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[kstuart]

I used to have a separate PC for TV recording only, but it died.

So, I added an internal TV tuner (ATSC) to my Home Theater PC that I use to play videos and music using MC20.

Between 10pm and 10:30pm every night, I record the local news program.

Often we playback a program or movie in the form of a separate file using MC20 - and sometimes it ends between 10pm and 10:30pm.  When that situation occurs, the end of the video file playback always hangs MC20 (I have to use Taskmgr to kill the process).

For years, I've used MC20 to playback video files without problems, so clearly this is due to the combination of TV recording and video playback.   Again, it only happens when playback of the video file goes to the very end of the file, and TV recording is occurring at that time.

This is using Build 84 with Red October HQ (madVR) on Vista 32-bit.

[Yaobing]

Is this easily reproduced?  Sounds like it requires precise timing (playback of video stops at the same time TV recording stops)?  Please turn on logging and send me a log package. 

[kstuart]

Is this easily reproduced?  Sounds like it requires precise timing (playback of video stops at the same time TV recording stops)?  Please turn on logging and send me a log package.  

No, it is playback of video goes to the end of file, while recording is going on.  I am using the TS (as opposed to JTV) method.

I've had it occur every time.  I've also played back videos to the end of the file with no problem, when no recording is going on.

[Yaobing]

Thanks for the clarification.

[kstuart]

Just to be exactly clear:

I am playing back a video.

During the playback a TV recording starts.

When the video playback gets to the very end of the file (after the credits), instead of going to back to Standard View, it hangs with a black screen.  (I then need to go to taskmgr with ctrl-alt-del, and then kill the MC20 process.)

If no TV recording is occurring, then any video playback will finish normally.

[Castius]

I tried this last night and couldn't reproduce it.
I tried two or three videos.
1 mp4 and 2 ts files

Windows 7 64 bit
HDHomeRun Prime

[kstuart]

I was able to get more information.

Tonight, I remembered not to let the video go to very end.  So, during the credits, I tried to pause or stop it.  It did not respond to any remote control presses, nor did it respond to mouse clicks, nor did moving the mouse to the top or bottom cause the OSD to appear.

So, it would appear that TV recording that starts during video playback, causes the  video playback to stop responding to input, go to the end, and then stop with a blank screen.

Details:

* recording to TS rather than JTV
* video playback with madVR (Red October HQ)
* full screen playback with exclusive mode
* jump on play (video) is Display View
* using Windows Explorer with Media Center -> Play in context menu to play video file
* Vista 32-bit

* Problem occurs with both 84 and 87 (have not checked earlier builds)
* Problem does not occur if no TV recording starts during playback

[Yaobing]

Thanks for the details.

I am still not able to reproduce the problem.  Maybe it has to do with Vista.  Can you grab a logging package and email it to me?  yaobing at jriver dot com

Thanks.

[kstuart]

I was thinking about the implications of adding the recording job to the playback job.

One thought was the simplest one - more resources used (since the PC is the Home Theater PC, previously I never had any reason to do two things at once).

Can the symptoms I described, be caused by running out of page file space ?

(I'll eventually do the log, but first I want to see if I can figure it out logically.)

[Yaobing]

That is possible.  Recording will increase disk activities, and obviously will use more memory too.

[kstuart]

Increasing page file size did not help.

UPDATE: I tried a different TV Tuner card and the first time it worked, but then the second time, it had the same hang.

I am going to try varying some other things, and then I will do a log.

[kstuart]

I was thinking that it had something to do with power draw, or use of buses, so I tried an external USB TV tuner with its own power supply (not a stick).

But, I was able to duplicate the same problem playing a video and recording on the external USB TV tuner. (The video being played back, and the TV file being recorded are on two entirely different disks, btw.)

So, there does not seem to be any hardware aspect to this problem.

While I have never checked specifically, I am almost positive that I have played music files during TV recording without any problem.

I am now going to try earlier builds of MC to see if it was introduced at some point (I have MC18 and MC19 still installed, so I should be able to determine that fairly definitively).