Dropped frames / messed-up time codes ?

[jch]

My old rig (see footer) recorded flawlessly (as .avi's).

My new rig (see footer too) is more than twice as powerful, but consistently messes up recordings (as .mpg's):

• dropped frames occur--losing ~5 seconds at a time, several times during an hour-long recording
  
• even worse, the time-codes get messed up--a 60-minute recording will get listed as, say, 10 minutes long with the time-code restarting at zero several times during the show
  

This happens on about 1/2 of my new recordings.

Because of this, I can't fast-forward or rewind through them. Comskip also can't handle them.


Both rigs use the same IDE HDDs, and show that they are running in Ultra DMA Mode 5.

The HDDs on the new rig share a disk cable (Primary channel: master & slave). The CD-ROM drive is alone on the other disk cable (Secondary channel) as it runs much slower (Ultra DMA Mode 2). The system & swapfile partitions are on the Master HDD. The recording are being made onto the Slave HDD.


CPU usage is <5% during recordings. I don't know whether it's momentarily peaking at 100% during recordings or whether it's an I/O bottleneck issue.


Questions:

1. Is there a log file that may help diagnose the problem?
   
2. Is there a way to change the type of recording format to something more robust? (.ts?)
   

Thanks for any help you can offer!

[sub]

[*]even worse, the time-codes get messed up--a 60-minute recording will get listed as, say, 10 minutes long with the time-code restarting at zero several times during the show

This sounds like the old PVR150 timestamp bug (which also affects PVR500's): http://forums.gbpvr.com//showthread.php?...ew-drivers.

[jch]

Thanks!

I just installed Driver: 2.0.43.24108 and added the 2 registry entries stated. Now waiting for a reboot to finish.

I'll let you know in a couple of days whether that fixed the problem...

Thanks again,
.../j

[jch]

Trying to fix the timecode on the existing recordings.

Tried retime, but it hasn't been able to see the full length of the recordings -- seems to give up part way through on all of them, resulting in truncated files.

Wanted to try mencoder instead, but can't seem to find a refererence to a direct download link... Instead, I found an overwhelming sea of options at the mplayer site.

Is there a way to just download the mencoder app??

.../j

[jch]

Not sure whether it was previously installed by something else or not, but finally found mencoder.exe in a different program's directory (i.e. not in the mplayer folder).

Fired it up (according to the instructions on the retime page (link above) and it seemed to fix the timecode perfectly on all the files that retime had a hard time with.

So far so good. Now to see whether new recordings are trouble-free....

Thanks for all the help!
.../j

[jch]

Okay, now that I've tried this for a few days here's what I've found.....

The Good News:
The time-codes no longer restart at zero part way through recordings. Recordings now roughly correspond to actual show lengths.

The Bad News:
Still get skips (dropped frames) in the middle of recordings. Some skips are several seconds long.


Question:
This machine uses IDE hard drives (i.e. no SATA controller) with the System/Swap partition on the Primary Channel, and the Recordings partition on the Slave Channel. The CD-burner is by itself on the Primary Channel of the other IDE cable. Would this configuration be causing the problem?? (e.g. the Recordings disk locked out while the computer is accessing the main drive?)

Another possibility is the priority of the recording processes. On my old system I used a program called "Priority Master" to automatically set the priority level of tasks whenever they launch (recording process set to High priority, email set to Low priority). Could this be the problem?? I was assuming that the new machine with its 2x faster processor wouldn't have a problem...

Any ideas??

Thanks!
.../j

[martint123]

Question:
This machine uses IDE hard drives (i.e. no SATA controller) with the System/Swap partition on the Primary Channel, and the Recordings partition on the Slave Channel. The CD-burner is by itself on the Primary Channel of the other IDE cable. Would this configuration be causing the problem?? (e.g. the Recordings disk locked out while the computer is accessing the main drive?)

That is a similar spec to what I was using recently and had no problems with it - except for the odd occasion when Windows thought something was wrong with the IDE interface and dropped down to polling mode rather than DMA mode and that did give stuttering with simultaneous record and playback.

(some info here http://winhlp.com/node/10 )

[jch]

I checked and it still has all the disks in DMA 5 Mode...

I think I found the problem though... I have a program running all the time called MSGTAGStatus that tags outgoing emails and tells me when they're viewed (necessary after messages to clients got silently lost in their spam filters). Periodically (when someone reads a tagged email), this process jumps to 100% CPU, causing any recordings to start skipping/dropping frames.

So what I had to do was:
- force MSGTAGStatus to always run as Low Priority, and
- GBPVRRecordingService and PVRX2 to always run as High Priority.

However, because GBPRVRecordingService and PVRX2 both run as SYSTEM processes, I could not easily change their priorities using PriorityMaster or Task Manager.

Instead, I needed to run PriorityMaster as a SYSTEM process itself and, only then, was it able to modify the Priority of these recording processes. To do this, I needed to get a copy of SysInternals "PsExec" program and copy it into the folder of where Priority Master was installed.

I then created a batch file that contained:

cd "\Program Files\Priority Master 2005\"
PsExec.exe -s -i -w "C:\Program Files\Priority Master 2005" -d "C:\Program Files\Priority Master 2005\primast5.exe"

which basically launches PriorityMaster as a SYSTEM process.

I then put this batch file in my Startup folder so that it automatically runs every time I reboot.

Instead of PriorityMaster, you could substitute "TaskMgr.exe" above, and manually change the priorities of the processes. Tedious, but free.

Hope this helps. I'll report back on whether it solves all the frame-dropping problems.

.../j

[jch]

So what I had to do was:
- force MSGTAGStatus to always run as Low Priority, and
- GBPVRRecordingService and PVRX2 to always run as High Priority.

[snip!]

I'll report back on whether it solves all the frame-dropping problems.

As promised, here's the report back...

This solved my frame-dropping problems :-) but meant that commercials weren't finished being detected until after the recording end (even though ComSkip was running during the recording).

To fix that, I modified the priorities slightly to:

- force MSGTAGStatus to always run as Low Priority, and
- GBPVRRecordingService to always run as High Priority (and leave PVRX2's priority alone).

Now it works like a charm.

Thanks for all the help everyone.

.../j

[jch]

Correction.... it almost works...

Still having a problem getting commercial break markers to appear while the recording is in progress.

I've set live_tv=1 in comskip's config file, but still no luck.

Any ideas??

.../j