PCR/PTS GAP(1)

[bogdan1980]

I have some errors in my DVBViewer for 1 year or so, PCR/PTS GAP(1), discontinuities, try all codecs, nothing work.

I have problem on server PC and as well on client PC. My signal is 100%, we have fiber with dvb-c, without receiver.

My tuner: terratec htc xs hd htc, tried terratec driver, empia original driver, sundtek driver, with all are the same.

Problems appear even on free channels. But now with v4.9, problem are worst, i have 100-200 discontinuties on HD channels, and some lines appear on image, like an worst v-sync off.

i have 350 and 700 set in dvbsource, tried with 200/300 or others, same situation.

When pcr pts gap appear, my image freeze, and sometimes channel get change to another one by itself, and also rec service could not restart the stream.

Solution to this is to stop and start again dvb service from service.msc till another pcr pts gap appear, then do it again.

In 6 hours for example, i have 5-6 errors with image freeze and i am force to restart dvb service.

 

http://imageshack.us/f/802/v49discontinuties.jpg/

http://imageshack.us/f/708/v49graphtoolate.jpg/

 

Thanks.

Edited October 14, 2011 by bogdan1980

[Derrick]

we have fiber with dvb-c, without receiver.

could you explain? How do you connect the fiber to the card?

[bogdan1980]

lol we have fiber at our apartment door, from there we have normal regular cable:P

[Derrick]

we have fiber at our apartment door

 

fiber_doorbell?

 

you should check different transponders with transedit. If you see lots of missing packets there is either something wrong with the signal or with the stick/usb.

[bogdan1980]

just test transedit 381, and on some of my transponders i see some missing packets on some channels, like 20 or 30 packet missing.

But not on all channels on an transponder, only on some of them.

Problem is my hardware( tuner) or my provider?

 

http://i54.tinypic.com/nz3qkj.jpg

Edited October 14, 2011 by bogdan1980

[Derrick]

..maybe not a good example. Apparently the shown missing packets were not sent by the provider. But it doesn't necessarily mean that these are errors.

[bogdan1980]

Also, with those missing errors, if i scan 1 time an transponder , i see some errors on 1-2 channel. IF i scan second time, no errors. Those errors appear on some channels, after a new scan appear on other channels, and so on.

Is not like i always have errors on same channels. Weird.

[Griga]

Is not like i always have errors on same channels

Seems to happen randomly. Looks like the device / driver sometimes is not able to deliver a "clean" stream right after tuning, maybe due to other things going on at the same time.

 

As far as it concerns tuning, there are two types of devices / drivers:

 

1) Synchronous: The tune request call performed by the application does not return until there is a tuner lock (signal present, data arrives) or a driver-defined time-out. During this wait time the application is blocked. It can't go on processing data and can't respond to user input.

 

2) Asynchronous: The tune request call performed by the application returns immediately. The device / driver performs tuning in the background (in a different thread), while the application is already doing other things, e.g. playback initialization. There is no synchronization between the application's activities and tuning.

 

Method 2 is obviously faster. Things are happening simultaneously (with a multi-core CPU) or quasi-simultaneously (with a single core CPU, in this case the OS assigns slices of processing time to each thread as needed). More about it here.

 

However, simultaneous processing may cause disturbances if one thread occupies resources that are needed by another thread, particularly if it is time-critical and does not run with a sufficiently high priority. Resources are not only CPU power, but also other things like bus occupancy. E.g. when the application initializes playback, opens windows etc. it will keep the CPU, graphics card and other hardware busy, thus *potentially* restraining a simultaneous tuning process and causing all kinds of failure. It's up to the driver developers to consider that.

 

The report above and others about issues with EMPIA devices suggest that tuning gets quite easily disturbed by simultaneous processing. In this case the driver should rather perform synchronous tuning - but it doesn't. Another interesting fact is that DVBViewer Pro 4.5 contained a "do nothing until data arrives or time-out" loop for these devices, that was dropped in later versions.

 

So it may be worth trying what re-introducing this loop for EMPIA devices does. I've uploaded a TransEdit 3.8.1.1 test version to the members area, beta section. After tuning it checks every 50 ms whether data has arrived or not, with a time-out of 500 ms. We'll see...

[bogdan1980]

i will test new transedit version.

I think you're right about tuner problem, and not cable problem, because in Romania we have a new cable and network system, maybe one of the best.

we all have here 100mbs internet.

 

EDIT: Just test transedit 381 beta, at missing i have 0 on all transponders.

I will test my transponders 2-3 days to make sure it's ok.

Edited October 15, 2011 by bogdan1980

[bogdan1980]

New info, if i test with TransEdit_3_8_1, in missing column appear 20-50 errors, but if i test with TransEdit 3_8_1_1 EMPIA Test, at missing column is 0(zero).

 

Regarding TransEdit_3_8_1, missing errors does not appear all the time, maybe from 3 scan i get 1 missing errors.

 

Edit: i scanned all my transponder with both TransEdit_3_8_1 ,TransEdit 3_8_1_1 EMPIA Test.

Edited October 18, 2011 by bogdan1980

[Tjod]

Try force auto modulation in the hardware options.

[bogdan1980]

With force auto modulation ON in the hardware options, i see only 2-3 missing errors in TransEdit_3_8_1 on only 1 transponder and one channel.

And in TransEdit 3_8_1_1 EMPIA Test 0 ( zero) errors.

But,with force auto modulation ON, i get a delay when i scan an transponder, like 10 seconds from the moment i press ANALYZE till information about scanning appear on the screen.

Also, with force auto modulation ON, in DVBViewer 4.9 i get slow channel switch on all SD and HD channels.

With force auto modulation OFF, and tuner set to 4, i get slow channel switch only on HD( like 18 seconds per hd channel switch).

Edited October 18, 2011 by bogdan1980

[Griga]

And in TransEdit 3_8_1_1 EMPIA Test 0 ( zero) errors.

So it looks like waiting for the tuner lock avoids missing packets, right? I will suggest an according implementation in DVBViewer.

 

Please note: The additional code in the TransEdit 3_8_1_1 test version only takes effect with the original Vendor = 28 value, not with Vendor = 4, which disables *all* special EMPIA handling. That means the device is handled as a normal DVB-C tuner.

[bogdan1980]

all my testing was done with vendor 4, i will test now with vendor 28.

[bogdan1980]

with vendor 28, force modulation ON:

 

TransEdit_3_8_1 : only few errors on 2 channel on 1 single transponder

TransEdit 3_8_1_1 test version: no errors

 

 

with vendor 28, force modulation OFF:

 

TransEdit_3_8_1 : some errors (10-20) on different transponders, 5-6 of them.

TransEdit 3_8_1_1 test version: no errors.

 

I notice that in v4.9, with vendor 4, switch channel time is good on free channels, and bad for encripted.( with force modulation off)

[bogdan1980]

Beside DVBViewer, i use also registered version of Dvblink+MCE ( their streaming for Iphone 3G is perfect) and i notice that in MCE, image do not freeze at all like in Dbviewer.

Yesterday i watch 3 hours an sd channel, in this time image freeze 4-5 times, graph to slow, discontinuities, and i restarted my DVBViewer service.

Then, i open Win7 MCE and watch same sd channel for 3-4 hours, no freeze, nothing.

I cant test with dvbdream or progdvb, those 2 are full of bugs and crashed all the time.

I will test few days with dvblink+mce to see if image freeze on it. I can't stand Mce, i hate it.

[Griga]

all my testing was done with vendor 4

I don't think so because before that you wrote

 

With force auto modulation ON in the hardware options...

This option is not available with vendor = 4. TransEdit only displays the checkbox for vendor = 28. Maybe you have only changed the vendor value in the file hardware.xml. TransEdit doesn't use it. It reads the value from the TransEdit.ini [Hardware] section.

[bogdan1980]

<section name="@device:pnp:\\?\usb#vid_0ccd&pid_00ac#100302001397#{71985f48-1ca1-11d3-9cc8-00c04f7971e0}\{b50b8116-da24-4f97-80d1-00451702c5f7}">

<entry name="HasCI">1</entry>

<entry name="UseHardwareFilter">1</entry>

<entry name="NoStandard">1</entry>

<entry name="useMSNP">1</entry>

<entry name="Name">BDA 2885 TVTuner C (7)</entry>

<entry name="TunerType">0</entry>

<entry name="Status">0</entry>

<entry name="InstID">BDA 2885 TVTuner C 6</entry>

<entry name="DeviceNr">6</entry>

<entry name="Vendor">4</entry>

<entry name="Priority">2</entry>

<entry name="Tag">0</entry>

<entry name="ClassID">{EAFB3270-65C7-4662-99D6-C06D5E009FA3}</entry>

<entry name="Groups">255</entry>

<entry name="Retune">5</entry>

<entry name="SkipComponents">0</entry>

</section>

 

this info is in transedit hardware.xml, and i could play with force modulation on or off, i see this setting in transedit.

Edited October 20, 2011 by bogdan1980

[Griga]

this info is in transedit hardware.xml

TransEdit neither reads from nor writes to the hardware.xml. It's an exclusive DVBViewer Pro file. The hardware settings are located in the Hardware section of the file TransEdit.ini.

[bogdan1980]

Thank for tutorial Griga.

In transedit.ini i see at dvbc tuner Vendor.6=28. Now i understand.

[bogdan1980]

Is it posible that buffer overflow to appear if i do other tasks when DVBViewer is starting?

like playing an game?

I notice that with 2gb ram on win7, other task like open few pages in Ie, chrome, freeze image in DVBViewer for one second or so.

 

I know buffer flow definition, like: There are no more buffers available for storing incoming data. Usually triggered if a decoder/renderer works too slow or doesn't fetch data at all.

But it seems to me to appear when hdd( hard drive) is doing something, or when ram is almost full.

[Griga]

I notice that with 2gb ram on win7, other task like open few pages in Ie, chrome, freeze image in DVBViewer for one second or so.

Try to set DVBViewer to high priority (Options -> Extended).

[bogdan1980]

I do that yesterday, i raise to high priority rec service, and also server and client pc.

I uninstall yesterday all codecs, remain only cyberlink terratec, fddshow and lav splitter. Let's see.