[mythtv] mythtv 0.18.1 stops playing in the middle of a movie

[Rainer Schöpf]

Hello,

please forgive me if this is the wrong mailing list to state my problem.

In short: since several weeks I can no longer properly play or transcode 
recorded movies; playing stops after a short time.

Setup: a Haupauge PVR250 tv card, running the ivtv driver version 
0.2.0-rc3i on a debian linux with kernel 2.6.8. I'm running the 
latest debian mythtv packages from http://dijkstra.csh.rit.edu/~mdz/debian/

Description of the problem:
1. I record something from the tv card (in .nuv format), everything works 
as usual. 
2. Afterwards, I am able to play the recording, enter edit mode, 
step through the whole recording, create a cutlist.
3. When I play the movie, it stops some time into the recording.
4. Transcoding stops as well, leaving a truncated transcoded recording.
5. No error messages, the log indicates successful termination.

So much for the facts, the following is speculation.

I tried to run an strace on the relevant process. The output was so big 
that I'm not sure whether I interpreted it correctly, but it certainly 
looked to me like there is a larger block of NUL bytes embedded in the 
video file, somehow connected with the string "VBI". I haven't 
investigated further.

Unfortunately, I cannot say when the problem first appeared, whether it is 
related to an upgrade of the ivtv driver or of the mythtv packages itself.

Any ideas what I can do?

Thanks in advance
  Rainer Schöpf

PS: After transcoding stops, I'm left with a) the untranscoded video in 
<name>.nuv.old, b) the truncated file <name>.nuv. How can I restore the 
previous state? I tried copying <name>.nuv.old to <name>.nuv AND changing 
the filesize field in the database's recorded table to the old value. This 
sort of works, except I can no longer enter edit mode.