USB recordings are jerky when played back.

[Mooly01]

I've added a comment to the FAQ's on USB recording as someone over there has mentioned this problem, but I feel that this warrants a thread of its own.

Having got to grips with how to record onto a USB drive I am finding that the replayed images are very slightly and subtley jerky. What might be a smooth zoom in and out, or a pan left to right on the original broadcast is replayed as if there is a random dropped frame every few 10's of milliseconds. It is subtle but hugely annoying and renders the USB record feature useless imo. The problem is identical on recording both HD and SD broadcasts.

There has been another identical report of this on a different model over in the FAQs section with no outcome or resolution. None of the TV settings appear to satisfactorily correct this problem.    

[Garymjh]

no I'm simply going to take the same usb stick and use it to record on
another Sony android tv. I'm pretty certain it will play back perfectly and
the fault is with my tv or model of tv (55x8005c)

[rooobb]

you cannot use recording from one tv and play it on another. they are encrypted by the source tv

[Mooly01]

A couple of interesting bits of info in amongst that link. I'm pretty sure the HDD I used is NTFS because the drive itself was from a Dell laptop that I swapped out for an SSD. I popped the old drive in a caddy to make a new portable USB 3:0 drive... but it would be NTFS by default. Hmmm.

I've deregistered the HDD now and moving around 200Gb of files from the drive I want to try next. That is an older USB 2:0 one which I will format as either FAT32 or exFAT.

Having deregistered the drive (and ejected it correctly using the TV menu) I found it was not recognised by Windows. Had to use the disk management console (it showed up there) to delete the volume and create a new simple volume. Two minutes work but something to be aware of.    

[Garymjh]

I think the link that was given referring to usb hdd recordings refers to
older Sony tv's and not android tvs. I seem to remember it doesn't matter
what format the usb is on android tv's as the tv completely formats the usb
anyway. Let me know if it makes any difference though. The problem is Sony
only addresses the "no recording at all" issue and has no mention of "crap
stuttery recordings" anywhere. We've done everything correctly, it's just
the tv is messing something up on playback.

[Garymjh]

Rooob, I know I can't play recordings made on another tv. That's why I'm simply going to use the same usb stick to record on another Sony android tv which apparently records without a stutter. 

[rooobb]

ok i was just unsure what you were trying to do

[Mooly01]

The alternative USB 2:0 drive is now in place having been formatted to exFAT.

The problem is still apparent although curiously it seems less pronounced on the program material I tested it with today. What does definitely seem to be a factor is the actual picture content and how fast any movement (including zooming and panning) happens to be. A slow studio camera zoom for example seemed pretty near perfect while a L/R or R/L pan was OK at slow speeds but as the pan speed increases then the jerking is apparent.

I've set a couple of timer events to see just how problematic or annoying this really is when watching a program normally rather than in hyper critical 'analysis' mode..

Conclusions so far... I feel there is a bug in the way the recording and/or playback process handles picture content, possibly related to the way the broadcast information data stream has to be converted to a format suitable for writing to an HDD, a format I assume that is 'lossless' as regards quality loss due to data compression. Something amiss is going on though. 

[Garymjh]

The easiest way to see the issue is by recording a football match. The
stutter is dreadful then and it's unwatchable. The real mystery is why this
issue has not been reported on a wide scale. This makes me think it has to
be a fault rather than an inherent flaw in the tv. The stutter on 4k boxes
such as Sky Q with Sony tvs was a major issue with a huge amount of reports
but jerky tv recordings on the usb connection- Zilch. I really can't
understand why.

[rooobb]

 cannot be a bug. on my xd83 i've just recorded and played back juventus Milan in fullhd without any problem. it should be something in your specific setup. 

[Garymjh]

I wish it was something in the set up. I've tried literally every
combination of setting on the tv. Nothing will stop the jutters and
stutters.