Reducing discontinuities in recording

[René Eske Jensen]

Hi guys

 

I have a bit of an issue with recording TV shows using the DVBViewer recording service (newest beta version). During a 2 hour film I always get more than 100 discontinuities. Earlier I got a lot less discontinuities, maybe 5-15 during a film. My question is, what factors can affect this? Is it disk access (i.e. would it help with a faster harddisk?)? Is it RAM? Is it CPU? Is it the signal strength?

 

I hope you can help me out, so I can narrow down my search.

 

Thanks in advance!

 

BR,

René

 

PS: I have the following HW in my laptop that runs the recording service:

1500Mhz intel mobile CPU (I think it is a celeron)

512MB RAM

40GB 4200RPM HD (defragmented automatically every morning using JKDefrag)

713x BDA PCMCIA DVB card

 

I am running nothing else significant on the PC other that some weather station software and a antivirus program (maybe I should make the antivirus program omit .TS files?)

 

BR,

René

Edited October 28, 2007 by René Eske Jensen

[Moses]

Discontinuties are produced by a bad signal most probably. You can see the discontinuties counter in view->filters->DVBSource while wathing TV, too. Does it rise while watching, too?

[Klaus_1250]

Bad signal is most probable, but looking at your setup and the fact that you get more discontinuities, it could be a hw bottleneck as well.

 

Some tips:

 

1) Check signal strength and quality, as noted above. Use proper cables and connectors, and good quality signal amplifiers.

2) Use a low resource anti-virusscanner. Certain AV's are known to hog CPU resources and slow down disk access (Norton for instance). Disabling AV-checks for .ts should not do any harm, though it is a small risk. Most AV's also have an option to check only a limited/essential number of file-extensions. Seeing your specs, I would use only those (but it is a small risk you're taking with that).

3) Minimize HD-access. Don't use Desktops Searchbars and other indexing services. They might come in handy from time to time, but they can hog resources under certain scenarios.

4) Make sure enough RAM is free. 512MB is enough for Win2k or XP, but make sure it isn't all used up. If your laptop is using the swap file a lot, it will have trouble keeping up with the recording.

5) Check your HD's SMART status. If the HD is slowly failing/degrading, you will see in reduced performance.

[René Eske Jensen]

Hi guys,

 

2) Use a low resource anti-virusscanner. Certain AV's are known to hog CPU resources and slow down disk access (Norton for instance). Disabling AV-checks for .ts should not do any harm, though it is a small risk. Most AV's also have an option to check only a limited/essential number of file-extensions. Seeing your specs, I would use only those (but it is a small risk you're taking with that).

3) Minimize HD-access. Don't use Desktops Searchbars and other indexing services. They might come in handy from time to time, but they can hog resources under certain scenarios.

I just replaced Avast with AVG, and now I have a 4.4GB recording with 0 (!!!) errors. Lets see if this improvement is permanent.

 

I have looked at the sugestion from Moses, but I have almost no discontinuities after several hours of streaming.

 

Anyway, thanks for your sugestions.

 

BR,

René

[Dvb-tv]

5) Check your HD's SMART status. If the HD is slowly failing/degrading, you will see in reduced performance.

I've never understood all those figures, is it lower values for all better, or is it higher values are better!

[Tjod]

Take a look here to see what is better.

[Dvb-tv]

Take a look here to see what is better.

Thank you Tjod from that i found this useful software, that will tell me. It uses values, but more important highlights in yellow and red of impeding hd failure