[mythtv-users] Firewire troubles after upgrade. Is test-mepg2 mightier than MythTV?

[bhaskins at chartermi.net]

---- Jarod Wilson <jarod at wilsonet.com> wrote: 
> On Wed, Jan 27, 2010 at 11:05 PM, Jå§òÑ M@¢þhè®$Øñ
> <jason.macpherson at gmail.com> wrote:
> > It looks as though my firewire recording problem has nothing to do
> > with my firewire card.
> >
> > I bought a new Agere firewire PCI card.  (Which other Myth users have
> > used successfully)
> > http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/User:Mrsdonovan#Tips_from_the_HD_Front_Lines
> > (This card can be found at BestBuy sold as "Dynex")
> >
> > I disabled my on-board firewire controller in the BIOS.
> >
> > My system now reports:
> > root at myth:/home/myth# lspci | grep 1394
> > 01:0a.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Agere Systems FW322/323 (rev 61)
> >
> > The new card works exactly like my original one:
> >  - firewire_tester still works perfectly
> >  - test-mpeg2 also still works perfectly
> >  - Mythtv still fails
> >
> > I could find no major differences in my backend log with previous
> > failed attempts.
> >
> > Next, I wanted to see if Juju was the culprit.
> > I installed Ubuntu 9.10 x86_64 (By default Ubuntu does not use juju)
> > With Ubuntu I still see the exactly same results (the test programs
> > work, but myth fails).
> >
> >
> > So to recap, I have been able to rule out the following possibilities
> > as the source of my problem:
> >  - Dual-Buffer mode  (my 22A card didn't use dual-mode anyway)
> >  - Firewire card  (same results TI card and Agere card)
> >  - Firewire stack (both juju and the old stack give me the same results)
> >  - Distro ( Ubuntu and Fedora face have the same issue )
> >
> > Firewire capture *did* work with Ubuntu 7.10 and myth. 21
> > Having reasonably eliminated other possibilities, I'm betting that my
> > problem lies within a change to Mythtv itself (and not the OS).
> 
> Hm. Certainly does seem that way. Would be interesting to see if
> MythTV 0.22 worked on Ubuntu 7.10 or if MythTV 0.21 worked on current
> Fedora or Ubuntu.

Just to answer this, I did all of the latest updates and then a capture using
UB 9.10 and Myth .22... DCH3200 FW out to a ( mature ) Thinkpad with a ALI PCMCIA 
adapter.
Nice quality, no problems.
I use this setup when my other units are busy.
 
Overall though, capturing from FW is a real crapshoot for me.
One time it may be perfect, the next blank or ???
I'm not sure about the questions, let alone the answers.

Offhand, I'm not aware of any changes that have been
> made to the firewire code in a long long time, but I haven't watched
> the commit logs that closely of late.
> 
> 
> -- 
> Jarod Wilson
> jarod at wilsonet.com
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