Freeview HD Recording Issues (1 Viewer)

[Rob_UK]

Hi

First of all what a great product Media Portal is, looking like a successor to my WMC set up.

Unfortunately I can't record freeview HD unless I'm watching the channel I want to record at the same time.

- Recordings without live picture are pixelated and distorted sound.
- Timeshift workd fine
- Record, (after timeshift active) in manual control works.

I've uploaded some logs viewing and recoding channel 4 HD and just recording wihtout live picture.

Any help would be greatly received!

 

[mm1352000]

Hello and welcome!

...and thank you for the log files

Recordings without live picture are pixelated and distorted sound.

There are a whole bunch of continuity errors in TV Server's TsWriter log file.

=> Make sure you've configured any security software you use (anti-virus, anti-spyware, Windows Defender etc.) to skip scanning your time-shifting and recording folders. I'd also recommend to configure them to skip scanning the MediaPortal and MediaPortal TV Server program folders, but that's a personal choice.

 

[mm1352000]

Also, I see you're recording to "D:\TV".
What type of driver is d: ?

 

[Rob_UK]

Hi

Thank you for looking into this.

D: is a USB 3 memory Stick. I've also tried on 2 different internal hdds, and external USB 3 HDD, ( I record to the latter on my WMC PC.)

On the anti-virus front just running windows defender.

Thanks

 

[Rob_UK]

I've excluded the folders and turned real-time protection off still the same

 

[mm1352000]

Okay.
I generally wouldn't recommend USB sticks for recording or timeshifting due to variable access latency and potential DPC latency issues caused by bad controller driver designs, both of which can cause exactly the sorts of symptoms you're seeing now.

Are any other programs running on the PC when the recordings without live picture are scheduled?
I ask because occasionally we've seen reports of recording being affected by CPU/system power-saving features. When other programs aren't running, the system/CPU may consider it okay to go into low power mode to save power... and that in turn can cause problems like what you're seeing now. Reported solutions/workarounds have been as simple as opening an Internet browser window (Chrome or Firefox).

 

[Rob_UK]

Hi

Had another go this evening nothing obviously wrong, still same issue.

So decided to uninstall Media Portal 1, and try media portal 2, it is working fine, even recording on the USB memory stick!

Just need to get MPTvScheduler set up, is it supported on Media Portal 2, if not is there an alternative?

Thanks

Rob

 

[regeszter]

Just need to get MPTvScheduler set up, is it supported on Media Portal 2, if not is there an alternative?

Not supported because there is no working MPExtended for MP2.

 

[Rob_UK]

Thanks
Will look at using Kodi http:// acess.
Rob

 

[BioEgo]

Hi,
it seems I have a very similar issue.Timeshifting is working fine, recording is fine as long as timeshifting is working, recording without timeshifting (ie. when not watching live TV) is extremely corrupted.
I ran some tests and I noticed that there's a pattern to this (or at least it seems).

Experiment setup:
- Start timeshifting to occupy one of my tv-cards
- Start recording on a different mux using the second card
- After a while stop timeshifting on first card and let recording continue for a while

Looking at TSWriter log (attached with all the other TVServer logs just in case) it seems that as soon as I stop timeshifting on the first card I start getting a lot of continuity errors on the other card, resulting in unwatchable recording. As you can see from the logs I tried it a few times and it always does that.

I need to add that I have this issue only on one of my tvcards (Cinergy T2 HD Stick) and it is already known to be a bit problematic (see this thread about it Terratec Cinergy T2 HD Stick DVB-T/T2 not recognized). Also: I'm still using the same modified TVLibrary.dll @mm1352000 provided in that same thread even if I updated everything else to MP1.18, not sure if it matters.

I already tried excluding TVService.exe and the timeshifting/recording folders from antivirus checking, setting energy profile to high performance and removing any kind of CPU Throttling setting. I also increased TVService priority to above normal. The recording and timeshifting folders are on internal SATA3 HDDs (I also tried to set the two cards to different recording folders on separated HDDs to see if it changed anything....it doesn't). MP is running from system SSD.

Can't say for sure for how long this is going on because I only noticed when doing two simultaneous recordings when away and it happens rarely. I know for sure it happened also a few versions ago, but I didn't pay a lot of attention then since it was a once in a while situation and didn't have any other dual recording situation till now.

Any idea? Let me know if I should test something else or if you need more info!
Thanks,
Bioego