using the --logfile <filename> option to see if it says anything interesting? Expecially when you try to execute it the second time.

[goti]

The log entries look fine. The first one is ExternalRecorder telling you that GB-PVR has called its stopRecording method. The second one is telling you that it found the vlc process and killed it. The third one is saying that it executed your "Stop Recording Executable" with the vlc:quit parameter. (Since it already killed the vlc process that was running, this should have no effect).

I am very new to these applications but I think the problem maybe that ExternalRecorder is "killing" the vlc process before the vlc:quit ever gets executed. VLC seems to be fairly sensitive to how it gets closed. As I mentioned before I can run the launch/quit commands to VLC from the command prompt all day long and it has no problems running multiple times.

What is the point of allowing the stop recording option if it is going to kill the process on its own anyways?

I am working on gettting VLC to generate some useful logfiles. It is very annoying since I get one shot and if I screw it up I have to reboot and start over. (Like I said I am a bigtime noob with VLC.)

[ubu]

I am very new to these applications but I think the problem maybe that ExternalRecorder is "killing" the vlc process before the vlc:quit ever gets executed. VLC seems to be fairly sensitive to how it gets closed. As I mentioned before I can run the launch/quit commands to VLC from the command prompt all day long and it has no problems running multiple times.

External Recorder most certainly is issuing the kill command first so, as I said, the vlc:quit command is not doing anything. I doubt that using "kill" would make any difference. Surely, both commands do the same thing.

What is the point of allowing the stop recording option if it is going to kill the process on its own anyways?

The "Stop Recording" executable and parms fields in External Recorder allow you to run an application immediately after the recording completes (comskip, for instance). Using it to run a vlc:quit command seems redundant and also fruitless since the command is only run when the recording is completed (and vlc has been terminated).

I am working on gettting VLC to generate some useful logfiles. It is very annoying since I get one shot and if I screw it up I have to reboot and start over. (Like I said I am a bigtime noob with VLC.)

The logfile messages are the only way to tell what it is that vlc doesn't like when you try to run it a second time. As I mentioned before, the VLC Forums are a good resource for VLC-specific issues.

[goti]

First off, thanks for the responses UBU.

I have done some more testing with this and it appears that with VLC being "killed" in this manner it is leaving the cable box device in a "messed up" state. Once GB-PVR has killed VLC in its own way, none of my applications can access the device. I did discover that unplugging/replugging the firewire cable to the cable box does reset the device so that things work once again. This does prevent me from having to reboot.

Surely I am not the only person to try this and run into this problem?

Thanks