Theater 550 - Sound loses sync with video...

[ngfrazier]

Firstly, let me thank Sub for an otherwise excellent program. GB-PVR is very close to being a pay-worthy program. I think with enough people working the bugs out GB-PVR could offer some stiff competition. Anyways, back to my problem....

OK, the BAD :mad: : The sound loses sync with the video on LiveTV. No matter what combination of decoders I try, the sound will not stay synchronized. The included Cyberlink PowerEnema software doesn't lose sound synchronization, so this seems to be a GB-PVR issue. The following are my choices for software MPEG-2 playback:

===Video Decoder===
System Default
NVIDIA Video Decoder
Cyberlink Video/SP Decoder

===Audio Decoder===
System Default
MPEG Audio Decoder
NVIDIA Audio Decoder
Cyberlink Audio Decoder

===Audio Renderer===
System Default
NVIDIA nForce Audio
Cyberlink Audio Renderer
Cyberlink Audio Renderer (PDDVD6)
Default DirectSound Device
Default WaveOut Device
DirectSound: NVIDIA nForce Audio

The GOOD : Oh, WOW does my TV look good with the PowerDVD 6 decoder! Cyberlink’s CLEV-2 decodes better than anything I have ever seen. The colors and contrast are simply amazing! And this is coming from a guy who has been using Dscaler for years! This is why I’d like to get GB-PVR working with my Theater 550 Pro. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

My RIG:
Abit NF7-S
AMD Athlon XP @ 2.4 Ghz (actual)
1 GB PC3200
NVIDIA GeForce 6800 NU (driver 71.89 WHQL)
200GB x 2 Seagate 7200.7
MSI Theater 550 Pro (driver 6.14.10.66 WHQL)
WinXP SP2 (fully updated)

[sub]

If you're having sync problems with this card in live tv (live preview mode), then I suspect its a bug with the ATI drivers.

Try disabling the live preview mode (on the misc tab), then it will be closer to the way Power Cinema uses the card.

[ngfrazier]

Sub's suggestion works!

Unchecking "LiveTV" corrects the sound-lag problem. I think you are right about the drivers: the Theater 550 is still a new chip and no doubt ATI needs to refine them.

On a side note, I have a couple of observations... I could swear that GB-PVR "LiveTV" looked better than watching the timeshifted material as BeyondTV and PowerEnima do. Is the difference in how GB-PVR accesses the tuner or the stream before it is compressed by the encoder? Whatever the difference, it looked far better than other programs I tried (using the PowerDVD decoder). Another benefit to GB-PVR is the nearly-instant channel change (on LiveTV mode). Also, GB-PVR (at least on my system) is lightning fast--especially compared to the horrendously slow PowerEnema software which makes me want to bash my head into the computer! Anyways, thanks for the quick replies. I hope this thread may help some of you Theater 550 owners.

[andlju]

I actually had a similar issue with my WinTV Hauppauge PVR USB2. It had no problems whatsoever with sync when recording or using timeshifted LiveTV. However, if I tried using live preview mode I never got the video and audio to sync properly.

Yesterday I think I finally figured out the problem. It's not with the MPEG2 decoders (they are not involved at all in live preview mode, right?), but rather with the deinterlace filter. I've always had it set to "none" since I thought that would give me the best performance. But after setting it to "Encoder pass-through" (?) I no longer have any OOS problems!

[ngfrazier]

Update: LiveTV mode still does not work with the latest version of gbpvr for me. No matter what I try, I cannot seem to get LiveTV mode working without sound-sync issues. When I try to use the "Encoder-pass through" I get the the following:

"Error: Object reference not set to an instance of an object."

The following is an excerpt from my "GBPVR.exe-native.log" file:

=========
19:17:07.609 VERBOSE ConexantRecorder::StopRecording()
19:17:07.609 VERBOSE ConexantRecorder::StartRecording(1, 1, 39, 0)
19:17:07.609 VERBOSE getSetting(DeinterlaceMethod)
19:17:07.609 VERBOSE Capture Device is based on BlackBird architecture
19:17:07.609 VERBOSE Capture Device is using Conexant (derived) drivers
19:17:07.609 VERBOSE Loading filter names
19:17:07.609 VERBOSE Found names:
19:17:07.609 VERBOSE ATI AVStream Analog Xbar
19:17:07.609 VERBOSE ATI AVStream Analog Capture
19:17:07.609 VERBOSE ATI AVStream Analog Tuner
19:17:07.609 VERBOSE ATI AVStream Analog TV Audio
19:17:07.625 VERBOSE ConnectPins: 'Analog Audio' to 'TVAudio In'
19:17:07.625 VERBOSE ConnectPins: 'Audio Decoder Out' to 'ATI Analog Audio Input'
19:17:07.625 VERBOSE Looking for encoder filter
19:17:07.625 VERBOSE - ATI AVStream MPEG2 Multiplexer
19:17:07.640 VERBOSE ConnectPins: 'ATI Audio Decoder PCM Output' to 'ATI MUX Audio PCM Input'
19:17:07.656 VERBOSE put_Mode(AMTUNER_MODE_TV)
19:17:07.656 VERBOSE put_CountryCode(1)
19:17:07.656 VERBOSE put_TuningSpace(1)
19:17:07.656 VERBOSE put_InputType(0, 0)
19:17:07.656 VERBOSE put_ConnectInput(0)
19:17:07.656 VERBOSE put_Channel(39, AMTUNER_SUBCHAN_DEFAULT, AMTUNER_SUBCHAN_DEFAULT)
19:17:08.234 VERBOSE get_VideoFrequency() returns 313250000
19:17:08.234 VERBOSE get_CountryCode() returns 1
19:17:08.234 VERBOSE ConexantRecorder::SetConfigurationDefault()
19:17:08.234 VERBOSE About to set BITRATE MODE
19:17:08.234 VERBOSE About to set BITRATE
19:17:08.234 VERBOSE DEVICE Min: 2000000 Max: 9000000 Stepping: 1000000
19:17:08.250 VERBOSE DEVICE BITRATE: 5000000
19:17:08.250 VERBOSE About to set PEAK BITRATE
19:17:08.250 VERBOSE DEVICE Min: 4000000 Max: 15000000 Stepping: 1000000
19:17:08.250 VERBOSE DEVICE PEAK BITRATE: 7000000
19:17:08.250 VERBOSE getSetting(ListGraphFilters)
19:17:08.250 VERBOSE Graph contains the following filters:
19:17:08.250 VERBOSE - MPEG-2 Demultiplexer
19:17:08.250 VERBOSE - Encoder
19:17:08.250 VERBOSE - Capture
19:17:08.250 VERBOSE - ATI AVStream Analog Xbar
19:17:08.250 VERBOSE - TV Audio
19:17:08.250 VERBOSE - TV Tuner
19:17:08.250 VERBOSE getSetting(SaveGraphFiles)
19:17:08.250 VERBOSE ConexantRecorder::StartRecording() done
19:17:08.250 INFO DirectShowPlayerBase::playLiveStream(pGB, 'MPEG-2 Demultiplexer', 'Video Pin', 'Color Converter', 'Out', 'MPEG-2 Demultiplexer', 'Audio Pin', hwnd)
19:17:08.250 VERBOSE Stopping previous graph
19:17:08.406 VERBOSE getSetting(PreferredAudioRenderer)
19:17:08.421 VERBOSE audio renderer filter: CyberLink Audio Renderer (PDVD6)
19:17:08.421 VERBOSE getSetting(PreferredDecoder)
19:17:08.484 VERBOSE video decoder filter: CyberLink Video/SP Decoder
19:17:08.484 VERBOSE getSetting(PreferredAudioDecoder)
19:17:08.484 VERBOSE audio decoder filter: CyberLink Audio Decoder
19:17:08.484 VERBOSE getSetting(DeinterlaceMethod)
19:17:08.500 VERBOSE FindFilterByName failed to locate filter: Encoder pass-through

=========:confused:

[sub]

Try using a different MPEG2 decoder, some of them dont like the 'encoder pass-through'.

If you dont go through the encoder, the current ATI drivers seem to make no attempt to sync audio/video, so you pretty much have to use the 'encoder pass-through' or disable live preview mode.