Weird: Subtitles Mangled During Recording While Watching

Channels DVR Server Troubleshooting
#1

This is a weird one.

When watching a program while it's being recorded the subtitles get mangled. Sometimes into incomprehensible gobbledygook. Switch to live and the subtitles are fine. Switch back to "tailing" the recording: Messed up again.

When recording (and commskip detection?) are complete the subtitles clear right up.

On shows that were not watched off the DVR whilst being recorded: The subtitles are fine.

Here's where it gets strange: On the portion of a show that was being watched as the show was being recorded (and while commskip detection is running?): The subtitles remain trashed. Let me be clear: Not the portion of the show that was being recorded as the earlier part of the show was being watched, but the earlier portion, the portion that was being watched as the show was being recorded.

E.g.: Watching Gotham last night as it was being recorded. Subtitles were trashed. Bailed out to the TV. Subtitles were fine. Back to Channels. Messed up. Bailed out, went back in, chose "Live." Subtitles were fine. Bailed out, went back in, chose "Recording." Subtitles messed up. Next commercial came along, went to hit "forward" to skip it, noticed the recording was now indexed. Hit "skip." Lo and behold: Subtitles were fine! Backed-up to the segment we'd been watching before the commercial break: Subtitles were trashed.

I just went back and checked the recording of Gotham from last night. Sure enough: In the portion we watched while the latter part was being recorded: Subtitles trashed. Then they clear up at the same point they did last night.

Btw: This is new. I don't recall seeing this problem in the past. My wife thinks it started a couple weeks ago or so. I think maybe longer. Could not say for sure.

#2

I wonder if this has something to do with commercial detection, as Comskip does indeed parse through the CC data. (If you look through the comskip logs, at the end you will find the CC transcript in plain text. I wonder if you look at the comskip log for the botched CC if it is proper there, or messed up there too.)

#3

comskip does not modify the file, but checking the log to see if it also read garbage would be a useful data point.

#4

Which log am I looking for? Disregard. Got it. Looking...

Yup, it's messed up in there, too:

I'm working on getng you help.
You've been prising me help for weeks.
When Barra and I showed up, that'shen the building blew.
Get the baard.

Later it cleans up. Want me to email you the video.log file?

#5

On disk it's under Logs/comskip/123/video.log

Or via http using x:8089/dvr/files/123/comskip.log

Where 123 is the file id

#6

See above. I updated my last reply.

#7

Try playing the video file in VLC and see if it has the same garbled captions.

If both channels and comskip are decoding them that way then it's likely that's what is in the recorded file. I assume there's no video corruption around the same spots?

#8

I'm kinda busy, right now, with Other Things (actually, coding something up for a friend), so I don't know when I'll get around to finding the file and putting it someplace VLC can find it.

No, no video corruption either my wife or I have noticed.