[mythtv-users] venetian blind picture

[Chad]

On 7/16/05, Greg Woods <greg at gregandeva.net> wrote:
> On Sat, 2005-07-16 at 11:16 -0600, Chad wrote:
> >   You could try passing parameters to your playback
> > software to deinterlace
> 
> Can anyone explain exactly now I would do this? I have tried checking
> "deinterlace during playback" but it has no effect. Old recordings still
> look fine, new ones look like venetian blinds.
> 
> > , OR you can deinterlace during recording
> 
> Same question: how exactly do I do this? I can't find any parameters
> that relate to this except the "enable" ones under the MPEG-4 codec and
> I've tried every possible combination of those on and off with no
> effect.
> 
> I'm so frustrated right now that I want to chuck the machine in the
> river. I just don't know how to fix this. I've run through mythtv-setup,
> wiping out everything and starting over. No effect, venetian blinds iS
> all I can record.
> 
> Any chance a complete reinstall might help? Can I do that without losing
> the recordings I already have that look good? I'm desperate and
> apparently clueless.
> 
> --Greg
> 
Forgot to choose the reply-all option:

The settings I was referring to are the ones you 'guessed'.  If those
aren't working, maybe there is something in the backend logs that tell
why.  Also, you could start the frontend from an xterm to see if it
provides any feedback on reasons it's not working.  And in the end, if
it is indeed working, maybe it's not interlacing, and it just reads
like that is the problem.

I get 1 station that gives me something like you are describing, and
for me, it's from a crap signal.  When I record that station with the
HDTV tuner (OTA not QAM) it looks great, so I am pretty sure it's just
crap signal (which I'm working on fixing).

If you can, grab a cheapie bt8x capture card (they are like 20 bucks
online) and see if the problem goes away.  It's not a great plan, but
it'll give you second card anyway so you can toy with and use the HDTV
card for what it was intended ;)  And it will also give you the
ability to rule things out, like channel signal problems (assuming
it's also a local broadcast channel).

You noted xawtv works fine, and said you may have dorked something up
in the recording profiles.  I'd play around with those settings,
switch between RTJpeg and Mpeg-4 and adjust the quality settings, just
see if the anything changes.  If nothing is ever changing, then you
may have a b0rked database.

A re-install probably won't help, but maybe a backup and re-do of the
database might.  It may be a bit time intensive to import back in your
existing recordings after you get the database reconfigured, but it
may be worth it.  Always keep your backup handy, if nothing else
works, you have something to revert back to.