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PostPosted: Thu Feb 05, 2009 11:43 am 
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Location: Los Angeles
Hi everyone,

I think I have a capture card that is beginning to fail. It's throwing out a lot of pixelation and breakup while other cards in the system work just fine on the same channel. I was going to swap it out with a spare that I have, but in the backend I have 4 identical capture cards. How can I know which physical card it is? I can't decipher a difference between any of them in lspci output. Anyone have any ideas?

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PostPosted: Thu Feb 05, 2009 5:01 pm 
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I'm sure there is a clever way to do this, but....

Just pick one and swap it out. If the problem goes away you're done.

If it doesn't go away then you know the bad one is still in there, so the one you pulled is OK. Use it to swap another one.
Repeat until the problem goes away.


Although another approach. It may just be the card is getting 'confused' I'm not sure which card you have, but maybe shutting your myth down for a few hours will force a reload of the firmware. That could fix the problem right there.


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PostPosted: Thu Feb 05, 2009 7:12 pm 
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Location: Los Angeles
jmckeown2 wrote:
I'm sure there is a clever way to do this, but....

Yeah, I was hoping for something less labor intensive ;)

jmckeown2 wrote:
Although another approach. It may just be the card is getting 'confused' I'm not sure which card you have, but maybe shutting your myth down for a few hours will force a reload of the firmware. That could fix the problem right there.


I suppose that's the least labor intensive way to fix it, so I'll probably try a cold boot first. Of cousre if some one has a nifty command that can allow me to uniquely identify each card, I'm all ears.

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PostPosted: Thu Feb 05, 2009 9:26 pm 
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Location: Kitsap Peninsula, Wa., United States
I have found that it takes about 30 minutes with all power removed from the box to clear the Firmware and force a reload.

I don't have more than one card in a box because I have multiple Dish receivers but here goes.

A thought train comes to mind on finding the errant card.
when you see a bad capture, go look at the recording properties for that particular capture.

In the Watch Recordings menu, Right arrow or menu on that show with your remote. If you look for Recording Options, then Show Program Details. In Mine it lists Recording Host. It may list Recording tuner for you.

2nd idea. The log files in the Mythweb view or the Information Center>System Status> Log Entries list a few days (you set that) in there of backend activity. Selecting that and pressing 5 or above should give you the Started and Finished Recordings

In the box on the right is the Log, you can right arrow or menu over into that and see the name of a show and what CardID is actually recording that show on.

Once you have the CardID I remember in the MythTV setup it showing me that info. With multiple Tuner cards they should be listed in order in the Capture Cards listing.

Now you should be able to determine from that which one is which since they will also be /dev/videonnn Which should relate to something in your log.

I see Card #0 on each of mine, but I am thinking when I had two cards Card 0 was Cardid #1 and Card 1 was called CardID #2

I hope that helps you trace this other wise. if you have enough lax tuners. ie. only needing 3 at a time, try lowering the priority of one so it doesn't get used per se. do that for each one individually until you find the culprit.


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PostPosted: Fri Feb 06, 2009 3:40 am 
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Location: Germany
Another way is when you get a bad recording, take a look at the backend logs and find the "Started recording" entry. The cardID is listed. Example:
Code:
2009-02-03 20:13:01.656 Started recording: Die Tricks der größten Zauberer: channel 13040 on cardid 1, sourceid 1
You can see the logs in mythweb or in /var/log/mythtv.

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PostPosted: Sun Dec 06, 2009 11:06 pm 
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Joined: Tue Mar 28, 2006 8:26 pm
Posts: 804
Location: Minneapolis, MN
mihanson wrote:
Hi everyone,

I think I have a capture card that is beginning to fail. It's throwing out a lot of pixelation and breakup while other cards in the system work just fine on the same channel. I was going to swap it out with a spare that I have, but in the backend I have 4 identical capture cards. How can I know which physical card it is? I can't decipher a difference between any of them in lspci output. Anyone have any ideas?

Hi,

Did you verify that one of your capture cards was actually bad?

I've just noticed over-the-air recordings with breakups in them in the last 2 weeks. It had never been an issue before.

My only thoughts for causes are:

1. About 2 weeks ago, I activated the Knoppmyth screensaver to blank the screen after 15 minutes of no activity. Maybe the screensaver is causing the breakups?

2. My 1GB hard drive (single drive system) is 85% full and perhaps I am getting breakups in recordings due to seek time to find empty disk space for the next part of the recording?

3. Maybe my HD-3000 card is going bad??

Eric

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PostPosted: Mon Dec 07, 2009 2:53 pm 
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neutron68 wrote:
Did you verify that one of your capture cards was actually bad?


Yes. In fact since I posted this I've had 2 (total) go bad. I figured out which one based on clues from lspci and the mythbackend logs. I determined which physical card was bad by checking the cardid from the backend logs i.e. cardid 1. Based on lspci output and noting the capture card's physical slot based on another unique card in a pci slot (In my case it was a pci firewire card.) I figured out which one was bad. So I replaced the suspected "problem card" with another spare capture card (I had 3 spares, now down to 1) and all my problems went away. ;)


neutron68 wrote:
2. My 1GB hard drive (single drive system) is 85% full and perhaps I am getting breakups in recordings due to seek time to find empty disk space for the next part of the recording?

A possibility. I always keep my OS/database on a different physical disk than any recordings or videos.

neutron68 wrote:
3. Maybe my HD-3000 card is going bad??

Do you have any spare card to throw in to check? How is your airflow/cooling around the cards?

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PostPosted: Mon Dec 07, 2009 5:22 pm 
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Joined: Tue Mar 28, 2006 8:26 pm
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Location: Minneapolis, MN
mihanson wrote:
neutron68 wrote:
2. My 1GB hard drive (single drive system) is 85% full and perhaps I am getting breakups in recordings due to seek time to find empty disk space for the next part of the recording?

A possibility. I always keep my OS/database on a different physical disk than any recordings or videos.

I ran with 2 hard drives for the first couple of years with Knoppmyth but decided to save electricity and heat and only run one drive.
I've been running with a single 1GB drive for about a year now (with R5F27 and R5.5) with no breakup problems.

mihanson wrote:
neutron68 wrote:
3. Maybe my HD-3000 card is going bad??

Do you have any spare card to throw in to check? How is your airflow/cooling around the cards?

I have an HD-5500 card I could swap in there and see. The HD-3000 card has been in the system since I built in in March 2006 and has not given troubles before.
Air flow is good and temperatures are always reasonable inside the case. For example, the hard drive temperature always reads 30-34C, so you know that the air inside the case is cooler than that.

The machine has 1 HD-3000 card and 1 PVR-150 card in it.
For comparison, I note that all the standard definition shows recorded by my PVR-150 card (from the analog output of the satellite receiver) are free of breakups.

I've also got an HD Homerun tuner in the house that I could raise the priority of, so that it becomes the first tuner used. Right now, the HD-3000 card has top priority, so it is almost always the tuner that gets used.
Using the HDHR to record from is probably the easiest way to test the theory of a failing HD-3000 card.

Eric

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PostPosted: Fri Dec 11, 2009 11:43 am 
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Joined: Tue Mar 28, 2006 8:26 pm
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Location: Minneapolis, MN
The good news is that the breakups in HD recordings have stopped.
I believe this means that my HD-3000 card is ok.
Of course, since I did 3 things, I don't know which one fixed the problem for sure...

1. I rebooted the computer. It had not been rebooted for at least 2 weeks.

2. I disabled the screensaver function. A couple of weeks ago, I had enabled the screen saver script for the first time. Shortly after that, I noticed the breakups in HD programs recorded with the HD-3000 card.

3. I deleted a bunch of shows from the hard drive. The drive went from 85% full to 70% full.

Eric

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