Stops working after an hour or two

[Nymble]

I was working on converting a bunch of videos and pulled out the OSD. It will start fine and then at 1 or two hours the video does bad. Black and white and all squiggly. Sometimes if I leave it off for a day it comes back and works again for a few hours, but it always goes bad. I have tried going a back a rev from the latest, reloading the latest, and trying a revision of the open source software. In every case doing an emergency reload to try to get it as fresh as possible.

Has anyone else seen this problem? Could it be the CF card itself? Can I run without the CF card? Any help would be appreciated.

[ChadV]

Could be the CF card, overheating, or any other number of things...

1) What firmware are you on?  I assume if you're recording to CF that you're on 3.33-1.77 (since 3.33-2.0+ puts OS files on the CF card)...
1A) When you say "the video does bad", do you mean the recorded bits, or the output to the TV?  If the former, do the menus still respond properly?
2) Are you recording one solid bit for the whole time?  Or is it 15-minute clips over 2 hours?
3) If I misunderstood, what are you recording to?

[Nymble]

I have recorded to a usb hard drive (FAT32) and to a USB thumb drive with the same result. I was not recording to the CF card itself.
The video recorded and displayed to the output TV are both bad. If I go to passthru mode it's just fine.  The menus are OK. I'm recording one to two hour chunks.

I was on the latest firmware (2.09?), then tried going back to 1.77, and also tried the open source 2.5. I'm getting the same result from each of them.

If I let the system rest unplugged, it starts to work properly for a while and then goes bad. It's as if the system overheats, but I don't detect any heat.

My last debug thought is to run without the CF card to determine if that is the problem. I just didn't know if that was possible.

[ChadV]

USB is touchy sometimes.  Try SD card or a network drive.

Bad video:
  As recorded, played back on other system or OSD: Bad
  Passthrough: Good
  Menus, even when recording is bad: Good
  Video behind menus after the recording has gone bad: ?  <-  This will tell me if it has to do with the storage/recording process, or if the input is bad.

If you're on 3.33-2.00 or higher (including OSDng), the CF card is holding critical OS files.  Removing it will cause the OSD to freeze / fail to boot.

[Nymble]

I'll try an SD card.

The recorded video is bad when played on another system.
The passthrough is good i.e. no menus on the screen.
The menus are good even when the video behind them is bad

I have swapped cables. I'll do another test tonight. I thought the cables were ok because pass through looks good.

The way it has been working is I'll set up to record and the video is OK, then it starts to degrade and goes to BW and squiggly. Even after I stop the recording it stays that way until I unplug the system and let it "rest".

I have used two different video inputs, from a VCR and from a DVR. The same thing happens for both.

[Nymble]

OK,
   I tried two different input cables and an SD card. The first video went bad at 34 mins. The second one with a different cable went bad at 26 mins. Both start fine. The video I see in playback is the same as what is recorded.

  Any thoughts?

[ChadV]

It sounds to me like the encoder is just overheating/bad...

You've already reset all the settings to default and an emergency upgrade, so I'm afraid there's not much else to be done.

[Nymble]

Thanks for the help.

[heyrick]

Hi,

Just out of interest, could you upload somewhere a short clip so we can see what you mean by "goes bad"?

Rick.