Colussus captures missing a lot of data

[theason]

I have a pair of Colussus cards in my system; capturing from a pair of cable boxes, and I'm noticing that some of the recordings are getting written in a rather corrupt state. I know from reading over the years, that NPVR just does a copy from the card to the disk without much processing, so I'd love to have anybody chime in and help me see if I can find where the issue might be.

Here's what I typically see...one of these recorded flawlessly, the other's all are way too small for 30 minutes of data off the Colossus.

[ATTACHMENT NOT FOUND]

The files do have contents to them, but it's almost like the frame markers are all set in the file but the actual frames may not have always been written. A quick run through VideoReDo's quick stream fix makes a file that skips around like a flea on a hot plate.

[ATTACHMENT NOT FOUND]

There's just not enough frames to make up 30 minutes of video...

[ATTACHMENT NOT FOUND]

I got desperate last week, and re-installed windows and everything completely fresh on my box.

Any experiences to share? Something jump out in the logs enclosed?

[sub]

There was bug that could cause this in 3.3.8 (which I see you're running), and a patch was supplied. You'd be better of upgrading to the new 3.4.8 release, which includes this fix.

[theason]

I'm pretty sure that I have the patched version of 3.3.8, but I'll get upgraded to 3.4.8 now that I see that it's out. Missed that. I'll see if that helps. Thanks.

[theason]

Alright, I'm all upgraded now. I noticed when searching through all the recordings for the past few days that right about 10:30AM yesterday the length of the file and the amount of data stop matching up.

[theason]

Well, it's still giving me grief. Any pointers what to check out next?

[ATTACHMENT NOT FOUND]

Uploaded new logs too.

[sub]

I can only see one recording of Shooting USA in your logs, and it was a half hour show. When you play it in NextPVR, how long does it report the duration?

Is there anything actually wrong with the recording? ie, if you play it, does it play half an hour of normal video?

[theason]

Your right. That was a poor choice for an example. The time stamp on the frames of that one may be off by 30 minutes, but the number of frames in that video make up a pretty close half hour. The video plays pretty well too.

Let's pick on a new example that's much clearer. Here we have a supposed 30 minute show with about 4 minutes worth of frames.




You can see that there was a period yesterday when the recordings came in with lots of content (29.97 * 60sec * 30min > 50k frames), but then it goes downhill and we see files with less than 10k frames for a 30 minute recording. The ones you see that are upwards of 700MB have 52k+ frames in them. So they play full length pretty nicely; the rest, not so much.

[sub]

I really cant read any of the numbers in those screenshots. Too small and blurry.

When play the recording in NextPVR, are you seeing problems? Reported duration in Windows Explorer is often wrong, so not an indication of any real problem.

[theason]

Fixed the resolution so you can see the screenshot.

So yes, the file is completely unwatchable.

Here's an entire show that was 30 minutes and I have about 4 minutes of actual frames for...

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1928...0Who.ts.7z

[mvallevand]

The biggest problem I seen is that you likely aren't using fixed bitrate on you PVR and you so the capture resolution is getting setting much too low because the initial tuning is SD. Here is a 1080i capture with an SD capture and these always look and act terribly.

Code:

2015-04-29 20:30:08.097    [DEBUG][9]    About to set BITRATE MODE
2015-04-29 20:30:08.107    [DEBUG][9]    requesting variable encoding
2015-04-29 20:30:08.117    [DEBUG][9]    trying to request bitrate: 3000000
2015-04-29 20:30:08.127    [DEBUG][9]    device confirms bitrate as: 3000000
2015-04-29 20:30:08.127    [DEBUG][9]    About to set PEAK BITRATE
2015-04-29 20:30:08.127    [DEBUG][9]    device minimum peak bitrate: 100000
2015-04-29 20:30:08.127    [DEBUG][9]    device maximum peak bitrate: 24000000
2015-04-29 20:30:08.127    [DEBUG][9]    device peak bitrate step size: 100000
2015-04-29 20:30:08.127    [DEBUG][9]    trying to request peak bitrate: 5000000
2015-04-29 20:30:08.136    [DEBUG][9]    device confirms bitrate as: 5000000
2015-04-29 20:30:08.215    [DEBUG][9]    Device started
2015-04-29 20:30:08.234    [DEBUG][9]    Device reports resolution(3): 1920x1080 (fps:30) (aspect:2) (progressive:0) (videoIdCode:5)
2015-04-29 20:30:08.234    [DEBUG][9]    About to switch HDPVR/Colossus to target:
D:\RECORDINGS\Bubble Guppies\Bubble Guppies_20150429_20302100.ts
2015-04-29 20:30:08.234    [INFO][9]    HDPVRRecorder.StartStream() allocated handle: 0x35
2015-04-29 20:30:08.234    [DEBUG][9]    Temp at 4/29/2015 8:30:18 PM
2015-04-29 20:30:08.234    [DEBUG][9]    Started recording (2573:53:D:\RECORDINGS\Bubble Guppies\Bubble Guppies_20150429_20302100.ts)

If you don't want to use fixed bitrate you should increase the bitrate for SD recording in config.xml.

Martin