Recording not stopping (1 Viewer)

[John_Galt]

I have finally managed to get the time to setup my system and the last days I have been testing it rigorously to see how it works, and it works great until suddenly...

What seems to happen is that suddenly one recording does not stop, it keeps on going and going and the only way to stop it is to press the powerbutton on the computer. I have tried to stop the recording and tvservice.exe to no avail, a normal restart of the computer also fails, it hangs at the "shutting down windows" message.

Also, when this happens it seems impossible to start new recordings.

Log file is attached, I hope my system specs are up to date and available, I hope that is all information needed and that someone can help me with this problem, thankful for any help or suggestions I can get.


Since this only happens approx once in 24hrs, to simplify finding the problem in the logs, the failing program is called "Mord i sinnet" and the troubling recording took place at 2012-08-03 23:50

 

[mm1352000]

Hello John

Those are some *really* long logs. Thank you for specifying the time of the problem and the program name, otherwise I would never have found it.

So in this case it looks like you're having trouble recording two analog channels at the same time:
- "Sjuan 23:50-01:45 Mord i sinnet"
- "TV8 00:55-01:55 Navy CIS"

Do you think it is possible that recording two analog problems is the general problem, or have you done that successfully at other times?
Did the recording of "Mord i sinnet" complete properly or not? I mean, it seems like it started okay and I can see that it doesn't appear to have stopped, but I want to know if the file can be played without problems.

mm

 

[John_Galt]

Hi mm
Thanks for your quick reply, yep those logs are long, did not want to remove anything though since I was not sure what could be needed...

First, the recording of "Mord i sinnet" worked fine, all 5 hours of the recording (thats when I stopped it)

Second, was not sure whether I had recorded two analog channels before so I had to try and it seems like I get some problems when doing that? I have attached the tv.log from my latest testrun.

 

[mm1352000]

Hello again

First, the recording of "Mord i sinnet" worked fine, all 5 hours of the recording (thats when I stopped it)

Okay. That is interesting.

Second, was not sure whether I had recorded two analog channels before so I had to try and it seems like I get some problems when doing that? I have attached the tv.log from my latest testrun.

Yes, that looks like the same problem as what I saw in the previous logs.

What seems to be happening is:
1. First recording starts successfully using the TerraTec tuner.
2. TV Server attempts to start the second recording with the Hauppauge tuner. Tuning appears to succeed that no video/audio stream is received from the tuner.
3. TV Server retries over and over again to start the recording, but in each case the problem is the same - no stream received from the tuner. The retrying seems to be preventing TV Server from stopping the first recording.

I suspect the problem may be an issue with the software encoders. In my experience the ATI encoders are great. Usually they can be used with more than one tuner, however it is possible that they are not compatible with the Hauppauge tuner for some reason. You can test this by temporarily disabling the TerraTec tuner and attempting to start a recording with the Hauppauge tuner. If it works then the problem is the encoder can't be used with more than one tuner on your system for some reason; if it doesn't work, the problem is a compatibility issue with the Hauppauge tuner and ATI encoder.

One possible solution may be to install the Hauppauge (Mainconcept) software encoder from the SoftMCE/SoftPVR package. This should be freely available for you from the Hauppauge website (link). Then go into TV Server configuration and have a look at the "software encoders" tab in the "general" section.

First ensure that the ATI and Hauppauge encoders are detected (if the Hauppauge encoders aren't yet recognised, restart the PC and check again).
Then increase the priority of the ATI encoders over the Hauppauge encoders since you know the ATI encoder works with your TerraTec tuner and your TerraTec tuner is higher priority than your Hauppauge tuner.
Finally, untick the "reuse" option on the ATI encoders so that TV Server won't try to use them for more than one tuner.

This should force TV Server to use the ATI encoders with the TerraTec tuner and the Hauppauge encoders with any other tuner.

Hopefully this will solve the problems...
mm

 

[John_Galt]

Hi again!
Thank you very much for all your help. To be honest it did not quite work out as smoothly as in your instructions (it never does) but you immediately put me on the right track.

I will write some here both so you know how it all went and also if someone else gets into similar problems

I tried to install the Hauppauge encoders from the link you posted but they never showed up in tv-server setup. After that I installed the Hauppauge TV-software and then the Hauppauge encoders showed so I am not sure whether the Hauppauge WinTV needs to be installed first or not.

I also noted during the testing that I actually could use the ATI encoder for both tuners at the same time when doing a manual timeshift/recording but I never made a complete test as to why it suddenly worked so I can not say a definite reason. The thing I know I changed is that I put another enecoder with higher priority that the tv-server tried with first but rejected before using the ATI encoder.

I think those where the major findings, I will let the server run hard for a couple of more days and hopefully everything will work now.

Thanks again.

 

[mm1352000]

Hello again John

Thank you very much for all your help.

You're very welcome!

To be honest it did not quite work out as smoothly as in your instructions (it never does)...

I tried to install the Hauppauge encoders from the link you posted but they never showed up in tv-server setup.

Well that is not ideal.
I don't think the Hauppauge software should need to be installed first. Maybe you now have two sets of slightly different Hauppauge encoders installed.
Could I ask you for a favour?
Would you be able to use GraphStudio (or similar) to check the names of the encoders that you have installed so that we can make sure that our list in TV Server is complete. You can help us like this:
1. Download and run GraphStudio from here (no install required).
2. Select "graph"->"insert filter..." from the top menu.
3. Ensure "DirectShow Filters" and "All Filters" is selected at the top of the new dialog.
4. Check through the list for any item with a name that includes "Hauppauge" and/or "Mainconcept" and is a video or audio encoder (usually named like "xxx audio encoder"). Please can you copy the exact names of those items and post them here.
5. Repeat (4) for "Audio Compressors"/"All Filters" and "Video Compressors"/"All Filters".

Hopefully this will only take a few minutes.
I would do this myself but the installer won't let me install SoftMCE because I don't have a Hauppauge tuner installed...

I also noted during the testing that I actually could use the ATI encoder for both tuners at the same time when doing a manual timeshift/recording but I never made a complete test as to why it suddenly worked so I can not say a definite reason. The thing I know I changed is that I put another enecoder with higher priority that the tv-server tried with first but rejected before using the ATI encoder.

I think those where the major findings, I will let the server run hard for a couple of more days and hopefully everything will work now.

Hmmm, okay. Thanks for reporting this information. Encoders can be strange like this. I am glad it is working now.

mm

 

[John_Galt]

Hi
Sure, no problems...
First, DirectShow filters there is only one: MainConcept (MCE) MPEG Encoder

and that is actually the only one I can find that fulfills your requirements.

Please get back if you need more information.

 

[mm1352000]

That is strange - there should be at least one video and one audio. Did you use the 64 bit GraphStudio? I should have said that you need the 32 bit one, even for a 64 bit OS - sorry.

 

[John_Galt]

Ah, now we are talking...

In Directshow Filters there are 16 Hauppauge and 4 MainConcept Filters but if we only look for the keyword audio/video/encoder they are:
MainConcept (HCW) Layer II Audio Encoder
MainConcept (HCW) MPEG-2 Video Encoder

under Audio Compressors there is only one:
MainConcept (HCW) Layer II Audio Encoder (located in WinTV folder)

under Video compressors the same, only one located in WinTV folder:
MainConcept (HCW) MPEG-2 Video Encoder

 

[mm1352000]

Thanks John (and sorry for leading you astray [again])!

...but it looks like we have those in our list already, unless I am missing something.
I guess we have to put this in the "strange" box?