Gremlin attack today! I am sending a VGA feed of powerpoint slides to the VGA-A input. I am recording in wide mode. I centered the image using the frame grabber settings. The image shifts every so slightly, every few seconds whether I am recording or not recording. The color changes slightly and the image shifts to the left, then shifts back. The image looks clean and colors are good other than when this shift occurs. I have been using this same laptop, VGA cable for other recordings today, with no issue like this. I tried a reboot on Pearl and laptop but that didn’t help. What am I missing?
Hsync threshold and Vsync threshold are both blank boxes. should I enter a value in Hsync threshold?
What do you currently have set for the auto-adjustments interval? It sounds like the signal is being re-detected every few seconds.
Auto adjust is set to 0.
The image is slightly degraded when the shift occurs and then goes back to normal when it shifts back.
I’ve tried switching to VGA-B, same result.
Hmm 0 should be disabled, can you set it to 9999 to see if there is any difference?
Can I also ask for some details about the connection? How long is the VGA cable, have you tried any others? Is this a direct connection, or is there something in between like a splitter, extender, etc?
I was using a 50ft VGA, reduced it down to 6ft cable. It is a direct connection. Changed auto adjust to 9999. Now it is shifting very slightly vertically, not horizontally.
I suspect the only difference in the improvement is down to using the shorter cable. Does the behaviour change if you remove custom settings here? Just delete all values entered for the frame grabber adjustments and apply it if you don’t mind testing.
This seems to have fixed the issue. I needed to adjust the horizontal shift to center the image, but so far so good. Thanks Adam!
Update, we continued to experience this issue after we thought we had it fixed. It seems that the fix was to fully start up the Pearl before plugging in any audio or video inputs.
Hmm, good that you found a workaround though this is strange. You should be able to connect inputs before powering and it shouldn’t matter.
Perhaps the problem is if we are forcing auto-adjust off? If you re-enable it does that correct this and allow for inputs to be connected before powering the unit?
No, that doesn’t help. The only work around was powering up and then plugging in.
I also had a very strange occurrence with my last session of recordings. I was recording a series of consecutive lectures. Each lecture being a separate file (start recording, stop recording). One file, right in the middle of other files was corrupt. Nothing had changed as far as inputs, etc. All of the files before the corrupt one were fine and all the files after the corrupt one were fine and they were all the same approximate length, etc.
I sent the file to a recovery service (because I could see that there was data there, file size about 999mb). They did recover the file (without audio). Fortunately I had an audio back up recording. Do you think there could be an issue with my Pearl?
That is a very strange occurrence. We should probably look at system logs.
If you have permanent logs enabled they can be downloaded from the Maintenance page. If not enabled yet, probably a good idea to do while we may be doing troubleshooting. They are just not enabled by default as they will continue growing forever until you disable permanent logs again.
Alternatively there are the temporary logs that can be found at Device_IP_Address/admin/allinfo.cgi
If you don’t mind emailing the logs into support@epiphan.com I would be happy to take a look!