Odd sounds/graphical glitches in all recordings.

[pilgrim2223]

Hi.

This is an odd one but I've now seen it enough to start thinking there's something odd going on here.

At this time of year I only record off two channels, Local Fox for 24, and HD CW for the nerd shows (Don't judge)

I use a Windows 7 64 bit home Premium connected to an HDHR3-US all wired together and happy. I have no Codecs installed on this system as it runs mostly headless and is not used for playback (recorder only)

The fox station is a 100/100/100 signal and never drops out. The CW is 100/68/68 some little flexing here and there but mostly rock solid around there, and never dipping past the cliff.

I've been using different PVR systems (WMC, MYTHTV, and so on) and am now moving into NextPVR (which I'm pretty happy with... BUT)

In every single recording I get some artifacts every now and then (normally a single line through the picture)
[ATTACHMENT NOT FOUND]
[ATTACHMENT NOT FOUND]

I'm also hearing an occasional Chirp... not too much hard, to notice, but once you notice it you can't stop.

I tried on two different systems, with different players (NPVR, VLC, and KODI) and all show the exact same behavior... so different systems, different codecs, it's got to be the files. It's also not a glitch while streaming as it is repeatable.

Also to note. This exact same hardware has been recording things for 5 some odd years without these issues... so thinking it's some setting somewhere in NPVR that I missed. The only thought I've had is that it could be comskip running in parallel (the recording system is an older I5 with 8 gig of RAM... so not a beast but it should be enough) Not sure if that's impacted anything yet.

So anyone have any ideas?

[snagglewest]

I'd check the HDHR signal strength from the web interface, they are known for being sensitive to low signal. I get the exact same thing when the signal drops into the low 90% range.

[j2gbpvr]

I used to have that problem when the NIC driver updated to add things like Energy Efficient Ethernet and Green Ethernet.
I ended up disabling all the advanced functions.
Device Manager, Network adapters, Realtek PCIe GBE Family Controller
Disable the following in Advanced settings:

ARP Offload
Auto Disable Gigibit
Energy Efficient Ethernet
Flow Control
Green Ethernet
Interrupt Modulation
IPv4 Checksum Offload
Jumbo Frame
Large Send Offload v2 (IPv4)
Large Send Offload v2 (IPv6)
NS Offload
Priority & VLAN
Receive Side Scaling
Shutdown Wake-On Lan
TCP Checksum Offload (IPv4)
TCP Checksum Offload (IPv6)
UDP Checksum Offload (IPv4)
UDP Checksum Offload (IPv6)
Wake on Magic Packet
Wake on pattern match

[pilgrim2223]

Thanks for the Reply! I've cut all those setting off (well the ones I could find, Intel NIC and not Realtek... and several settings were slightly different/in different places but I sorted it) and started using MCEBuddy and delay by a day watching anything. The one normal recording I had was pretty much clear, so here's hoping

[pilgrim2223]

Yeah nothing has helped yet

May set the whole she-bang up on another computer (with a metric ton more power ) and see if I get better results!

[Handy.Man]

Something similar just happened here, 2 weeks ago, one channel switched from NTSC ATSC 1080i to 720p.
After the switch, I am getting random MPEG2 errors when encoding with HandBrake with all recordings on that channel:

Code:

[16:49:22] thread 27a762a0 started ("Muxer")
[16:49:22] thread 27a76440 started ("Muxer")
[mpeg2video @ 0000000024874380] invalid mb type in P Frame at 26 8
[mpeg2video @ 0000000024874380] MVs not available, ER not possible.
[mpeg2video @ 0000000024874380] slice mismatch
[mpeg2video @ 0000000024874380] MVs not available, ER not possible.
[mpeg2video @ 0000000024874380] slice mismatch
[mpeg2video @ 0000000024874380] MVs not available, ER not possible.
[mpeg2video @ 0000000024874380] ac-tex damaged at 19 40
[mpeg2video @ 0000000024874380] MVs not available, ER not possible.
[mpeg2video @ 0000000024874380] ac-tex damaged at 32 42
[mpeg2video @ 0000000024874380] MVs not available, ER not possible.
[mpeg2video @ 0000000024874380] ac-tex damaged at 50 19
[mpeg2video @ 0000000024874380] MVs not available, ER not possible.
[mpeg2video @ 0000000024874380] MVs not available, ER not possible.
[mpeg2video @ 0000000024874380] ac-tex damaged at 75 15
[mpeg2video @ 0000000024874380] MVs not available, ER not possible.
[mpeg2video @ 0000000024874380] MVs not available, ER not possible.
[mpeg2video @ 0000000024874380] MVs not available, ER not possible.
[mpeg2video @ 0000000024874380] ac-tex damaged at 24 19
[mpeg2video @ 0000000024874380] MVs not available, ER not possible.
[mpeg2video @ 0000000024874380] ac-tex damaged at 18 33
[mpeg2video @ 0000000024874380] MVs not available, ER not possible.
[mpeg2video @ 0000000024874380] MVs not available, ER not possible.
[mpeg2video @ 0000000024874380] ac-tex damaged at 61 16
[mpeg2video @ 0000000024874380] MVs not available, ER not possible.
[mpeg2video @ 0000000024874380] ac-tex damaged at 79 33
[mpeg2video @ 0000000024874380] MVs not available, ER not possible.
[mpeg2video @ 0000000024874380] mb incr damaged
[mpeg2video @ 0000000024874380] MVs not available, ER not possible.
[mpeg2video @ 0000000024874380] invalid cbp at 47 22
[mpeg2video @ 0000000024874380] MVs not available, ER not possible.
[mpeg2video @ 0000000024874380] mb incr damaged
[mpeg2video @ 0000000024874380] MVs not available, ER not possible.
[mpeg2video @ 0000000024874380] MVs not available, ER not possible.
[mpeg2video @ 0000000024874380] ac-tex damaged at 12 6
[mpeg2video @ 0000000024874380] MVs not available, ER not possible.
[mpeg2video @ 0000000024874380] ac-tex damaged at 53 4
[mpeg2video @ 0000000024874380] MVs not available, ER not possible.
[mpeg2video @ 0000000024874380] ac-tex damaged at 62 17
[mpeg2video @ 0000000024874380] MVs not available, ER not possible.
[mpeg2video @ 0000000024874380] MVs not available, ER not possible.
[mpeg2video @ 0000000024874380] invalid cbp at 4 33
[mpeg2video @ 0000000024874380] MVs not available, ER not possible.
[mpeg2video @ 0000000024874380] MVs not available, ER not possible.
[mpeg2video @ 0000000024874380] ac-tex damaged at 52 40
[mpeg2video @ 0000000024874380] MVs not available, ER not possible.
[mpeg2video @ 0000000024874380] MVs not available, ER not possible.
[mpeg2video @ 0000000024874380] ac-tex damaged at 47 26
[mpeg2video @ 0000000024874380] MVs not available, ER not possible.
[mpeg2video @ 0000000024874380] ac-tex damaged at 75 6
[mpeg2video @ 0000000024874380] MVs not available, ER not possible.
[mpeg2video @ 0000000024874380] skipped MB in I frame at 19 14
[mpeg2video @ 0000000024874380] MVs not available, ER not possible.
[mpeg2video @ 0000000024874380] ac-tex damaged at 75 34
[mpeg2video @ 0000000024874380] MVs not available, ER not possible.
[mpeg2video @ 0000000024874380] invalid cbp at 19 2
[mpeg2video @ 0000000024874380] MVs not available, ER not possible.
[16:55:00] hb_ts_stream_decode - eof

Some audio gaps with eac3to

Code:

[a02] Audio has a gap of 32ms at playtime 0:24:00.  <WARNING>

some video artifacts similar to the one you are experiencing.

Signal strength is strong, never had any random glitches on that channel @1080i. :confused:
:mad: Saturday, I sent them an email to check their equipment.
Tonight they switched back to 1080i and those random glitches are gone.

[sub]

Signal strength is strong, never had any random glitches on that channel @1080i. :confused:
:mad: Saturday, I sent them an email to check their equipment.
Tonight they switched back to 1080i and those random glitches are gone.

Wow - good outcome. Must have had some problems if they decided to go back to the old setup.

[Handy.Man]

In the past, I did see some 720p broadcasting for a couple of days, maybe twice in 3 years.
It looks more like they created a problem 2 weeks ago, and someone got to configuring the broadcast equipment today.

Sometimes it's the broadcaster that introduces stream errors.
About 2 months ago, on another channel, I was getting stream discontinuities one night. Could figure out as this channel also has strong signal. At some point during the evening things got back to normal.

[pilgrim2223]

I'll take a look. Would be a real bummer if two different channels (though the same broadcaster so... hmmmmm...) changed broadcast standard between one week and the next, and that happens to be the exact same week I switch PVR software!

Seems possible for sure! I'll see if I get similar issues elsewhere.

[pilgrim2223]

FYI. on the NPVR Server I watched an hour or so live TV from the channel in question via VLC (using the HDhomerun launch)

No issues, no tears, no sound issues, nothing.