Recordings corrupted and won't play - due to custom firmware?

N

Nathan

Member
Hi,

I've recently loaded the latest custom firmware onto my HD-FOXT2 which was very easy and also got HDR Booting to work (slightly more fiddly - can't get the moving directory flag to work but using telnet works fine) and managed to decrypt some recordings.

All seemed to be well, but I've now noticed that a number of my recordings now won't play. Instead of being displayed with a thumbnail, the affected files appear with their filename complete with the .ts extension. When you try to play them you get "this file type is not supported". Looking at the file structure, the .ts files themselves are all there, so I'm assuming its the additional files that are corrupted somehow. Unfortunately that now renders the recordings unplayable.

It's happened to about 20% of my recordings - all recordings done before I'd loaded the custom firmware. No obvious pattern to which were affected.

Has anyone seen this behaviour or have any idea what caused it?
Is there any way to regenerate the supporting files to recover those recordings?
 
It would help if we knew what packages you have installed. What are you using for your hard drive?

In general we do not see complaints about files corrupting, particularly not due to the custom firmware/software. If we did, you can be sure not many people would be using it!
 
I'm using a 2tb Western Digital USB drive. Never had any problems with it before.

I'm running HD_FOX_T2_1.02.20_mod_1.14

Installed packages are:
BootHDR 1.0
anacron 2.3-1
busybox 1.19.3-1
cron-daemon 1.18.3-1
epg 1.0.8
hmt 1.1.1
humidify 1.0.2
inotify-tools 3.14
jim 0.71-1
jim-cgi 0.4-1
jim-oo 0.71
jim-pack 0.71
jim-sqlite3 0.71-1
lsof 4.82
mongoose 3.0-5
rs 0.3.2
service-control 1.0
sqlite3 3.7.6
squashfs-tools 3.1r2
ssmtp 2.64
tinyftp 1.0-1
virtual-disk 1.1
webif 0.8.5
webif-iphone 1.0.0

I also had auto-unprotect 1.0.6 but after I noticed the corruption I've taken that off since it seemed like that was the most likely cause (since it does change packages.)

> Some good news: If the corrupted recordings have been decrypted, raydon's AV2HDR utility should get you back on track

Sadly none of the affected recordings were decrypted. That's what's so odd - they were just regular recordings. In once case an entire directory (ie a series) has been affected. Looking in the directory there are only the TS files so it seems like all the associated files have been wiped somehow.

None of the lost recordings are super important.
The big question is whether it was a one off or will happen again. I've written down all the corrupted files and will see if any more get corrupted - lets hope not.
 
I suspect that the recordings' .hmt files are corrupted. Could you post a few .hmt files belonging to these non-playable .ts recordings for us to analyse?

If my suspicion is correct, reconstructing the hmt for each .ts will fix your problem...
 
It looks like the .hmt files have been deleted. In some cases the other files (.nts .thm .hmi) are still there, in other cases everything has gone except for the .ts file.

So that explains what's happened, but why? And is there any way to reconstruct the .hmt file from the ts?
 
Nathan said:
It looks like the .hmt files have been deleted. In some cases the other files (.nts .thm .hmi) are still there, in other cases everything has gone except for the .ts file.

So that explains what's happened, but why? And is there any way to reconstruct the .hmt file from the ts?
Click to expand...
Well if they are gone, then someone or some process/program has deleted them... I am afraid the above utility in the link, AV2HDR-T2, will not work on encrypted .ts files.

The best you can hope for is to ask raydon to publish the format of the HMT and the NTS files so that we can recreate them using just the encrypted .ts file - or even better, maybe he has time to create an extension to the AV2HDR-T2 utility to enable you to fix your recordings...
 
Well I definitely didn't delete them. It it were one file I could conceivably deleted one by accidents but its lots of files.

I was doing various reboots when I was testing out the HDRBoot. Is it possible that I rebooted whilst auto-unprotect was doing its stuff and that could have cause the loss of some files? Though wouldn't that only affect HD files?

Anyway, the good news is so far no more files seem to have been deleted. I'm not too bothered about the ones I've lost (luckily nothing essential there), I'm more concerned about whether I'll lose more files. I'll keep looking.
 
Nathan said:
Well I definitely didn't delete them. It it were one file I could conceivably deleted one by accidents but its lots of files.

I was doing various reboots when I was testing out the HDRBoot. Is it possible that I rebooted whilst auto-unprotect was doing its stuff and that could have cause the loss of some files? Though wouldn't that only affect HD files?

Anyway, the good news is so far no more files seem to have been deleted. I'm not too bothered about the ones I've lost (luckily nothing essential there), I'm more concerned about whether I'll lose more files. I'll keep looking.
Click to expand...

auto-unprotect would only affect the hmt files too, it doesn't touch the nts ones. I can't think of a process that would be so selective.
 
The situation is worse than I realised. I tried playing one of the recordings that looked OK (thumbnail there, filename correct) and it wouldn't play "Unknown Error". Went through all my recordings and almost half of them are like this.

Looked via ftp and in those cases the support files are there but the .ts itself has gone.

What could have happened to have deleted so many of my files?

Again, no pattern. Affects older and more recent recordings - HD and SD.

A real downer.
 
Are these still only the files from previously, or has there been a recurrence? Not much consolation I know, but I think it is safe to say you are in a minority of one!
 
It's hard to know when it happened but I'd say it's still possible that all the deletions happened on a single occasion.
I've now made a definitive list of the damaged recordings so I'll know for sure if any more get deleted.

Perhaps this was a one off freak occurance that won't ever happen again to me or anyone else. Lets hope so!
 
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