Thema: SmartDVB 0.2.5 RC 1

[ritschibie]

[OT]
Thanks, Jürgen for this small but very informative English lesson. Anyway, I tend to be faulty in my German grammar too -
at least from time to time , especially in the busy and time consuming Inet posting
[/OT]

However, the tray area also provides it's own grouping routine, depending on OS version and settings.
Therefore, it also comes with it's own possible bugs.

Did you try with Win 7 a recording over (at least) one hour. Would be interesting to me:
a: if this is only a Vista phenomena or
b: a possible settings result (whereby I don't even know how I might change the settings of the tray   )

Thx
Ritschie

[Jürgen]

Did you try with Win 7 a recording over (at least) one hour.

Yes, several times.
TS recording to a huge NTFS partition.
No issues found, at all.
Though, I am not using the computer for DVB every day, as my receiver does the job pretty fine, with far less electrical power.
This for, most of the time the computer is off or in some deep sleep mode these days.

I don't even know how I might change the settings of the tray

On 7, right click on the Windows clock.
Though, less options than on XP. Like, on XP I could allow or disallow auto grouping of some tray icons and limit the area, if I recall this well.
On my recent machine, the XP part is kept quite minimalistic, as I don't use it to often any more.
My 7 installation also is not totally complete by now, as I am just installing what's really necessary ATM.
An even better machine may come up sooner or later, just a few basic components still missing.
I just don't want to / can't spend to much on those these days. Definitely no retail prices...

Never played around with Vista here. Just give it a try, take a deep look into the context menu items of the tray area.
May well be, the system control or registry provided even more tray options.
Perhaps also check WinFAQ.

[ritschibie]

Thx a lot Jürgen for this exhausting answer 

I fumbled around a little bit with the tray options but could not find one that really changes the function there (mostly the appearance of symbols).
Will give it another try (hopefully more in depth) soon.

Sorry for further investigating but, during the smartdvb recordings did you send the program "asleep" in the tray?
Minimizing smartdvb to the taskbar resulted in perfect recordings on my PC! No issues in this case.

Ritschie

[Jürgen]

Sorry for further investigating but, during the smartdvb recordings did you send the program "asleep" in the tray?

Not yet.
Will try exactly this throughout the few days, with both tuners I have.

[ritschibie]

Jürgen, in my Broken English (credit goes to Marianne Faithful) I would say: You Are A Treasure! 

[jackjavo]

hi ritschibie. I've looked at the tray code, made some little changes concerning the showing of the main window when clicking the tray icon (doesn't seem to make a difference on win7 but might on vista, not sure ofcourse as i never really used or liked vista myself). I'll send you a pm with an exe  link (can you also perhaps see if the app still works fine, had to reinstall some things so hope all's still fine, just make sure you backup your older smartdvb.exe).

[Jürgen]

Well, here are my first quick test results on the tray / task bar minimizing issue:

Minimized to a tray icon, a scheduler controlled .ts recording of slightly above two hours leads to a working file, but SmartDVB exited, even though "At end: nothing" was chosen.
Does not depend on tuner in use, nor on the station / provider.
Did two different tests of same length on each, DVB-S and DVB-T.
I could not find any error logged by SmartDVB or Windows protocols.

Minimized to task bar button instead, everything else as before, also gave a good file, and SmartDVB was still up and running, but video stuttered permanently, until changing the station once.
Also not effected by tuner or station.  

So there seems to be some kind of an after minimisation issue, at the end of a long recording.
Though, could perhaps also be a code / label error involved, on the settings controls.

I will carry on testing, to find more hints and details, and report in full.
But as long recordings seem to be relevant, this will surely need some more time, maybe days...



BTW, another idea resulted from those minimizing thoughts:
Is there a chance, to implement some useful message box and / or context menu functions to the tray icon, or informative icon changes?
For example, during recordings a red or blinking icon, and on mouse over some basic info like duration.
Or along with scheduler action a message box showing actual and next item for some seconds, closing automatically.

[jackjavo]

hi,

I've been able to reproduce this strange tray icon behaviour on win7 here even so am going to look at this as it obviously is tray related.

I'll see about adding more informative tray icon information in the future Jurgen, must be possible ofcourse and not that hard (tooltip text changes), but i'll leave it for after the release which i hope will be soon now (have a new win7 system up and running finally). Btw any acamd users here having problems with that? Not used that plugin myself much but i have some reports it seems that it doesn't run well for some, not sure if it's an acamd related thing or smartdvb mdapi problem.

thanks again to my most dedicated testers it seems :-)

jackjavo

[ritschibie]

Hi jackjavo,

Sorry to state that the new executable is not having any positive effect to the program once it gets into the tray. This time I programmed the timer to 1.30 hrs. Left only the net icons and the antivirus (two essentials on my system) icon in the tray. After one hour not only the smartdvb window was "frozen" but for a few minutes my whole system. It stopped the recording after 1:30 hrs. and the file (HDTV) was clean and without any visible errors but the program window had again disappeared from the tray about 10 min before the end of the recording.

Is that really necessary to send the program to the tray? I did'nt see such an option f.e. in the DVBViewer program.

As far as the signal now showing up, I noticed that on some crypted channels (on some not) I get the message "Wait while the channel is loading". Unfortunately, this message remained in many occasions on the screen even when the channel was loaded and the picture was shown.

I'm still very impressed by the fact that smartdvb is the only free program in this field that I tested which can handle the CI extension. For me being banned from time to tine to look football on my PC this is a big plus!!!

[Jürgen]

Strange thing, this tray issue...
Have tried a few short scheduler recordings today, no more than a couple of minutes each, and did not have any trouble, neither minimized to tray, nor to task bar.
But one more try with a duration of more than two hours, minimized to tray, and SmartDVB got closed again, without leaving any trace. File was OK.

Feels if my computer evolved some feminine aspects 

However, this is not an urgent issue, would just be nice, to have it fixed one day.
Until then it's pretty simple to get along, just don't minimize for timer recordings.

[jackjavo]

hi ritschibie,

I did some more testing today on this tray problem (and you're right it's not a MAJOR problem, but still a bug ofcourse), and i think i'm making progress (it's probably an underlying library problem, as when recording is stopped some interface items are changes ofcourse while the app is still in the tray), so the problems lie there and i'm making progress already but it's late and i'm going to bed, i'll send you an update tomorrow after some more testing so hold off any more testing with the current version). And the wait while the channel is loading has to do probably with the null/stillvideo filter (which you are perhaps inserting, is it set in the directshow settings?). Better not to use this if not needed as it does slow down channel changing and it was only made as a test a while back to perhaps allow better osd access, but in any case the osd will be changed for the next version so i might not put any more effort in that null filter)..
best regards,
jackjavo

[jackjavo]

jurgen & ritschibie : you have pm concerning the tray problem, hopefully with noticeable changes now..

[ritschibie]

Thx jackjavo.

Will test it this afternoon with CI and report here.
ritschibie

[Jürgen]

As I will be out for the afternoon, my test and report are supposed to follow in the evening.

CU

Jürgen

[ritschibie]

Sorry to state that 2 of 3 tests with recording 2 hrs. of video whilst program is in the tray resulted in the same phenomena as described before. I had the null/still video filters unchecked during these tests.

The first test was unattended the first 1:50 hrs. Ten minutes before the recording should stop, I awakened the program from the tray. No menues were seen and after sending it in the tray again the program disappeared (only the process visible in the task manager). As I had checked the option "quit" the program disappeared from the task manager after the 120 min programmed.

The second test I ran was a bit more attended. I opened every 30 min the program from the tray. Until 1.30 hrs everything was stable, menues and video were functional. Then again, after 1:50 it showed the same effect as in the first test. This time I had the option "none" checked so I had to terminate the prog with the task manager.

Now I'm running the third test to get a better idea when the "mess" begins. In the first hour I'll wake up the program every 30 mins. After that every 10 mins until the 90 min mark. The last 30 mins I'll check every 5 min so to determine more exactly after what period of timed recording the program turns unstable in the tray. Recording began at 5:35 p.m.

Will report the result as an edit to this message.

Edit 1: As expected, after 1 hour no anomalies
Edit 2: After 1:20 no anomalies, after 1:30 (last check) program was unstable. It happens between 1:20 and 1:30. Could it be a memory problem?