pvr150 video timing bug

[wtg]

I have a problem and I hope someone has a better solution than I do.

I don't know how many people using the pvr150 have run into the bug the drivers have with timing in the mpgs, but I have a serious issue with it about once every 4 or 5 videos I record. A video may be an hour long, but when I go to play it in gbpvr or whatever, it may show the video is 1 min, 10 seconds long, or something silly like that. Playback is fine as long as I don't try to fast forward or skip. If I do that it jumps all over the place, to the end or the beginning, and then there's no getting back to where you were.

When I have a screwed up video with a lot of commercials I'd like to skip, I've found I can remux the file and then it's fine. One of the plugin writers - don't recall who - made a group of files available for doing this. It includes a retime.bat file that with the help of some other utilities demux and remuxes. It works ok most of the time (not always though) and it takes quite a while to run. Does anyone know of a better/faster way to reset an mpg whose time is all screwed up? Is there just some header record in the file that needs to be reset, or do I really need to remux the entire file to get the time values corrected? It's a real bummer when you sit down to watch a two hour video and realize to be able to skip you need spend an 30 minutes remuxing the thing.

Thanks,
Tim

[groover km]

The fastest way I have found is to use PVAStrumento (available from the hauppauge.com support page) and to run the file through that - it usually takes about 10mins per hour of video. Make sure that you deselect "split on audio change" as well.

Incidentally, I seem to be seeing this more and more often, and Ihaven't changed PVR-150 drivers for ages.... strange.

Hope this helps.

[daphatty]

I wonder if running your recordings though a program like Comskip or Show Analyzer would fix this problem? They do work with the timing of the show and are completely automated. Sure beats manually running PVAStrumento. (I'm assuming that you have to run it manually.)

[groover km]

That's what's strange - these are scheduled recordings that have had comskip run anyway. When it falls over, if it's a premium cable recording (no ads) I just run pva, but for network tv I have to run pva, delete the existing comskip files, then run comskip on the file again.

It's getting to be a major PITA.

[wtg]

Neither comskip or showanalyzer modifies the original mpg so it doesn't help. I've found the comskip .txt files still have the correct commercial breaks (since it uses frame numbers instead of time), but gbpvr converts the frames to time so they are useless until the times have been reset in the file. If gbpvr used frame numbers internally it probably wouldn't matter, but I've seen sub mention elsewhere that frame numbers are more difficult so he converts to time and then passes that to DirectShow.

As it is, I've found most of my recordings have an error of some sort, though most are just off by a couple minutes so the commercial skipping or other skips and resumes aren't a problem until the very end. However, every few recordings I'll have a 1 or 2 hour video that shows a time of 2 minutes, or 18 minutes or something totally off like that. Those files, once you get past their incorrect duration, you simply can't touch the remote during playback or
you might as well start over from the beginning.

groover_km, thanks for the suggestion of pva... I'll give that a try. I've noticed the solution I currently have can get messed up on certain files - maybe pva will be more forgiving.

[reboot]

Try a modified comclean.bat
Demux the file, then simply remux in cuttermaran.
Run comskip, then comclean (or whatever) later.
You can do all this via Dirmon, or even postprocessing.bat
If you need help with setting it up, let me know.

[wtg]

Decoder software HAU is bad then, I've switched mine to MainConcept 1.42 MPEG1/2 Encoder/Decoder has improved VMR9 playback on a CBS channel here in the states. Don't see any video issues with Comskip from Erik and Reboot Comskip.ini. I have 3 PVR-150 running, don't really see a problem. 1 /2004 and 2 /2005 tuners. I do see there have been firmware changes on the 3 cards.

I don't think it's a decoder problem because it doesn't matter what I play the file with, the timing is off. The video plays fine but shows an incorrect length. And because the length is off, virtually any command to position the video at a certain spot in the file fails since it seems most software tries to position by time instead of frame number. Remuxing the file fixes the problem, but it's a pain and takes a while.

I was hoping someone knew of a utility that would reset the duration in a header of the MPG, keeping me from having to remux the entire file. But if it exists, I haven't found it.

[sub]

I was hoping someone knew of a utility that would reset the duration in a header of the MPG, keeping me from having to remux the entire file. But if it exists, I haven't found it.

There is no header that contains the duration in the MPG file. The duration is derived from the presentation time stamps that are spread throughout the file (thousands of them). When people remux the file, this as the side effect of rebuilding these timestamps.

If you're timestamps are 'broken' then the PVR150 drivers are probably to blame. GB-PVR just saves the MPEG stream byte for byte as its generated by the drivers. Somewhere in amongst all that data is the timestamps, but at record time GB-PVR has no knowledge of which bytes are what, and doesnt manipulate them in any way.

[steves]

Not really had this myself, but did a bit of searching and found this:

http://www.digitalfaq.com/dvdguides/capt...stream.htm

Restream looks like it may well be the tool for the job... if it does commandline of course...

[groover km]

If you're timestamps are 'broken' then the PVR150 drivers are probably to blame.

This makes sense, but what is confusing me is that I haven't changed my PVR-150 drivers in maybe six months; neither have I installed any new hardware, apps, etc., that may be causing a conflict. The weird thing, the problem seems to be getting worse for me, ie, happening on more and more recordings.

I think I am going to start by going back to basics and:
- Make sure nothing else is running while recording
- Defrag the recording drive (recordings go to a separate drive which is defragged with perfectdrive automatically every monday night; I'll see how tonight's recordings come out)

Can't remember what version of the PVR-150 drivers I use (I think I just stayed with the 'official' release from the hauppauge website) - has anyone else got any ideas / recommendations? Ideally I'd like to just fix the issue, rather than work around it....

Thanks.