[mythtv-users] Super flakey FireWire capture

Ryan Allen ryan at the-summit.net
Fri Nov 9 20:01:50 UTC 2007


Hey MythTV List,

    Is anybody experiencing flaky FireWire capture from a digital cable
    box?

    These are my symptoms:

    1) firewire_tester returns just "fail" until I run 
         "firewire_tester -B -n 2".  
       Then when I re-run firewire_tester again, I get about 3 out of 10
       fails, in random places.  Also, my packets received is very
       variable:

       root at mythtv:/var/log/mythtv# firewire_tester -p -n 1 -r 5
       Action: Test P2P connection 5 times, node 1, channel 1
       P2P: Testing...Failed
       P2P: Testing...Failed
       P2P: Testing...Success, 25 packets received
       P2P: Testing...Success, 49 packets received
       P2P: Testing...Success, 32 packets received
       root at mythtv:/var/log/mythtv# firewire_tester -p -n 1 -r 5
       Action: Test P2P connection 5 times, node 1, channel 1
       P2P: Testing...Failed
       P2P: Testing...Success, 31 packets received
       P2P: Testing...Success, 99 packets received
       P2P: Testing...Success, 31 packets received
       P2P: Testing...Success, 35 packets received
       root at mythtv:/var/log/mythtv# firewire_tester -p -n 1 -r 5
       Action: Test P2P connection 5 times, node 1, channel 1
       P2P: Testing...Success, 42 packets received
       P2P: Testing...Success, 73 packets received
       P2P: Testing...Success, 194 packets received
       P2P: Testing...Success, 55 packets received
       P2P: Testing...Success, 58 packets received
       root at mythtv:/var/log/mythtv# firewire_tester -p -n 1 -r 10
       Action: Test P2P connection 10 times, node 1, channel 1
       P2P: Testing...Success, 35 packets received
       P2P: Testing...Success, 39 packets received
       P2P: Testing...Failed
       P2P: Testing...Failed
       P2P: Testing...Success, 50 packets received
       P2P: Testing...Failed
       P2P: Testing...Success, 32 packets received
       P2P: Testing...Success, 62 packets received
       P2P: Testing...Failed
       P2P: Testing...Success, 25 packets received


       2)  Everytime I log in, or reboot the firewire "node" changes.
       Is this normal?  It seems n 1 is always the plug that is not
       populated on the STB.  I usually have to change the plug from n 0
       to n 1 in order to get any packets at all.  Am I just trippin'?


       3)  Even after I get good packet capture, it is intermittent
       weather I can get any video at all.  Chanel 149 seems to work a
       little more then others, but it's still about a 1 out or three
       chance I will capture anything at all.  However, I got Discovery
       in HD the other night on live TV, and I've been told that won't
       work.  Well it did work once, but I haven't been able to
       reproduce it since. 


       And the biggest one:
       4)  If there is no video captured, the front end crashes.  This is
           what the frontEnd log says:

2007-11-08 23:40:01.121 TV: Changing from None to WatchingLiveTV
2007-11-08 23:40:01.130 Using realtime priority.
2007-11-08 23:40:01.231 Video timing method: RTC
2007-11-08 23:40:01.718 VideoOutputXv: XvMCTex: Init failed
2007-11-08 23:40:01.719 VideoOutputXv: XVideo Adaptor Name: 'NV17 Video Texture'
    X Error: BadMatch (invalid parameter attributes) 8
    Major opcode:  142
    Minor opcode:  14
    Resource id:  0x18c
2007-11-08 23:40:02.176 AFD: Opened codec 0xaa535010, id(MPEG2VIDEO) type(Video)
2007-11-08 23:40:02.176 AFD: Opened codec 0xb2920860, id(AC3) type(Audio)
2007-11-08 23:40:02.238 Opening OSS audio device '/dev/adsp'.
2007-11-08 23:40:02.239 NVP: Enabling Audio
2007-11-08 23:40:02.790 NVP: Prebuffer wait timed out 10 times.
2007-11-08 23:40:04.328 NVP: prebuffering pause
2007-11-08 23:40:17.775 Using protocol version 31
2007-11-08 23:40:25.583 RingBuf(/myth/tv/1031_20071108234018.mpg):
    Invalid file (fd -1) when opening '/myth/tv/1031_20071108234018.mpg'.
2007-11-08 23:40:25.594 Could not bind to UDP notify port: 6948
2007-11-08 23:40:25.594 NVP::OpenFile(): Error, file not found:
    /myth/tv/1031_20071108234018.mpg
2007-11-08 23:40:25.595 TV Error: StartPlayer(): NVP is not playing after 20000 msec
2007-11-08 23:40:32.598 MythSocket(aa523e30:24):
    readStringList: Error, timeout (quick).
2007-11-08 23:40:32.598 RemoteEncoder::SendReceiveStringList(): No response.
    QObject::disconnect: Unexpected null parameter
2007-11-08 23:40:32.601 TV Error: LiveTV not successfully started



Is FireWire just simply flaky?  Do I have bad hardware?  Is there more
things I can do to tune the system?

Thanks!  Myth is a really cool project!

-- 

+-----------------------------+
|     ryan at the-summit.net     |
|  http://www.the-summit.net  |
+-----------------------------+


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