[mythtv-users] Second Encoder Too Wide and Quiet

[Stephen Henderson]

When my second encoder card is used to record programs, the recordings 
have no sound and the video plays double-wide, yet cropped such as to 
present the proper aspect ratio, leaving only the left-hand side of the 
program material visible & stretched.

The first encoder card always works like a charm.

The issue first seemed to appear 6 months ago or so.  I disabled the 
card after frustration and recording a 'critical' Battlestar Galactica 
poorly... ouch.

In a burst of energy... and given the off-season of Galactica, I enabled 
the second card a few weeks ago, and it seemed to be working until I 
physically rebooted the backend server... at that point we were back to 
wide & quiet recordings on the second card.

Until today... somehow the problem is fixed.

I've left it enabled to spur me to debug the problem.

My guess is that the mythbackend is not altering the capture settings on 
the second card, leaving some bad power-on defaults in place.  I'm 
wondering if any readers have ideas surrounding mythbackend's behavior 
w.r.t. setting capture settings, problems that might be related, etc. 

Here's some info:
1. FC4 configured, per J. Wilson's HOWTO, via YUM.
2. Encoder 1 is a PVR350
3. Encoder 2 is a PVR250
4. I've diff'd the ivtvctl output for both cards during the wide & quiet 
era, and today during the double-fisted recording era.  This effort 
clearly illustrates that the capture settings are wrong when things are 
wide & quiet.
5. /var/log/mythtv/mythtbackend.log doesn't seem to be reporting any 
'couldn't set the settings' failure.  Also, the permissions of the 
/dev/video devices do not vary.
6. Mythbackend runs as root.

Thanks for reading! I'd appreciate any suggestions.

-Stephen