TV Service stops working each time (2 Viewers)

[b5draw]

Hello,

For some reason the TV in MediaPortal freezes after a while. After restarting the TV Service it works again, till it freezes again (somethimes after five mintues, sometimes longer, but it freezes). Watching TV with other software (Teratec Home Cinema) works just fine, without freezing ... It had to be MediaPortal related. In attachment I added the logfile. Can somebody help me out on this one?

Thanks in advance.

 

[b5draw]

Additional information: when tv freezes, nothing is writen to the error log. No new timeshifting files are created. Tv service keeps running. When try to turn the tv back on it displays a message "no video/audio detected".

 

[mm1352000]

Hi and welcome b5draw

So the problem is with the analog tuner? If so, the issue is probably related to the software encoders that you're using. In general software encoders can be unreliable - they can just stop working without any warning. The Terratec HC software is probably using different encoders - have you checked which encoders you have installed and tried different ones? You can do that on the "software encoders" tab in the "general" section of TV Server configuration.

mm

 

[b5draw]

Hello,

Thank you for your reply. I can't figure out witch encoders are used by the Terratec Home Cinema software ...
Under General > Software Encoders (MediaPortal TV Server Configuration) I see these encoders in the listed order:

Video Encoders
1. InterVideo Video Encoder
2. Ulead MPEG Encoder
3. MainConcept MPEG Video Encoder
4. MainConcept Demo MPEG Video Encoder
5. CyberLink MPEG Video Encoder
6. CyberLink MPEG Video Encoder (Twinhan)
7. MainConcept (Hauppauge) MPEG Video Encoder
8. nanocosmos MPEG Video Encoder
9. Pinnacle MPEG 2 Encoder
10. MainConcept (HCW) MPEG-2 Video Encoder
11. ATI MPEG Video Encoder

Audio Encoders
1. InterVideo Audio Encoder
2. Ulead MPEG Audio Encoder
3. MainConcept MPEG Audio Encoder
4. MainConcept Demo MPEG Audio Encoder
5. CyberLink Audio Encoder
6. CyberLink Audio Encoder (Twinhan)
7. Pinnacle MPEG Layer-2 Audio Encoder
8. MainConcept (Hauppauge) MPEG Audio Encoder
9. NVIDIA Audio Encoder
10. MainConcept (HCW) Layer II Audio Encoder
11. CyberLink MPEG Audio Encoder
12. ATI MPEG Audio Encoder

I use the Cinergy T Stick Video HD (see TerraTec - Products - TV - Hybrid (Multi-Standard) - TerraTec). What order of encoder would you advice me to use? Thanks in advance. I'm rather new to MediaPortal, please excuse me for my ignorance.

 

[mm1352000]

Hi again

Thank you for your reply. I can't figure out witch encoders are used by the Terratec Home Cinema software ...

Okay, no problem. Please could you use the watchdog to collect MP logs. I'll check the codecs listed in the dxdiag output for encoders...

Log Files - MediaPortal Wiki

Just follow the instructions in the link, except choose option 3 ("export all currently present logs") instead of option 1, then post the zip file here.

Under General > Software Encoders (MediaPortal TV Server Configuration) I see these encoders in the listed order...

Those are the encoders that TV Server supports. Everyone has the same list. Just because they are listed does not mean that they are installed. You need to check the "installed" column. Which ones are marked as "yes"?

mm

 

[b5draw]

Hello, in attachment I added the requested logfiles. These are the installed encoders:

Video Encoders
1. InterVideo Video Encoder
5. CyberLink MPEG Video Encoder

Audio Encoders
1. InterVideo Audio Encoder

 

[mm1352000]

Hi again

I think the Terratec software is using "CyberLink Audio Encoder(TerraTec)" and "CyberLink MPEG Video Encoder(TerraTec)". Those would probably work with TV Server if you can figure out how to add the definitions to the softwareencoder table in the database. Sorry, in a rush so I'm not able to give you precise instructions...

mm

 

[b5draw]

Hello, I managed to successfully add the two encoders to the database. They show up in de TV Server Configuration (under General > Software Encoders) and are displayed as Installed "Yes". I put both drivers on position one. In MediaPortal it took a whole "loading" time after I started TV, then I received a message "No signal". In TV Server Configuration I changed the order of the audio encoders so the "InterVideo Audio Encoder" is listed before the "CyberLink Audio Encoder(TerraTec)", the "CyberLink MPEG Video Encoder(TerraTec)" on position one. With this configuration I can watch TV in Mediaportal for about half a minute, then it freezes again. In attachment I added the new tv.log and watchdog log.

 

[b5draw]

Case closed, I switched to an internal solution with hardware encoding (Hauppauge - WinTV HVR-2200). Works really perfect!

 

[George Pepper]

I know this thread is a little stale, but it doesn't lead to a solution with the Terratec Cynergy T-Stick Video HD, so I will give you one, at least for AV Composite in (I have no need for DVB-T as all my set top boxes work off satellite inputs). I could not get the Cynergy stick to work cleanly with the packaged Terratec Home Cinema software. I must admit I didn't try very hard because that sofware is no match for MP, so why would you bother.

The codecs provided with the stick installed OK (they appear with the name Cyberlink MPEG Video Encoder(Terratec)), but even though I added them to the MpTvDb SQL database, TV-Server does not "see" them in the "General -> Software Encoders" tab.

I now have the Terratec Cynergy T-Stick Video HD working well with MP 1.3.0 beta using the ATI AVIVO codec reading input from the composite phono input. This codec can be obtained from the 10-11_vista_win7_32-64_xcode.exe AVIVO installation as indicated in the second page of the link at:

https://forum.team-mediaportal.com/...l-most-software-encoder-based-tv-cards.90355/

posted by naibaf7. If you follow the link in that post, you are redirected to a survey page at AMD (who acquired ATI) and after much clicking and huffing and puffing, you are invited to download the file 12-8_vista_win7_32-64_xcode.exe which does NOT contain the codecs.

If you are persistent, you can still find copies of this here and there, e.g.

http://www.mmnt.net/db/0/1/files.3dnews.ru/pub/drivers/ati/

You then need to extract the contents of this 10-11_vista_win7_32-64_xcode.exe file using another tool that naibaf7 mentions on page 2 of that first link. This is the uniextract tool, which needs to be installed to get a shell extension so you can right click on the file 10-11_vista_win7_32-64_xcode.exe and select UniExtract Files... Accepting the defaults, this will extract the contents to a directory in the same directory that 10-11_vista_win7_32-64_xcode.exe resides. Don't worry if you get a "Could not load library" message, just click OK and continue. Drill down into the directory .\$_OUTDIR\Packages\Apps\AVIVO64 and you will see a file called AVIVO64.msi - Don't let the 64 throw you - this file contains both 64 bit and 32 bit codecs.

Once again right click on AVIVO64.msi and use uniextract to extract the contents of this .msi file - when prompted you can select the MSI Administrative Installer option. This will create a directory called AVIVO64; drill down again to the .\$_OUTDIR\Packages\Apps\AVIVO64\AVIVO64\Common64\ATI Technologies\Multimedia directory and you will find the codecs.

Now create a directory called C:\Program Files\MPEG Encoder Package

Now create a directory called C:\Program Files\MPEG Encoder Package\ATI

From the MPEG Encoder Package NOCP.zip file posted by naibaf7 at http://www.2shared.com/file/w3UjsWre/MPEG_Encoder_Package_NOCP.html, extract the Configuration.exe file to the C:\Program Files\MPEG Encoder Package directory.

Copy the codecs you extracted from 10-11_vista_win7_32-64_xcode.exe (there should be 4 .dll files as indicated in the file Filelist.txt in the MPEG Encoder Package NOCP.zip file) to the directory C:\Program Files\MPEG Encoder Package\ATI.

Run the file Configuration.exe and click the ATI Install button.

I couldn't get the graphedit tool at http://www.shspvr.com/graph_build/download/graphedit_dx9.zip to give me anything. Each time I would click on the DirectShow filters option to expand the list, the tool just quit.

I found another tool for examining codecs at http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/installed_codec.html. This is a portable .exe, so no install needed. It will show you that the ATI codecs got installed, and with which name. Fortunately, the name is the same as an exiting entry in the MpTvDb database, so you don't need to add this pair of codecs.

Incidentally, if you want to add, modify, remove etc. entries from the MpTvDb database, download this great tool:

http://www.heidisql.com/download.php

...makes SQL a breeze.

Once you have the ATI codecs installed, check that TV-Service Configuration can see them in the "General -> Software Encoders" tab and they have a Yes in the Installed column. Move them up to priority 1.

Use the TV-Servers section to scan for channels and (in my case) "Add S-video channels" to get the composite input as well. After scanning, go to the TV Channels section and "Edit" the channels. Here make sure the country is set correctly in the Add/Edit Analog Tuningdetail dialogue page. I noticed that if country was set to France (which is a SECAM region) my PAL composite input lost it colour and was not clean. Setting the country to United Kingdom solved this.

Now in MediaPortal configuration, go to the "Codecs and Renderer" section, and on the "Video Codecs" tab select the ATI MPEG Video Decoder for MPEG-2 Video and H.264 Video. Set everything else to LAV. Click the "TV Codecs" tab and do the same thing.

That's it. When I ran MP and selected TV, and picked the composite input there was the video of my daughter's gym class playing clear as a bell.

...George