investigating random choppy recordings

[morser]

Hello,

This is going to be a tough one i know.

I've been modifying my settings for other reasons, and this issue has plagued me throughout. Some of my recordings end up with choppy video and audio. then, some do not.

This occurs on every channel sometimes, then not.
This occurs with dvr-ms mux as well as ATI MUX
Signal strength is always overkill (over did it with antenna)
It occurs at any time range for any recording.
It occurred before I installed the K-lite pack, and it occurrs after as well.

This one is important. I can watch a show Live no problem, but the scheduled recording of it may be messed up. Or actually i know i was taping a show, I made a config change in the middle of it and didn't care if i interrupted the show, so i let it restart the recording service. the last part of that show exibits the choppyness. It doesn't skip any video, it doesn't skip any audio, it just puts a .5 second pause in the middle of the playback. My processor is at less than 20% at playback, Disk is at mimimal, as well as memory pages per second. ONCE in a blue moon, the video will correct, and the disk will raise up higher, but this is suspect is when there is more to read? I don't know...

Then, a recording will record fine which throws a wrench into my troubleshooting.

My processor is a P4 HT 2.8, with 800FSB. It never seems maxed out (I've run taskmgr always on top, in the corner.)

I've logged disk activity to ensure the queue isn't maxing out and it is able to keep up, even when two recordings are going at once etc.

I've also set a Defrag application to run only at IDLE times to ensure the recordings aren't fragmented. It is aware of CPU utilization / disk utilization and runs when below 10%.

Where can i start, or what is left?

[sub]

You probably need to playback the same recordings a few times to identify if its a playback or recording problem (ie, does it happening in the same spot each time).

This occurs with dvr-ms mux as well as ATI MUX

If it is a recording problem, then its either going to be the signal or the mux. If it happens with both these muxes, then its sounding like a signal problem. Alternatively something else happening on your machine at those times has interfered with the I/O.

[Reddwarf]

I have the same problem too, but not all the time. Some recordings can be fine, others are choppy and (more rare) some stops after about 3/4 of full time, regardless of the actual length. My computer is a AMD-64/3700+ with 1Gb ram and two 160Gb ATA disks.

[sub]

See same advice above.

[morser]

Recording is Top down, and Watching is Bottom up.

Is there a way to tell which recordings are being recorded on a certain Tuner?
I have two Digital Tuners set up. I called them "DDD" and "DDD2" .

One is a PCIe card(1600), the 2nd is a USB2(950).

-Two recordings at the same time; one will be choppy.
-Two recordings back to back (the padding overlaps, I THINK making it use the other spare tuner right?); The 2nd recording is choppy.

I will of course look at drivers of the devices asap, and possibly ensure that the USB2 Tuner is on it's own USB controller (I think my desktop has 2 USB controllers).

In the GBPVR logs should I be able to search for which tuner the recordings are being performed on? i would then go through and great a sheet showing which channels recorded on which tuner, and list whether they are choppy.

[sub]

Is there a way to tell which recordings are being recorded on a certain Tuner?
I have two Digital Tuners set up. I called them "DDD" and "DDD2" .

No.

In the GBPVR logs should I be able to search for which tuner the recordings are being performed on?

Yes, you can tell by looking at the GBPVRRecordingService.exe-native.log after the recordings have occured.

[stustunz]

you can see whats been recorded on what tuner while its recording if you click on show status

[sub]

Yep, true - thats probably easier.

[morser]

Wanted to bump this to add what was MY solution to this thread.

even though disk performance looked ok on perfmon, I upgraded to a SATA-300 disk and stopped my auto defrag program from running at all.

THE CHOPPYNESS WENT AWAY!!!

It went away totally. That was interesting. I was taping three shows at once using an IDE drive on it's OWN Adaptec ata-1200 hardware Raid 0/1 card. Maybe it couldn't keep up, as the card is pretty old, no new drivers in last 4-5 years...

Thanks,

[sub]

Wanted to bump this to add what was MY solution to this thread.

even though disk performance looked ok on perfmon, I upgraded to a SATA-300 disk and stopped my auto defrag program from running at all.

THE CHOPPYNESS WENT AWAY!!!

It went away totally. That was interesting. I was taping three shows at once using an IDE drive on it's OWN Adaptec ata-1200 hardware Raid 0/1 card. Maybe it couldn't keep up, as the card is pretty old, no new drivers in last 4-5 years...

Great. I'm sure others have reasons like this causing problems for them too, so hopefully this will help some of them.