Partial Recordings

[eskimoquin]

The Problem:
I've been using GBPVR since this past winter; I love it. The most vexing problem so far is that I will occasionally get partial recordings, this has been happening since I've been using GBPVR. For example, if a show starts at 8:00pm and ends at 9:00pm, I may only get the first 2 minutes or the first 35 minutes of the show; the length seems random. I think GBPVR thinks it is still recording the entire show because the time stamp on the recording is 9:00pm.

What happened:
This morning, I finally caught it in the act. I started a manual recording of the Olympics that was to go from 1:10 am to 5:00 am. For the first time ever, I decided to try to watch a show while it was being recorded; I use Media Player Classic to watch the recordings. As I was watching, the recording ended. I thought it was because I was watching it while recording. I restarted the service and the recording started again, I watched the hard drive light flash for a while (I wasn't watching the recording), then it stopped, I restarted the service again; we went through this a few more times. At 3:11 am, I rebooted the computer, the recording started, but yet again, it stopped at 3:36 am. I captured this log at 3:49 while it was recording. All the while, GBPVR status always showed "Recording XXIX Summer Olympics".

Extra info:
I'm amazed that this one recording stopped so many times. I've recorded about 5 of these 4 hour Olympic blocks and haven't lost anything till now. Since I've been paying attention to the problem (since summer), I've only notice it happen on NBC (KUSA-DT, ATSC). I got a few partial American Gladiators recordings, see 07/28/08 logs for one that happened when I wasn't looking.

I'm using v1.2.13; no plug-ins installed that didn't come with GBPVR. These recordings are done on a FusionHDTV5 RT Lite over ATSC. I also have a WinTV HVR-1600 in the machine that wasn't recording this morning as the Fusion was recording the Olympics.

As I've been writing this, the recording has stopped about 6 times. Sometimes it stopped after 20 seconds, sometimes after 25 minutes. I've watched the segments; the shorter ones seem slightly jumpy (like a bad signal), the longer ones seem perfect. I wouldn't rule out that I'm getting a bad signal and this confuses something so it looses the signal (if that's possible) and records nothing (it doesn't even record black) even though the signal returns. But this theory seems suspicious when the recording seems so perfect.

[sub]

From the logs it looks the recordings werent stopped by GB-PVR, and it was unaware of any problem (ie, didnt try to stop the recording to well after the problem happened). This typically means either the device stopped delivering data (lost signal, driver problem etc), or the mux locked up.

[eskimoquin]

Awesome, thanks for the info. I wouldn't doubt if the problem was the device. I noticed the drivers for the Fusion5 were really old and I couldn't find updates; they are dated 5/24/2003. I'll try to get another 1600 to replace it.

Aside from that, how can I tell if the mux locked up?

Thanks for all the hard work sub.


P.S. Tonight's Olympic recording stopped after about 2 hours.

[sub]

Aside from that, how can I tell if the mux locked up?

Pretty much all you can do to test this is see if the problem occurs with another mux (like the TS Mux).

[eskimoquin]

Ok, I'll give that a try too.

Given that writing to the hard drive will begin again after the GBPVR recording service has been restarted (via the system tray icon), is this consistent with device problems, mux problems, or neither?

[martint123]

When it has happened with me in the past, it was due to a weak signal and what seemed to happen was the device lost lock and just gave up delivering data. Re-starting the recording service makes gbpvr realise a recording is due and it starts the recording again as normal and it carries on until the signal drops again.
A bigger and higher aerial solved my problem unless torrential rain gets between me and the transmitter 50 miles away.

[eskimoquin]

Thanks martint123, I believe very much that what you describe was my problem. Hopefully others may catch your post.

This past week I was able to get the last remaining $30 HVR-1600 from CircuitCity in all of Denver. I didn't realize they started getting rid of them last month or I would have jumped on that sooner. I'm still giddy to think I got a $100 card for $30. Anyway, I replaced the FusionHDTV5 RT Lite with the new HVR-1600 and have recorded a few NBC Olympic broadcasts. The show will be running along just great, but occasionally I'll get a skip here or there (due to signal problems). The Fusion would have crapped out, but the HVR-1600 handles the problems and keeps sending info.

For anyone who is looking into buying a used FusionHDTV5, I would suggest against it. The card was supposed to do QAM, but it had trouble so I had to swap it to ATSC. The latest drivers were old and since installing them, my computer would randomly reboot on occasion.

HDTV here is still broadcast in UHF but my double bowtie antenna has a hard time with the lower frequency signals close to VHF, NBC (channel 9) is the lowest one, so that's why I think I get the partial recordings from NBC.

Thanks for all the help guys.