Hi, I have an asus u3000 mini usb digital tuner and have managed to get progdvb to detect and everything works fine watching, I just havent had any luck recording.

The files are created, look to be the correct size, but will not even play back in progdvb or vlc. Have tried using both mpeg2 and ts recording methods..

Are the files correct? Is there just something wrong with missing codecs or something? Any opinions would be hugely appreciated.

Recordings don't depend on codecs (but any playback surely does, on the player). The streams are recorded as transmitted, written directly into a container file.

MPG should even play somehow in mplayer2.exe, which is Windows Media Player 6.4 and comes with IE 5 and up.
Also PowerDVD should be able to play.
Just some limitations may occur, like quite heavy bus traffic at playback, caused by file system and drive controller, or failing QuickSearch / SloMo / Review and alike.

If the file grows normally, the stream(s) should in fact be in there.
Try to demux resp. restructure, clean and constrain for PC / DVD with a suitable tool, e.g. PVAStrumento or ProjectX.

BTW, is timeshift working?

thanks for the reply. will try the programs mentioned. Havent really got to trying the timeshift function though, that would be a good indicator I guess huh?

I think they grow around 70 meg a minute, which seems like 'something' is being written...

Couldnt quite get pvastrumento... first info it came up with seemed to suggest the video sample was fine.. pressing the demux button didnt seem to do much though, tried even I thought changing the filename to make sure it wasnt writing over the old file, but video still would not play...

here is the complete log of what I did I guess if anyone can take the time to peruse it.

Stream info for
D:\_tvshows\ABC TV - December 09 13 17 01.mpg

Found 1 video stream.
Found 1 MPEG audio stream.

VIDEO #1
Resolution 720 x 576 (full D1)
Aspect ratio is 16:9
Frame rate 25.00 fps
Nominal bitrate 15000000 bps
First PTS: 03:53:05.581

MPEG AUDIO #1
MPEG1, Layer 2
stereo, sampled at 48.0 kHz.
Bitrate 256 kbps
Each frame contains 24.0 ms audio (768 bytes)
First PTS: 03:53:05.562
..... [edited for brevity]

oops, that log was a bit bigger than I thought, sorry.

installed projectx and am getting 'some' progress, thanks so much for your help.

creates two files, and audio and a video, but Im sure I can figure that out in the settings somewhere.. quality isnt great sadly... again settings I suppose..

Quality should not be effected by ProgDVB (or any other DVB application), as it just uses the original streams as they are transmitted.

Now, at least you have indeed found the streams inside of the recordings.

Did you get many error messages from PVAStrumento?
What sort of?

I've just told you to demux, to identify the streams and check their size.
Normally you would want to 'make PS', .mpg file, constrained for PC / DVD.
By this, header and timecode based errors should be fixed.

But missing stream data, caused by partly bad recption, surely won't get corrected.
Due to the working principles, Live TV is a bit more error tolerant than playing a file.

Thanks Juergen.. I read around a bit and ended up grabbing some freeware (forget the name already sorry!) That would 'remux'... Thought it would be a bit of a pain to run it through two filters, (and the result wasnt great) so will try the pva option again. Well, at least it gave me the tiniest bit of understanding of what demux actually is.

So I just captured two minutes this time as a better test. File size about 102 meg, log file of demux below.. But before that, re: live quality.. Yeh, I remembered that about satellite when I lived in the US, and thought 2.8ghz amd with 1gig memory and 256 meg video card ought to be enough to play digital tv smoothly.. But maybe it just is like satellite, I would have thought any device would have had at least a three second buffer though or something and the ability to ask for a resend on the receiver side, but, of course not, it is just one stream and has to be that way.. Pity, but anyways, thanks for help, log below:




***
*** PVAStrumento 2.1.0.17
*** running at 12-10-2007 18:01
***
Pre-Scanning input. May take some time.
Stream info for
D:\_tvshows\Nine Digital - December 10 17 52 42.mpg

Found 1 video stream.
Found 1 MPEG audio stream.

VIDEO #1
Resolution 720 x 576 (full D1)
Aspect ratio is 16:9
Frame rate 25.00 fps
Nominal bitrate 10000000 bps
First PTS: 11:43:43.418

MPEG AUDIO #1
MPEG1, Layer 2
stereo, sampled at 48.0 kHz.
Bitrate 256 kbps
Each frame contains 24.0 ms audio (768 bytes)
First PTS: 11:43:43.400


<<DEMUXING>>
Input: D:\_tvshows\Nine Digital - December 10 17 52 42.mpg
Options
.. fixing startup delay.
.. fixing stream synch.
.. keeping track of audio offset accumulation.
.. strict checking of audio framing.
.. falling back to relaxed semantics on TS
.. dropping GOPs longer than 980 KB
.. splitting on change of video format.
.. splitting on change of audio format.
.. splitting on number of audio tracks.
.. clearing CDF
.. creating new GOP timecodes.

Closing starting GOP.
Aiming for sync at 11:43:43.498
Cutting audio.
Audio stream 1 now starts at 11:43:43.496
Video stream 1 now starts at 11:43:43.498
ALERT> Temporal structure wrong in GOP at 11:43:43.498. Dropping.
[found tref duplicates]
Re-syncing.
Closing starting GOP.
Aiming for sync at 11:43:44.458
Cutting audio.
Audio stream 1 now starts at 11:43:44.456
Video stream 1 now starts at 11:43:44.458
ALERT> Temporal structure wrong in GOP at 11:43:44.458. Dropping.
[found tref duplicates]
Re-syncing.
Closing starting GOP.
Aiming for sync at 11:43:46.858
Cutting audio.
Audio stream 1 now starts at 11:43:47.696
Video stream 1 now starts at 11:43:46.858
New MPEG video : D:\Nine Digital - December 10 17 52 42_00.mpv
New MPEG audio : D:\Nine Digital - December 10 17 52 42_00 - DELAY 838ms.mpa
ALERT> Temporal structure wrong in GOP at 11:45:07.978. Dropping.
Re-syncing.
Closing starting GOP.
Aiming for sync at 11:45:08.744
Cutting video.
Closing starting GOP.
Aiming for sync at 11:45:08.938
Cutting audio.
Audio stream 1 now starts at 11:45:08.936
Video stream 1 now starts at 11:45:08.938
ALERT> PTS jump in video
Closing starting GOP.
Aiming for sync at 11:45:08.938
Streamstart seems to be in (reasonable) sync:
Video 1 starts at 11:45:08.938
Audio 1 starts at 11:45:08.936

ALERT> Audio 1: 2 audio frames missing at 11:45:12.698
ALERT> Audio 1: 1 audio frames missing at 11:45:24.698
ALERT> Audio 1: 1 audio frames missing at 11:45:37.178
Adjusting audio to frames in last GOP at EOF
Last fileset:
103549889 total bytes written
Video 1: 2864 frames, 00:01:54.560
Audio 1: 4774 frames, 00:01:54.576

Sync estimate at EOF:
MPEG Audio #1 : sync

************************************
*** Problem sections in output:
************************************
At or near 00:01:24.336 : Mpeg-Audio #1
At or near 00:01:48.816 : Mpeg-Audio #1

Video statistics
================
GOP length (min/avg/max):
10 / 11 / 12 [frames]
342890 / 417836 / 476842 [Bytes]
GOP bitrate (min/avg/max):
5714 / 6974 / 7947 [kbps]


(Autosaving log to D:\Nine Digital - December 10 17 52 42.txt)

Sorry, just reread your post, you said make ps, not pva..

Just tried that, video is acceptable for just my rewatching purposes, audio is about 1.5 seconds ahead of video.. Below is log of 'make ps' action:


***
*** PVAStrumento 2.1.0.17
*** running at 12-10-2007 18:04
***
Pre-Scanning input. May take some time.
Stream info for
D:\_tvshows\Nine Digital - December 10 17 52 42.mpg

Found 1 video stream.
Found 1 MPEG audio stream.

VIDEO #1
Resolution 720 x 576 (full D1)
Aspect ratio is 16:9
Frame rate 25.00 fps
Nominal bitrate 10000000 bps
First PTS: 11:43:43.418

MPEG AUDIO #1
MPEG1, Layer 2
stereo, sampled at 48.0 kHz.
Bitrate 256 kbps
Each frame contains 24.0 ms audio (768 bytes)
First PTS: 11:43:43.400


<<Make PS>>
Input: D:\_tvshows\Nine Digital - December 10 17 52 42.mpg
Options
.. fixing startup delay.
.. fixing stream synch.
.. keeping track of audio offset accumulation.
.. strict checking of audio framing.
.. falling back to relaxed semantics on TS
.. dropping GOPs longer than 980 KB
.. splitting on change of video format.
.. splitting on change of audio format.
.. splitting on number of audio tracks.
.. clearing CDF
.. creating new GOP timecodes.

Closing starting GOP.
Aiming for sync at 11:43:43.498
Cutting audio.
Audio stream 1 now starts at 11:43:43.496
Video stream 1 now starts at 11:43:43.498
ALERT> Temporal structure wrong in GOP at 11:43:43.498. Dropping.
[found tref duplicates]
Re-syncing.
Closing starting GOP.
Aiming for sync at 11:43:44.458
Cutting audio.
Audio stream 1 now starts at 11:43:44.456
Video stream 1 now starts at 11:43:44.458
ALERT> Temporal structure wrong in GOP at 11:43:44.458. Dropping.
[found tref duplicates]
Re-syncing.
Closing starting GOP.
Aiming for sync at 11:43:46.858
Cutting audio.
Audio stream 1 now starts at 11:43:47.696
Video stream 1 now starts at 11:43:46.858
New program stream : D:\Nine Digital - December 10 17 52 42_2_00.mpg
ALERT> Temporal structure wrong in GOP at 11:45:07.978. Dropping.
Re-syncing.
Closing starting GOP.
Aiming for sync at 11:45:08.744
Cutting video.
Closing starting GOP.
Aiming for sync at 11:45:08.938
Cutting audio.
Audio stream 1 now starts at 11:45:08.936
Video stream 1 now starts at 11:45:08.938
ALERT> PTS jump in video
Closing starting GOP.
Aiming for sync at 11:45:08.938
Streamstart seems to be in (reasonable) sync:
Video 1 starts at 11:45:08.938
Audio 1 starts at 11:45:08.936

ALERT> Audio 1: 2 audio frames missing at 11:45:12.698
ALERT> Audio 1: 1 audio frames missing at 11:45:24.698
ALERT> Audio 1: 1 audio frames missing at 11:45:37.178
Last fileset:
103096995 total bytes written
Video 1: 2864 frames, 00:01:54.560
Audio 1: 4754 frames, 00:01:54.096

Sync estimate at EOF:
MPEG Audio #1 : sync

************************************
*** Problem sections in output:
************************************
At or near 00:01:24.336 : Mpeg-Audio #1
At or near 00:01:48.816 : Mpeg-Audio #1

Video statistics
================
GOP length (min/avg/max):
10 / 11 / 12 [frames]
342890 / 417836 / 476842 [Bytes]
GOP bitrate (min/avg/max):
5714 / 6974 / 7947 [kbps]


(Autosaving log to D:\Nine Digital - December 10 17 52 42_2.mpg.txt)

Those error messages are not looking good.
The recording starts with a normal A / V offset (which is being corrected), but bad temporal structure shows up even in the first GOP, same in the second, then on the third one, this results in an offset of almost a second, far too much.
And so on.
Additionally there are several data frames missing.

Do you perhaps have a reception problem?
Or a bad ressource problem, regarding streaming into file?