Some worrying recording/editing issues

Starionx · Post by **Starionx** » Fri Apr 18, 2008 17:14

I've had the P1 for a few months now, and to be perfectly honest (apart from some missing functionality

), this machine hasn't missed a beat... but...
A couple of times (out of a few hundred edits) I have edited a file (different files) using the 'keep A-B' option. In both cases it would show the file length as 5 seconds, and when trying to play them, it would give the message 'Error loading media file'. and it won't play it.

The other day I recorded channel 10 news at 5. The length shows as 55 mins (as it should be), but when I try and play it, I get the same error message.

I am worried that there seems to be no correlation, and that this could randomly happen again. Has anyone else had this happen?

Bruiser333 · Post by **Bruiser333** » Fri Apr 18, 2008 18:02

I have ended up with a 'broken' file while doing multiple trims at various points in the file. It may have had some errors in the transmission, and I was getting some strange behaviour while trying to navigate and set the 'B' marker just before it dumped on me. I only top & tail now, and haven't had any more 'funnies' (touch wood).

What FW are you using? The scenario you described happened to me and others regularly after upgrading(?) to .215 (while on Auto time).

As for straight recording, my P1 has also performed very well apart from a few instances, all of which I can put down to firmware upgrades (mainly to .215). That is, until last weekend when something really strange happened with my timer for Doc Martin. I have 5 mins pre padding, and the timer fired ok. When we went to view the recording, we were navigating through the end of the previous show and self promotions to get to the start of Doc Martin, when it suddenly jumped from an ad to a point well into Doc Martin. Looking at the progress timeline, it didn't show a jump in time; it was like the recording paused for a good 4-5 minutes, then resumed.
As I have the Toppy as a backup, I checked it's recording of the same show, and it was fine ie no missing section. There was also no evidence of a glitch or transmission problem at the time the recording went missing on the Wiz.

It's only happened once that I am aware of, and there's not much anyone can do unless the behaviour can be replicated under test conditions, so I haven't bothered mentioning it before now.

Cheers,

Bruiser

jonesboy · Post by **jonesboy** » Fri Apr 18, 2008 18:47

i have had this happen to me once. after trimming the padding off underbelly it told me it was a 9 min recording and wouldnt play. luckily enough i was still able to use wizfx to download the file to pc where it was fine. (able to edit , convert to xvid and archive).

so you may be able to watch your corrupted recording via your network

Neon Kitten · Post by **Neon Kitten** » Fri Apr 18, 2008 19:56

I've had this happen to me three times now - and only one was after an edit. The other two were programs recorded on timer. When I went to play them, I got "Unsupported Media File" or similar - but if I transferred them to the PC with WiFX, they were fine.

This has only ever happened to me with the March firmware.

Starionx · Post by **Starionx** » Fri Apr 18, 2008 20:45

Hmmm, if it's happened to a few people, I would say it's a bug of some type. At least it sounds like there's a way around it by transferring to PC.

My Fw version is in my sig.

Neon Kitten · Post by **Neon Kitten** » Fri Apr 18, 2008 21:25

Starionx wrote:Hmmm, if it's happened to a few people, I would say it's a bug of some type. At least it sounds like there's a way around it by transferring to PC.

Oh, I did neglect to mention that the first time it happened - after an edit that involved cut-and-save from the file to another - I didn't transfer to PC because powering the BW down and back up again made the file playable again. That wasn't the case with the two that just came off a timer recording and hadn't been touched. The first of these I transferred to the PC and it played fine; the second I didn't bother with and just deleted since it was going to take too long to transfer it just to watch a show I was only semi-curious about.

But definitely something odd going on here; as I said, it has never happened to me before the March firmware.

sub3R · Post by **sub3R** » Sat Apr 19, 2008 10:53

I have always had various types of random edit problems on my S1s.
A quick search found my following issues:

here (01.05.195 f/w), here (01.05.192 f/w), here (01.04.144 f/w), here (01.04.144 f/w), here (01.04.144 f/w), here (01.04.144 f/w).

Although, except for the odd test recording, I do edit every single recording recorded by the S1s. I didn?t have editing issues with 01.05.205 f/w but I only ran that for 2 days.

The above doesn?t seem a lot over a 6 ? mth period but it shouldn?t happen, especially if a recording is lost. Clearly a problem with the editing function somewhere.

Lex200 · Post by **Lex200** » Sun Apr 20, 2008 13:52

I usually record SD stations and have had very few problems - none like this one.

Veronica Mars was only shown on HD and 2 recordings a week apart show the expected duration and file size but failed to playback at all with "file error" or similar message when trying to start playback.

I'm using the December firmware and have not updated or changed anything. The signal on 10HD is in the upper green band and I've had no reception problems other than some audio drop outs occasionally. I haven't tried transferring to PC but will do so.

Are others problems also related to HD channels?

jonesboy · Post by **jonesboy** » Sun Apr 20, 2008 15:34

Lex200 wrote:I

Are others problems also related to HD channels?

sorry mate. SD recording for me

ocdi · Post by **ocdi** » Sun Apr 20, 2008 15:38

I can also confirm this is an issue for me. I had Dr Who recorded from Friday on ABC2 which is showing Unsupported media format. I'm running the March firmware.

I have also had some random recordings display a lower level format for the filename in the recording list, something like ABC2_Apr.18.2008_20.25.dr_who

I'd definitely say the 215 firmware is buggy.

The unusual thing is using getWizPNP it shows this using the default download option:

./getWizPnP.pl "dr who"
ABC2: dr who
dr who/stat, stat : Not Found
Download failed!

Downloading as a .ts file works.

Is there any way we can get this information onto the developers?

prl · Post by **prl** » Sun Apr 20, 2008 16:32

ocdi wrote:I can also confirm this is an issue for me. I had Dr Who recorded from Friday on ABC2 which is showing Unsupported media format. I'm running the March firmware.

I have also had some random recordings display a lower level format for the filename in the recording list, something like ABC2_Apr.18.2008_20.25.dr_who

I'd definitely say the 215 firmware is buggy.

The unusual thing is using getWizPNP it shows this using the default download option:

./getWizPnP.pl "dr who"
ABC2: dr who
dr who/stat, stat : Not Found
Download failed!

Downloading as a .ts file works.

Is there any way we can get this information onto the developers?

Yes, losing the stat file is one well-known problem with corruption of recordings.

I could make getWizPnP just warn, not fail, when the stat header is missing. It needs the other two header files, header.tvwiz and trunc for the download to actually work, but getWizPnP doesn't care whether the stat file exists or not.

It doesn't try to download the stat file when downloading in TS format, so that's why it succeeds there.

I wasn't going to do another release of getWizPnP until I had got resuming incomplete downloads working, but I'm actually in a state where I could do a release where there's just a warning, rather than failure if there's no stat file.

The downloaded Beyonwiz format recording will still not play on the BW if there's no stat file, but others who've had this problem have found that a stat file copied from any other recording will usually work.

I know that you didn't mean the getWizPnP developer, but I can do this bit, anyway

ocdi · Post by **ocdi** » Sun Apr 20, 2008 16:53

Thanks for that prl, makes sence. I assume the missing/corrupt stat file is what is causing the file to be unplayable on the Beyonwiz. I just tried playing the resulting .ts file via samba back on the Beyonwiz and it says unsupported media format. Using mplayer on Linux it works fine. Any suggestions for that?

I tried transcoding using mencode to a DivX file and it worked but unless I got the wrong arguments the audio was out of sync, etc.

prl · Post by **prl** » Sun Apr 20, 2008 17:17

Yes, it's the missing stat file that makes the recording unplayable. Copying a stat file from another recording usually makes it playable again.

The current beta can play .ts files downloaded to a computer using getWizPnP (and presumably WizFX, but I can't test that, because it's Windows only and I have a non-Intel Mac).

Prior to that I transcoded downloaded TS files using MPEG Streamclip. I haven't tried anything else.

Neon Kitten · Post by **Neon Kitten** » Mon Apr 21, 2008 21:28

I had another one of these last night - once again I could play the file fine when transferred to the PC. Which, since it was a 150 minute HD recording with padding, took forever.

I can't see any particular set of events that make this happen, aside from the possibility that it happens when two recordings are being made at the same time - and indeed perhaps scheduled to start at the same time.

I really hope this gets fixed in the next firmware version, though.

Neon Kitten · Post by **Neon Kitten** » Tue Apr 22, 2008 00:24

And now two more shows unplayable from today's recordings - one in the afternoon on 10HD, one this evening on 10SD.

The problem seems to be getting more and more frequent.

Crawf · Post by **Crawf** » Tue Apr 22, 2008 10:10

This has happened to me several times since the latest FW. None of them involved editing of any kind. They could be transferred to PC and successfully edited/converted to MPEG by VideoRedo but the size of some of these recordings makes this a pain.

I suspect it happens most frequently when 2 timers fire at exactly the same time, perhaps while watching a 3rd program but this is just supposition and I don't have the exact facts.

Neon Kitten · Post by **Neon Kitten** » Tue Apr 22, 2008 10:34

Crawf wrote: I suspect it happens most frequently when 2 timers fire at exactly the same time, perhaps while watching a 3rd program but this is just supposition and I don't have the exact facts.

After yesterday's instances of unplayable recordings I can now say 100% that neither 2 timers recording/firing at the same time nor any kind of playback is responsible.

The (seemingly) escalating regularity of these failures happening - I had none at all for a good week after flashing this firmware, then they've gone from occasional to several in the last few days - makes me wonder if it's some kind of file system issue.

ocdi · Post by **ocdi** » Tue Apr 22, 2008 10:56

Mine hasn't increased in frequency... I have only had 3 instances where this happened. Two were a couple weeks or so ago and the most recent on Friday. It has only happened on the most recent firmware too.

I can't wait for the next release... at least it can play the .ts files so I don't need to transcode, etc.

IanSav · Post by **IanSav** » Tue Apr 22, 2008 11:57

Hi Neon Kitten,

What version of firmware are you using?

Regards,
Ian.

Neon Kitten · Post by **Neon Kitten** » Tue Apr 22, 2008 18:07

IanSav wrote:Hi Neon Kitten,

What version of firmware are you using?

The latest (March) version - 1.05.215.

Bruiser333 · Post by **Bruiser333** » Tue Apr 22, 2008 19:04

Neon Kitten wrote:
IanSav wrote:Hi Neon Kitten,

What version of firmware are you using?
The latest (March) version - 1.05.215.

The latest, but not necessarily the greatest. My advice would be if you are experiencing problems on .215, to immediately revert back to .197 and (hopefully) discount your problems as being FW related.

Neon Kitten · Post by **Neon Kitten** » Tue Apr 22, 2008 20:50

Bruiser333 wrote: The latest, but not necessarily the greatest. My advice would be if you are experiencing problems on .215, to immediately revert back to .197 and (hopefully) discount your problems as being FW related.

Unfortunately the pair of revisions before the latest one cannot play h.264 files smoothly. The latest one can, and this is important to me. The latest firmware is also faster and more responsive, and of course I've been making use of the bookmarking functionality.

What has me puzzled is why this unplayable-file bug (a "stat" file not being written, from what I read here) didn't show up at all for the first couple of weeks of using the firmware, then appeared very occasionally, and by now is happening almost every day. There's got to be a clue in that somewhere...

IanSav · Post by **IanSav** » Tue Apr 22, 2008 20:59

Hi Neon Kitten,

Neon Kitten wrote:The latest (March) version - 1.05.215.

I have not noticed this complaint from the beta testers (but it has been hectic in here lately and I may have missed some items) so I think you should first follow Bruiser333's suggestion of reverting to the previous firmware and see how that behaves.

If stability returns then you can try the upgrade again or wait for the next firmware version.

Edit: I just saw your update post. I will ask some questions in the beta area to see if anyone has a handle on this.

Regards,
Ian.

bohemian · Post by **bohemian** » Wed Apr 23, 2008 01:15

I suppose I should add my experience as well so the issue gets more attention.

Last week I had two recordings which wouldn`t play because of the stat file.

One was ten HD on Tuesday and the other was SBS on Wednesday.

Nothing unusual going on, may have been watching a recording while the failed recordings were active.

I copied the two recordings to the PC and resurrected the files by replacing the bad stat files with a good ones.

The main problem I see with this, is the people out there who had a recording with this problem and didn`t know any better so deleted it

Neon Kitten · Post by **Neon Kitten** » Wed Apr 23, 2008 01:23

bohemian wrote: I copied the two recordings to the PC and resurrected the files by replacing the bad stat files with a good ones.

The other way around this is to copy the recordings as TS files using WizFX, then re-mux (and edit if you like) to VOB with VideoReDo. The resulting file then plays fine on the BW via the network.

Either method's a pain, though, especially for HD programs as the transfer rate is so glacially slow. But it'll have to do till a fix comes along.

prl · Post by **prl** » Wed Apr 23, 2008 08:56

If you're willing to install the telnet hack, the stat file can be copied from another recording while the broken recording is still on the BW.

The hack isn't available for the March firmware, just December, but some would view that in itself as an up side

And no, this post is not an indication that I think this isn't a bug, no, I don't think that it's reasonable that these sorts of workarounds are needed, and yes, you're right, this isn't a fix to the problem, it's just a workaround.

Lex200 · Post by **Lex200** » Wed Apr 23, 2008 10:08

Just to reiterate my earlier post that I've had the same problem twice on TenHD for the first time only recently and I've never upgraded from the December firmware.

It suspect it's not a problem only with the March firmware.

bohemian · Post by **bohemian** » Wed Apr 23, 2008 14:48

I have considered the telnet patch, but are concerned about unauthorised telnet sessions.

What extra precautions if any have users of the telnet patch applied.

Bruiser333 · Post by **Bruiser333** » Wed Apr 23, 2008 15:01

prl wrote:And no, this post is not an indication that I think this isn't a bug, no, I don't think that it's reasonable that these sorts of workarounds are needed, and yes, you're right, this isn't a fix to the problem, it's just a workaround.

It appears that a new form of political correctness has crept into these forums!

Unnecessary IMO; if people want to take offence at your tireless efforts that should be their problem, not yours.

prl · Post by **prl** » Wed Apr 23, 2008 15:26

bohemian wrote:I have considered the telnet patch, but are concerned about unauthorised telnet sessions.

What extra precautions if any have users of the telnet patch applied.

Care.

Some basic knowledge of Unix-like systems.

More specifically: don't change any files in /tmp/config without knowing exactly what you're doing; files in there are part of the Beyonwiz's configuration. If you mess that up, you may need to do a factory settings reset, or even have to use the How to recover from FW update failure procedure.

The system won't let you change anything in the root file system or in /flash. The contents of those two file systems are essentially what's in the firmware distribution.

If you change stuff on the internal drive (/tmp/mnt/idehdd) you can wreck recordings or IceTV EPG operation.

The telnet daemon is part of the standard firmware distribution (at least for all of them so far that it's been tried on), so you don't actually need to add any new programs to the firmware to run it.

All the telnet patch does is to change the system startup script /etc/rc.sysinit to run telnetd when the system starts. You then just use your favorite telnet client to connect and you're running in a slightly simplified Unix command line shell on the Beyonwiz.

Once you're in, if you add an executable shell script /tmp/config/rc.local that looks like:

Code: Select all

#!/bin/sh

telnetd &

then that script will become part of the system configuration, and will allow telnet access even if you put the original firmware back in.

I'm working on a slightly more sophisticated "framework" rc.local that allows you to control remotely whether various such hacks run at system startup without needing to have telnetd running. This includes the ability to switch telnetd startup on and off remotely. I plan to make it part of the BWFWTools distribution.

To go back to running without the hacks, simply telnet to the Beyonwiz, delete /tmp/config/rc.local if you've created one, restore any other files you've changed in /tmp/config to what they were originally, reinstall the firmware if you're running modified firmware, and restart from standby. You're then back to running an unmodified Beyonwiz.

Remember, if you install modified firmware, you run the risk that your Beyonwiz won't start up. You can probably recover from that using the procedure in How to recover from FW update failure. That procedure will only work on a Windows computer. There's no published procedure for doing it on any other system.

Likewise, if you use modified firmware, the Beyonwiz may behave in unexpected ways (even more so than normal

).

Don't expect Beyonwiz support to help you for problems that occur if you run modified firmware.

If in spite of all this, you still want to indulge in hacking your Beyonwiz, some useful resources are: the Software Developers forum here, for discussions about software developed for use with, or use on, the Beyonwiz PVRs, Beyonwiz Software WiKi, for software to run on, or run with Beyonwiz PVRs, OpenWiz, a Wiki set up as a repository of information about the internals of Beyonwiz PVRs and source code of some of the software developed for them, and REMINDER: If you are using any Firmware hacks...., another admonition about what support you can('t) expect if you run modified firmware. Oh, and did I mention How to recover from FW update failure?

Any further discussion on this would probably be better being carried on in Software Developers forum.

Hic sunt dracones

prl · Post by **prl** » Wed Apr 23, 2008 15:29

Bruiser333 wrote:
prl wrote:And no, this post is not an indication that I think this isn't a bug, no, I don't think that it's reasonable that these sorts of workarounds are needed, and yes, you're right, this isn't a fix to the problem, it's just a workaround.
It appears that a new form of political correctness has crept into these forums!

Unnecessary IMO; if people want to take offence at your tireless efforts that should be their problem, not yours.

It was intended to be at least a little tongue-in-cheek. Unfortunately there's no emoticon for that.

Starionx · Post by **Starionx** » Tue Apr 29, 2008 16:58

I generally put the unit into standby at night and turn it back on the next day. The last few nights I have left it on, and when I've turned on the tv the next day, there is a BW message 'Unable to detect signal' (or something to that effect). If I change the BW channel the message goes away and all is ok.

I had the same message today so I changed the channel and all seems ok. I had a timer set for today and in the Recording list, it looks like it recorded ok. When I go to play it, I get the dreaded 'Error loading media file'.

I'm wondering if they are related? I'm getting to the point where I think it would be best to put the unit into standby when not in use, which is pretty pathetic.

IanSav · Post by **IanSav** » Tue Apr 29, 2008 17:09

Hi Starionx,

Can you please confirm if these issues happen with firmware version 01.05.197. While 01.05.215 should have improvements in reception stability the other issues in it may be having a negative effect.

Regards,
Ian.

Gully · Post by **Gully** » Tue Apr 29, 2008 17:09

Starionx

If you are able to do so, a hard drive format might be worthwhile. It fixed it for me.

prl · Post by **prl** » Tue Apr 29, 2008 17:10

Starionx wrote:I generally put the unit into standby at night and turn it back on the next day. The last few nights I have left it on, and when I've turned on the tv the next day, there is a BW message 'Unable to detect signal' (or something to that effect). If I change the BW channel the message goes away and all is ok.

I had the same message today so I changed the channel and all seems ok. I had a timer set for today and in the Recording list, it looks like it recorded ok. When I go to play it, I get the dreaded 'Error loading media file'.

I'm wondering if they are related? I'm getting to the point where I think it would be best to put the unit into standby when not in use, which is pretty pathetic.

When there's no signal during a recording a data stream is still fed into the recording file, but it has no decodeable data.

If there's no signal being detected by the Beyonwiz at the start of a recording, then the media type detection will fail and the recording won't load on the Beyonwiz. If signal was recovered part-way through the recording you may be able to transfer the recording off the BW to a PC and see if any of the recording fragment files (the 0000, ... files in the recording folder) are playable. If they are, you may be able to stitch together part of your recording.

Starionx · Post by **Starionx** » Tue Apr 29, 2008 17:12

IanSav wrote:Hi Starionx,

Can you please confirm if these issues happen with firmware version 01.05.197. While 01.05.215 should have improvements in reception stability the other issues in it may be having a negative effect.

Regards,
Ian.

Ackkk... live without bookmarking?? Alright. I will go back to 197 for tonight and see what happens tommorow.

Starionx · Post by **Starionx** » Tue Apr 29, 2008 17:17

prl wrote:
Starionx wrote:I generally put the unit into standby at night and turn it back on the next day. The last few nights I have left it on, and when I've turned on the tv the next day, there is a BW message 'Unable to detect signal' (or something to that effect). If I change the BW channel the message goes away and all is ok.

I had the same message today so I changed the channel and all seems ok. I had a timer set for today and in the Recording list, it looks like it recorded ok. When I go to play it, I get the dreaded 'Error loading media file'.

I'm wondering if they are related? I'm getting to the point where I think it would be best to put the unit into standby when not in use, which is pretty pathetic.
When there's no signal during a recording a data steram is still fed into the recording file, but it has no decodeable data.

If there's no signal being detected by the Beyonwiz at the start of a recording, then the media type detection will fail and the recording won't load on the Beyonwiz. If signal was recovered part-way through the recording you may be able to transfer the recording off the BW to a PC and see if any of the recording fragment files (the 0000, ... files in the recording folder) are playable. If they are, you may be able to stitch together part of your recording.

The problem with this is that I live in the Parramatta area and have NO signal issues at all. It seems strange that this only happens if I leave the unit on overnight (and when I say overnight, I'm up until about 4am and have no signal issues up until then). I'm not so worried about losing the recording (it was only Huey), it's the fact that it is happening, that's the worry.

Starionx · Post by **Starionx** » Tue Apr 29, 2008 17:21

Gully wrote:Starionx

If you are able to do so, a hard drive format might be worthwhile. It fixed it for me.

I did a format not too long ago (and I've only had the unit a few months now). So I don't think that would help. Besides, I have so much stuff to watch and not enough time, I don't want to wipe anything.

Gully · Post by **Gully** » Tue Apr 29, 2008 19:17

Starionx wrote:
Gully wrote:Starionx

If you are able to do so, a hard drive format might be worthwhile. It fixed it for me.
I did a format not too long ago (and I've only had the unit a few months now). So I don't think that would help. Besides, I have so much stuff to watch and not enough time, I don't want to wipe anything.

Your choice as always and while you may not have had it long my suspicion from my experience and others is that there is something that happened with 215 to lead to this problem.

If you get a chance when doing the next firmware upgrade try it then.