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Author Topic: Irritating nigglies  (Read 1624 times)

Battledad

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Irritating nigglies
« on: February 06, 2013, 04:53:17 pm »

Let start out saying that I REALLY like MC. I played with other choices and like the integration of features and keep Theater view live. In our limited time of use there are some nigglies which we hope will be addressed. This is NOT intended to be gripe session and won't talk about crashes and other large issues. Here is our current shopping list of "little" things that bug us:

1) Channel information staying on the screen (middle bottom) - I stopped timing at 10 minutes. Blocks part of the picture and is distracting.

2) Sudden sound drop - At random times the sound (we've only noticed watching OTA TV) drops and we need to increase it

3) Failure to "learn" remotes - We've shared a log file so hopefully this will get some attention. Can't get the system to learn any remote (we bought the MC remote to use)

4) TV Channel guide falls behind - If we watch TV for a couple of hours (or have it on as background noise) and go back to the guide it's not up-to-date. We need to exit the guide entirely and re-enter for it to change to current time

We dropped satellite and have gone over to OTA + Internet all coordinated through MC. Looking forward to continued addition of features and correct of bugs and refinements. Best $50 I've spent in a long time.
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glynor

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Re: Irritating nigglies
« Reply #1 on: February 06, 2013, 08:20:30 pm »

2) Sudden sound drop - At random times the sound (we've only noticed watching OTA TV) drops and we need to increase it

Try adjusting Options > Video > Adaptive Volume.

The default setting is "light".  This is really not completely aptly named, as it doesn't really do "processing" on the audio's dynamic range, but instead tries to increase it to the proper volume (without going over).  This is often useful because many AC3 tracks ripped from DVD are terribly quiet (only using the lower end of the available dynamic range), especially when compared with the results of the Loudness War for popular music (only using the high end of the available dynamic range).

However... With badly encoded audio files embedded in video, I've seen problems where this gets confused.  The problem is that the Adaptive Volume system also tries to be "safe" and prevent clipping, and with files with stream errors, it sometimes freaks out and thinks there are sudden, transient peaks in the audio, and drops the volume way down.

Many TV Tuners and video capture devices, particularly consumer ones, don't produce very nicely encoded files.  And, frankly, neither do most cable broadcasters (not to mention line loss and digital errors introduced during transmission, through space and miles and miles of cable), so it would make sense that you might be seeing the same thing here.

I'd try a few things:

1. Play with the Adaptive Volume control and see if you can make it better.  Medium, for example, will compress the dynamic range (hurting quality), but can make troublesome videos much more easy to hear.  You can also disable the adaptive volume system entirely.

2. Check for driver updates for your capture card, and make sure your connection is solid (loose cables seem to dramatically impact both my analog and QAM tuners).

3. See if it impacts certain channels more than others.  In my case, Comedy Central and A&E are so full of errors in the audio tracks that my Denon won't decode the AC3 properly at all (if I bitstream or hook the cable directly to the receiver via SPDIF).  Other channels seem unaffected, and switching MC to let it decode the AC3 streams works much better.  In any case, you might be able to find certain other correlations that are channel specific.  Then, at least, you know what you're in for, and can maybe activate the Medium Adaptive Volume (or turn it off, whichever works best) for those files.

The adaptive volume control is Zone-specific, so if you want a quick way to switch between them, you can make a duplicate of your existing Zone (manually, unfortunately) and change only Adaptive Volume to whatever alternative you want.  Then, you can quickly and painlessly switch back and forth (especially if you add the Zones toolbar button somewhere).
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Battledad

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Re: Irritating nigglies
« Reply #2 on: February 06, 2013, 10:55:05 pm »

Thanks very much for the response and detail. I changed the setting from light to medium so lets see what that does/doesn't do.

I'm checking to see if there is an update driver for my Hauggauge 2250 and if so I'll get that installed.
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glynor

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Re: Irritating nigglies
« Reply #3 on: February 06, 2013, 11:13:21 pm »

I'm checking to see if there is an update driver for my Hauggauge 2250 and if so I'll get that installed.

I have the exact same card.

I don't record with it in MC.  I'm still stuck on Sage as I'm not 100% satisfied with the multiple tuner setup in MC, and I'm planning to get a second HD-PVR (or something like it, still deciding) and a second cable box soon.

But I do all my watching in MC (Sage is just a back-end recording engine for me, and occasional live-TV viewing application, though I never do that anymore and when I do, Sage is a piece of crap)...

The more I think about it, the more I'm sure I have seen the same thing with my recordings, though not lately.  I do remember, though, watching stuff on the HTPC and it would get "stuck" where MC would reduce the audio level, and then stay that way for a while, and then it would drop again suddenly (occasionally, but not always, timed with an audible pop or drop in the recording), and stay at that level.  I'd have to keep cranking my volume up periodically.

I know I've seen it with some crap quality downloaded-from-nefarious-site TV episode rips I downloaded for whatever reason before, but I'm remembering seeing it with the recordings on the 2250 too (along with all sorts of trouble, periodically, with skipping QAM recordings from the same card).

Check your signal strength.  Make sure you have high-quality splitters on the cable if you split it at all, and maybe check (or have the cable company check) the actual signal strength for you.  Try to solve the problem at the source, if you can.

And, yes, checking the drivers is a good idea too.  The latest from Hauppauge are not always the best.

But, for the stuff you already have, try playing with the Adaptive Volume.  And I also forgot to mention the separate Volume Protection control (under the Volume button on the main toolbar in Standard View).  That's the part that makes it go down and then stay there, and then go down further later (how it interplays with the Adaptive Volume when you have encoding errors can be tricky).

If nothing else, you should be able to turn both of those things off, and crank your volume and it should be fixed.  But it is nice to have those turned on if you can help it, so I'd make a separate zone and just use it for "troublesome" video.
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Battledad

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Re: Irritating nigglies
« Reply #4 on: February 07, 2013, 10:57:36 am »

Thanks for the follow up.

I'm using an external antenna for the TV. I added an Electroline amplifier yesterday (their newest) since I have 6 outlets in the house. Any outlets not in use have a terminator. Since activating the amplifier yesterday the signal strength at the various TV's is notably better. We'll play with the sound settings to see if we can settle on something that works best.

Any thoughts on the other "nigglies" I posted? Have you seen the small text box I mentioned or the TV guide not updating unless you exit guide/tv?
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JimH

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Re: Irritating nigglies
« Reply #5 on: February 07, 2013, 11:12:20 am »

It would be better if you could use the topics you've already started since they have subjects that may better attract answers.
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