Hauppauge stopped recording!

[strongbad]

I was in the middle of recording for 2:13:26 and then all of a sudden the picture paused and there was no sound but the recording was still going. So I closed wintv and reopened it and now the tv comes on again. WTF!!!

[jagabo]

Disk full? 4GB limit on FAT file system?

[SHS]

You should never closed wintv and reopened it stop the recording just put it paues mode then and unpause it sound like buffer lockup.
But I hope you not runing FAT32 that not good FAT to used any way.

[strongbad]

NTFS plenty of HDD space. The final output file when I closed wintv was like 14.1GB.

Buffer problem? Why and how can I prevent this madness from happening again? Good thing what I was recording does replays all day.

So you mean this is a normal thing and I have to pause and unpause all the time? That's ridiculous! And it would also mess up the recording.

[SHS]

No just ever now then that can happing when MPEG buffer get head of video decoder as the bigger the files gets is which in turn cuases by decoder lock up it not ridiculous it just happing sometime and that can happing with any software.

[jameshgross]

Which Hauppauge card are you using?

[strongbad]

the PVR USB2.

That's not very reliable if it just randomly happens every now and then. What happens if you're recording something important and it craps out? Just an oh well case? What do I have to do to prevent this from happening?

[jagabo]

I have a Hauppauge WinTV PVR-250 (PCI). The only time I've ever had something like that happen was when I was trying to cause problems. I was capturing with WinTV2000, running Defrag on one drive, Chkdsk on another, a 3D game, and an Xvid video encode with VirtualDub all at the same time, switching back and forth between them. WinTV stopped updating the video window once but after a while the picture returned. The MPEG file was fine.

I've capture files much larger than that before, so it's not a size limitation.

[SHS]

There nothing you can do prevent that from happening as long it still wirting to the disk you only need worry about stop time which why as rule tumb I alway keep small TV a round and hook to the TV from 2nd source output just it case or do time recording with the scheduler just a few min more to.

[strongbad]

There nothing you can do prevent that from happening as long it still wirting to the disk you only need worry about stop time which why as rule tumb I alway keep small TV a round and hook to the TV from 2nd source output just it case or do time recording with the scheduler just a few min more to.

Yeah I can still watch it on my tv but it won't salvage the recording.

Anywho, there is a buffer setting in the Video tab of wintv, should I raise it higher than it's default?

[jagabo]

Strongbad, If it happens again, try hitting the || (pause) button in the little VCR control pulldown. That doesn't pause the recording but stops WinTV2000 from updating the video/audio on-screen. Press it again to turn video/audio back on. Maybe that will restart and re-sync the display?

[jameshgross]

strongbad,
I suspected that you where using the PVR-USb2.0.
I had the exact same problem with mine.
You have RF interference.
I was using cheap bargin cabling and cheap Radio shack power strip.
The symptoms were:
1. When ever my or my neighbors wireless phone rang the record would halt.
2. When an airplane flew over and was transmitting the recording would stop.
3. If I transmitted on my CB radio the recording would stop.
4. If I answered my CELL Phone the record would stop.
Catch the thread here?
The solution!
I went and purchsed the best video, audio and usb cable I could find.
Basically you want double sheilded cables.
I made sure that the power supply and main computer was plugged into a AC filtered power strip(top of the line APC).
Since I made these changes I have not had anymore problems.
Hope this helps.

[strongbad]

Godamnit, it happened again twice today. I scheduled a recording for over 3 hours and I came home to a file that's about 2:45. I was then recording something for about 1:40 and I come back and see it's frozen. I tried pausing and unpausing and it does nothing. WTF is this??? I spent over a hundred dollars for this crap and it's not even working. Shittiest pos card in the world.

[jameshgross]

I think you should drop Hauppauge a e-mail. They have excellent tech support.

[strongbad]

The Hauppauge tech support is completely useless. They are telling me to uninstall, reinstall, reinstall drivers, install ulead and all this other nonsense. I am not running any firewalls, AV's or anything. Just straight recording and this crap just stops recording at random moments. It's happened once more again since my last post. I'm searching all over google and many people are having the same problems but there seems to be no solution. It appears this is just a stupid POS crap manure of a device. WHY do they keep releasing crap that doesn't even work properly. I can't even return it because it's past 14 days. I didn't discover the damn problems within the 14 day period because 1, I didn't have anything to record, and 2, I have to sit there for 2 or 3 hours or 1:32 to see if it stops or not. I don't have time for that crap! I am very disappointed with Hauppauge and will not be buying anything else from them. And I'm not on a VIA MB.

[jagabo]

I don't know if it works with the USB2 version but you might try capturing with WinTVCap:

http://wintvcap.sourceforge.net/

It doesn't display the video while capturing -- it just sends the MPEG data directly to a file. This will let you diagnose whether the problem is with USB transfer or with decoding and displaying the image and sound by WinTV2000.

[strongbad]

I'll give it a shot, thanks.

[jagabo]

A word of warning: WinTVCap is a command line driven program. You'll need to type a command line (or batch file) that looks something like:

wintvcap -c255 -minutes:1 -profile:TWELVE -startr:.\_svideo.mpg

-c# is the channel number. -c255 is s-video, -c254 is composite.

-minutes:# is the number of minutes to record.

-profile:NAME is named the profile as defined within the WinTVCap.INI file.

startr:NAME.MPG is the name of the output MPEG file to record to. If you don't supply a full path the video will go to a default location specified in the INI file. I think the default is My Documents\My Videos.

[strongbad]

ahh I don't know how to work the command lines. I shouldn't have to mess around with all kinds of tricks that may or may not work. This is absurd on Hauppauge's part to not address the problem and fix it. Time to ebay it.

[jagabo]

I think there are some GUI frontends for WinTVCap. Check shspvr.com.