Video freezing in Recording View

[FolkHistory]

Video all looks fine in Passthrough View (and when capturing with Media Express) but in Recording View is freezing every few seconds then speeding up to correct itself. I've tried all sorts of tests, upgrading, reinstalling etc. but am still stuck.

I'm getting these messages in the terminal log by the way

[v210 @ 0x7fb1ef705100] Application has requested 33 threads. Using a thread count greater than 16 is not recommended.
[Parsed_amovie_0 @ 0x7fb1f01061c0] Channel layout is not set in output stream 1, guessed channel layout is '7.1'

Could be relevant? Any suggestions?

Thanks! Nigel

[FolkHistory]

Just adding some specs to this:

• Mac Pro 2019 running Sonoma 14.4.1

• Black Magic Desktop Video vers 12.9

• BM Hardware - Ultrastudio 4K Extreme and Ultrastudio HD Mini (same issue with both)

• I am capturing VHS PAL via Leitch DPS-575 SDI out File format Matroska FFV1 vers 3, 24 bit PCM QC Tools XML after recording

Video freezes in all of these views : Unfiltered, Visual, Audio + Video, Visual + Numerical (thought testing 4 was enough for now)

Also, if I run Vrecord with QC Tools XML set to concurrent, capture fails and I get the following errors as part of the log

[Parsed_amovie_0 @ 0x7fc094f04840] Channel layout is not set in output stream 1, guessed channel layout is '7.1'
    nan    :  0.000 fd=   0 aq=    0KB vq=    0KB sq=    0B f=0/0   
analyzing input file... -
                                                   0 of 100 %[matroska,webm @ 0x7fc094f04fc0] File ended prematurely
[matroska,webm @ 0x7fc094f04fc0] Seek to desired resync point failed. Seeking to earliest point available instead.

QCTools analysis is complete.q=    0KB vq=    0KB sq=    0B f=0/0   
Checking file conformance against FFV1 video policy...   0B f=0/0   
[Parsed_amovie_0 @ 0x7fc094f04840] EOF timestamp not reliable=0/0   
    Last message repeated 1 times

Thanks, Nigel

[bravoalphatango]

Wanted to comment that the intermittent freezing during capture is still occurring with the most current version (v20241018) of vrecord. As Nigel mentioned it will freeze and then playback will speed up (as if fast forwarding) to catch up to where the tape is. This is happening on all of the computers I use (M1 MacBook Pro and both Intel MacMinis).

[privatezero]

Hi @bravoalphatango - for you is this consistent across playback views the same as what was reported above?

[libbyhopfauf]

@FolkHistory @bravoalphatango are you writing files to an external solid state or hard drive? or to the actual computer?

I have been experiencing this too for recording (we only use no filter for capture) and have noticed the freezing and then speeding up, but no issues with the files when they are reviewed post-capture. I did a bunch of testing today and this doesn't seem to happen during passthrough mode. (the playback gets really slow and laggy after about 5 minutes, but it's fine once it's reopened). For reference, we typically use numerical+visual mode for passthrough, but I tried all the various views and let a video play for a bit for each to see if there was any difference. I did some test captures where I wrote to the desktop and then wrote some to our 1TB Samsung solid-state drive (connected via USB-C). The files being written to the SSD consistently had this issue whereas it didn't seem to happen as often with writing to the Desktop (sometimes it didn't happen at all when writing to the Desktop). I'm going to try using fresh USB-C cables tomorrow for connecting the solid-state drives to the computers to see if maybe they have just reached the end of the line (seems weird that it would happen to both of them around the same time, but who is to say). Will update on how that goes! I started noticing it around the time of the upgrade as well.

Testing was done on a Mac Mini with M1 chip, running Sequoia 15.1. I noticed it on our other other M1 running Sonoma as well recently, but didn't have a chance to test it today.

@privatezero let me know if any other tests would be helpful! I haven't used any of our Intel Macs to capture in a long time since we only have two capture stations for analog, but can try that out too if it's helpful.

[FolkHistory]

@libbyhopfauf writing to hard drive HDD. I've tried different drives but no difference. Capturing with Media Express doesn't display the issue so I assumed I could rule out any hard drive issues from that. Speed test results were fine too. As you say, no issues with the resulting files but something odd going on. Appreciate you looking into this. Thanks, Nigel

[bravoalphatango]

@libbyhopfauf the behavior I am seeing is similar to @FolkHistory: writing to a HDD hard drive, same results with different drives, speed tests are ok and the resulting files play back fine.

I am using an M1 Macbook Pro w/Sonoma 14.7 and two 2018 Intel Mac Minis w/Sonoma 14.7. All are using the v2024-20-18 of vrecord.

@privatezero I always use "Visual + Numerical" view so I will try different views when I am back onsite tomorrow.