Live TV corrupts recordings?

[bungle]

I just rebuilt my Win2000 box because my old drive crashed. I set it up clean with all SPs and installed 94.13. My recordings are on my other drive on a separate partition, and GB-PVR is the only thing that uses that partition/drive letter. I had some old recordings from the previous install, which were fine. After getting GB-PVR set up and playing with it, those recordings were hosed. The sizes looked right, but some wouldn't play, and some would contain video from old recordings. I deleted everything, defragged, and started over. Also, I turned off live preview. Then I recorded a few shows and everything was good. Normally I use my MVP for everything; however, yesterday I was using the GUI on the PC and playing with live TV again, and now my recordings are hosed again. Live TV worked on the PC at first, but when I tried it yesterday it never would display, just a black screen with a message about preparing to go.

I have a PVR-150. Does live tv use the card and filesystem in a different way than recording? I can't imagine what about live tv would cause filesystem corruption, but I thought I saw a post sort of like this problem before on the forums, though I couldn't find anything searching. I'm using the 150 drivers from the Hauppauge site as of last week. Does the driver interact with the filesystem, or does it just make data available via the bus? I want to rule out things besides GB-PVR, but I had looked at the files before and after playing with the GUI on the PC, so the time window in which the problem happened is pretty small. Does GB-PVR open or otherwise access recordings while running, even if not being watched? I think I may have viewed the now-hosed recordings via the GUI and then played with live tv, but then safely ESC'ed out to the menu. I didn't see anything useful in my logs, which I was looking at to see why live tv wasn't working. It did seem to work on the MVP.

Thanks
John

[sub]

I have a PVR-150. Does live tv use the card and filesystem in a different way than recording?

No, they even share all the recording code.

Does the driver interact with the filesystem, or does it just make data available via the bus?

Nothing that low level. I just basically hook up various directshow components (hauppauge tuner and capture objects, and the file writer object), and then tell it to start recording to "c:\blah\blah.mpg". This is exactly the same for both live tv and recording. The file writer uses normal windows API calls to create file, then write data to it.

[bungle]

Nothing that low level. I just basically hook up various directshow components (hauppauge tuner and capture objects, and the file writer object), and then tell it to start recording to "c:\blah\blah.mpg". This is exactly the same for both live tv and recording. The file writer uses normal windows API calls to create file, then write data to it.

That was my expectation, so I'm baffled as to what is going on. The reason for asking was to determine whether the Hauppauge drivers could be doing something, but it sounds like DirectShow is responsible for accessing the disk, and the old and new installs are both 9.0c.

After viewing a recording in the GUI, is there any way a file handle that was opened could stay open or anything? I never had this problem with .93.10, which was in use since it came out until about a month ago when my drive crashed, and it manifested very quickly (twice now) with .94.13. (Sorry - not trying to pin this on GB-PVR here, but just trying to work through some ideas.)

[Chris.Day]

Make sure that you're not using driver build 23074 for the PVR150, as it is known to create corrupt recordings.

[bungle]

Make sure that you're not using driver build 23074 for the PVR150, as it is known to create corrupt recordings.

Nope, got pvr150_base_driver_2_23258.zip and driver update pvr150_22_23257.exe from http://hauppauge.com/pages/support/support_pvr150.html. I don't quite understand why the update has a lower version number than the base driver, but that's what the instructions said to do. I do not know the driver version I used to have. I did not install any of the other Hauppauge apps for the 150, but did install mediamvpsetup_2.4 release 23096 for the MVP. The weird thing is that the recordings weren't corrupt from recording, something corrupted them later. For instance, I had recorded the Simpsons last week. I looked at it once and it was fine. However, after whatever hosed the recordings hosed them, playing the Simpsons file actually played some old Arrested Development episode from a while back at the beginning of the file, and some MythBusters towards the end. It seems like it actually changed the file, like changed the cluster pointers or something. The filesystem is NTFS. Very bizarre.

[sub]

Maybe its time to do a chkdsk?

[Chris.Day]

I don't quite understand why the update has a lower version number than the base driver

"Driver Update" is really the middleware to interface the driver to WinTV2000. You don't need to install it for 3rd party applications.

[bungle]

Apparently the filesystem was corrupt. I had run chkdsk before, but I didn't check the box for "automatically fix errors". It never reported any problems. I did it again with that box checked and it found errors (had to run on startup). I don't understand the purpose of running it if it isn't going to tell you about errors unless you want them fixed. I know older versions would actually tell you about the errors - I don't know why it didn't work. Anyway, I reformatted the drive since I didn't want to trust it being fixed. So far I haven't had any other problems with files in limited testing. Not sure how it got corrupted in the first place.

Sorry for the confusion. I could have sworn that some files that did work later didn't, but perhaps either I was mistaken or something with reading or accessing them from Explorer or GB-PVR just exacerbated an already screwed up file and made it look worse, leading me to follow an incorrect trail.

[b00sfuk]

Quote:
I have a PVR-150. Does live tv use the card and filesystem in a different way than recording?
No, they even share all the recording code.

Sorry to hijack this thread but the subject is connected to the above and I guess the original problem is corrected now.

I have problems with LiveTV Preview with my PVR-150 card (latest drivers with 95.11). Occasionally after resuming from standby (S3) I get a black screen with LiveTV Preview and any subsequent scheduled recordings are 0bytes. I think it causes an issue with the card/drivers as a full power off (not restart) is required to reset it. I've tried devcon but it says the driver is running and restarting has no effect. There do not appear to be any errors in the various logs that could be the cause (rather than effect).

If I configure for always Timeshift (instead of Live Preview) instead then the problem does not occur (or has not done yet). So are there any differences in handling a PVR-150 between Live Preview and timeshift mode in Live TV? Thanks

[bungle]

Sorry to hijack this thread but the subject is connected to the above and I guess the original problem is corrected now.

Actually, I'm having a similar problem and was going to post a new thread, but I'll add it here. I can schedule recordings and watch them from the GUI. However, when attempting to watch live tv via the GUI it displays a black screen saying it is starting timeshift, but it never leaves that screen. Also, GB-PVR becomes unresponsive to the point that bringing another window to the front and then closing it leaves the GB-PVR window unpainted. I have to forcefully end the process. The live tv file gets created and starts to grow, and I can view it in media player (after GB-PVR is killed and releases the lock). I am not getting any information about an error in the logs, either. This is still 94.13.