[mythtv-users] Help needed - jittery playback, missing recordings, 16 second recordings, all kinds of craziness

[Brian Wood]

On May 3, 2006, at 8:41 PM, T. Waldren wrote:

> About a month ago I upgraded to .19 from .18 (where everything was  
> working gloriously) and I keep having problems.  I have been trying  
> to read through all the mailings, and searching the archives to see  
> if I can find answers for all my problems, but so far nothing seems  
> to help.
>
> The symptoms:
>
> 1)When you select a recording from recording shows, you get 4-5  
> secs of blank screen (no sound) then the recording starts, but is  
> very jittery at the beginning and sometimes at random spots in the  
> recording.
>
> 2)Some recordings, for which mythtv says there is a file never  
> play.  I get 5 to 10 secs of blank screen, then go back to the  
> menu.  I can go out and see that the files actually exist, but  
> mythtv can never play them from the frontend.
>
> 3)Mythtv just doesn't record a show.  Its listed to be recorded,  
> the system is running when it should be recorded, but nothing shows  
> up in the recorded listings.  I have not sat there to see if the  
> system shows that a turner is currently recording at the time.
>
> 4) The frontend crashes, a lot.  Sometimes, if you hit pause, play,  
> anything on the remote during the above mentioned blank screens,  
> the front end goes away, and the log shows a segmentation fault as  
> the last thing listed.
>
> 5) There are shows that mythtv says are recorded, that do not have  
> files present for them.
>
> 6) Lastly, it records 16 secs of a show (when you play it, that is  
> how long it says the show is) but the data on the file from the  
> recordings screen says that the full length was recorded.
>
> 7) Last Lastly (the wife just added this as she read over my  
> shoulder) sometimes mythtv records a show, without sound.  This  
> happened occasionally with .18, but is more frequent with .19
>
> I am not sure what people would want to know in order to help out.
>
> I am running fc3, mythtv .19, on an Amd Athlon 1800 (on a Chaintech  
> 7nif2 board) with 512 meg of ram.  I have 300 gig of harddrive  
> space for recordings, and that is around 65% full.
>
> Thanks for any help that anyone can give me. The wife is getting  
> really peeved that her shows are not being recorded, and has asked  
> repeatedly if I can downgrade back to the older version.
>

I would guess your problems are related to your capture hardware and  
the drivers for it. You didn't mention what you are capturing with,  
this is probably important information.