Would giving each tuner its own drive partition improve skip function?

[stu8080]

I have two tuners and now start to watch one recording whilst recording another. I find that skipping forwards/backwards on a recorded mpeg is very slow whilst another tuner is recording to the same hard disk.

Would having each tuner card set to record to its own partition or even drive improve the read times as described above?

If the ansawers yes how do i do it?

[reboot]

I don't think you can do it.
In theory, it should work.
I have 5 tuners, and recording to an SATA drive with all 5 simultaneously I have no problem.
I can record/watch using 3 tuners to an IDE drive at 7200rpm.
Is it possible you have a slower 5400rpm drive, and/or it's not set up using UDMA?

[stu8080]

no both drives are 7200 and Ultra-DMA

Its probably my processor struggling! Im comparing it to the skip speed i got with the PVR-350 out which was much quicker. Im not really bothered though because the advantages of using software out far outweight those of the PVR-350.

[reboot]

Yes, if you're used to hardware decoding, then software does take longer.

[stu8080]

Shame there is no way to swap over whilst in gbpvr, i know its not something sub intends to do though.

What else could help speed this up though cos it really does hang for a good 5-10 seconds each time even whilst nothing else is being recorded to the drive?

I presume regular defrag would help...

[sub]

Certainly worth checking how fragmented your discs are.

What else could help speed this up though cos it really does hang for a good 5-10 seconds each time even whilst nothing else is being recorded to the drive?

Something must be wrong on your setup. For me to skip takes less than half a second (pretty much instant).

Might also be worth posting your gbpvr.exe-native.log, so I can see if there is any unexpected directshow filters in there that could be causing a problem.

[stu8080]

After playing Fututurama and skipping acouple of times here is my native log:

DirectShowPlayerBase::playVideoFile(D:\T4Futurama\T4Futurama_20051229_08550925.mpg)
11:55:51.625 VERBOSE Creating new graph
11:55:51.640 VERBOSE getSetting(PreferredAudioRenderer)
11:55:51.640 VERBOSE audio renderer filter: DirectSound: Realtek AC97 Audio
11:55:51.875 VERBOSE getSetting(PreferredAudioDecoder)
11:55:51.890 VERBOSE audio decoder filter: MPEG Audio Decoder
11:55:51.890 VERBOSE getSetting(PreferredDecoder)
11:55:52.000 VERBOSE video decoder filter: InterVideo NonCSS Video Decoder for Hauppauge
11:55:52.671 VERBOSE Adding Close Captioning
11:55:52.687 VERBOSE About to connect Close Captioning
11:55:52.703 VERBOSE ConnectPins: '~Line21 Output' to 'XForm In'
11:55:52.718 VERBOSE After Close Captioning connected
11:55:52.718 VERBOSE getSetting(ListGraphFilters)
11:55:52.718 VERBOSE Graph contains the following filters:
11:55:52.718 VERBOSE - MPEG Audio Decoder
11:55:52.718 VERBOSE - Video Renderer
11:55:52.718 VERBOSE - DirectSound: Realtek AC97 Audio
11:55:52.718 VERBOSE - Line 21 Decoder 2
11:55:52.718 VERBOSE - Nero Digital Audio Decoder
11:55:52.718 VERBOSE - InterVideo NonCSS Video Decoder for Hauppauge
11:55:52.718 VERBOSE - MPEG-2 Demultiplexer
11:55:52.718 VERBOSE - D:\T4Futurama\T4Futurama_20051229_08550925.mpg
11:55:52.718 VERBOSE getSetting(SaveGraphFiles)
11:55:52.750 INFO DirectShowPlayerBase::playFile() done
11:55:52.750 VERBOSE DirectShowPlayerBase:etPlaybackRate(1.000000)
11:55:52.750 VERBOSE Restoring audio


By the way Sub, what is the difference between gbpvr.exe.log and gbpvr.exe-native.log?

[sub]

Logs look generally ok. Did you check how fragmented your disks are?

Maybe try disabling closed captioning and see if it helps.

Also worth trying a different audio decoder, some people have had problems with that nero decoder.

[stu8080]

Im trying Cyberlink from PowerDVD 4 (dont know what happened to 5, is it worth getting hold of?)

Drives were very fragmented, its taking hours to defrag them, so i'll let you know if it helps.

[stu8080]

none of the above seemed to have worked... skip still takes an age unfortunately.

ny other suggestions as to what i could look at?