Trouble shooting

[Ozzy]

Good Evening!

For some reason when i download videos onto the SD card it causes an error on the TinyTV.

Example: I download a file called Bebop-> I turn on the TinyTV and you can see the video  -> when i switch to the very next channel its a glitched out screen.

When I turn off TinyTV mode in the settings I can see that the working channel name is called Bebop, while the glitched out channel file name is called "._Bebop" This has happened for multiple videos to include the example video files provided.

Things i've done to troubleshoot.
- reformatted the SD card
- I've tried using only example videos, only personal videos, or a mix of both
- Re-uploaded the TinyTV code using arduino

I also noticed that the channel numbers are messed up. Channel numbers are now " :, ;, <, =, ?, @, A, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9". I've only tried uploading 9 different videos.

Please help 

[lennevia]

Ozzy,

All the titles of the .tsv videos on the SD Card should be shorter than 50 characters long and should not include any characters outside of the ASCII characters - not following these rules would produce strange results like what you are describing, but it doesn't appear that a title error is the problem here.

Can you send a video of the behavior you're seeing and a screenshot of the files on the SD Card? It sounds like the videos you put onto the SD Card are somehow duplicating themselves, is that true?

The channel numbers are randomly decided using modulo in the tinytv program, so every once in a while funny characters get inserted with a larger amount of videos - this is a bug that can happen sometimes.

It might also be helpful for you to send one of the videos you've converted to see if I can duplicate the problem here. Let me know!

Best,
Réna

P.S. Bebop as in Cowboy Bebop??

[Ozzy]

Attached are pictures of the files, both personal and example, that i'm using.

Videos using personal files
https://youtu.be/gNSb8iKqj7w  https://youtu.be/CjkugETNGcM

Videos using example files
https://youtu.be/-WBSJfcySQ0 https://youtu.be/Q4CkJgMo-10

Ps. Haha Yep, I couldn’t resist uploading some childhood classics

[lennevia]

Wow! I've never seen that happen before, and I've been debugging TinyTV problems since we started selling them. Thank you so much for sending me the videos and screenshots.

It looks like there are some invisible files that your version of MacOS has created and these hidden files are causing problems. What version of MacOS are you using?

From this page, to reveal hidden files on an SD Card: https://mackeeper.com/blog/show-hidden-mac-files/ -
"How do I view hidden files on an SD card on my Mac?
Whenever you insert an SD card or connect another data storage to your Mac, it appears in the left panel in Finder within Locations. If you go to that location and press Shift + Command (⌘) + Period, you’ll be able to see hidden files on an SD card, a USB drive, an external hard drive, and so on."

The above page will also instruct you on how to delete these hidden files that start with "." and that should remove the problems hopefully. You will also see a .DS_STORE file and here's some more quick info on what that file means: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.DS_Store

Let me know if that helps!

Cheers,
Réna

[Ozzy]

It looks like there are some invisible files that your version of MacOS has created and these hidden files are causing problems.

My macOS is Big Sur Ver 11.6

Can confirm it was the hidden files that were creating the issues!   A hidden file name called ".Spotlight-V100" ".fseventsd" and ".Trashes" (this one would be created if i tried deleting the other two) were found on my SD card. I didn't see and "._" files though.

I used the command you gave me to show the hidden folders in the SD card file. I went into the Mac book terminal and typed "rm -r" and then dragged all the hidden files on to the terminal window to delete them. I had to do this repeatedly until all the ._ files were gone.  I couldn't pinpoint exactly what I did that caused it work.....just repeated this until it did. Spent a lot of time trying to figure it out to share it with yall, but i had to throw in the towel 

This also fixed the channel number issue too.

If this issue is still something you'd like to figure out or have more information on let me know. I'd be willing to zoom and show you what I'm seeing on my screen.


- Ozzy

[lennevia]

MacOS Big Sur has had some Big problems over the past year, so I'm glad this problem was resolvable, albeit not in a direct way.

Thank you for reporting back that removing the hidden files worked! This is the first time I've seen this bug, but I'm sure it won't be the last - glad to know there is a solution! 

-Réna

[knoptop]

I recently purchased my TinyTV and experienced this issue with my first time trying to play my videos.
I went through the steps listed on the mentioned link and found a "hidden file" (in my case it was just a file folder named 'fseventsd'.
Deleting it hasn't fixed the issue for me.
I was curious if there is another way to handle this? I'm not familiar with Terminal commands and was hoping not to have to download more software to 'clean' the sd card from files. I'm on a Mac running Ventura 13.0.1

[lennevia]

In the link above for the tutorial that demonstrates how to view hidden files, there is an option to use a shortcut instead of a terminal: https://mackeeper.com/blog/show-hidden-mac-files/

There are a few other options as well. Hope that helps!

Cheers.
Réna