# Anybody else having pixelization problems transferring from S3 > PC >S3?



## David Platt (Dec 13, 2001)

This is driving me nuts-- I just had to offload a bunch of HD shows from my S3, and now I'm transferring them all back. In a lot of the shows, I'm getting seemingly random spots of pixelization that wipe out about 5-10 seconds of the program. Virtually every show I've recorded in the last two weeks is unwatchable. 

I'm pretty new to the TTG thing, so I really don't have much idea what could be causing this or how to troubleshoot it. Any ideas?


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## wgw (May 16, 2007)

I just now noticed this in a file I sent to the S3 yesterday. About half way through the movie I started getting small spots of pixelation about every 5 minutes. Nothing real serious, but annoying. I have confirmed that the original file is OK. When I sent the file to the Tivo again, I got pixelation in different parts of the movie than the first transfer. It's as if the Tivo is choking on the high speed data transfer and can't record it fast enough. This file did not originally come from the Tivo like yours. I encoded it with ffmpeg and transferred it to the Tivo. I wonder if a new bug could have been introduced with the final 9.2a version they pushed out on the 9th.

EDIT: Nevermind, I encoded the file at 20.9mbps which was too high a bitrate. But I am having the same trouble with .tivo files sent back to the Tivo.


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## Laserfan (Apr 25, 2000)

David Platt said:


> ...transferring them all back....I'm getting seemingly random spots of pixelization that wipe out about 5-10 seconds of the program.


Do these "events" look like the Tivo is "racing ahead" for a sec or two? Other?

Honestly while I have attempted to edit Tivo>PC shows and then transfer them back, and had the "racing" (yes there is pixellization) problem, I thought it was my editor that was causing this. But you have a problem w/untouched shows? Not good; wonder what Tivo might be jazzing-up in the S3>PC>S3 again process.

Are you using standard (not "Plus") Tivo Desktop 2.5.1?


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## leeherman (Nov 5, 2007)

Hiya!

I've had my S2 and S3 for around two weeks. I finally got my S3's cablecards yesterday from Cablevision Long Island and the installation was painless.

I've been transferring a two hour program from my S2 to my S3, and started watching on the S3 almost immediately. * The buffering on the S3 was well ahead of my watch point, however.*

I noticed pixelization and sound "clicks" immediately and frequently while watching the program, paused it, and went to the S2 to make sure the source program was OK. Didn't see any problems there and went back to the S3. At that point, the S3 played perfectly after resuming.

The program is still transferring and playing as I type this, and I just rewound to the to beginning of the program. The pixelization exists when I replay the areas that were doing it earlier, however, it was fine when I went back to point I'd left off (approx 37 minutes into the program).

Has anyone else experienced this particular kind of problem, and is there any known fix?

Thanks!

LH


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## Brainiac 5 (Aug 25, 2003)

This problem with S3->PC->S3 is happening to me, too, and others have mentioned it in the S3 forum. What shows is this happening on? In the other discussions, it seems like most or all of the problems so far have been on NBC shows. Also, it seems like it pretty predictably works or doesn't work for a given show. For instance, for me, "House" (on Fox) always works fine but "Chuck" (on NBC) always get messed up. Does this sound like what others here are seeing?


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## YupYup (Sep 13, 2006)

Brainiac 5 said:


> This problem with S3->PC->S3 is happening to me, too, and others have mentioned it in the S3 forum. What shows is this happening on? In the other discussions, it seems like most or all of the problems so far have been on NBC shows. Also, it seems like it pretty predictably works or doesn't work for a given show. For instance, for me, "House" (on Fox) always works fine but "Chuck" (on NBC) always get messed up. Does this sound like what others here are seeing?


YES YES YES!!!!!
This problem has been driving me nuts for the past couple of weeks, and I was beginning to think that maybe I was starting to have a hard drive failure on one of my S3 TiVos. But then I tried some MRV's, ping-ponging a show back and forth between them, and no pixelization problems after several generations of transfers.

What I have noticed is that shows broadcast/recorded in 1080i exhibit the problem, while those in 720p do not. NBC and CW (and maybe CBS) are 1080i, while FOX and ABC are 720p.

Glad to hear its not just me, I was going NUTS!


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## YupYup (Sep 13, 2006)

Laserfan said:


> Do these "events" look like the Tivo is "racing ahead" for a sec or two? Other?
> 
> Honestly while I have attempted to edit Tivo>PC shows and then transfer them back, and had the "racing" (yes there is pixellization) problem, I thought it was my editor that was causing this. But you have a problem w/untouched shows? Not good; wonder what Tivo might be jazzing-up in the S3>PC>S3 again process.
> 
> Are you using standard (not "Plus") Tivo Desktop 2.5.1?


Yes, both pixelization and racing for unmodified shows.

I do have a "plus" key, but don't convert any uploaded shows. I bought the "plus" to download .avi/.divx/.xvid shows (but TD won't ship them in HD to the TiVo, it downrez's them, so I currently find the "plus" to be of no use).

Also, any of these shows that exhibit pixelization, look even worse if I use Direct Show Dump to convert them to .mpg files and ship them back to the TiVo. They are basically unwatchable in that format, even though the .mpg file will play fine on the PC.


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## Laserfan (Apr 25, 2000)

YupYup said:


> Yes, both pixelization and racing for unmodified shows.


Damn, I had figured when this functionality was made available to me that it would mean easily off-loading shows from Tivo without getting the eSata hard drive. Knowing now that I can't transfer them back again w/o quality problems is a big <<poop>>. I hope the folks at Tivo know there's something hosed in their export/import/Tivo Desktop system.


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## wgw (May 16, 2007)

Does anyone know if the Tivo "records" transfers from PC to Tivo, or if it is a simple file transfer? The problem might be that the Tivo cannot "record" over the ethernet port at the same bitrates that it does through the RF ports.

I sent a recording of Life is Wild from KPLRDT back to the Tivo and the playback exhibited the broken playback everone is reporting. The recording had an average bitrate of 18.7mbps with peaks of 20mbps.

When I downsampled the video with ffmpeg using a max bitrate setting of 17.8mbps, the file transferred and played back fine on the Tivo.

I had assumed that Tivo transfers were just file transfers, but now it looks like it is recording the transfers and cannot record bitrates above 18mbps over ethernet. This coincides with my previous tests where most of my encodes above 18mbps had playback problems. I had thought the problem was that the Tivo could not "playback" bitrates over 18mbps. But apparently it "can" playback higher bitrates. It just has problems recording over ethernet at higher bitrates.

Whatever is happening, a software fix is certainly in order.


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

It doesn't "record" from the the PC. It transfers the data directly. However there is a small conversion which has to be done to convert the file from the TiVo native ty stream, to a PC compatible MPEG program stream, and then back to the ty stream again. That process seems to be the issue. Specifically it seems that the process which converts the PC compatible MPEG program stream back to the TiVo ty stream is the problem. I don't know if they have bad demuxing code, or if they are unable to recreate some sort of sync packet used on native streams from the program stream, but something is obviously up and hopefully they can figure out some way to fix it or this process becomes considerably less useful.

Dan


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## PaulS (Sep 16, 2002)

Brainiac 5 said:


> This problem with S3->PC->S3 is happening to me, too, and others have mentioned it in the S3 forum. What shows is this happening on? In the other discussions, it seems like most or all of the problems so far have been on NBC shows. Also, it seems like it pretty predictably works or doesn't work for a given show. For instance, for me, "House" (on Fox) always works fine but "Chuck" (on NBC) always get messed up. Does this sound like what others here are seeing?


Add me to the list. I TTG'ed four of Journeyman (NBC) episodes S3->PC->S3 via the https web interface, and all of the episodes exhibited some fairly significant glitching (pixellation and audio break ups).


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## YupYup (Sep 13, 2006)

Laserfan said:


> Damn, I had figured when this functionality was made available to me that it would mean easily off-loading shows from Tivo without getting the eSata hard drive. Knowing now that I can't transfer them back again w/o quality problems is a big <<poop>>. I hope the folks at Tivo know there's something hosed in their export/import/Tivo Desktop system.


I don't think the problem is in the "export" path (TiVo to TiVo Desktop). And it does appear to be specific to S3 units, the THD's don't seem to have the problem.
As an experiment, I did the following:
1. Uploaded a 1080i show from my S3 to my PC via TTG.
2. Converted the show to a .mpg file via Direct Show Dump.
3. Transferred the .mpg show back to both of my S3's, neither one could play the show decently (lots of pixelization/racing).
4. Transferred the .mpg file to a THD unit, where it played just fine, no issues.

Repeated the test, starting with a different show from a THD unit, and in this case the THD could play its own show that had been converted to .mpg, while the S3 units again had lots of pixelization and racing. (I'd like to try this with the .tivo files between the S3 and THD units, but the THD isn't mine, so it doesn't have the same MAK code.)


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## JYoung (Jan 16, 2002)

Same problem
Recorded a 30 min 1080i program on my TiVo HD.
Used TiVo Desktop to pull it off the HD.
Went to my Series 3 and used TTGB to copy it from the PC to the Series 3.

Pixelation and audio dropouts and sync issues.


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## YupYup (Sep 13, 2006)

Hmmm... Anyone know of an easy way to convert a 1080i .mpg file to 720p?

If I could take one of these problematic 1080i shows, convert it to a .mpg via Direct Show Dump, and then convert that to a 720p .mpg, I could see if that resultant file, when transferred to the TiVo S3, would play back correctly.


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## Laserfan (Apr 25, 2000)

YupYup said:


> ...it does appear to be specific to S3 units, the THD's don't seem to have the problem.


Izzat so? That would be very bizarre, huh, though I'll admit I don't know what hardware/firmware differences might exist between the S3 and the THD.

Regarding conversion of 1080i to 720p it's certainly doable, though it would take several hours probably to convert an hourlong show.

I don't normally convert MPEG2 to MPEG2 (to Xvid instead) but I use Staxrip myself...


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## yunlin12 (Mar 15, 2003)

Laserfan said:


> Izzat so? That would be very bizarre, huh, though I'll admit I don't know what hardware/firmware differences might exist between the S3 and the THD.
> 
> Regarding conversion of 1080i to 720p it's certainly doable, though it would take several hours probably to convert an hourlong show.
> 
> I don't normally convert MPEG2 to MPEG2 (to Xvid instead) but I use Staxrip myself...


Doesn't the HD have more memory, but it's shared between the CPU and the decoder as opposed to the S3 having dedicated memory for CPU and decoder? Is this a memory bottleneck?

Quote from Tivo lover's Tivo HD review:
"The main system memory consists of four Nanya NT5DS32M16BS-5U chips, 64MB each, for a total of 256MB RAM. The original Series3 has 128MB dedicated to the main BCM7038 and a separate bank associated with the BCM7411 MPEG-4/VC-1 decoder. The TiVo HD consolidates both of those chips into the BCM7401 and the RAM has been consolidated into one bank as well."

http://www.tivolovers.com/a-review-of-the-tivo-hd-digital-media-recorder/


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## wgw (May 16, 2007)

Dan203 said:


> It doesn't "record" from the the PC. It transfers the data directly. However there is a small conversion which has to be done to convert the file from the TiVo native ty stream, to a PC compatible MPEG program stream, and then back to the ty stream again. That process seems to be the issue. Specifically it seems that the process which converts the PC compatible MPEG program stream back to the TiVo ty stream is the problem. I don't know if they have bad demuxing code, or if they are unable to recreate some sort of sync packet used on native streams from the program stream, but something is obviously up and hopefully they can figure out some way to fix it or this process becomes considerably less useful.
> 
> Dan


Thanks Dan, I would imagine that this defect in the conversion process could also explain why many recordings refuse to completely transfer from the S3 to the PC. But is a bit more pronounced on the return trip to the S3. Otherwise people would not be able to completely transfer the recording to the PC in the first place. If the defect is really related to bitrate as I suspect, I would guess the threshold is somewhere between 18 and 19mpbs.

Since the PC to S3 transfer problem affects both Tivo recordings and non-Tivo source material, I think a defect in the original Tivo recording could be ruled out as the cause.


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

If I had to guess I'd say it is probably a buffer overflow somewhere their demuxing code causing it to drop packets. MPEG is a very resilient format that can recover from relatively large losses of data, however those loses are expressed as pixelation and other audio/video glitches. If this is the case then a higher bitrate stream could cause the problem to occur more frequently, which could explain why HD exhibits the problem more often then SD does.

I don't believe this is the same problem as the one which causes transfers to stop short however. Most people who report having this problem report that when the recording is played back on the TiVo itself there is a glitch in the audio or video somewhere around the point where the transfer stopped. Which means that there is an error in the MPEG stream somewhere near that point which is causing the muxer to choke. Although I guess it could be related in general if they use the same library for both muxing and demuxing.

Dan


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## Reiver (Mar 31, 2007)

I have been frustrated for weeks by this and now I see I am not the only one.
Almost everything I try to transfer to the S3 exhibits the racing ahead phenomenon to varying degrees. I called Tivo support and their answer was to defrag my hard drives, which incidentally made absolutely no difference. An interesting note is that I transferred a show I originally copied to the PC back to the S3 then back to the PC again and it was over 100MB smaller then the file I copied the first time (S3 -> PC -> S3 -> PC). The file I copied the first time plays flawlessly on the PC but the file that got two rounds of copying shows dropouts when playing on the PC. This led me to the belief that it was the S3 that was corrupting the data and not the network or the PC. All the shows I have been experimenting with have been standard definition shows because the file sizes are smaller so the transfers complete quicker. If anyone has any insight on how to fix this please share as TTG is pretty much unusable for me right now.


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## wgw (May 16, 2007)

I've never had many playback problems with SD recordings sent back to the TiVo. However, today I had some major SD playback problems on one my S3 units. But I was apparently able to fix the problem. I restarted the Tivo from the menu, and then pulled the plug on it before it could boot. I waited a while, power cycled the router, unplugged all the ethernet connections and plugged them back in real good, moved the ethernet cable away from the battery backup it was laying on, and then plugged the Tivo back into the wall outlet. When it rebooted I transferred the same SD shows back to the TiVo and they played back fine.


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## ldudek (Sep 2, 2007)

wgw said:


> I've never had many playback problems with SD recordings sent back to the TiVo. However, today I had some major SD playback problems on one my S3 units. But I was apparently able to fix the problem. I restarted the Tivo from the menu, and then pulled the plug on it before it could boot. I waited a while, power cycled the router, unplugged all the ethernet connections and plugged them back in real good, moved the ethernet cable away from the battery backup it was laying on, and then plugged the Tivo back into the wall outlet. When it rebooted I transferred the same SD shows back to the TiVo and they played back fine.


Wow. I'm glad it worked for you but my "common sense" thing in the back of my head says "huh". Seems like a great deal of effort.

I personally have not transfered any of my HD or SD recordings back to my S3 from TiVo desktop but this has me a bit concerend. I did recently transfer an avi file of "Shark" which I got from "soureces unknown" if you know what I mean and it did have some glitches and pixelation on it. Nothing too bad but still noticeable and when I preview these things I usually get a sense of how good they are. That one looked perfect.


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## YupYup (Sep 13, 2006)

Reiver said:


> I have been frustrated for weeks by this and now I see I am not the only one.
> Almost everything I try to transfer to the S3 exhibits the racing ahead phenomenon to varying degrees. I called Tivo support and their answer was to defrag my hard drives, which incidentally made absolutely no difference. An interesting note is that I transferred a show I originally copied to the PC back to the S3 then back to the PC again and it was over 100MB smaller then the file I copied the first time (S3 -> PC -> S3 -> PC). The file I copied the first time plays flawlessly on the PC but the file that got two rounds of copying shows dropouts when playing on the PC. This led me to the belief that it was the S3 that was corrupting the data and not the network or the PC. All the shows I have been experimenting with have been standard definition shows because the file sizes are smaller so the transfers complete quicker. If anyone has any insight on how to fix this please share as TTG is pretty much unusable for me right now.


Oh, that is bad news.  I had thought this problem was isolated to 1080i shows, but you're seeing problems with SD content, yuk! I'll have to try the ping-ponging of SD and 720p content between my S3 and PC, to see if it suffers the same way that I'm seeing with 1080i.

Regarding the file size changes, I did notice that ping-pong a 1080i show between my S3's via MRV, resulted in each generation having a different sized result, even though each copy played fine on receiving S3. The size change was significant, the original recording was 7.0G, and copies got down into the 6.6G range (I only did 3 ping-pongs, so I'm not sure picture degradation would have occurred if I continued the ping-ponging for a few more generations).


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## YupYup (Sep 13, 2006)

wgw said:


> I've never had many playback problems with SD recordings sent back to the TiVo. However, today I had some major SD playback problems on one my S3 units. But I was apparently able to fix the problem. I restarted the Tivo from the menu, and then pulled the plug on it before it could boot. I waited a while, power cycled the router, unplugged all the ethernet connections and plugged them back in real good, moved the ethernet cable away from the battery backup it was laying on, and then plugged the Tivo back into the wall outlet. When it rebooted I transferred the same SD shows back to the TiVo and they played back fine.


How about HD shows? Did your "fix" have any affect on 1080i shows transferred from the PC back to the S3 TiVo?


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## YupYup (Sep 13, 2006)

This thread has been awful quiet for awhile, has this problem changed for anyone? As I'm still suffering from it!


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## Reiver (Mar 31, 2007)

I recently purchased another TiVo and that allowed me to do some further testing. I am able to successfully move shows between TiVos without the intermittent FF issue. Further testing and I was able to upload shows with the new TiVo to the PC and download them back to either TiVo with no FF issue. The only difference between the two boxes is that the old TiVo has an upgraded (by me) 750Mb internal drive and the new box is of course newer. I have tried numerous cabling and switch combinations so I am fairly confident in ruling out a physical network issue. Any suggestions on further testing I can do to the old TiVo and or its hard drive would be much appreciated.


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## YupYup (Sep 13, 2006)

Reiver said:


> I recently purchased another TiVo and that allowed me to do some further testing. I am able to successfully move shows between TiVos without the intermittent FF issue. Further testing and I was able to upload shows with the new TiVo to the PC and download them back to either TiVo with no FF issue. The only difference between the two boxes is that the old TiVo has an upgraded (by me) 750Mb internal drive and the new box is of course newer. I have tried numerous cabling and switch combinations so I am fairly confident in ruling out a physical network issue. Any suggestions on further testing I can do to the old TiVo and or its hard drive would be much appreciated.


In your earlier post you said you had a S3 (old box), what type is your "new" box, S3 or THD?

I am assuming you still have the problem if the "old" box is both the source and destination of the S3 -> PC -> S3 round trip test?


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## Reiver (Mar 31, 2007)

The new box is an S3, the same as the old one.
If the old box uploads a show to the PC then no matter which TiVo downloads it the show will exhibit errors. I don&#8217;t recognize any errors if I play the show on the PC but I am definitely not an expert in that reguard.
If the new box uploads a show to the PC then either TiVo can download it and it plays fine.


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

FYI I did a lot of experimenting today with this and found that when using VideoReDo if you go into Tools->Options, click on the Stream Parameters tab and then uncheck the "Convert all I-frames to GOPs" it will produce a file that is a lot less likely to have playback problems on the TiVo. We're still investigating why this works, but for now it's a simple work around.

Dan


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## wackymann (Sep 22, 2006)

Here's another interesting data point... If I do a S3->PC->S3 (with some VideRedo editing in between), I have horrible artifacts. If I take the same exact file from the PC and transfer it to a THD, it plays fine. I think several other people have reported that. Now here's the cool part...

If I then MRV it from the THD->S3, it plays fine on the S3!! This is the same exact file that wouldn't play when directly transferred to the S3.

This suggests to me that maybe it is a problem in the PC->S3 transfer process? Another interesting test would be S3->PC->S3->THD. I'll try that tonight.


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## klgood1 (Oct 21, 2002)

FYI, I've been having this problem on my S3's a lot recently with HD transfers, with the latest software release. I've got tons of shows that automatically archive to my PC, and with the recent writers' strike, I've finally gotten around to watching them. Same problem -- audio dropout/pixelation/occasional "racing"/etc. Not bad enough to be a big deal, but annoying.

Also happened with some non-HD material that I ripped via DVDShrink, so it's not just HD programs.


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## wgw (May 16, 2007)

Dan203 said:


> FYI I did a lot of experimenting today with this and found that when using VideoReDo if you go into Tools->Options, click on the Stream Parameters tab and then uncheck the "Convert all I-frames to GOPs" it will produce a file that is a lot less likely to have playback problems on the TiVo. We're still investigating why this works, but for now it's a simple work around.
> 
> Dan


Have you found out why this makes a difference? Does this still help? Have not tried it myself but was wondering if this is still the best solution at this time. Thanks.


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## wgw (May 16, 2007)

Does anyone recall if this problem also happened with the 9.2j beta before 9.2a was pushed out. I seem to recall that there is a kickstart code to revert to the previous software install. I suppose I could look it up and give it a try.

EDIT: I guess it's not possible. kickstart 52 apparently just reinstalls current software on other partition.


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## bicker (Nov 9, 2003)

Has anyone an update on this issue? Is it worth getting VideoReDo simply to make S3->PC->S3 work?

----

I read in another thread about this issue that perhaps switching to a 802.11*b* wireless adapter also resolves this problem. I actually switched from the TiVo 802.11g wireless adapter to wired, so perhaps I've made things worse? Can anyone comment on that aspect of this problem?


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## YupYup (Sep 13, 2006)

Take a look at this thread:

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=379388

Its looking like a throttle on the PC -> S3 path greatly improves the transfer result. I've just started playing with NetLimiter2 (Lite), and the results are really encouraging, and the OP in that thread has had luck with BWMeter.

If this is really the culprit, perhaps TiVo could modify TiVo Desktop to automatically throttle to an S3 acceptable rate (if modifying the S3 side is too difficult).


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## YupYup (Sep 13, 2006)

I ran a test this morning with a program segment that had been totally unwatchable when transferred from my PC back to my S3 TiVo. Previously the segment (a 30 minute 1080i portion of NBC news) had severe pixelization, picture racing and audio dropouts. Transferring that segment this morning to my S3 on 9.3a resulted in a clear and watchable program, no glitches! 

I need to do more testing, but it appears that 9.3a may have fixed this long standing problem with program transfers from the S3 to the PC and then back to the S3 (a friend with a THD has never experience this issue).

If this holds true upon further testing, TiVo will have made this camper very happy!


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