2 Tuners, Simultaneous recording problems (1 Viewer)

[mundy5]

MediaPortal Version: 1.1
MediaPortal Skin: default
Windows Version: xp x32 sp3
CPU Type: Intel Dual CPU E2160 @ 1.8 GHz
HDD: Seagate 500 GB
Memory: 3.25 (technically 4) DDR2 800
Motherboard: Gigabyte EP43-DS3L
Video Card: NVIDIA GEForce 9500 GT
Video Card Driver: NVIDIA 6.14.11.9621
Sound Card: Realtek integrated
Sound Card AC3:
Sound Card Driver: Realtek 5.10.0.5653
1. TV Card: ATI TV Wonder 600 PCIe
1. TV Card Type: analog & ATSC
1. TV Card Driver: ATI 6.14.10.394
2. TV Card: AVermedia M791
2. TV Card Type: ATSC
2. TV Card Driver: AVermedia 23888 BDA Driver
3. TV Card:
3. TV Card Type:
3. TV Card Driver:
4. TV Card:
4. TV Card Type:
4. TV Card Driver:
MPEG2 Video Codec:
MPEG2 Audio Codec:
h.264 Video Codec:
Satelite/CableTV Provider:
HTPC Case:
Cooling:
Power Supply:
Remote: n/a
TV: n/a
TV - HTPC Connection:

All, I currently have a 2 tuner setup picking up an ATSC signal. Each tuner has its own antenna. I'm not having any issues when recording one show at a time or watching one channel live.

However, when I decide to watch live TV and record another show or when two shows are recording simultaneously or they overlap a few minutes at the end of one show and the beginning of another, there is a relatively constant breakdown of the video quality in terms of jitters, breaks, and pauses in both audio and video.

I'm wondering if there is something wrong with the way I set it up.

I currently have the program on one HDD and the recording on a dedicated HDD. The recorded TV shows go into the same folder.

Should I set this up differently? I have a dual core processor, is there a way to have it record using the 2 different processors? Is there some setting I am missing say allocating more memory resources to MP?

Any help would be greatly appreciated. This is not by any means a deal breaker, but it sure would be nice to use both tuners at the same time and get a high quality recording.

I've read recently that local broadcast stations will move away from having their shows available online in 1 day and will start charging for them or delaying the rebroadcast up to a month. So I'd like to be able to record all my shows I want to watch in a given week.

Thanks.

 

[RobNorthcott]

I reckon you ought to be able to record two channels at once with that system, certainly if they're not HD broadcasts. You shouldn't need to do anything clever with settings. Recording two streams to the same drive works fine - you end up with seriously fragmented files, but it doesn't really bother the system (I do it all the time). You could check the processor use while recording from both tuners to see if it's using too much CPU time (although I wouldn't expect it to). Is it an old hard drive you're using that may not have enough bandwidth (again, unlikely if it's a 500GB)? Do both tuners work fine on their own or is it possible that the second tuner is always stuttery?

I suppose it's possible that an antivirus is continuously scanning the recording files and causing a slowdown. I tend to exclude the recording (and timeshift) directories from antivirus.

Good luck!

Rob

 

[mundy5]

Some log entries; need help

Thank you, Rob, for responding to my post. Responding to your questions, first, I am recording ATSC, over the air broadcasts, they were in HD, but since the signal is already digital, my tuners do not need to do any encoding. It simply gets translated into TS files so the processor load is virtually nil.

My HDD is an 800 GB 7200 rpm drive; just purchased for this particular purpose of using it to record TV shows. It should not have any issues, however, looking at my TsWriter logs from yesterday, I did notice some unusual error messages. Perhaps people can help here.

I started recording my first show at 6:58 pm and the first recording ends @ 8:02 pm; I have a 2 min before and 2 min after recording setting.

The second show started @ 7:58 pm and ended @ 9:02 pm and the final show started @ 8:58 pm and ended @ 10:02 pm.

the error messages began right when the first and second program overlapped and continued throughout the 2nd program's recording which clearly was noticeable by all the stutter. The 3rd program also had some errors until the 2nd program recording ended and then no more error messages.

I noticed that there are 2 different types. Here is a sampling:

Beginning of the 2nd program overlapping with the 1st program----------

25-10-2010 19:58:17.265 Recorder: RECORD start of audio detected
25-10-2010 19:58:40.453 Recorder: RECORD Info : Program clock reference forward jump ( 67054 ).
25-10-2010 19:58:45.93 Recorder: RECORD Info : Program clock reference forward jump ( 163231 ).
25-10-2010 19:59:04.109 Recorder: RECORD Info : Program clock reference forward jump ( 55170 ).
25-10-2010 19:59:09.906 Recorder: RECORD Info : Program clock reference forward jump ( 51792 ).
25-10-2010 19:59:11.796 Recorder: RECORD Info : Program clock reference forward jump ( 75566 ).
25-10-2010 19:59:14.265 Recorder: RECORD Info : Program clock reference forward jump ( 42334 ).
25-10-2010 19:59:16.375 Recorder: RECORD Info : Program clock reference forward jump ( 51330 ).
25-10-2010 19:59:21.156 Recorder: RECORD Info : Program clock reference forward jump ( 39328 ).
25-10-2010 19:59:26.234 Recorder: RECORD Info : Program clock reference forward jump ( 40421 ).
25-10-2010 19:59:27.359 Recorder: RECORD Info : Program clock reference forward jump ( 35119 ).
25-10-2010 19:59:33.937 Recorder: RECORD Info : Program clock reference forward jump ( 36649 ).
25-10-2010 19:59:34.625 Recorder: RECORD Info : Program clock reference forward jump ( 67560 ).
25-10-2010 19:59:37.984 Recorder: RECORD Info : Program clock reference forward jump ( 52403 ).
25-10-2010 19:59:38.468 Recorder: RECORD Info : Program clock reference forward jump ( 34053 ).
25-10-2010 19:59:44.375 Recorder: Pid 31 , No PayLoad, Continuity Counter should be the same ! 8 ( prev 6 )
25-10-2010 19:59:57.781 Recorder: RECORD Info : Program clock reference forward jump ( 26804 ).
25-10-2010 20:00:05.265 Recorder: RECORD Info : Program clock reference forward jump ( 37825 ).
25-10-2010 20:00:05.312 Recorder: RECORD Info : Program clock reference forward jump ( 36314 ).
25-10-2010 20:00:07.593 Recorder: RECORD Info : Program clock reference forward jump ( 52961 ).
25-10-2010 20:00:09.375 Recorder: Pid 31 , No PayLoad, Continuity Counter should be the same ! c ( prev 9 )
25-10-2010 20:00:09.390 Recorder: RECORD Info : Program clock reference forward jump ( 70226 ).
25-10-2010 20:00:10.296 Recorder: RECORD Info : Program clock reference forward jump ( 172902 ).
25-10-2010 20:00:11.296 Recorder: RECORD Info : Program clock reference forward jump ( 37796 ).
25-10-2010 20:00:12.781 Recorder: Pid 31 , No PayLoad, Continuity Counter should be the same ! c ( prev 8 )
25-10-2010 20:00:12.937 Recorder: RECORD Info : Program clock reference forward jump ( 61851 ).
25-10-2010 20:00:15.265 Recorder: RECORD Info : Program clock reference forward jump ( 35086 ).
25-10-2010 20:00:15.609 Recorder: RECORD Info : Program clock reference forward jump ( 153954 ).
25-10-2010 20:00:15.718 Recorder: Pid 31 , No PayLoad, Continuity Counter should be the same ! 9 ( prev c )
25-10-2010 20:01:21.359 Recorder: Pid 31 , No PayLoad, Continuity Counter should be the same ! 7 ( prev 6 )
25-10-2010 20:01:46.843 Recorder: Pid 31 , No PayLoad, Continuity Counter should be the same ! 5 ( prev 4 )
25-10-2010 20:02:01.140 Recorder: Pid 31 , No PayLoad, Continuity Counter should be the same ! d ( prev c )
25-10-2010 20:02:04.937 Recorder: RECORD Stop 'G:\Recorded TV\FOX 2\House 2010-10-25\House.ts'

Then throughout the 2nd program's recording, I saw the following error message:

25-10-2010 20:02:27.359 Recorder: Pid 31 , No PayLoad, Continuity Counter should be the same ! 8 ( prev 7 )
25-10-2010 20:02:29.671 Recorder: Pid 31 , No PayLoad, Continuity Counter should be the same ! 3 ( prev 0 )
25-10-2010 20:02:29.843 Recorder: Pid 31 , No PayLoad, Continuity Counter should be the same ! 0 ( prev f )
25-10-2010 20:02:31.46 Recorder: Pid 31 , No PayLoad, Continuity Counter should be the same ! 0 ( prev f )
25-10-2010 20:02:44.187 Recorder: Pid 31 , No PayLoad, Continuity Counter should be the same ! 2 ( prev 0 )
25-10-2010 20:04:53.625 Recorder: Pid 31 , No PayLoad, Continuity Counter should be the same ! 3 ( prev 2 )
25-10-2010 20:05:03.656 Recorder: Pid 31 , No PayLoad, Continuity Counter should be the same ! 8 ( prev 7 )
25-10-2010 20:05:07.203 Recorder: Pid 31 , No PayLoad, Continuity Counter should be the same ! d ( prev c )
25-10-2010 20:05:11.312 Recorder: Pid 31 , No PayLoad, Continuity Counter should be the same ! b ( prev 9 )
25-10-2010 20:05:46.62 Recorder: Pid 31 , No PayLoad, Continuity Counter should be the same ! b ( prev a )
25-10-2010 20:06:19.812 Recorder: Pid 31 , No PayLoad, Continuity Counter should be the same ! a ( prev 9 )
25-10-2010 20:06:34.796 Recorder: Pid 31 , No PayLoad, Continuity Counter should be the same ! 0 ( prev e )
25-10-2010 20:07:39.328 Recorder: Pid 31 , No PayLoad, Continuity Counter should be the same ! b ( prev a )
25-10-2010 20:07:44.625 Recorder: Pid 31 , No PayLoad, Continuity Counter should be the same ! 2 ( prev 0 )
25-10-2010 20:07:46.921 Recorder: Pid 31 , No PayLoad, Continuity Counter should be the same ! 7 ( prev 6 )

The above error message occurred roughly 3-4 times every minute which made viewing the show very painful as it kept skipping and stuttering several times every minute.

If someone can help me identify what these two error messages are and how to fix it, I'd truly appreciate it. As you can see, when the log is being recorded, I believe that the tswriter is unable to write a steady stream and hence the breakup of the video and audio.

Then when the 3rd program started recording, I got the following error messages for 4 mins during the overlap:

25-10-2010 20:58:08.593 Recorder: RECORD start of audio detected
25-10-2010 20:58:37.859 Recorder: RECORD Info : Program clock reference forward jump ( 45937 ).
25-10-2010 20:58:45.31 Recorder: RECORD Info : Program clock reference forward jump ( 42341 ).
25-10-2010 20:58:45.484 Recorder: RECORD Info : Program clock reference forward jump ( 27005 ).
25-10-2010 20:58:49.500 Recorder: RECORD Info : Program clock reference forward jump ( 256974 ).
25-10-2010 20:58:50.375 Recorder: RECORD Info : Program clock reference forward jump ( 37798 ).
25-10-2010 20:58:56.375 Recorder: RECORD Info : Program clock reference forward jump ( 42056 ).
25-10-2010 20:58:56.390 Recorder: RECORD Info : Program clock reference forward jump ( 58034 ).
25-10-2010 20:58:57.234 Recorder: RECORD Info : Program clock reference forward jump ( 102453 ).
25-10-2010 20:59:00.765 Recorder: RECORD Info : Program clock reference forward jump ( 124217 ).
25-10-2010 20:59:00.812 Recorder: RECORD Info : Program clock reference forward jump ( 30434 ).
25-10-2010 20:59:04.31 Recorder: Pid 31 , No PayLoad, Continuity Counter should be the same ! 3 ( prev 2 )
25-10-2010 20:59:24.250 Recorder: RECORD Info : Program clock reference forward jump ( 40505 ).

I would really appreciate your help in resolving this. Thank you in advance.

 

[RobNorthcott]

I don't know what those errors are I'm afraid - hopefully somebody else will.

I know the streams don't have to be processed/encoded, but HD does generate ts files something like twice the size of SD ones (or at least it does with DVB-S broadcasts so I'd guess it's no different with other flavours of digital stream), so I wonder if it could be a storage speed problem. Not necesarily maximum bandwidth, which is obviously easily enough with a modern drive, but with two files recording simultaneously the seek times and random access speed will affect it greatly. If I record two channels at once on my system with one of them being HD, the drive light is on pretty much constantly, so I wonder if it's close to having problems. I can't try it with two HD channels because I can't tune two HD channels at once with my tuners. I know I can WATCH a recording af an HD channel while recording HD at the same time, though (but again, the drive light is pretty much solidly on).

Have you tried the second tuner on its own? It's probably fine, but it would be silly to waste time with other stuff if it's just a poor tuner or driver issue.

Hopefully somebody will see those logs who knows what the errors may mean. It may help if you attach a full set of logs in case the problem is in other areas.

Rob

EDIT: What people are discussing in this thread sounds like a similar issue.

 

[mundy5]

Thanks, Rob. I'll try the fix on that other thread tonight.

What logs should post? I'll be glad to post whatever logs there are. I assume, TV.log and tswriter.log? Is there more?

I did use both tuners individually with no issues in the past. I attributed most of the stutter to antenna reception. But it is very noticeable and often when I am recording two shows at the same time. So that cannot be a reception issue.

Anyway, I'll try the .dll patch tonight and report back.

 

[mundy5]

Just tested the patch for StreamingServer.dll; it did not resolve my issues of studder. Can anyone help me understand why my TsWriter.log is constantly writing to file and causing the breakup in the recording?

 

[RobNorthcott]

What logs should post? I'll be glad to post whatever logs there are. I assume, TV.log and tswriter.log? Is there more?

People tend to prefer it if you post all the log files zipped up, as an attachment. The new installations set up a shortcut on the Start menu that runs MediaPortal in debug mode, then collects all the logs for you after you have replicated the issue. Otherwise, just zip up all the logs from the MP and TVServer directories manually.

Just tested the patch for StreamingServer.dll; it did not resolve my issues of studder.

Bummer. The only other thing I can think of (straw-clutching!) is that the two tuners are interfering with each other somehow when they are both in use. If there's room on your motherboard I'd be tempted to try moving the cards into slots as far apart as possible. You did say the two cards had completely separate aerials didn't you? If not, and they share the same aerial with a splitter, it could just be signal strength issues when both tuners are on, and a booster may help. Apart from that I'm out of ideas.

Rob

 

[mundy5]

Thanks, Rob for the responses.

I am attaching the zip file after recreating the stutter and issues for 2 mins. The issues come up very quickly after starting my second simultaneous recording. I hope someone here can help. Is there another section of the forum I ought to post this? Anyway, each tuner has its own antenna so it should not be an issue losing signal strength due to splitting etc. I must admit that my NBC 5 is one of the weakest signals though so even regular watching has some occasional stutter but not nearly as bad as when it is being recorded at the same time as another channel.

 

[RobNorthcott]

Did you ever find a reason or solution for this? Coincidentally my system has recently been doing the same thing. We've got more stuff being broadcast on HD now, so there have been times when I have had two overlapping HD recordings. When this happens, I get stuttering during the overlap just as you described (when playing back the recording, not just trying to watch it live while there is a recording going on). I'm wondering if it's just drive speed (my recording drive is a WD Green drive, so not the fastest, although not really slow). I can't try separating the recordings because they're both from the same tuner, so have to go to the same place.

Rob

 

[mundy5]

Unfortunately, Rob, I never found a solution. I do not think it is a hdd issue as mine is a brand new 7200 rpm 750GB hdd. I'm not sure how fast it needs to be but it has a 64MB cache. I consider those specs to be more than adequate for recording 2 shows at one time. But it fails to do that. It keeps getting those errors that I posted earlier.