playback issues onlyunder NPVR

[toomanyhandles]

Does anyone have playback issues under XP and NPVR?

Specifically, most programs will only have black video, audio is present. Some few play back Ok. Live playback is always black video, audio present, unless I've intentionally broken it by audio decoder choice.

Same recording plays back perfectly in VLC, so the recording is OK. Quality is a little fuzzy, I have a bit noisy digital cable going thru a convertor to analog hauppauge hvr-1600.

WinTV 7 plays live, plays recorded items fine.

I've tried EVR, VRM9, VMR9 enhanced decoders, installed SAF pack to try ffdshow.

The only thing that fails is NPVR. i've had this issue for at least three release, posted about it once before.

Basically I use npvr to record stuff and I've just been playing back in VLC.

GBPVR is still installed but not running, a long while back I tried playing some of these recordings in gbpvr and they played.

The only thing that I can think is doing it is the noise in the recording; but I don't know why npvr would have issue when vmr9 decode in gbpvr does not. Nor VLC, etc etc.

I've kinda given up spending time trying to fix this for quite a while due to lack of time, that I'm not sure what would be useful to post here for troubleshooting. I doubt graphics card chipset or recording issues since everything else is happy.

Any thoughts? Mention any util output or logs useful to attach, I'll do so.

Thanks!

[johnsonx42]

try playing some recordings that don't play, and post your NPVR.log showing the attempt.

[sub]

Specifically, most programs will only have black video, audio is present. Some few play back Ok. Live playback is always black video, audio present, unless I've intentionally broken it by audio decoder choice.

From your description it just sounds like it's related to the video decoder you're using.

What type of video are you trying to watch MPEG2 or H.264? and what video decoder do you have selected for that?

[toomanyhandles]

what type? I don't see a way for me to control the type that is made. HVR-1600, analog input. Recordings made are with .ts extension.

I think the issue is that when npvr is writing this, its not properly recording the stream type, I do get an informative error from VLC often, "could not determine stream type".

It seems many here have the same issue.

[sub]

Ah, I missed the "HVR-1600" part of your post. Your recordings are MPEG2, so your missing video is almost certainly down to what MPEG2 decoder you're using.

[toomanyhandles]

I've tried every decoder available by default, whatever the source, and also every decoder that SAF6 loaded. Just ran thru the entire gamut this past hour, both for renders and decoders. Whats the best way to get a list of everything available on the box?

RE: playback and logs: there are no logs being generated that I can find, even looking at recently modified files.

Would you expect that VLC would pop up an information message: "can't determine stream type" when playing a mpg format file created by NPVR?

[sub]

I've tried every decoder available by default, whatever the source, and also every decoder that SAF6 loaded. Just ran thru the entire gamut this past hour, both for renders and decoders. Whats the best way to get a list of everything available on the box?

I'm not aware of anything to give you a list. What MPEG2 decoders did you try? I can probably give you an indication of which of those have been confirmed as working in the past.

I have no idea what SAF6 installs.

RE: playback and logs: there are no logs being generated that I can find, even looking at recently modified files.

On XP the logs are in C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\NPVR\logs. Reproduce the problem, then zip and attach the npvr.log.

Would you expect that VLC would pop up an information message: "can't determine stream type" when playing a mpg format file created by NPVR?

npvr doesn't create .mpg files. If you mean .ts file, I'm not aware of any issues with this. It's probably just VLC misreporting this. If you want to put a small sample file somewhere, I'm happy download it and take a look.

[toomanyhandles]

I saw a mention in another thread about disabling the misc2 setting for "use alternate OSD with missing video". Unchecking that box and I have a picture and sound with several renderers and several mpeg decodes.

As I was messing with this I accidentally shut down the box instead of restart, moved some cables around getting to the power, and the video quality is really bad just now. I'll fix the cabling, get the quality to what is normally is, ensure the issue is still repeatable, and send a vid snip plus logs.

Thanks! for the replies.