Thought I was going nuts... video skips randomly around at certain points.

[goldentiger]

I recorded several shows tonight, and at certain spots if I go to them or just watch from the beginning to them, it ALWAYS skips backward or forward a random amount, then starts doing it at other random spots. I tried all kinds of different codecs, but none alleviated the issue. The best combination (with some of them, the image would block up before it jumped randomly) seems to be the Dscaler MPEG2 Decoder with Intervideo's Audio decoder. This skipping seems really random, it just goes to random spots in the video minutes or seconds around it, sometimes even to the end or beginning. I am on a WinTV PVR-USB2... my system is:

Athlon 64 X2 3800+
eVGA 7800GT videocard
2GB dual-channel RAM
300gb Maxtor MaxLine III SATA-native NCQ 7L300S0-model HDD


Also, sometimes when I use the skip-forward/skip-backward buttons, the video begins to stutter (it never stutters unless I do this, up until it skips). The audio stays perfectly smooth throughout the glitches with the stuttering and jumping, except during the block-up of the screen with certain codec combinations.

I googled as much as I could and fiddled a lot, but nothing seems to be solving this for me... I know it must be something with a setting in my system somewhere, since no one else seems to have had this issue that I can find... hoping it's something quick and easy !


EDIT: It does it in Windows Media Player too... so it's gotta be some sort of codec issue.

[Jeff]

You don't happen to have autoskip enabled for comskip files? It could be that comskip has mis-detected commercials.

Jeff

[goldentiger]

Nope, comskip files aren't in the directory, and it is disabled in the config utility. On one recording I made, it does it every few seconds . The tuner is brand-new, could it be defective or something?

[stefan]

Hmm... long shot. If your tuner is defective, maybe it produces really awkward timestamps. You can try "mending" the mpeg file with PVAStrumento (from http://www.offeryn.de/dv.htm ) and see if that fixes it.

[goldentiger]

This is the log I get upon a scan... it looks like there's some errors in the recording, would this be related to software or hardware? If software, any ideas on what I can do?

---------

***
*** PVAStrumento 2.1.0.15
*** running at 01-17-2006 02:34
***
Pre-Scanning input. Takes some time.
Stream info for
C:\Recordings\Dream House\Dream House_20060117_00300100.mpg

Found 1 video stream.
Found 1 MPEG audio stream.

VIDEO #1
Resolution 720 x 480
Aspect ratio is 4:3
Frame rate 29.97 fps
Nominal bitrate 6750000 bps
First PTS: 00:00:00.333

MPEG AUDIO #1
MPEG1, Layer 2
stereo, sampled at 48.0 kHz.
Bitrate 256 kbps
Each frame contains 24.0 ms audio (768 bytes)
First PTS: 00:00:00.333


==SCANNING==
Input: C:\Recordings\Dream House\Dream House_20060117_00300100.mpg
Closing starting GOP.
Aiming for sync at 00:00:00.333
Streamstart seems to be in (reasonable) sync:
Video 1 starts at 00:00:00.333
Audio 1 starts at 00:00:00.333

ALERT> Audio 1: 3 audio frames missing at 00:00:09.843
ALERT> Audio 1: 3 audio frames missing at 00:01:13.406
ALERT> Temporal structure wrong in GOP at 00:01:42.502. Dropping.
Re-syncing.
Closing starting GOP.
Aiming for sync at 00:01:43.053
Cutting video.
Closing starting GOP.
Aiming for sync at 00:01:43.503
Cutting audio.
Audio stream 1 now starts at 00:01:43.509
Video stream 1 now starts at 00:01:43.503
ALERT> Audio 1: 3 audio frames missing at 00:03:26.039
ALERT> Audio 1: 3 audio frames missing at 00:12:44.597
ALERT> Audio 1: 3 audio frames missing at 00:12:45.097
ALERT> Temporal structure wrong in GOP at 00:12:58.677. Dropping.
Re-syncing.
Closing starting GOP.
Aiming for sync at 00:13:03.117
Cutting video.
Closing starting GOP.
Aiming for sync at 00:13:03.682
Cutting audio.
Audio stream 1 now starts at 00:13:03.693
Video stream 1 now starts at 00:13:03.682
ALERT> Audio 1: 4 audio frames missing at 00:15:15.247
ALERT> Audio 1: 3 audio frames missing at 00:15:15.748
ALERT> Audio 1: 3 audio frames missing at 00:18:43.956
ALERT> Temporal structure wrong in GOP at 00:19:21.059. Dropping.
Re-syncing.
Closing starting GOP.
Aiming for sync at 00:19:23.397
Cutting video.
Closing starting GOP.
Aiming for sync at 00:19:23.562
Cutting audio.
Audio stream 1 now starts at 00:19:23.565
Video stream 1 now starts at 00:19:23.562
ALERT> Audio 1: 3 audio frames missing at 00:21:16.108
ALERT> Audio 1: 4 audio frames missing at 00:21:24.616
ALERT> Audio 1: 3 audio frames missing at 00:21:25.117
ALERT> Audio 1: 3 audio frames missing at 00:21:25.617
ALERT> Audio 1: 3 audio frames missing at 00:22:44.696
ALERT> Audio 1: 3 audio frames missing at 00:24:32.804
ALERT> Audio 1: 3 audio frames missing at 00:25:38.870
ALERT> Audio 1: 3 audio frames missing at 00:27:37.489
ALERT> Audio 1: 3 audio frames missing at 00:29:43.615
Last fileset:
1062306324 total bytes written
Video 1: 53484 frames, 00:29:44.582
Audio 1: 74824 frames, 00:29:55.776

Sync estimate at EOF:
MPEG Audio #1 : sync

Video statistics
================
GOP length (min/avg/max):
13 / 14 / 15 [frames]
73882 / 281697 / 572986 [Bytes]
GOP bitrate (min/avg/max):
1180 / 4503 / 9158 [kbps]


(Autosaving log to /dev/null.txt)
Cannot save to /dev/null.txt

[stefan]

it looks like there's some errors in the recording, would this be related to software or hardware?

My bet would be with hardware. Not sure though.

[goldentiger]

My bet would be with hardware. Not sure though.

It still skips after using a Make PS on the file . I mail-ordered the tuner, package was fine etc., from newegg.com. I'm hoping it's not defective as it's a pain to mail it back and get an exchange, but looking that way at the moment .

[stefan]

Sorry. Good luck.

[erik]

Search the forum for "retime" or "timeline" to find some tools to fix the recording.

[ricklous]

it wouldnt be a defrag/cluster problem would it?
do you have a spare machine you can bung the tuner in to see if it produces good recordings on a different machine?