inaccurate positioning

[rdhoore108]

Hi,

I'm having many troubles with "Smart Cutter for DV and DVB" these days. My start and end points always end up to be inaccurate.

Let's say I set a start and end point, and then click "Add list". Then I right-click with the mouse on the entry that was added to the list on the right top, and click "View". The start and end points I get to see will be somewhat near the ones I set, but certainly not the ones I set...

It was not like that before. I don't know if it changed in a new version of Smart Cutter, or if it is because of a driver update for my Hauppage HD PVR. I use the latest driver, 1.6.29277. The recorded files are .TS, VBR around 10 Mbps, 1280x720 at 50 fps.

What to do? Should I upload a sample?

- Ronny

[admin]

Dear Ronny:
Thanks for your message.

Please help us to show and identify the problem by providing us a video sample.

It would be better if the sample file size is less than 100 MB.

If you can not find small sample, use this simple tool to split your movie file into small pieces, and upload any one of them.
http://www.softpedia.com/get/PORTABLE-S ... rger.shtml
-------------------------------------
before uploading sample, please create sub-directory with your name under the root, then upload sample to this sub-directory.

FULL priviliged --- mkdir, read, write, remove
Will be helpful to limit the sample file size under 100MB.
Thank you.

FTP Username: samples@fame-ring.com
Password: samples
FTP Server: ftp.fame-ring.com
FTP Server Port: 21
-------------------------------------

Looking forward to your further message.
Thank you very much.

Best Regards,
FameRing Support Team

[rdhoore108]

Hi,

Sorry for the somewhat late reply. I've uploaded /rdhoore108/sample.zip which includes:

• a short recording from the TV (2011_12_22_20_30_33.TS),
• a project file with two selections (test.prj)
• my Smart Cutter settings file in case the settings matter (vs_fame.ini)

After marking these two sets of start and end points, I clicked "View" for each one, and then I noticed that:
[*]the start point of the first set was wrong[/*]
[*]the end point of the second set was wrong[/*]

For the first set, I had selected as start point the exact frame where the advertisement about the TV's started.
For the second set, I had selected as end point the last white image, the one before the woman appears.

I hope you can reproduce my problem. Thanks very much.

Best regards,
Ronny

[JohnnyB]

I've also experienced similar problems w/ the updated HD-PVR driver recently installed (see my other post). It seems that the .TS files generated by the new HD-PVR driver has repeated video frames and Smart Cutter is having problems picking a frame near these areas. I don't know if the frames are actually repeated, or of the time code for those frames are not in proper sequence causing Smart Cutter to get confused and not allow easy selection of the frame to make the cut.

I sent a message to Hauppague regarding my other post. I have a funny feeling that their new driver isn't quite right. All my problems started after I loaded the new driver. I'm planning on reverting back to the original driver to see if that fixes my problems.

[rdhoore108]

I read your post, and indeed I also got occasional crashes. I'm not sure if I get more crashes now than before, with the old Hauppage HD PVR drivers. But indeed I also suspect the HD PVR drivers to cause the "moving" start and end points, and the strange "loops" that you also described when loading back a file that was processed with Smart Cutter, and looking at the places where it was cut.

I do know the problem is there both with 1.6.29277 and 1.6.29207. I haven't tried yet with 1.5.7.0 or 1.5.6.1 because just as you I would rather keep the newer driver. The old drivers often caused trouble or even froze my whole computer when the pc would go to sleep or wake up, or if I switched off the HD PVR and forgot to close the capturing program first.

The new drivers are much better in this regard, but now indeed I get very strange behavior when indicating start and end points to skip the commercials, indeed it seems like there are loops. I'm very curious what the verdict will be on the file I've uploaded, but I think the fame-ring team is still celebrating the new year. I really hope they can somehow make a workaround on the side of Smart Cutter, as I've recorded so much stuff already and had to remove the originals from my settopbox to free up space. So there is no way I can recapture them with the old drivers

[JohnnyB]

I did send Hauppague a message describing the problem w/ their new driver. As I mentioned in the update in the other post, I switched back to the original driver and no longer have the problem. Fortunately, I caught this pretty quickly and had only recored 2 programs w/ the newer driver (and like a dummy, deleted them from my STB DVR so I can't re-capture them w/ the older driver.... I'll be searching for a re-run of those 2 programs). I'm kinda hoping Hauppague will find the issue w/ their driver and release an update that fixes it. Even without using Smart Cutter, the .TS files generated by the newer HD-PVR driver has periodic skips/loops every ~4 secs when played back on my WD HDTV media player, so I don't believe the problem lies entirely w/ Smart Cutter.

Meanwhile I'll await a reply from Hauppague.

[rdhoore108]

Mr. Admin,

Have you had a chance to look into the sample file that I uploaded? Is it something that could be fixed?

Thanks.

Regards,
Ronny

[admin]

Dear Ronny:
Thanks for your sample file.

We did test it on our end, but we are still not sure about the reason of this strange frame repeating.
It looks related to time code error or false H.264 frame order. The developers are still working on it.
We will keep you posted about the progress.

Please feel free to send us your further advice and suggestion.
Thank you very much.

Best Regards,
FameRing Support Team

[rdhoore108]

Hi,

Is there still no news on this? I tried processing these files with v4.1.7, with and without TME mode, and the start and stop frames are still totally inaccurate, unfortunately.

[rdhoore108]

I found another software Video**** which can process those files just fine. So actually it doesn't seem there is a problem with the files themselves.

I've been waiting for four months now. Should I wait any longer for your developers, or is nothing going to happen and would it be wiser for me to purchase the other software?

Thanks.