anyone else having a problem with the show "V"?

[johnsonx42]

Is anyone else having a playback problem with the show "V"? Every recording I've made of that show this year has had frequent, regular stutters and audio glitches. All other shows recorded on ABC playback fine, as do other shows recorded at the same time as "V" on other channels. I've also tried cancelling the recordings that happen at the same time as "V", to no avail.

Playback in-between the glitches is perfect, then the video will freeze for a second or so, followed after that by an audio drop-out; then all returns to normal for 10 to 15 seconds.

It seems like the problem has to be a playback issue, although the problems are the same regardless of which decoder I try, and are the same when I play the recording on two other computers.

Episodes of "V" recorded last year were all fine.

Anyone else having any problems like this with "V"?

[mvallevand]

I wonder if it is this issue that I remember them talking about with Lost? http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthrea...251&page=1
The summary was "ABC uses equipment which drops frames to speed up playback to allow more commercials to be inserted"

Martin

[johnsonx42]

VERY interesting Martin. The effect I'm seeing is definitely much bigger than the occaisional dropped frame, but perhaps what I'm seeing is the decoder chain reacting badly to the dropped frame. Maybe they're doing something ugly to the stream, which would have no effect on realtime viewing on a normal TV, but causes a big hiccup in playing back a recording. I notice comskip breaks are pretty far off by the end of the show too.

I've got a thought on something to try now... will report back if it has a good effect.

[johnsonx42]

ok, I thought maybe removing the Timing.Info from a "V" recording might have some positive effect... No, none that I can tell.

what it seems to me is happening is that something either on the recording side or on the playback side "knows" about the missing frames and is trying to force the frames back into the original timeline. after about 10 to 15 seconds (I haven't exactly timed the interval), there are too many accumulated missing frames, so it has to pause for a dozen or so frames until it's time to show the next real frame. I don't understand it completely, but that's what I appear to be seeing.

something like this oversimplified frame sequence:

|1234567|1234567|1234567|1234567|1234567[]1234567 - original frame sequence

|123456|123456|123456|123456|123456[]123456 - ABC butchered sequence - 1 of each 7 dropped

|1234561|2345612|3456123|4561234|56_____[]1234561 - NPVR recording or playback sequence - the "_____" is my glitch

so what I'm trying to convey is that the [] is a reference point in the timeline. ABC removes every 7th frame to speed up the show (in my example), and this is ok for live tv - a tv just shows 'em as it gets 'em. but when it's recorded or played back, something either in the recording graph or playback graph forces everything back into the orignal timeline. when it gets to the end of the first bunch of frames, 30 frames when there should have been 35, there are no more frames to get to the next reference point in the timeline... so there's nothing to do but keep showing the same frame for awhile until it reaches the next reference point in the timeline and gets more frames to display.

I understand this is not techinically correct, but it describes what I am seeing.

[mian]

Yes I am having trouble with V. Compression though, I haven't actually tried playback. I've got 4 episodes that will not compress without the audio falling WAY out of sync. 30+ seconds. Quicksteam fixing with Videoredo hasn't been helpful so far.

I also had no issues with last year's episodes. All compressed in exactly the way I'm doing now without issue.

[johnsonx42]

yeah, I think you're seeing another effect of the same thing. CURSE YOU ABC!!!!

by the way, is that a new avatar for today, or have I just never noticed it before? either way, awesome... don't drive angry!

[mian]

You must not have noticed. It's my favorite movie, bar none. Just got finished watching it in honor of the holiday too. Glad there's another fan.

Looking at that thread, it occurs to me I still have one episode of lost in .ts that I was never able to properly compress, and I did have sync issues with other episodes. I had some other file repair tools, something TS specific back then. I'll hunt that down and see if it works for me and I'll report back.

[pcostanza]

I've not noticed any problems with V but I sometimes as I watch tv, I'm partially preoccupied so I'll take another look and see if I can notice anything. I haven't converted to any other format so I don't know about sync issues. If there's anything you want me to try with the file, let me know and I'll give it a go.

[pcostanza]

Can't see any problem with playback of V. Anything you want me to try? What format did you convert to and using what program? I've been using the video converter that's part of AMD's Catalyst, formerly called Avivo. It's fast and very good using Stream but I can try something else if you prefer.

[mian]

I used VideoRedo to cut out the commercials first, then compressed the resulting mpeg with AutoGK into XviD. Using some alternate program to do the compression was next on my list. I'll look at catalyst but I'll probably run mediacoder tonight. I'll throw in an uncut version to make sure my cutting hasn't affected anything too.

Before I saw this thread, I assumed I had some sort of localized issue, signal or some such. That could still be true.