Some recordings won't play in NPVR

[HarryH3]

Lately a few shows are hit or miss as to whether NPVR will play them. When we click play we just get a black screen. No video or audio. The recordings are there, as we can watch them via Media Player Classic. One show that this has happened on a few times is "Bitten", but it doesn't happen every week. One or two other shows have done the same thing, but again, not every week. Here's a link to the first 50MB of the last Bitten episode that wouldn't play in NPVR.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/2693...0-chunk.ts

Is there any indication that the file has an anomaly that would prevent NPVR from playing it? :confused:

Thanks!

[sub]

It looks like there is an extra PMT at the beginning of the file, which breaks playback. ie, if you use cutchunk to grab a .ts chunk from the end of the file, it'll probably play fine.

[HarryH3]

Any idea what could cause that? 95% of the shows recorded playback fine. This one is the most likely to not play, but there have been one or two others that have not played (yet they all play in Media Player Classic). Does MPC have some code embedded that lets it deal with the extra PMT?

[sub]

It's almost like it's got one PMT from the last channel it was tuned to. Was this a second recording of some back-to-back recording? ie, was the device active and looking at some other channel immediately prior to switching to this channel to make this recording?

Most players, NextPVR included, will look at the first PMT to determine what audio/video streams to play. It does this, then then those audio video streams never actually appear in the file, so it plays to the end of the file immediately.

[HarryH3]

Yes, my wife records a lot of shows on the night that Bitten airs. All 3 tuners on the HD HomeRun Prime would have been in use from 9-10 and then Bitten begins recording at 10, but one of the tuners has to switch channels because all 3 of the previous shows are on channels other than SyFy (Where Bitten airs). Is there a race condition going on somewhere in the switchover logic when this happens?

[sub]

Is there a race condition going on somewhere in the switchover logic when this happens?

I've got no idea really. If you can find a way to reproduce it though, I can see if there is a way to fix the scenario you find.

[jcole998]

Um...What's a PMT? I'm still on the learning curve.

Thanks.

[HarryH3]

Um...What's a PMT? I'm still on the learning curve.

Thanks.

I had to look it up also. http://www.etherguidesystems.com/Help/SD.../PMTs.aspx

Program Map Table

[V_J]

I'm also noticing this behavior, even when not recording back-to-back. When trying to play back the recording, the screen just stays black, no audio nor even progressbar, ... Only thing that seems to work is ESC, to cancel the playback.

Initially, I thought it to be codec related but then I found this thread. I will have to try and find a recording that behaves like that and make it available for you. If I find one, how big a section do you need and from where in the file?

[sub]

About 20 seconds or so of playback time would be fine.

I don't think it'll be related to the above, which was related to an obscure bit of North American PSIP data.