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[greynolds]

I've been recording shows off of my Ceton InfiniTV ETH 6 tuner cards in parallel with Windows Media Center for the last few weeks to evaluate if I can ditch Windows Media Center and switch to using MC for TV duties.  I'm running into a couple of issues with this:

1) I've had more than a few recordings that were truncated at around 17 seconds.  These are shows that should be 30 minutes or more, typically 1 hour shows.  Is there a place where I can look to find out why the recording stopped (and this sort of info really ought to be available in TheaterView so the user doesn't have to switch views)?  When this happens, MC never seems to attempt to record another showing, which I would expect it to do as the recording obviously failed.

2) If I start playing a recording that's still in progress, playback appears to be at 2x speed and there's no sound.  I currently have JRiver setup to record in the TS format, but the same thing happens if I use the JTV format.

3) When playing recordings that have finished, the picture stutters as though it's playing at 24fps instead of 30fps or something along those lines (this is for 1080i channels).  I do not have this issue when playing recordings that were made with BeyondTV (the BeyondTV recordings would be over the air HD programming, but still 1080i except for the local FOX affiliate) or with recordings of the exact same show using the same Ceton tuners recorded in Windows Media Center (as .wtv files).  I currently have JRiver setup to record in the TS format, but the same thing happens if I use the JTV format (I greatly prefer the single file and portability of the TS format).  I have video mode set to Red October HQ - my initial thought was that perhaps my PC isn't up to the task, but given that the same recordings made in other programs play back fine, I'm pretty confident that's not the issue.  I can try recording to a different hard drive to rule out issues with the hard drive.

[Yaobing]

I've been recording shows off of my Ceton InfiniTV ETH 6 tuner cards in parallel with Windows Media Center for the last few weeks to evaluate if I can ditch Windows Media Center and switch to using MC for TV duties.  I'm running into a couple of issues with this:

Running WMC at the same time running JRiver MC could be problematic.  WMC appears to assume that it has exclusive access to the tuners, and that can cause problems for MC.  If you really want to do this parallel comparison, which I do not see the need, you should enable only a specific tuner in WMC, and at the same time disable the same tuner inside MC.

1) I've had more than a few recordings that were truncated at around 17 seconds.  These are shows that should be 30 minutes or more, typically 1 hour shows.  Is there a place where I can look to find out why the recording stopped (and this sort of info really ought to be available in TheaterView so the user doesn't have to switch views)?  When this happens, MC never seems to attempt to record another showing, which I would expect it to do as the recording obviously failed.

See above.  

There is no way of finding out why recording failed in Theater View.  Log files may contain some info.

2) If I start playing a recording that's still in progress, playback appears to be at 2x speed and there's no sound.  I currently have JRiver setup to record in the TS format, but the same thing happens if I use the JTV format.

Do you mean at half speed, instead of 2x speed?  I have seen the behavior of slow motion playback, but have not found the cause yet.  I am still working on it.

3) When playing recordings that have finished, the picture stutters as though it's playing at 24fps instead of 30fps or something along those lines (this is for 1080i channels).  I do not have this issue when playing recordings that were made with BeyondTV (the BeyondTV recordings would be over the air HD programming, but still 1080i except for the local FOX affiliate) or with recordings of the exact same show using the same Ceton tuners recorded in Windows Media Center (as .wtv files).  I currently have JRiver setup to record in the TS format, but the same thing happens if I use the JTV format (I greatly prefer the single file and portability of the TS format).  I have video mode set to Red October HQ - my initial thought was that perhaps my PC isn't up to the task, but given that the same recordings made in other programs play back fine, I'm pretty confident that's not the issue.  I can try recording to a different hard drive to rule out issues with the hard drive.

While playing, check the madVR settings.  Some settings are not suitable for 1080i HD video, depending on your hardware.  In particular, what setting is used for image downscaling?

[greynolds]

Running WMC at the same time running JRiver MC could be problematic.  WMC appears to assume that it has exclusive access to the tuners, and can cause problem for MC.  If you really want to do this parallel comparison, which I do not see the need, you should enable only a specific tuner in WMC, and at the same time disable the same tuner inside MC.

WMC can assume what it wants as the Ceton drivers are using tuner pooling, so they're all essentially virtual tuners.  When WMC or MC requests tuner X from the driver, they will actually get back the first available tuner from the pool.  Note that WMC and MC are not running on the same PC, they're 2 separate PC's.  Given that I'm running into both recording AND playback problems with MC, I most definitely see the need to do parallel recordings so I don't end up either missing shows (issue #1) or ending up with recordings that are unwatchable (issues #2 & 3).

There is no way of finding out why recording failed in Theater View.  Log files may contain some info.Do you mean at half speed, instead of 2x speed?  I have seen the behavior of slow motion playback, but have not found the cause yet.  I am still working on it.

It looks like double speed, not half speed to me.  Where are the log files located - I don't see anything in the options that points to where they might be?  But I'm actually even more interested in the 2nd part of my question - why does MC not record another showing when a recording fails?

While playing, check the madVR settings.  Some settings are not suitable for 1080i HD video, depending on your hardware.  In particular, what setting is used for image downscaling?

The files recorded by BeyondTV and WMC playback just fine in MC, so wouldn't that imply that my madVR settings are ok, wouldn't it?

In any event, I believe my madVR settings were at the defaults as I don't recall ever modifying them.  Didn't you mean image upscaling (going from 1080i to 1080p wouldn't be downscaling).  Both image downscaling and upscaling are set to Lanczos, 4 taps, and activate anti-ringing filter is checked.  If I switch image upscaling to DXVA2, playback of the recordings improves dramatically.  I checked CPU usage while playing with image upscaling set to Lanczos and it was only around 7%, so this doesn't seem to be a horsepower issue on the PC.

Out of curiosity, I just started a recording and then started playing it with image upscaling set to DXVA2 and still have the playing at 2x speed issue - it's definitely playing fast, not slow.

[Yaobing]

WMC can assume what it wants as the Ceton drivers are using tuner pooling, so they're all essentially virtual tuners.  When WMC or MC requests tuner X from the driver, they will actually get back the first available tuner from the pool.  Note that WMC and MC are not running on the same PC, they're 2 separate PC's.  Given that I'm running into both recording AND playback problems with MC, I most definitely see the need to do parallel recordings so I don't end up either missing shows (issue #1) or ending up with recordings that are unwatchable (issues #2 & 3).

When I initially tested, the tuners were not pooled correctly.  WMC definitely messed up the tuner in use inside MC.  Not sure if it is still the case now.

why does MC not record another showing when a recording fails?

No reason.

Oversight?  Lack of time?  Logistics?

The files recorded by BeyondTV and WMC playback just fine in MC, so wouldn't that imply that my madVR settings are ok, wouldn't it?

No.  MC uses its own madVR settings.  I am just trying to see if we did not set it appropriately.

In any event, I believe my madVR settings were at the defaults as I don't recall ever modifying them.  Didn't you mean image upscaling (going from 1080i to 1080p wouldn't be downscaling).  Both image downscaling and upscaling are set to Lanczos, 4 taps, and activate anti-ringing filter is checked.  If I switch image upscaling to DXVA2, playback of the recordings improves dramatically.  I checked CPU usage while playing with image upscaling set to Lanczos and it was only around 7%, so this doesn't seem to be a horsepower issue on the PC.

Try changing that to Lanczos 3 taps, or Bicubic 75.
If your display max resolution is equal or less than 1080 lines, you may need down scaling, not up scaling.

[greynolds]

When I initially tested, the tuners were not pooled correctly.  WMC definitely messed up the tuner in use inside MC.  Not sure if it is still the case now.

We actually have 2 WMC PC's and the 1 JRiver PC sharing the pool of 12 Ceton tuners (2 x InfiniTV ETH 6) and there are definitely a lot of users posting on AVS Forum and The Green Button forum who make use of the pooling feature without any significant issues.  While it's possible that's the culprit for the abbreviated recordings, I would be more inclined to think something else is going on.  Of course without any indication as to why the recordings in question were truncated, it's kind of difficult to diagnose the problem.  I did some searching and figured out how to turn on logging in MC and found where it's stored.  Next time I get one of these truncated recordings, I'll try to see if there's any useful info in the logs.

No reason.

Oversight?  Lack of time?  Logistics?

All kidding aside, I consider this an extremely important DVR feature.  Stuff is bound to happen that will cause a recording to fail once in a while.  If the user isn't around at the time to notice what happened, they may lose out on the chance to manually reschedule, while the software ought to be able to do it automatically for the user.  This is one of the things WMC does extremely well.

No.  MC uses its own madVR settings.  I am just trying to see if we did not set it appropriately.

Right, but as I said, the recordings from the other programs play fine when I have imported them into MC.  I didn't say that I watched those recordings in BeyondTV or WMC (though they do play back fine in the other programs too) as that would obviously use all sorts of different settings.

Try changing that to Lanczos 3 taps, or Bicubic 75.

Those work out better than Laczos with 4 taps, but playback still isn't very good.

If your display max resolution is equal or less than 1080 lines, you may need down scaling, not up scaling.

My display is a HDTV with a resolution of 1920x1080P.  Unless madVR uses really bizarre terminology, going from 1080i to 1080p wouldn't be down scaling.  In any event, the only settings I've changed during this conversation were in the up scaling section and they have made very clear differences in the quality of playback in regards to reducing or eliminating the stuttering.

In case the scores might be useful, here are the results of running the Benchmark in the JRiver help menu:

Math Score: 2211
Image Score: 4345
Database Score: 4013
JRMark (version 19.0.163): 3523

[Yaobing]

Did you schedule more simultaneous recordings than the number of tuners?

About a month ago I fixed a bug that resulted in interrupted short recordings.  I wonder if we are still seeing the problem.

19.0.157 (7/25/2014)

3. Fixed: When more recordings were scheduled than the number of available tuners, scheduled television recordings could be handled incorrectly, resulting in numerous short recordings of different television programs.

[greynolds]

Did you schedule more simultaneous recordings than the number tuners?

About a month ago I fixed a bug that resulted in interrupted short recordings.  I wonder if we are still seeing the problem.

19.0.157 (7/25/2014)

3. Fixed: When more recordings were scheduled than the number of available tuners, scheduled television recordings could be handled incorrectly, resulting in numerous short recordings of different television programs.

Nope, I don't have too many shows recording this time of year, which is part of the reason I've been trying out the TV functionality in MC right now.