<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Thu, Jun 11, 2009 at 2:09 PM, Brad DerManouelian <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:bderman@gmail.com">bderman@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;">
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The firewire_tester and priming scripts don't seem to work with this box since they were written for the 6200 boxes. I basically need help priming the DCH-6416 boxes for consistent firewire capture.<br>
<br>
Some additional info:<br>
<br>
$ sudo plugreport<br>
Host Adapter 0<br>
==============<br>
<br>
Node 0 GUID 0x0023a2fffe12916a<br>
------------------------------<br>
oMPR n_plugs=1, data_rate=2, bcast_channel=63<br>
oPCR[0] online=1, bcast_connection=0, n_p2p_connections=1<br>
channel=1, data_rate=2, overhead_id=0, payload=376<br>
iMPR n_plugs=0, data_rate=2<br>
<br>
Node 1 GUID 0x0023a2fffe12912a<br>
------------------------------<br>
oMPR n_plugs=1, data_rate=2, bcast_channel=63<br>
oPCR[0] online=1, bcast_connection=0, n_p2p_connections=1<br>
channel=2, data_rate=2, overhead_id=0, payload=376<br>
iMPR n_plugs=0, data_rate=2<br>
<br></blockquote></div><br><div>Hi Brad,</div><div><br></div><div>Good to see you posting. The firewire_tester program should work fine with your box, it may just take some combination of options to get a good prime. I use the 3200 and 3216 (exactly the same as your box minus the analog tuner), and personally use the firewire_primer.pl script from trunk (mythtv/contrib/user_jobs/firewire_primer.pl) to prime the connection at 5 and 35 after the hour. It's a helpful script because it leverages firewire_tester to do the priming, but only does so after checking with the backend and confirming that the tuner is not in use, which prevents killing a recording by priming while trying to record.</div>
<div><br></div><div>First thing you need to do is get the box onto a channel that is almost definitely not 5C. NBC, ABC, CBS, Fox, etc. are good choices. Now you should test the firewire_tester with a variety of options. The ones that work best for me are (and here I'll use the example of your node 0):</div>
<div><br></div><div>firewire_tester -n 0 -B -r 5</div><div><br></div><div>That's the "Broadcast Stabilization" mode. The other options besides -B are -b and -p. I also use -r 5 to repeat the prime five full times. Sometimes if it's particularly tricky to get a good prime, the repeats are enough to get a good one. I have found that the plugctl voodoo from the firewire page on the wiki is useless and has never had any effect. If you are getting "Failed," that means there's no prime. If you get "(sync failed)", that generally means the channel is 5C'd. Try another channel and see if it gets any better.</div>
<div><br></div><div>Once you've figured out the options that work for you, I would get the firewire_primer.pl script from trunk and cron it to run sometime after the normal program boundaries (5 and 35 after, for me). For me, I changed the firewire_tester line to:</div>
<div><br></div><div>my $results = `$firewire_tester -B -P $guid_list{$guid}{host} -n $guid_list{$guid}{node} -r 5`;</div><div><br></div><div>I also tend to run that script manually 10 or 15 seconds after I bring up the backend just to be sure. One other thing I needed to do was disable firewire bus resets in mythtv-setup. This might help you too.</div>
<div><br></div><div>I hope this help you. I have not had a failed recording on firewire in a really long time, aside from the occasional program on a normally reliable channel that randomly has 5C turned on.</div><div><br>
</div><div>Robert</div>