bad recording, other weirdness

[johnsonx42]

sorry for the vague title, couldn't think of how to sum this one up...

ok, the primary problem is that one of my wife's recordings was bad, and this is a problem for the reputation of my stupid pvr project (married guys, you all know what I'm talking about).

House was started recording at 8:00pm tonight. We ended up with two files, the regular .ts file with zero length, and another -1.ts file that is about 75% of the size it should be, but the -1.ts file is unplayable. In the the recording-service log just after the recording started I see this:

Code:

2009-04-19 20:00:26.079    INFO    [5]    Recording is unusually small. Giving second chance: F:\Recordings\House\House_20090419_20002100.ts  (0)

So something wasn't working, and it restarted, thus explaining the 0 size first file and subsequent -1.ts file. I notice then in the native log this when the recording first started:

Code:

2009-04-19 20:00:03.329    VERBOSE    SubmitTuningRequest(T:66,0,0~P:3~V:49~A:52~PMT:48~PCR:49~N:>13.1  KCOP DT (000))
2009-04-19 20:00:03.329    VERBOSE    getSetting(BDASubmitTuningRequestAlways)
2009-04-19 20:00:03.329    VERBOSE    BDASubmitTuningRequestAlways is true. Forcing...
2009-04-19 20:00:03.329    VERBOSE    Initializing ATSC tuning request.
2009-04-19 20:00:03.329    VERBOSE    Audio and Video PIDs known...
2009-04-19 20:00:03.329    VERBOSE    atsc@1
2009-04-19 20:00:03.329    VERBOSE    atsc@2
2009-04-19 20:00:03.329    VERBOSE    atsc@3
2009-04-19 20:00:03.329    VERBOSE    atsc@4
2009-04-19 20:00:03.329    VERBOSE    atsc@5
2009-04-19 20:00:03.329    VERBOSE    atsc@6.
2009-04-19 20:00:03.329    VERBOSE    atsc@7
2009-04-19 20:00:03.329    VERBOSE    atsc@8
2009-04-19 20:00:03.329    VERBOSE    atsc@9
2009-04-19 20:00:04.532    VERBOSE    ServiceID: 3,    PMT PID: 48,    VPID: 49,     APID: 52
2009-04-19 20:00:04.532    VERBOSE    SubmitTuningRequest() complete
[B][color=Red]2009-04-19 20:00:04.548    VERBOSE    locked=0    present=0     strength=0     quality=0[/color][/B]

When it restarted the recording a half minute later, I get this:

Code:

2009-04-19 20:00:30.735    VERBOSE    locked=1    present=1     strength=15625     quality=48

The signal strength and quality reported the second time is insufficient (I know different tuners report things differently, but for this tuner that is bad). So that appears to explain pretty much everything - it got zero signal at first, recorded nothing, tried again, got a lousy signal and recorded a file with too much garbage at the start to be playable. The signal came back at some point, since the next episode of House on the same channel at 9:00pm recorded fine (frustrating though, I don't recall ever having a problem with the signal on that channel before, it's been one of the very reliable ones).

What I'm looking for first is if anyone else has a different take on the matter?

Second, what is also interesting to me that I'm looking for comments on, is that throughout my logs I frequently get the same message when recordings start on my primary recording tuner (the Kworld atsc-340u):

Code:

2009-04-19 21:00:04.626    VERBOSE    locked=0    present=0     strength=0     quality=0

Yet those recordings are all fine. This doesn't happen every time though, just as often I get a valid signal strength report for that tuner, such as:

Code:

2009-04-19 19:30:04.313    VERBOSE    locked=1    present=1     strength=32000     quality=100

What could cause it to report no signal yet record anyway? Is there a timeout to adjust, or tuning parameter? Could any of this have anything to do with the failed recording of House, or was that just an honest bad signal?

Am I making a rather long post out of nothing?

A couple of logs and config.xml attached.

Thanks for any insight.

[sub]

The signal strength and quality reported the second time is insufficient (I know different tuners report things differently, but for this tuner that is bad). So that appears to explain pretty much everything - it got zero signal at first, recorded nothing, tried again, got a lousy signal and recorded a file with too much garbage at the start to be playable.

That would have been my assessment of what happened.

Second, what is also interesting to me that I'm looking for comments on, is that throughout my logs I frequently get the same message when recordings start on my primary recording tuner (the Kworld atsc-340u):


Code:
2009-04-19 21:00:04.626 VERBOSE locked=0 present=0 strength=0 quality=0Yet those recordings are all fine. This doesn't happen every time though, just as often I get a valid signal strength report for that tuner, such as:


Code:
2009-04-19 19:30:04.313 VERBOSE locked=1 present=1 strength=32000 quality=100What could cause it to report no signal yet record anyway? Is there a timeout to adjust, or tuning parameter? Could any of this have anything to do with the failed recording of House, or was that just an honest bad signal?

To be honest, I dont know. Unfortunately the app doesnt have very good visibility of what is going on inside the tuner card in regards to signal levels, and virtually impossible to tell retrospectively.

There is some registry settings that log statistics about data coming from the tuner card, so you could see if the data drops off or stops coming, but these create huge files so its not done by default.

[johnsonx42]

Thanks for the input sub. Would <BDASubmitTuningRequestTwiceOnRecord> be of any service here? I set all those RequestTwice parameters false when you said they were probably no longer needed (was it 1.3.11 release notes? i forget...)

As to the failed recording of House, I'm going to assume it really was just a temporary poor signal for that channel. I'm starting to get the feeling that the digital broadcasters around here sometimes dick around with their signal for whatever purposes; I completely lost KNBCDT here for a couple of hours last weekend, so maybe it's the same story again here.

[sub]

I'm not sure. You could try it.

[johnsonx42]

I went ahead and set it to true. I'll report whether it improves the signal strength reporting at recording start.