Media MVP: black screen, returns to menu when playing video

[bits4bites]

I'm using the latest release of GBPVR (9.9.12).

When I play back a media file (divx, avi, rm, or other media) the Media MVP will display a black screen then bring me back to the main GBPVR menu. I'm using a plain install of GBPVR.

I also noticed that when I playback video it does not display the whole video length at the top of the screen it might say 2 seconds into the vide0 out of 3 minutes, when the video is 30 or 60 minutes long.

The videos play fine through the GBPVR interface on my PC, and in the appropriate media player.

My system crashed and I had to rebuild it from scratch, prior to this I didn't have any of the problems I'm having now.

I'm going to attempt to install the Hauppauge software and see if it acts the same way.

In the mean time I've attached all the log files I can find, if you need anything else I'll check back later.

Thanks

[sub]

When I play back a media file (divx, avi, rm, or other media) the Media MVP will display a black screen then bring me back to the main GBPVR menu. I'm using a plain install of GBPVR.

I also noticed that when I playback video it does not display the whole video length at the top of the screen it might say 2 seconds into the vide0 out of 3 minutes, when the video is 30 or 60 minutes long.

The MVP only really plays MPEG-1/MPEG-2 files, so when you try to play any file other type, it has to try converting the file to MPEG-2 on the fly. This temporarily .mpg file will report a very short duration, which increases as you watch the file (as the conversion progresses). Eventually the duration stops increasing when that process has finished completing the background MPEG-2 conversion.

[bits4bites]

I tried the Media MVP software and I had better luck playing some of the files that were encoded as AVI, and MPEG. Real audio files are not an option.

Some of the same files that played sucessfully through the MVP are giving me trouble through the GBPVR interface.

[sub]

Sorry, I dont really have any suggestions for you. The Hauppauge app and GB-PVR both use really different ways for doing transcoding non-MPEG files.

You'd be much better off sticking with MPEG1/MPEG2 files if you're using a MVP with GB-PVR, or sticking with the Hauppauge MVP software (even then wouldnt really recommend non-MPEG). GB-PVR only provides some very basic transcoding ability for non-native file types - its usally enough for the occasional playback of a .avi file, but I wouldnt wont to do it all the time.

[mobiusnz]

I agree with Sub, the MVP is a MPeg1/2 playback device - any other formats are converted on the fly and this is very "kludgy". I can playback AVI's (Xvid) through GBPVR and my MVP but its very problematic if you don't just watch it straight through. As soon as you pause for too long playback can crash and forget skipping. We were watching a downloaded episode of Prison break we'd missed - Go halfway through it and one of our kids woke up. To try and get back to where we were was a nightmare, you can't just skip forward as you simply catchup with where the transcode is upto (on a Pentium D2.8Ghz with 2gb ram it was converting about 4 seconds to 1 so I could jump forward a minute every 25 seconds) but then once we'd accidentally skipped past where we were up to it wouldn't go back and the audio was out of sync. Took about 20 minutes to get back to the 30 minute mark we were up to.

Mpeg2 Playback from our recordings works like a dream.

[groover km]

I agree with Sub, the MVP is a MPeg1/2 playback device - any other formats are converted on the fly and this is very "kludgy". I can playback AVI's (Xvid) through GBPVR and my MVP but its very problematic if you don't just watch it straight through. As soon as you pause for too long playback can crash and forget skipping. We were watching a downloaded episode of Prison break we'd missed - Go halfway through it and one of our kids woke up. To try and get back to where we were was a nightmare, you can't just skip forward as you simply catchup with where the transcode is upto (on a Pentium D2.8Ghz with 2gb ram it was converting about 4 seconds to 1 so I could jump forward a minute every 25 seconds) but then once we'd accidentally skipped past where we were up to it wouldn't go back and the audio was out of sync. Took about 20 minutes to get back to the 30 minute mark we were up to.

Mpeg2 Playback from our recordings works like a dream.

You think that's something -

A couple of weeks ago, a load of my wife's friends drove 100 miles to us...

to watch the Scotland vs. Italy 6 nations game...

All three hours of it....

...That I had downloaded in .xvid format.

Talk about holding your breath!

[HtV]

For occasions like this I prefer to transcode the avi's before watching them. You can use Zprocess for that or (as I did) add a line to the customffmpegconversions in config.xml.

I added these:

Code:

<Conversion name="MPG-MVP 16:9" cmd="-y -i {SOURCE_FILE} -target pal-dvd -b 4500k -aspect 16:9 -s 720x576 -acodec mp2 -ab 224 -ac 2 -mbd 2 -qmin 2 -async 1 {DEST_FILE}" targetExtension="mpeg.mpg" />
<Conversion name="MPG-MVP 4:3" cmd="-y -i {SOURCE_FILE} -target pal-dvd -b 4500k -aspect 4:3 -s 720x576 -acodec mp2 -ab 224 -ac 2 -mbd 2 -qmin 2 -async 1 {DEST_FILE}" targetExtension="mpeg.mpg" />

For NTSC you would ofcourse have to change it to some thing like this:

Code:

<Conversion name="MPG-MVP 16:9" cmd="-y -i {SOURCE_FILE} -target ntsc-dvd -b 4500k -aspect 16:9 -s 720x480 -acodec mp2 -ab 224 -ac 2 -mbd 2 -qmin 2 -async 1 {DEST_FILE}" targetExtension="mpeg.mpg" />
<Conversion name="MPG-DVD 4:3" cmd="-y -i {SOURCE_FILE} -target ntsc-dvd -b 4500k -aspect 4:3 -s 720x480 -acodec mp2 -ab 224 -ac 2 -mbd 2 -qmin 2 -async 1 {DEST_FILE}" targetExtension="mpeg.mpg" />

I "borrowed" these lines from GUI4FFMPEG, they work very well for me.