No Audio

[abit late]

Hello Folks

First of all thanks very much for this plug-in, I'm very keen to get it working on my machine but unfortunately am not getting any audio.

Running GB-PVR on Vista with 3 tuners (1 dvb-s and a nova-t-500 dual tuner) connected to my receiver by SPDIF.

Installed the plug-in, downloaded lame.ax from the recommended source and registered it with no apparent problems. The lame.ax encoder shows up in FilterManager.

Started the service and then the plug-in via GB-PVR blue skin, the scan took place and 1 minute later 25 channels appear to have been found. If I select a channel it appears in the 'now playing' field but there is no audio. I've tried different audio renderers and encoders but still get no sound from DVB-T Radio.

Had a read of other threads about no audio but didn't find anything obvious.

The logs and graph are attached in the hope that someone might be able to take a look and spot something amiss!

Thanks

Al

[bgowland]

Hmmm - pretty much everything looks good but the playback of the buffer file.

The way the plugin works is that it starts writing the audio to an mp3 buffer file then tells pvrx2 to start playing back the file. The following from your DvbtrClient.log shows it's trying to play gbnetradio-0.mp3 but something is going horribly wrong.

06/10/2008 23:32:09.050 Invoking PlayAudioFile() for I:\Videos\Recordings\gbnetradio-0.mp3
06/10/2008 23:32:09.191 Play2() threw exception: [cut]

Can you confirm that you have an I:\Videos\Recordings\gbnetradio-0.mp3 file? If so can you play it with Windows Media Player or anything else you use for mp3 files?

Is I: a network or local drive? Is it NTFS - if so does the Local System account have full read/write access to it?

Looking at other bits in the logs, it looks like something has possibly gone screwy with the DvbtrService so you may want to restart that before trying anything else.

[abit late]

Hi Brian

Thanks for your help with this.

I have restarted the DvbtrService.

I:\Videos\Recordings\gbnetradio-0.mp3 does exist and it plays fine in various media players. Thats a step forward in my book :-)

I: is a local NTFS drive and the Local System account does have full read/write access to it. I don't know what is going wrong when it is trying to play the file since GB-PVR can read and write to I:\Videos\Recordings\

[bgowland]

Hi Al,

OK - I hoped that was the case. The bit of my code that creates the files wasn't complaining so I guessed it would be there.

The playback is actually part of the GB-PVR app. itself and not anything I've written. I may have to pick sub's brains to see if he knows what might be failing.

In the meantime you could try setting...

<UseLivePlayback>True</UseLivePlayback>

...it's in the DVBTRadio.xml file - edit it with Notepad or use the GB-PVR Config app (on the Plugins tab, select the DVB-T Radio plugin then click the Settings button).

Setting the above to 'True' will bypass the file buffering although I find it can be a bit stuttery on my machine.

Let me know how you get on with it and I'll try to get an answer to the buffering problem ASAP.

Cheers,
Brian

[abit late]

Ah, sorry I should have already told you:

I previously set Use Live Playback to true, otherwise I get a RadioClient.Play() failed error whenevr I try to play a channel. I expect thats the code complaint you didn't want to hear!

I have attached logs and graph for <UseLivePlayback>False</UseLivePlayback>

Thanks again for your help with this

[bgowland]

Ooops - it looks like I broke live playback somewhere along the line.

I've uploaded a new version which should work properly when setting the <UseLivePlayback> option to true. Give it a try and let me know if it works for you.

I don't have an answer to the buffer problem yet but I'll let you know when (if) I do.

Cheers,
Brian

[abit late]

Thanks for the note and the new version. i now have audio if <UseLivePlayback>True</UseLivePlayback>
However it is not possible to stop or change channel, the only way to stop a channel from playing is to manually end DvbtrService.exe in Task Manager.

Incidentally I noticed that when the <UseLivePlayback> option is false I get a RadioClient.Play() Unspecified error. The gbnetradio-0.mp3 file is created but won't play. The log say:
RunGraph() threw exception: The requested resource is in use.
at DirectShowLib.DsError.ThrowExceptionForHR(Int32 hr)

There are no problems with permissions on the drive with other apps afaik.

[bgowland]

Thanks for the note and the new version. i now have audio if <UseLivePlayback>True</UseLivePlayback>
However it is not possible to stop or change channel, the only way to stop a channel from playing is to manually end DvbtrService.exe in Task Manager.

Odd - I'm not having any problems with stopping in live playback mode. Could you try the following with the live playback option set to true...

1. Restart the DvbtrService (make sure pvrx2 is closed first)
2. Start pvrx2 and the plugin then play a channel for maybe 20 seconds.
3. Double-click another channel then wait maybe 10 seconds.
4. Click the Stop button and wait maybe 10 seconds.
5. Do what you need to do to get out of pvrx2 then stop the DvbtrService.
6. Zip and attach logs - I'll follow the sequence through to see what's going wrong.

Incidentally I noticed that when the <UseLivePlayback> option is false I get a RadioClient.Play() Unspecified error. The gbnetradio-0.mp3 file is created but won't play. The log say:
RunGraph() threw exception: The requested resource is in use.
at DirectShowLib.DsError.ThrowExceptionForHR(Int32 hr)

There are no problems with permissions on the drive with other apps afaik.

Having the live playback option set to false is what's causing the buffer issue that I still need to resolve - don't use this setting as it won't work until I have an answer. BTW - I'm convinced it isn't a permissions issue so don't worry about that.

If you can run the test above and attach the logs I'll see if I can offer further advice. I know the plugin works on Vista but I'm not sure if anyone is using Vista with the live playback option.

[abit late]

ok I have carried out the steps above and attached the logs. Just for info: the stream played fine, but didn't stop, the channels wouldn't change and I had to terminate DvbtrService.exe in Task Manager.

Let me know if there are any other tests that could help in troubleshooting this.

Cheers
Al

[bgowland]

To be honest, I'm struggling a bit here. It's as if the code loses control of the graph once it's been built/started and any attempt to change channel fails because of this. Similarly, any attempt to stop and then play a new channel fails because the code 'thinks' the graph has been stopped when it hasn't. Consequently, trying to play a new channel results in the code trying to re-use the same tuner which is still tied up. Aaaargh!

Two things...

Firstly, I meant to mention that I won't be able to open the graph files you've attached as they're machine-specific. If you don't already have it, download a copy of GraphEdit and open the Dvbtr.grf file yourself and take a screenshot to include with your logs, I'll look at that.

Secondly, I've added some extra logging to the attached binaries for you to try.

To install, do the following...

1. Stop the DVB-T Radio Service
2. Extract the files into the plugins\DVB-T Radio folder
3. ALSO - copy the DvbtrLib.dll and DvbtrLib.pdb files to the plugins\Common folder.
4. Restart the DVB-T Radio service and try the test from my previous post then attach logs and screenshot.

Cheers,
Brian