Questions Regarding Recording Live TV from HDHomeRun Prime Tuners

[Sam865 13]

I am a relatively new Emby user. There are several things that I find confusing when I try to record shows from Live TV.  Due to my lack of understanding it's frustrating not to be able to do scheduled recordings reliably. When this feature works for me, it works really well, but it doesn't always work! It's a very good product and potentially a great product but I need help in understanding what's going on. Here are a few of the issues that confuse me:

 

On one night I may use the Guide to schedule a recording and it behaves as expected (i.e. the recorded program shows up the next day in Recorded TV  or in TV Recordings with appropriate metadata images, it replays correctly, etc.) The next day, I may repeat the exact same process and the program fails to record. Tuners were available in both cases, Emby was up and running, no network problems, etc.

 

I am confused by the two very similar menu tabs on the Emby console Live TV screen – TV Recordings and Recorded TV. Some of my recorded content shows up in one place, and some in the other, but the content is not always the same in both places. What is the difference in these two menu tabs?

 

It appears that metadata displayed for recorded content in these locations does not update immediately, but usually appears several hours later when a scheduled refresh occurs. Sometimes doing a manual refresh will populate the folders with metadata, and other times it does not.

 

When I set up my PC a few months ago, I installed a solid-state hard drive and used it for the operating system (currently Windows 10). I intended to separate my user data from OS data and place it on the original hard drive that came with the computer – re-assigned to drive letter "E". I set up a folder for Emby on the "E"  drive for recorded TV because I didn't want multi-gigabytes of recorded data stored on the system drive. However, when I updated to the latest Emby server the location apparently got changed back to the default location on the system drive (C:\Users|<name>\AppData\Roaming\Emby-Server\data\livetv\recordings\...). I added the second location back in Emby (E:\Recorded TV\TV\Series\...) and now I can't predict which location the recorded ".ts" files will be saved in. "Sometimes they're in one location, other times in the other location.) Do my TV recordings really need to be stored on the system drive? I would appreciate your advice and suggestions on how to simplify things and increase reliability.

 

 

[Luke 37049]

it sounds like you must have setup a library called TV Recordings, correct? The Recorded TV section holds your recordings, and for many this is a temporary destination before moving to their actual tv or movie collections. The live tv feature is brand new and will keep evolving, so we'll take this feedback and confusion to heart to see where we can improve.

 

As for failed recordings, grab the server log next time:

 

http://emby.media/community/index.php?/topic/790-how-to-report-a-problem/

 

Correction about your recording path setting - when you updated to the recent Emby Server, nothing was changed on you because that setting is brand new and did not exist prior to this release. So i'm not exactly sure what you mean there. Maybe you were using the EmbyTV plugin before-hand, which is now obsolete, so make sure to remove that plugin if you still have it.

[Sam865 13]

Thanks so much for helping with this Luke. You are correct that I had set up a TV Recordings folder in my media library. I did this when I first started using Emby and I had forgotten that it was something I had added.)

 

I can probably struggle along on my own and eventually figure out how everything is supposed to work in Emby, and I know your time could be better spent on more important issues. However, if you want to see things from a novice perspective, maybe you can wade through what I've included below at your convenience and use it to help me and other people overcome common mistakes such as I have made.

 

I'm attaching a couple of log files from yesterday and today that may be helpful in describing what is going on. The relevant information begins at the very end of yesterday's log at 11:35 PM. It shows that the recording of The Late Show with Stephen Cobert began successfully. The show did record and it shows up in the Emby console. The actual recording operation seems to be working fine now. It's just that certain shows show up in unexpected places in the console, or don't show up at all. When I look for the ".ts" recorded files in E:\Recorded TV\TV\..., I can usually find them and they will play, but the organization makes no sense.

 

I'm still very confused by the information I see in the console and I've attached a few screen shots of things that just don't make sense to me.

 

The first screen shot (Not All Current Recording Showing Up in Live TV Tab.JPG) shows two short program snippets that I recorded yesterday to make sure I could record. These were not scheduled, but simply grabbed from the Schedules Direct Guide while in progress. Note that none of my other recent recorded TV programs show up in this shot. The Late Show with Stephen Colbert recordings are missing here, but they show up in the TV Recordings Media Library folder (See the screen shot Displayed in TV Recordings.JPG.) Note that the Late Show thumbnail has a green circle with the number 3, which I interpreted to mean that three episodes of this show have been recorded. However, when I drill down by clicking on the thumbnail, I can only play the latest show, and there's no obvious way to play the previous episode.

 

 

 

The screen shot What's Going On Here.JPG is what I see when I click the Late Show thumbnail and scroll down. Note that there are six metadata thumbnail images shown here – all for the Late Show. when I mouse over the second thumbnail, a black image pops up for the 10 News recording. When I click the image, the 10 News video plays. That's not what I would have expected.

 

 

 

I have included a screen shot from the Manage Metadata screen. It appears that images for other recorded items are being stored in the Late Show section. This leads me to believe I may have a corrupted metadata database. If that's the case, is there any way to rebuild it and start from scratch?

 

 

Finally, there is a screen shot showing the folder structure on my E drive for Recorded TV. Some of the folders contain remnants (metadata?) of previously recorded shows that have been deleted. The folders for 10 News and Judge Judy contain both metadata and .ts files. The Late Show folder contains only metadata. The .ts files for the Late Show are being stored in the Season 1 folder, along with additional metadata. The information is there, but the locations are baffling to me.

 

 

(I am learning a little more about Emby each day.)

server-63577468029.txt

server-63577526402.txt

Edited September 11, 2015 by Sam865

[Luke 37049]

they show up in your TV recordings section and not the dedicated Live TV section because you moved them out.

 

Think of how windows media center is organized. In WMC you have your own dedicated videos library and a separate Recorded TV library. That's basically what this was modeled after. Once it gets saved in Recorded TV you might then take it and move it to your regular library, similar to the WMC videos library. If you used the same folder path in both locations, then that's something you shouldn't do.

[Sam865 13]

I removed all of my user-installed library folder locations related to recorded TV, and now Emby works flawlessly! Everything is where it should be and it all makes perfect sense. I also finally took a good look at all the amazingly good documentation that is available on the web.by using the Help option.

 

Note to other newbies: Learn from my mistakes. Install Emby and let it do the work. In most cases, the default settings will work fine and you don't need to make changes and mess with optional settings until you take the time to understand how they work!!

 

I've looked everywhere for a viable replacement for Windows Media Center's DVR capability and Emby is by far the best solution I have found. Kudos to Luke and the Emby staff.

[Luke 37049]

Thank you, glad to hear it. And we will be looking to improve the above situation such that it hopefully won't require any explanation in the future.

[Luke 37049]

We have new post-processing features in testing now:

 

https://emby.media/community/index.php?/topic/41725-recording-post-processing/

 

Enjoy !