Something in a file is making DVR-Studio crash!

[TonyC]

Hallo zusammen. First posting so please be nice...

I've been using DVR-Studio Pro for over a year and generally am very happy with it. I regularly recommend it to other UK users of the Topfield TF5800. But there is one minor problem, which seems to be getting worse at the moment and it is starting to drive me mad. I hope you can find a fix for this, because the program is becoming unusable.

The problem is that some TV recordings I make seem to have something strange about them, maybe an invalid coding due to interference on the signal. DVR-SP will get part way through the process then just exit back to Windows without any warning (though recently I have started getting an "abnormal program termination" message). Retrying the process gives exactly the same result. But other recordings work fine, even a repeat broadcast of the same program on another day.

My TV reception is generally quite good (so far as I can see on the screen). But especially on BBC1, now up to 50% of recordings won't convert to DVD because of this problem. So it's becoming very annoying! (I have by the way updated to the most recent version of DVR-Studio, but have the same problem still.)

After a lot of work I have managed to isolate a 5-minute recording that shows this problem, and have uploaded it to a server I manage. Could one of you experts please check if the same occurs on your systems? If so, maybe there is some additional error-checking (and maybe error-correction) that could be added to DVR-Studio to prevent the problem.

Address for the file: **** (edit: now removed)

Herzlichen Dank im Voraus

Tony

[Kimi]

Hi Tony,

thanks for the file. How large should it be? Just to make sure, that I have received everything...

It's great that you were able to isolate a sample to reproduce the problem. I assure you that I then can identify the problem and solve it. Nothing is more frustrating than having an error I cannot reproduce here.

[TonyC]

It's 167.602 kB. And still has 10 minutes left to upload, so for sure you don't have it yet!

I could exactly imagine that "DVR-Studio sometimes crashes" would not be much help to you as an error description, so that's why I made the effort to get you this file.

[Kimi]

I now have the file and yes it crashes. Some might think: "why is he happy that his software crashes?" . Well that's because now I can look where the error happens and hopefully can find a solution.

On the first glanze there seem to be a lot of errors and drop-outs in the file. Although this should not crash the software it's an explanation. The full analysis will take some time, so please give me a few days.

[TonyC]

On the first glanze there seem to be a lot of errors and drop-outs in the file.

I guess there will always be some with any DVB system. But yes, I live in an area where the signal quality is lower than normal, so I am not surprised you see a lot of errors. In normal viewing these don't seem to have any effect. If you can find a way to make DVR-Studio handle these errors without crashing (even if it means having a slight defect in the final output) that would be great.

I'm hoping that this file is representative of all likely errors, and I won't have to send you hundreds of other "problem" files for you to fix them all

One other piece of information: the files that most often cause problems are those from BBC1. This tends to have a higher bit rate than other channels (2 Gb/hour instead of 1 - 1.5 for other channels). Perhaps this is coincidence, or perhaps not.

The full analysis will take some time, so please give me a few days.

Sure. But please don't take too long as my hard disc is nearly full and I need to make some DVDs quick!

[Kimi]

I'm pretty sure the file will be quite representative. So don't worry.

I have an idea what could cause the problem: on which transponder is BBC1 transmitted? Especially on which frequency? Because in Germany the broadcaster "Pro7" changed it's transponder because it was often disturbed by wireless DECT phones.

This could be the case for BBC1 as well... So at the moment your neighbour is making a phone-call this could disturb your reception if some of the cables from antenna to receiver are weakly shielded.

[TonyC]

Kimi, I've tried your new version of DVR-Studio and am pleased to say it seems to work perfectly. About 10 files, which previously always caused the program to crash, have now processed without any problems. Herzlichen Dank!

I just wish I had asked about this 12 months ago, because I could have saved a lot of wasted time...

As to your theory about the DECT interference, I'm not sure. Other channels that transmit on the same MUX don't seem to have the same problems.

[Kimi]

@TonyC:

in this case the DECT problem wasn't the cause. The problem was a partially missing audio track. It looked like during the trailer or intro of the recording one of the audio-tracks was switched off. It was missing in the stream for a few minutes. Then in re-appeared.

The software now "gives up" when an audio-track is missing for more than 5 second and removes it from the list of tracks for the DVD-wizard and the demux-process as well. This is the only way of recovering from this problem. Otherwise the sound of that track would be out of synch for a few minutes which would be pretty useless...
Or the software would need to insert "silent" frames for that period. But this leads to an overflow of internal buffers (and the crash), so I decided not to process such tracks any further. In your case this is the audio-commentary track which I think is not so precious, right ?