scheduled recording crashes

[Hoerer1]

Hi,

 

I am a newbie using DVBV 3.1 with a skystar 2 under Windows XP in an actual PC from Medion (Titanium MD 8386 having Pentium 4 640 HT Processor, 1 GB RAM, Western Digital HD 150 GB separately for recording only, ATI Radeon X740 Graphic card). The build-in Receiver-Card was not used under circumstances reported below, however, both receiver cards run well together at the same time.

 

First of all, before telling anything about bugs, I want to give big appreciation about DVBV -programmer’s work, which is the best on TV-Cards I could found. Most valuable feature for me is recording of different stations of the same bouquet at the same time without dealing with TS-stuff or so. (I use it mostly for German cultural radio station being all at the same transponder in near future.) As far as I can see DVBV is much easier and flexible to handle than the only alternative in that feature, LIN-VDR under Linux.

 

Settings are: scheduling records using Scheduler, hiding AV-output (in order to let my tube-type monitor switched of by windows for power saving), after recording switch of DVBV and then let windows go to standby (with “suspend to disk”) for power saving.

 

DVBV runs stable in general, but under some circumstances scheduled recording doesn’t work and also crashes DVBV at all. Often then I need to reboot the system to have DVBD running stable again. One of this circumstances I figured out consistently.

 

Making some test, DVBD “reliable” crashes when making a scheduled recording shortly after another scheduled recording (Delay of obviously 3 minutes or lower, 3 minutes seen before systematic testing, 1 minute in this test) with a station in the second recording which is of different (!) bouquet than the station of first recording (In my test radio station was first SWR2 and then hr2. No crash with first hr2 and then hr-klassik being in the same bouquet). In my test recording time was 1 minute only, but this happens also with “normal” recording duration (30 min around).

 

The second recording does not taking place (although looking like: station seems to be tuned but no file output happens. After the recording, DVBD hangs up i.e. no reaction on inputs. Forcing close yields a Windows problem report:

 

signature of problem: szAppName : DVBViewer.exe szAppVer : 3.1.0.25 szModName : hungapp

szModVer : 0.0.0.0 offset : 00000000

 

Files of problem report in folder “Crahs1” together with setup.xml except DVBViewer.exe.hdmp (36 MB, can be posted if needed)

 

Maybe interesting, that DVBV did close itself after the first recorcding and shortly after that starts again although in options DVBV was told not to do so (No standby if next recording is within 30 min).

 

After that crash start of DVBV (without reboot) makes the program hangs up immediately, no AV-output available, station switch yields no reaction. Forcing close yields a Windows problem report:

 

Problem signature is szAppName : DVBViewer.exe szAppVer : 3.1.0.25 szModName : hungapp

szModVer : 0.0.0.0 offset : 00000000

 

Files of problem report in folder “Crahs2” together with setup.xml and osd.log and MPEGDecoder.txt except DVBViewer.exe.hdmp (36 MB, can be posted if needed)

 

Reboot fixes this.

 

Other circumstances making DVBV stop on recording:

-switch often stations in one direction yielding a crash of recording. In my test starting with radio station “hr-klassik” recording started manually and the switching station arrow right until it come “ndr info”. Next stations switch yields “sky movies 2 (station nr 1115) this switch to a encrypted tv-station after all that radio stations confuses DVBV obviously then there is no AV output (also switching in recording control window between output disabled and enabled does not work), then no further file output is yielded but DVBV shows to be continuing recording (record button grey. Starting and stopping record button does not yield files with more than 1 kb. Closing DVBV and restart makes all things running well again.

 

-having significant processor usage during start of DVBV. In my test I run lame/razorlame with “idle” priority yielding 50% Processor usage. This makes recording problems only sometimes.

 

It would be very nice to have scheduled recording run more reliable, let say with an error rate of not more than 1 of 100 recordings. Just now it is at my system about 5 – 10 per 100 recordings.

Crash1.zip

Crash2.zip

Edited May 25, 2005 by Hoerer1

[Griga]

The second recording does not taking place (although looking like: station seems to be tuned but no file output happens. After the recording, DVBD hangs up i.e. no reaction on inputs. Forcing close yields a Windows problem report:

 

Forcing close may cause follow-up problems, even after a reboot (!), since it leaves the SkyStar2 and the driver in an indefinite state - streams are still open, but there's no DVBViewer to process them.

 

This can be fixed by unplugging your PC, or by resetting the SkyStar2 in the Windows device manager: De- and re-activate it there. So I'd say do it right now. Maybe it solves some of the problems described above.

 

However, if the issues are caused by DVBv Pro bugs, you may additionally install and try DVBViewer GE as alternative.

 

In combination with the Videorecorder Plugin it provides similar recording capabilities (recording n broadcasts at the same time requires n-1 plugin instances). Since DVBViewer GE is coded more "straight forward", it is faster and less error prone in some respects.