Graph and TVPI external recorder beta

[carpeVideo]

Yes - however you probably need to use legacy firewire drivers

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Foru...84537e8da1

[mikeh49]

Thanks. I already had that part working, i.e., I can capture with Capdvhs, and create graphs that view and record. I can't preview with Graphrecorder in GBPVR, just get a black screen. I'll do some more testing including recording and see what the logs say. There are no errors in the logs when I try to preview.

The config screen for Graphrecorder says version 1.9, but the log entries say 1.8. I'm using a dll dated January, 2009, if that makes any difference. The graph files are on my d: partition rather than in the GBPVR folder, which is a change from my previous working XP install.

[carpeVideo]

can you timeshift or record?

[mikeh49]

OK, this is weird. I can record the STB stream with Graphrecorder just fine; I have two graphs, one with the ATI mux to PS, and one with just the Nvidia TS parser to TS. Both produce good files. But, when recording, the channel changer does not run. I'm using the Hauppauge blaster with Sub's Haupblast.exe and I don't see anything happening at the STB. However, for preview, the channel changer runs and the channel changes properly. The logs show the channel changer request and show the call to Haupblast when recording, though. The channel does not change for a scheduled recording, nor for a record request from the guide. There are no errors in the logs.

As noted before, preview gives a black screen. I can use the STOP key on the remote to get back to PVRX2. During the transition from the black screen to PVRX2, the Active Movie window is visible for a couple of seconds, also with a black screen. The preview graph plays fine in Graphstudio. Should I be using GraphEdit instead? The graph is using VMR9 renderer (as is GBPVR) and default direct sound device.

I haven't tried time shift, as I have no need for it. There is also almost no need for preview either (that's what the TV is for ). But, channel changing for recording is pretty important. I suppose I could try Firewire channel changing, but I think I had trouble with that when I first tried this, so went to the blaster and it has worked fine.

[carpeVideo]

For channel changing why not use the firewire exe - its much faster.

If you can record then timeshift should work as well, that is what I use almost exclusively for watching 'live tv'. Preview should work as well , try creating a preview graph that renders then remove the render part and see if that works. It could be that the renderer you have chosen in gbpvr can't connect to that graph so make sure you test with the same renderer (ie EVR etc.)

[mikeh49]

An update:

Preview: removed the renderer from my preview graph but it wouldn't work. Then changed the renderer from Video Mixing Renderer 9 to Video Mixing Renderer. There are two Video Mixing Renderers with the only difference that I can see being the "unfriendly" name. So, I picked the one with the highest merit. It works in Graphstudio and also works in GBPVR, including the on-screen displays. I think this is the renderer I was using in the working XP setup. GBPVR is set to use VMR9 custom, as it was in XP.

Channel changing; set up firewire channel changing and seems to work fine. The first record attempt (from the guide) sent the channel change 3 times but still ended up on the right channel. The second record attempt after a reboot sent the channel change only once. The firewire channel changer is spec'd in the Graphrecorder config (Graph A tab), not in the GBPVR capture source config.

Bottom line, seems to be OK now.

[carpeVideo]

The channel may change more than once - it is checking to see if the file grows , if it doesn't it tries the channel change again in the hopes things work,

[mikeh49]

OK, makes sense. Thanks, and good app.

[keith_leitch]

A long time ago, either Carpe or Sub told me how to make visible the batch files that my system is invoking from GraphRecorder.

Who was it that said reinstalling was a good idea?

I had a system working reliably that would use Graphrecorder as a tuner to launch from the PVRx2 interface, run a variety of online TV players, and transcode their streams into files playable by PVRx2.

Recently, I was forced by a hard drive crash into a position to reinstall before I was ready. Now, more often than not, every program I try to invoke from my batch files "fails to initialize". I followed this advice:

http://www.tech-pro.net/howto_015.html

to set permissions on the DLLs for all users, but it has not had any effect. Just to make matters more confusing, it only happens SOMETIMES; the first few attempts after a reboot are usually successful.

Anyway, my first step is to actually be able to see what's going on.

Edit: Since this post, I've found how to switch on desktop interaction for the GBPVR recording service (Start, Run, Services tab, Properties...). I'm now looking at my batch files. Maybe now that they know I can see them, they will behave.

[keith_leitch]

Some followup, here: it is too early to say for sure whether this was a solution, but since I allowed the service to interact with the desktop, I have not had a recurrence of the applications failing to initialise. It appears so far that having those system processes hidden produces an unwanted side-effect.

I run FSE with my batch files minimised, anyway. It's easy enough to hide them completely once I am finished modifying and debugging (i.e. never).