LiveTV Freezes after 1-2 seconds

[bigzaj]

I have Ceton InfiniTV4 with Comcast CableCard. The tuner works fine in WMC, I have tested it in SageDCT and it also works fine and creates a long, skip free video file. When trying to use LiveTV with NextPVT the TV freezes after about 1-2 seconds. I tried all of the renderers:
EVR, VMR9, VMR9FSE, etc (even tried MadVR). It always freeze after 1-2 seconds. I have the decoders set to the Msft decoders and defaults, I've read LAV and LAV CUVID have issues. Anyways, I have posted my log and I'm hoping for some help with this issue.

[ATTACH=CONFIG]35432[/ATTACH]

[mvallevand]

This is a known issue. If you can post a 50 MB sample of a live TV file to dropbox or similar site, I can try and duplicate it here. Let the file play for 30 seconds and then start copying it before stopping. That Fox News station you played, would be good.

Also if you can add these two registry DWORD entries

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\NPVR\LogReaderAutomap= 1
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\NPVR\LogSlipFile=1

After these are set play a live tv file and supply, the NRecord.log, NPVR.log, and reader.log and reader-automap.log files from C:\Temp creating C:\Temp if necessary.

Martin

[bigzaj]

Here you go (I think):

live-FOX NEWS-6090 - Copy.ts
NVPR.log
NRecord.log
reader-automap.log
reader.log

[mvallevand]

Thanks bigzaj, that's very helpful

@sub, when I run that same file from my home system (client to a vm backend) it plays fine. This leads me to believe the issue isn't so much how the file is muxed as the how NextPVR is reading the file that is growing. Here are my logs for comparison with those above.

Martin

[mvallevand]

Here are the same logs when the file played back directly on the server. I don't get the GetDuration 2 error but it is constant and it is still reported wrong but it does play through.

Martin

[sub]

@sub, when I run that same file from my home system (client to a vm backend) it plays fine. This leads me to believe the issue isn't so much how the file is muxed as the how NextPVR is reading the file that is growing. Here are my logs for comparison with those above.

As I mentioned in the other thread, I think it relates to the presence of multiple channels in the PAT, which aren't really present in the transport stream. NextPVR does have some support for playing ts files with this types of PAT, but it depends on scanning a lot of data to try to identify which channels are present, and unfortunately this scheme doesn't work for live tv where that data isn't typically available.

We'll need to come up with some scheme for correcting PAT. Some ideas include:
-update SageDCT to generate correct PAT entries
-make some sort of directshow graph to reprocess the SageDCT files on the fly, writing corrected versions of the files alongside the originals
-tell SageDCT to record to a named pipe filename (like "\\.\pipe\networkrecorder"), which Network Recorder is listening on, read the data, rewrite the PAT, then write the data to disk.

The last of those sounds like a good idea to me, if SageDCT will accept a filename in this format.

[mvallevand]

Still you think that if it works correctly from a NextPVR client, it should work on the host.

Code:

18:53:31.857    37600 bytes read
18:53:31.857    PCR 3448156131, at offset 10904
18:53:31.857    bitrate now -1.#IND00
18:53:31.857    PCR 3448157216, at offset 16920
18:53:31.857    bitrate now 1.#INF00
18:53:31.857    PCR 3448159518, at offset 29328
18:53:31.857    bitrate now 1.#INF00
18:53:31.857    PCR 3448160630, at offset 33464
18:53:31.857    bitrate now 1.#INF00
18:53:31.857    CVirtualFile::GetFileSize()
18:53:31.858    About to check for final PCR

What I see odd in my failed duration that I saw in bigzaj's was this log on a "final" PCR after some errors on an incorrect format.

Martin

[mvallevand]

NextPVR does have some support for playing ts files with this types of PAT, but it depends on scanning a lot of data to try to identify which channels are present, and unfortunately this scheme doesn't work for live tv where that data isn't typically available.

Buffer time in configurable in NetworkRecorder and increasing to 8 seconds (with about 13MB written) it still gives us exactly the same behavior on the server. reader-automap and npvr.log indicate that is is selecting the correct PIDs for playback.

If you are so inclined here is a test scenario:

1) download bigzaj's sample http://dl.dropbox.com/u/106594718/NextPV...%20Copy.ts into c:\users\public\npvr\web\public\cook.ts this can be changed if necessary I use the 8866 web server as the source
2) install the attached plugin to Plugins\NetworkRecorder
3) move npvr.db3 from the output folder to your data directory
4) restart recording service or use NRecord RUN

Martin

[sub]

Buffer time in configurable in NetworkRecorder and increasing to 8 seconds (with about 13MB written) it still gives us exactly the same behavior on the server.

That's because the reader doesn't analyse the streams when it's in LIVE& mode.

[sub]

BTW, I wasn't specifically talking about bigzaj's problem, but the get general Ceton/NetworkRecorder issues that have been raised recently (like lockups when changing channels etc).