Bad DVR-MS files with Vista Media Center

[waxtadpole]

About 40% of the DVR-MS files I record on an HP dv9640us laptop come out corrupted. They play for 15-20 seconds and then nearly stop -- jumping ahead just a few frames every five seconds after that. This happened with Vista Home Premium 32-bit and again when I upgraded to 64-bit.

Media Center doesn't see the files as corrupted because it makes no effort to repair them. But converting the bad DVR-MS files to mpgs with VideoReDo fixes the problem and the files play from beginning to end.

At first I thought it might be the external drive where I store my video (2TB MyBook mirror edition), and it turned out that Vista's automatic defragging didn't do a very good job on that drive. But a thorough defragging with Auslogics didn't solve the problem.

I have no idea why most of my DVR-MS files play OK while others don't. Has anyone else had this problem? Thanks for any help.

W.

[edDV]

So are you recording directly to the external drive? There are many conflicts that can interrupt a USB transfer. Do you see the same problem if you record to an internal drive?

What else is going on with your machine while recording? The only way I've found to generate corrupted dvr-ms files is to run the CPU near 100% at the same time memory is in heavy use. The first warning is the video freezes in the monitor window. Video file playback shows the same freeze at the same point in the program.

I often encode while mce is recording a show. In most cases mce gets the priority it needs to stay realtime. I haven't needed to alter priorities manually. All my mce recording is to an internal drive. If I want to save the show, I edit then process out to an external drive.

[waxtadpole]

Thanks for your quick reply. I had been recording exclusively to the external drive but switched back to the internal D drive this past weekend to record three programs. Two of those are fine and the third is broken.

I usually have the laptop on all the time, so it records under all conditions, unattended, when I'm on the Web or watching other recordings. There's only one tuner attached to it, the HP Express Card that came with it. I also recently upgraded from 2 to 4 GB of RAM, thinking that was the issue.

Another strange thing is that the bad files start up again when I go from full-screen mode to a window on the desktop, or when I go from full screen to minimized. The file runs again for 10-15 seconds and locks up until I maximize -- then the file runs and hangs again.

None of this happened the first three or four months I owned the laptop. It may have to do with a MC update, or as you say there may be resources in use as the recording begins. There's a lot plugged into this laptop (HDMI cable, USB cordless mouse/keyboard interface, external hard drive, USB audio interface). Something may be damaged in the DVR-MS metadata that the conversion to mpg is stripping out. But these are only guesses.

Sorry to ramble, thanks again for your help.
W.

[edDV]

I don't know. I haven't experieced this on either my 32bit Vista Premium laptop or desktop. In fact I'm generally pleased they record OK when I'm stressing the machines in other ways. I'm using hardware encoding devices (ATI 550 pro and Hauppauge WInTV-PVR-USB2).

It may be an issue with your graphics driver running under 64bit Vista.

[rallynavvie]

This happened with Vista Home Premium 32-bit and again when I upgraded to 64-bit.

Why the change in OS?

BTW I wouldn't look at a 64-bit OS as an "upgrade" unless you're running 64-bit applications regularly.

[waxtadpole]

>>>Why the change in OS?

That's a fair question. The laptop has given me problems from the beginning with the original 32-bit Vista OS, bad Nvidia video drivers that couldn't be upgraded, and HP bloatware. The freeze-up issue was the last straw. I discovered that all my internal hardware and peripherals had 64-bit drivers available, and since I was planning to clean out the laptop and start over, why not use a 64-bit OS with a 64-bit processor? I have HP recovery disks (my hard drive-based recovery partition got corrupted and I had to really hassle HP support to send me disks free of charge) and also XP MCE 2005 if I want to go back to a 32-bit OS.

Right now I'm messing with the virtual memory settings to see if that helps. So far everything seems more stable. The next few recordings should tell.

W.

[slacker]

Do you have a detailed log of what has changed on your machine from day 1?

I have two of the exact same model and after one year of heavy use they are still screaming along with zero problems. The OS is fine, the NVIDIA updates have gone fine, and, quite honestly, there wasn't that much bloatware on the machines to begin with. Removal of what little bloatware there was went fine as well. All updates have been performed, both MS and HP.

Have you run hardware diagnostics? Upgraded the firmware?