Jump to content

Issues around managing of recorded media


virtualtinker

Recommended Posts

virtualtinker

So this isn't so much issues from a bug standpoint, but more around general usability issues that I'd like to bring up.

 

I mentioned in a prior post about the problem with the scheduled recordings repopulating when the guide is refreshed a few weeks back and how there's no way to keep deleted stuff to stay gone to better manage my tuners and disk space.  This takes that issue to its later conclusion for me.  The drive that I dedicated to recorded television is running low on space since everything gets recorded and I can't stop it.  I don't have the time to babysit cleaning up the episodes due to the extra management overhead caused, and now I need to delete numerous episodes of shows I've already seen/don't want.

 

The UI doesn't allow for a good way to delete multiple episodes at one time and I am stuck deleting episodes one at a time which is woefully inefficient.  I ended up deleting the episodes via the share itself as I can mass delete way faster and had good luck doing this in the past when using SWMC.  However, Emby is caching my list of recorded episodes somehow and doesn't know that I've gone in the backend to delete them, as all the episodes still show via the user interface.  After days of waiting to see if some job would flush the cached list, all of my ghost recorded episodes are still showing.  I've even restarted the server in hopes that would flush the recorded media and show it empty, yet all the non existing recorded content remains.

 

At the very least, I'd like to ask for a better way to mass delete recorded shows via the interface as DVR data should be much more volatile and as mentioned before with the issue around the scheduled recordings repopulating, I am going to be doing this a lot.

 

I'd also like to ask that the if the server does not reflect my recorded content real-time like SWMC, have some kind of sync job with the actual contents of my recorded media and update the server to correctly reflect the DVR'd episodes in the event someone did delete the episodes directly and not via Emby.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

virtualtinker

I get prioritizing and addressing some of the usability issues I am bringing up may not happen in the foreseeable future but at the very least, is there something I can do to flush the list of recorded episodes so I don't still have these episodes showing that don't actually exist anymore on the backend?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

virtualtinker

I ended up deleting manually every item via the UI and was able to clean up the ghosted recordings after about 30 minutes.  Brings up another usability item aside from not being able to do mass deletes.  When I drill down to a specific recording and delete it, rather than going back to the recordings tab, I am taken back to the suggestions tab.  Deleting a recorded item I think should take me back to the recorded tab so I can further manage from there and not have to start over from the beginning each time.  This behavior I noticed was also reflected the same in the IOS app and not just in the web app.

 

Also, whenever a movie or tv show is recorded, a folder is created on the backend with the actual recording in the folder.  I actually think this makes sense, however, when all recordings are deleted, the folders remain with no actual content in them.  If there is no content remaining in the folder, they should really be deleted.  As is, even after deleting all of my recordings, I had folders still showing for 3 movies and about 5 series that I went in and deleted as well to make the actual cleaning as thorough as possible.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

virtualtinker

I think I am going back to using SWMC.  Looking at the number of topics in the Schedule Direct forum seems to suggest a pretty low adoption rate.  Couple that with the fact that in 2 weeks of providing feedback regarding usability concerns over the current implementation and I couldn't get any feedback from a developer leads me to believe that the priority of Emby's own Live TV offering with Schedules Direct is so low, it doesn't even deserve a response. I was at least looking for someone to help set my expectations as to when I might see my issues addressed or if there was anything further I could do to help.  Lack of response, instead, set my expectation that none of this will ever be looked at in any foreseeable future. So the simple answer is to go to the more mature 3rd party offering where I don't have all this extra management overhead.

 

Please understand, I appreciate the work that has gone into the overall product and know it's a big open source labor of love, but at the end of the day, I need the best option that meets my needs, and Emby's live TV offering simply isn't as mature as others already out there in its current iteration.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I apologize, we must have just missed this.  Live tv is a very high priority for us. Both of the delete topics you mention are in the pipleline. i have been trying to reproduce the deletion issue but. multi-delete is also planned.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

virtualtinker

I appreciate the response Luke.  If it helps, I can make a video recreating the steps for any of the issues that you may have trouble recreating or I could carve out some time to do a TeamViewer session if it would be easier for me to reproduce any usability issues live.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

rkulagow

[i work for Schedules Direct.]

 

Does this thread really even involve Schedules Direct? I believe that the intent of this forum was for users which are having issues with their account at our site, or the lineup is incorrect and you need to let us know that there's a new channel, or program descriptions are wrong to be able to at least get the issue out there so that we could investigate.

 

From what I can tell, most if not all of the issues you're experiencing have to do with the UI or deleting programs within Emby, which doesn't have that much to do with the guide data. That may be why the developers didn't jump onto the thread, because when they saw it come up in the "Schedules Direct" forum they may have assumed, "Oh, it's a guide issue." and continued to write code. A UI issue with deleting programs doesn't have that much to do with providing guide data, so this probably should have been in another forum.

 

The reason that you don't see too many threads in this forum is that I'd like to think that we do a pretty good job of providing the EPG data and respond pretty quickly if there's an issue with our piece of the environment.

 

@@Luke @@ebr

Can the description of the forum include that it's really for guide data issues to ensure that users aren't putting threads in here that I'm ignoring (because it didn't have anything to do with the guide data being incorrect) and that you may be ignoring (because it's in the Schedules Direct forum, so the assumption is that it's a guide issue and I'm taking care of it?)

  • Haha 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Yes thank you. I am going to move this to the normal live tv section. And I agree, Schedules Direct works perfectly for Emby's needs and you guys are very attentive and quick to respond to issues.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

virtualtinker

@@rkulagow

 

You are correct in that I've never experienced any problems with Schedules Direct in itself. My problems were specifically with usability issues around the in house live tv solution. Unfortunately, there is no sub forum for Emby's TV option, as opposed to the other 3rd party offerings. As, to the best of my knowledge, Schedule Directs currently only works with Emby's solution, I figured putting my post there would make the most sense.

 

@@Luke

 

Would it make sense to create a sub forum for your in house offering similar to how the 3rd party Live TV plugins have their own homes?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Well, I think just the front facing Live TV is good to be honest. I know categories vs a flat list is always a difficult choice. Anyway, I stand by earlier statements that I'd like to get these two things taken care of.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

virtualtinker

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ueauati8kqj4rxe/livetvissues.avi?dl=0

 

Forgive the quality, I wanted to keep the file size down, but it should explain well enough what I've seen. I know you said most of this is in the pipeline, but for the sake of completeness, I've recorded what I could accurately video.

 

0:16 - Lack of single video delete option on the recording splash page.

0:20 - Deleting recorded content takes you back to the suggestions tab rather than recorded tab.

0:28 - Deleted movie file is gone, but the folder it was in does not delete on the backend.

0:38 - 1:25 - Movie is deleted on the backend, but isn't reflected in the GUI after either refreshing the page or restarting the server.

1:32 - No delete option during multi-select.

1:50 - 2:07 - Delete recordings scheduled for one of the shows, followed by refreshing guide.

5:00 - 5:10 - Deleted recordings are repopulated.

 

I found something else out while trying to record this.  There isn't a good way to prematurely stop an active recording that I could find; I had to refresh the tuners and restart the server multiple times in order to free the tuners up.

 

Also, I made a FR for this but maybe this should have been an issue in the Live TV forum, but there is a problem also around recording a show and sleeping drives.  I'm not exactly sure how I could video this or if this would show up in the server logs, so I don't have anything to show you except telling you the steps I did in troubleshooting. In the past, I had a lot of my scheduled recordings not really work as they were less than a meg in size.  I thought it might have had something to do with the drive being asleep when the recording started, so I went into my power settings and set the drives on my computer never to sleep.  After doing that, I've never had a problem since with the scheduled recordings not recording to the proper length they are supposed to.  I would think maybe having a file in the target location of recorded media and, a few minutes before a scheduled recording kicks off, perform some kind of read in order to wake the drive up so there aren't problems when the actual recording kicks off. In any case, here was the link to the FR I made around this issue.

 

http://emby.media/community/index.php?/topic/28826-live-tv-spin-up-recording-path-location-prior-to-scheduled-recording/

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Ok of those 7 things.

 

#1 and #2 and #5 are being fixed.

 

#3 is not specific to live tv but the general delete function. it's an improvement that can be made in the future.

 

#4 is expected behavior. It is the guide refresh that handles this and will clean it up. When you are browsing the web interface you are looking at the database, not the file system.

 

In your video i don't see deleted recordings being repopulated after the refresh. maybe it was cut off but i can't tell.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

virtualtinker

#4 - I would challenge then that the guide refresh is not cleaning that up properly.  I've gone upwards to a week with the database data not being cleaned up and I had to end up deleting the entries via the GUI manually.  See post 1, paragraph 3 of this topic where I mentioned this occurring, and post 3 where I manually cleaned it up 7 days later.  See the video I just made about this specifically.  I deleted the 2 episodes via the file share, restarted the server, then did a guide refresh.  Both episodes still are showing in the GUI.

 

https://www.dropbox.com/s/dy0w6weoiq64ujn/livetv_backend_delete.mp4?dl=0

 

Regarding deleted recordings, I verified the video I uploaded is showing the steps about the repopulating.  At 1:57, I am deleting the 2 scheduled recordings of The Expanse. 2:15 - 5:00 is the guide refresh. 5:09 is back to the scheduled recordings and the 2 episodes of The Expanse that I deleted are showing up again.

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

virtualtinker

I just updated prior to recording that video so 3.0.5814.0.  I can get you a log if the not cleaning up of the database is an actual bug versus a functionality issue.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

virtualtinker

I noticed issues 1,2 and 5 were addressed in the beta release, so thanks or that.  Multi-delete inside the GUI makes things so much easier.

 

Wanted to follow up though and see if you wanted logs or anything else from me.  Also, wanted to check if you had any feedback regarding my comment in post #12 about stopping an active recording and any way to have Emby wake the drive location of recorded content prior to a recording starting.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

What issue are you having at this point? I would jump up to the beta as it will be easier to help you there. Keep in mind anytime you delete the file manually as opposed to using the interface, you're always going to have to wait for the server to realize that it's been deleted. that's why i would always suggest using the UI.

 

Thanks.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

virtualtinker

See post #12.

 

- The guide repopulating even after scheduled recordings are deleted in Emby is an issue.

- No clean way to stop an existing recording in the GUI that I found.

- Can we have Emby do a read or something to wake up the drive location where the TV show will be recorded to a few minutes before the actual recording occurs?  I had a number of failed recordings happen back when my drives slept and spun up only when used.  When I went into power management and told my drives never to spin down, the recordings issues went away.

 

I currently run the beta builds but these items are things that are present in the stable release.Are you saying you want me to post my problems in the Testing sub-forum rather than here?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'm just saying the beta builds come faster. What do you mean

The guide repopulating even after scheduled recordings are deleted in Emby is an issue.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

virtualtinker

See post #12.

 

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ueauati8kqj4rxe/livetvissues.avi?dl=0

 

Forgive the quality, I wanted to keep the file size down, but it should explain well enough what I've seen. I know you said most of this is in the pipeline, but for the sake of completeness, I've recorded what I could accurately video.

 

1:50 - 2:07 - Delete recordings scheduled for one of the shows, followed by refreshing guide.

5:00 - 5:10 - Deleted recordings are repopulated.

 

I found something else out while trying to record this.  There isn't a good way to prematurely stop an active recording that I could find; I had to refresh the tuners and restart the server multiple times in order to free the tuners up.

 

Also, I made a FR for this but maybe this should have been an issue in the Live TV forum, but there is a problem also around recording a show and sleeping drives.  I'm not exactly sure how I could video this or if this would show up in the server logs, so I don't have anything to show you except telling you the steps I did in troubleshooting. In the past, I had a lot of my scheduled recordings not really work as they were less than a meg in size.  I thought it might have had something to do with the drive being asleep when the recording started, so I went into my power settings and set the drives on my computer never to sleep.  After doing that, I've never had a problem since with the scheduled recordings not recording to the proper length they are supposed to.  I would think maybe having a file in the target location of recorded media and, a few minutes before a scheduled recording kicks off, perform some kind of read in order to wake the drive up so there aren't problems when the actual recording kicks off. In any case, here was the link to the FR I made around this issue.

 

http://emby.media/community/index.php?/topic/28826-live-tv-spin-up-recording-path-location-prior-to-scheduled-recording/

Link to comment
Share on other sites

i'm reworking some things around deletion but you can currently cancel active recordings using the Scheduled tab

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...