[vdr] Re: Necessity of Emergency Exits...

[Klaus Schmidinger <Klaus.Schmidinger@cadsoft.de>]

Karsten Müller wrote:
> 
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> 
> Hi List, hi Klaus :)
> 
> this weekend I added a third DVB-C card to my VDR box. No problem with that
> at all :) But I noticed that especially due to the "nice" weather we had
> this weekend the signal quality wasn't the best which resulted in *many*
> messages like these
> 
> Jul 21 19:00:02 player vdr[2292]: ERROR: video data stream broken
> Jul 21 19:00:02 player vdr[2292]: initiating emergency exit
> Jul 21 19:00:02 player vdr[2267]: emergency exit requested - shutting down
> Jul 21 19:00:02 player vdr[2267]: saved setup to
>                                   /usr/local/src/VDRtmp/setup.conf
> 
> [ ... approx. 30 repeats of these messages... ]
> 
> Jul 21 22:52:57 player vdr[4710]: ERROR: video data stream broken
> Jul 21 22:52:57 player vdr[4710]: initiating emergency exit
> Jul 21 22:52:57 player vdr[2612]: emergency exit requested - shutting down
> Jul 21 22:52:57 player vdr[2612]: saved setup to
>                                   /usr/local/src/VDRtmp/setup.conf
> 
> Is it *really* necessary to shutdown the *whole* vdr just because the video
> stream of *one* recording is broken for a second or two ?
> Wouldn't it be *much* better to "record" just a black picture or whatever
> until the signal is back ?
> 
> An "emergency exit" of course affects *all* recordings on *all* cards at
> that time. So if a video data stream of *one* card fails, *all* recordings
> are stopped by this "emergency exit". This behaviour is very annoying and
> I really don't see the necessity of handling errors like this...?
> 
> As Klaus Schmidinger stated in an earlier eMail, a DVB card should be
> able to jump on a data stream at *any* given time, wouldn't it be much better
> to let the card just "sit and wait" until the signal comes back maybe with a
> timeout of a minute or so (*and* leaving all the other recordings
> unaffected) ?
> 
> I could live with an audio/video glitch or even a missing part in *one*
> particular stream which actually *was* broken but not with missing 10-20
> seconds in *all* recordings...
> 
> Hopefully this behaviour will be fixed/changed in the next "plugIn'ed"
> version of the VDR (?)
> 
> Anyone ?
> 
> PS: At the same time where VDR "emergency exits", my dbox f.e. just waits for
>     a second, displaying a message like "signal lost, blah blah..." and then
>     immediately continues working after the signal returns (mostly after
>     about 1 second)

I just did some tests and found the following: in normal viewing mode, if the
antenna signal is lost for a few seconds and then returns, the picture on the tv
is frozen while the signal is gone, and continues to play after the signal returns.

It's different in recording mode: if the signal fails here, the data stream doesn't
continue even after the antenna signal has returned. I'm not sure if this is a problem
of the driver or of VDR. Maybe somebody could find the time to look deeper into this.

Klaus
-- 
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Klaus Schmidinger                       Phone: +49-8635-6989-10
CadSoft Computer GmbH                   Fax:   +49-8635-6989-40
Hofmark 2                               Email:   kls@cadsoft.de
D-84568 Pleiskirchen, Germany           URL:     www.cadsoft.de
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