HDHR recording issues

[drmargarit]

I have a fullsized TV antenna on the roof (takes me back to the 70's) hooked up to two HDHR's.

About 1/3 of the shows recorded on NPVR will freeze up with any comskip jump or skip from a button press.
The same shows are recording on SageTV simultaneously and playback flawlessly (on a HD200 box).

I understand that .ts is a crappy container for video playback, especially when it comes to skipping ahead and back.

What does SageTV do that NPVR doesn't? Transcoding on the fly?

I have had success with a few of the bad files by transcoding them into mp4 and back out again immediately. ie.
ffmpeg.exe -i npvr.ts -acodec copy -vcodec copy npvr.mp4
rename npvr.ts npvr.ts.old
ffmpeg.exe -i npvr.mp4 -acodec copy -vcodec copy npvr.ts

It's nice because it takes less than ten minutes each way because there's no transcoding but I wouldn't be able to watch the shows for at least 20 mins after recording ends.

What's the best solution for this problem? Will it just go away if I buy Hauppauge tuners?
If I don't get the WAF up, we'll go back to Comcast when SageTV finally dies. (insert vomiting emoticon here)


drmargarit

[sub]

I'm not aware of any problems with playback of recordings from HDHR, and skipping in .ts files is generally pretty good. Pretty much everyone here is leaving their recordings as .ts files. It might just be related to the decoders you're using.

Do you see any problems with the recording if you just leave them playing? Are they breaking up? (since you mentioned the antenna)

[BrettB]

NPVR creates a timing.info file which allows to do very accurate skipping in .ts files even if the timeline from the broadcast isn't completely consecutive or has "issues". By default it will store this file as an alternate data stream in the .ts file as long as it is stored on an NTFS drive. There is also a configuration option to have it store the timing.info as a separate file which is useful with using a NAS or other non NTFS drive.

Are you recording to a local drive on the NPVR server that is NTFS formatted? Your "workaround" of transcoding to .mp4 and then back to .ts sounds like it is creating a new, "clean" timeline so that the timing.info isn't needed for good skipping.

[drmargarit]

It is recording to a NTFS local drive.
How do I enable the alternative timing.info separate file?

For example: last week's TheAmazingRace. I start it playing and hit ctrl > to skip forward. Instant lockup. Ctrl-s returns me to the menu.

If I run ffmpeg on it using the profile mentioned earlier, at 49 seconds I get:
[mpegts @ 0294d820] PES packet size mismatch

I converted it back to .ts. No error messages. I can skip to my hearts content back and forth without errors.

I am 60 miles from the towers so some garbling may be happening.
A clean timeline seems to do the trick.

drmargarit

[johnsonx42]

I seem to recall that this sort of problem can be caused by having the Application set to "NPVR" in the HDHR driver. It should be set to "Other ATSC" instead.

[sub]

For example: last week's TheAmazingRace. I start it playing and hit ctrl > to skip forward. Instant lockup. Ctrl-s returns me to the menu.

If you can reproduce the error and post the npvr.log, I'll check it out.

Because the problem seems to happen when you skip, it sounds like a playback issue, which points me towards the decoders you're using.

[drmargarit]

If you can reproduce the error and post the npvr.log, I'll check it out.

Because the problem seems to happen when you skip, it sounds like a playback issue, which points me towards the decoders you're using.

Attached are the log files for watching just a few seconds of video and hitting the ctrl-> to skip.
One log file is the original .ts file.
The second log file is the .ts -> .mp4 ->.ts file.

The freeze happens for every video renderer and every video decoder (microsoft,ffdshow,lav from SAF) and every audio decoder (ffdshow,lav,microsoft,ac3filter).
The second file skips fine.

Thanks for looking.

drmargarit

[mvallevand]

What I would do first is try the EVR Renderer and set Audio to default device

Martin

[sub]

Yep - what he said. Definitely set the audio renderer back to 'Default'. Other settings have caused skipping freezes for some users.

[drmargarit]

Set the video renderer to EVR. Cycled through all of the audio renderers. Same result for all of them. Freeze on ctrl->.
I have several recordings queued for tonight with the HDHomerun software set to "other" rather than NextPVR. The previous recordings were on my old machine. I will get back to you and let you know on this thread if anything changes.
Thanks for your help.


drmargarit