Re: [pvrusb2] WinTV USB2/Tv-Viewer question
Hey Mike, Thanks for the reply After playing with it for a couple of days now, I feel fairly confident that this issue is an application issue. I can view vcr tape fine, and I can view tv fine. I seem to be able to record tv fine, but only part time can I record vcr. I will learn more as I tinker until I can find a better solution to recording. Just simply doing the bash prompt command seems stable as suggested by one of our readers... So I DO have a work around for now. From: Mike Isely is...@isely.net To: Communications nexus for pvrusb2 driver pvrusb2@isely.net Sent: Wednesday, August 28, 2013 10:01 PM Subject: Re: [pvrusb2] WinTV USB2/Tv-Viewer question On Tue, 27 Aug 2013, Lorne Shantz wrote: I have done some more tinkering... It seems to be related to the composite cables coming from the vcr player. ? Tv-viewer would not play. I'm getting a lot of this below: [19727.089020] pvrusb2: ***WARNING*** device's encoder appears to be stuck (status=0x0003) [19727.089023] pvrusb2: Encoder command: 0x81 [19727.089024] pvrusb2: Giving up on command. This is normally recovered via a firmware reload and re-initialization; concern is only warranted if this happens repeatedly and rapidly. Routinely testing, I removed the cables from the vcr player and up it comes. ?? So it is intermittent it seems. I have recorded stuff from the vcr, but something seems amiss. Is there such a thing as a firmware update for these devices? I have over time seen later versions of the mpeg video encoder firmware bundled with later models of the device (any of the devices, actually). The fwextract.pl script recognizes a number of variants. However I personally have never really seen any improvement (or degradation) in behavior of that encoder correlated with firmware revision. Generally speaking, the different mpeg encoder firmware variants floating around all seem to be interchangeable, and the pvrusb2 driver doesn't make any attempt to discriminate among them. As for the ...apears to be stuck... message, that is what happens when the pvrusb2 driver attempts to issue a command to the mpeg encoder and the encoder fails to acknowledge it. (There's a sort of shared memory mailbox interface which uses a sort of handshake protocol for issuing commands to the encoder.) From all outward behavior at this point, the encoder appears to be crashed. I've only ever seen this happen when the command is issued to start streaming and there has NEVER been any pattern to it that I could find. It's just generally been random with a low probability. The pvrusb2 driver always recovers this case by quickly reseting the encoder and reloading its firmware. It's hackish but the whole recovery happens in less than a second and because it only ever seems to happen when streaming is started, it never actually causes lingering problems. Back when I first encountered this behavior (way back around 2005) I spent a LONG time trying to characterize it so that I could understand its cause. I never did find the root cause. Instead, the workaround (i.e. reboot the encoder) all along seems to have been good enough. Some day if I could ever get a good look at the source code for that encoder firmware, it might be possible to finally suss out what's really going on. But I doubt that day will ever come :-( I have over time seen some reports where people have gotten frequent rapid bursts of this problem happening. In all cases that I remember, it was never pinned down to be a real encoder problem. Rather some have found that cleaning up glitchy power has helped - the mpeg2 encoder is probably the most complicated and definitely the most power hungry chip in the device so it might be the most power sensitive as well. It might also be a sign over overheating. I've also suspected over time that if the mpeg encoder fails to get a clean digital stream from the upstream pipeline stage (the video digitizer) - perhaps because of problems with video sync - that this might cause the mpeg encoder to behave badly. But I've never been able to prove it. -Mike -- Mike Isely isely @ isely (dot) net PGP: 03 54 43 4D 75 E5 CC 92 71 16 01 E2 B5 F5 C1 E8 ___ pvrusb2 mailing list pvrusb2@isely.net http://www.isely.net/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/pvrusb2 ___ pvrusb2 mailing list pvrusb2@isely.net http://www.isely.net/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/pvrusb2
Re: [pvrusb2] WinTV USB2/Tv-Viewer question
Oh... sorry this is a little off topic for this forum, but... I broke down and bought a HDHomerun hardware. The digital quality output is amazing. In theory, since I can play it via VLC, I should be able to redirect that to a file from the command line right? I would just need to know the IP address, port # etc, then just redirect () to a file yes? From: Mike Isely is...@isely.net To: Communications nexus for pvrusb2 driver pvrusb2@isely.net Sent: Wednesday, August 28, 2013 10:01 PM Subject: Re: [pvrusb2] WinTV USB2/Tv-Viewer question On Tue, 27 Aug 2013, Lorne Shantz wrote: I have done some more tinkering... It seems to be related to the composite cables coming from the vcr player. ? Tv-viewer would not play. I'm getting a lot of this below: [19727.089020] pvrusb2: ***WARNING*** device's encoder appears to be stuck (status=0x0003) [19727.089023] pvrusb2: Encoder command: 0x81 [19727.089024] pvrusb2: Giving up on command. This is normally recovered via a firmware reload and re-initialization; concern is only warranted if this happens repeatedly and rapidly. Routinely testing, I removed the cables from the vcr player and up it comes. ?? So it is intermittent it seems. I have recorded stuff from the vcr, but something seems amiss. Is there such a thing as a firmware update for these devices? I have over time seen later versions of the mpeg video encoder firmware bundled with later models of the device (any of the devices, actually). The fwextract.pl script recognizes a number of variants. However I personally have never really seen any improvement (or degradation) in behavior of that encoder correlated with firmware revision. Generally speaking, the different mpeg encoder firmware variants floating around all seem to be interchangeable, and the pvrusb2 driver doesn't make any attempt to discriminate among them. As for the ...apears to be stuck... message, that is what happens when the pvrusb2 driver attempts to issue a command to the mpeg encoder and the encoder fails to acknowledge it. (There's a sort of shared memory mailbox interface which uses a sort of handshake protocol for issuing commands to the encoder.) From all outward behavior at this point, the encoder appears to be crashed. I've only ever seen this happen when the command is issued to start streaming and there has NEVER been any pattern to it that I could find. It's just generally been random with a low probability. The pvrusb2 driver always recovers this case by quickly reseting the encoder and reloading its firmware. It's hackish but the whole recovery happens in less than a second and because it only ever seems to happen when streaming is started, it never actually causes lingering problems. Back when I first encountered this behavior (way back around 2005) I spent a LONG time trying to characterize it so that I could understand its cause. I never did find the root cause. Instead, the workaround (i.e. reboot the encoder) all along seems to have been good enough. Some day if I could ever get a good look at the source code for that encoder firmware, it might be possible to finally suss out what's really going on. But I doubt that day will ever come :-( I have over time seen some reports where people have gotten frequent rapid bursts of this problem happening. In all cases that I remember, it was never pinned down to be a real encoder problem. Rather some have found that cleaning up glitchy power has helped - the mpeg2 encoder is probably the most complicated and definitely the most power hungry chip in the device so it might be the most power sensitive as well. It might also be a sign over overheating. I've also suspected over time that if the mpeg encoder fails to get a clean digital stream from the upstream pipeline stage (the video digitizer) - perhaps because of problems with video sync - that this might cause the mpeg encoder to behave badly. But I've never been able to prove it. -Mike -- Mike Isely isely @ isely (dot) net PGP: 03 54 43 4D 75 E5 CC 92 71 16 01 E2 B5 F5 C1 E8 ___ pvrusb2 mailing list pvrusb2@isely.net http://www.isely.net/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/pvrusb2 ___ pvrusb2 mailing list pvrusb2@isely.net http://www.isely.net/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/pvrusb2
Re: [pvrusb2] WinTV USB2/Tv-Viewer question
try it without tv-viewer simply by using the command cat /dev/video0 test.mpg while the VCR is playing. Then open the test.mpg file with vlc. You can watch it while it is recording. Let' s see if this recording works or if again any encoder command errors appear You can check this in another console with tail -f /var/log/syslog I have done some more tinkering... It seems to be related to the composite cables coming from the vcr player. ? Tv-viewer would not play. I'm getting a lot of this below: [19727.089020] pvrusb2: ***WARNING*** device's encoder appears to be stuck (status=0x0003) [19727.089023] pvrusb2: Encoder command: 0x81 [19727.089024] pvrusb2: Giving up on command.? This is normally recovered via a firmware reload and re-initialization; concern is only warranted if this happens repeatedly and rapidly. ___ pvrusb2 mailing list pvrusb2@isely.net http://www.isely.net/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/pvrusb2
Re: [pvrusb2] WinTV USB2/Tv-Viewer question
It has been awhile since I've done any bash prompt commands, but before that, I have to tell it what to capture first. IE: right this moment, the unit is set to watch TV, so it is just capturing what ever channel is on, and not the Tape. I'm pretty sure I can pass that on to it though. Good advice. I'll have to go try to find that on the web somewhere. From: Martin Dauskardt martin.dauska...@gmx.de To: pvrusb2@isely.net Sent: Wednesday, August 28, 2013 11:04 AM Subject: Re: [pvrusb2] WinTV USB2/Tv-Viewer question try it without tv-viewer simply by using the command cat /dev/video0 test.mpg while the VCR is playing. Then open the test.mpg file with vlc. You can watch it while it is recording. Let' s see if this recording works or if again any encoder command errors appear You can check this in another console with tail -f /var/log/syslog I have done some more tinkering... It seems to be related to the composite cables coming from the vcr player. ? Tv-viewer would not play. I'm getting a lot of this below: [19727.089020] pvrusb2: ***WARNING*** device's encoder appears to be stuck (status=0x0003) [19727.089023] pvrusb2: Encoder command: 0x81 [19727.089024] pvrusb2: Giving up on command.? This is normally recovered via a firmware reload and re-initialization; concern is only warranted if this happens repeatedly and rapidly. ___ pvrusb2 mailing list pvrusb2@isely.net http://www.isely.net/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/pvrusb2 ___ pvrusb2 mailing list pvrusb2@isely.net http://www.isely.net/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/pvrusb2
Re: [pvrusb2] WinTV USB2/Tv-Viewer question
On Wed, Aug 28, 2013 at 7:50 PM, Lorne Shantz lorne_sha...@yahoo.com wrote: Hmmm... so you think it is drawing more power to pull the signal from the vcr machine? It is rock solid (it seems) when capturing TV signal, or watching tv. Well, it really should not (be significantly different), but my first reaction to flaky is always to check the power (source). It is an old habit from long ago lessons. Gary ___ pvrusb2 mailing list pvrusb2@isely.net http://www.isely.net/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/pvrusb2
Re: [pvrusb2] WinTV USB2/Tv-Viewer question
On Tue, 27 Aug 2013, Lorne Shantz wrote: I have done some more tinkering... It seems to be related to the composite cables coming from the vcr player. ? Tv-viewer would not play. I'm getting a lot of this below: [19727.089020] pvrusb2: ***WARNING*** device's encoder appears to be stuck (status=0x0003) [19727.089023] pvrusb2: Encoder command: 0x81 [19727.089024] pvrusb2: Giving up on command. This is normally recovered via a firmware reload and re-initialization; concern is only warranted if this happens repeatedly and rapidly. Routinely testing, I removed the cables from the vcr player and up it comes. ?? So it is intermittent it seems. I have recorded stuff from the vcr, but something seems amiss. Is there such a thing as a firmware update for these devices? I have over time seen later versions of the mpeg video encoder firmware bundled with later models of the device (any of the devices, actually). The fwextract.pl script recognizes a number of variants. However I personally have never really seen any improvement (or degradation) in behavior of that encoder correlated with firmware revision. Generally speaking, the different mpeg encoder firmware variants floating around all seem to be interchangeable, and the pvrusb2 driver doesn't make any attempt to discriminate among them. As for the ...apears to be stuck... message, that is what happens when the pvrusb2 driver attempts to issue a command to the mpeg encoder and the encoder fails to acknowledge it. (There's a sort of shared memory mailbox interface which uses a sort of handshake protocol for issuing commands to the encoder.) From all outward behavior at this point, the encoder appears to be crashed. I've only ever seen this happen when the command is issued to start streaming and there has NEVER been any pattern to it that I could find. It's just generally been random with a low probability. The pvrusb2 driver always recovers this case by quickly reseting the encoder and reloading its firmware. It's hackish but the whole recovery happens in less than a second and because it only ever seems to happen when streaming is started, it never actually causes lingering problems. Back when I first encountered this behavior (way back around 2005) I spent a LONG time trying to characterize it so that I could understand its cause. I never did find the root cause. Instead, the workaround (i.e. reboot the encoder) all along seems to have been good enough. Some day if I could ever get a good look at the source code for that encoder firmware, it might be possible to finally suss out what's really going on. But I doubt that day will ever come :-( I have over time seen some reports where people have gotten frequent rapid bursts of this problem happening. In all cases that I remember, it was never pinned down to be a real encoder problem. Rather some have found that cleaning up glitchy power has helped - the mpeg2 encoder is probably the most complicated and definitely the most power hungry chip in the device so it might be the most power sensitive as well. It might also be a sign over overheating. I've also suspected over time that if the mpeg encoder fails to get a clean digital stream from the upstream pipeline stage (the video digitizer) - perhaps because of problems with video sync - that this might cause the mpeg encoder to behave badly. But I've never been able to prove it. -Mike -- Mike Isely isely @ isely (dot) net PGP: 03 54 43 4D 75 E5 CC 92 71 16 01 E2 B5 F5 C1 E8___ pvrusb2 mailing list pvrusb2@isely.net http://www.isely.net/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/pvrusb2
[pvrusb2] WinTV USB2/Tv-Viewer question
Hey guys, I finally had to give up on my old WinTV USZ2 device. I bought one on Ebay and it works fine with one annoying problem. I am wanting to convert all my old vhs family movies to MP3 type format. I don't recall the application I did my recording with before, but it was cake to use. For some reason xawtv does not display video. It just freezes. I can stream data via VLC, and TV-viewer. Tvtime won't work from what I read. I'm open to any suggestions on what works easily at this point. The first time I fired up my vcr player and the tv-viewer it started recording and I was elated. Tv channels change and that part is great!! However, the problem... When I select a tape to record, I can not see the video being played. For some reason, it does not seem to allow me to see it in the tv-viewer window while the record program is working. ? What ever I used before I could. But, what seems to be happening is the recording is not going, and there is no way to determine if it is working, unless I go to where the file is being recorded and I can see the size increasing. When it does not record, it seems locked up and nothing helps but powering down the tuner and bringing it back up. I grabbed the tail end of dmesg, hoping it will be obvious to someone that has a clue. [14825.672038] tveeprom 1-00a2: TV standards NTSC(M) (eeprom 0x08) [14825.672041] tveeprom 1-00a2: audio processor is CX25843 (idx 37) [14825.672044] tveeprom 1-00a2: decoder processor is CX25843 (idx 30) [14825.672047] tveeprom 1-00a2: has radio, has IR receiver, has no IR transmitter [14825.672054] pvrusb2: Supported video standard(s) reported available in hardware: PAL-M/N/Nc;NTSC-M/Mj/Mk [14825.672057] pvrusb2: Initial video standard guessed as NTSC-M [14825.672067] pvrusb2: Device initialization completed successfully. [14825.672214] pvrusb2: registered device video0 [mpeg] [14825.950206] tuner-simple 1-0061: creating new instance [14825.950209] tuner-simple 1-0061: type set to 43 (Philips NTSC MK3 (FM1236MK3 or FM1236/F)) [14826.009191] pvrusb2: registered device radio0 [mpeg] [15002.250933] usb 5-2.4: USB disconnect, device number 10 [15002.251446] pvrusb2: Device being rendered inoperable ^ I assume this is from unplugging? [15002.251481] pvrusb2: Attempted to execute control transfer when device not ok [15002.251485] pvrusb2: Attempted to execute control transfer when device not ok [15004.704291] xhci_hcd :0c:00.0: WARN Event TRB for slot 2 ep 2 with no TDs queued? [15004.704470] xhci_hcd :0c:00.0: WARN Event TRB for slot 2 ep 0 with no TDs queued? [15062.583167] usb 5-2.4: new high-speed USB device number 11 using xhci_hcd [15062.598974] usb 5-2.4: New USB device found, idVendor=2040, idProduct=2400 [15062.598978] usb 5-2.4: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=3 [15062.598979] usb 5-2.4: Product: WinTV [15062.598980] usb 5-2.4: Manufacturer: Hauppauge [15062.598981] usb 5-2.4: SerialNumber: 2401-00-00823D64 [15062.600628] pvrusb2: Hardware description: WinTV PVR USB2 Model 24xxx [15063.605437] pvrusb2: Device microcontroller firmware (re)loaded; it should now reset and reconnect. [15063.697679] usb 5-2.4: USB disconnect, device number 11 [15063.697744] pvrusb2: Device being rendered inoperable [15065.400224] usb 5-2.4: new high-speed USB device number 12 using xhci_hcd [15065.416264] usb 5-2.4: New USB device found, idVendor=2040, idProduct=2400 [15065.416271] usb 5-2.4: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=3 [15065.416275] usb 5-2.4: Product: WinTV [15065.416278] usb 5-2.4: Manufacturer: Hauppauge [15065.416281] usb 5-2.4: SerialNumber: 2401-00-00823D64 [15065.418019] pvrusb2: Hardware description: WinTV PVR USB2 Model 24xxx [15065.440895] pvrusb2: Binding ir_video to i2c address 0x18. [15065.79] cx25840 6-0044: cx25843-24 found @ 0x88 (pvrusb2_b) [15065.448344] pvrusb2: Attached sub-driver cx25840 [15065.459078] tuner 6-0061: Tuner -1 found with type(s) Radio TV. [15065.459084] pvrusb2: Attached sub-driver tuner [15065.460304] wm8775 6-001b: chip found @ 0x36 (pvrusb2_b) [15065.463015] pvrusb2: Attached sub-driver wm8775 [15065.466246] tda9887 6-0043: creating new instance [15065.466250] tda9887 6-0043: tda988[5/6/7] found [15065.466571] tuner 6-0043: Tuner 74 found with type(s) Radio TV. [15065.466580] pvrusb2: Attached sub-driver tuner [15066.291748] cx25840 6-0044: loaded v4l-cx25840.fw firmware (16382 bytes) [15066.328665] tveeprom 6-00a2: Hauppauge model 24012, rev C3A3, serial# 8535396 [15066.328672] tveeprom 6-00a2: tuner model is TCL MFNM05-4 (idx 103, type 43) [15066.328676] tveeprom 6-00a2: TV standards NTSC(M) (eeprom 0x08) [15066.328679] tveeprom 6-00a2: audio processor is CX25843 (idx 37) [15066.328682] tveeprom 6-00a2: decoder processor is CX25843 (idx 30) [15066.328685] tveeprom 6-00a2: has radio, has IR receiver, has no IR transmitter [15066.328691] pvrusb2: Supported video
