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Record TV not working


rikiwi

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rikiwi

For a few weeks I have set up to record a few programs but when I go to play them there is nothing but a lot of 1 minute wtv files in the TempSWMC/savedForDebug folder.

I am using Media Browser Server Version 3.0.5309.26857 (Beta), ServerWMC. on a Win7 PC. During the recording times there has not been any activity on the server (I have been out of the house)

I have 3 tuners in my PC/server.

It's got to the stage where I am thinking of just going back to Media Center as this has worked for me for years. But I really want to use Media Browser as it's fantastic for streaming over my home network and great for streaming music over internet when I;m away from home. I still can't stream movies remotely, probably the internet speed.

Sorry I'm not sure what log files you need to help me with this.

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krustyreturns

There must be something else going on.  Serverwmc uses the wmc recording service to schedule and do the recordings, same as wmc, there really should be no difference between them.  To help understand what is happening you can start wmc and see the recordings you scheduled with serverwmc/MBS, it really doesn't matter where they originate.

 

Swmc and MBS have settings that effect recordings like padding and such and possibly there is a setting that is bad, like a crazy long pre-padding, but you should be able to see that problem in MBS or even in wmc. 

 

Those little wtv files you are seeing in tempswmc have nothing to do with recordings, they are failed attempts at starting a live stream.  They are periodically cleaned up.

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rikiwi

Thanks for your reply and explanations. I'll go through all my Serverwmc settings again. I only use 2mins prepadding and 5mins post. I do see scheduled recordings in WMC but after the TV programs has aired they disappear from the recorded tv screen.

As far as the live streaming goes I do get a lot of fails especially on the server itself. It works best in chrome and fails totally in IE. On my Nexus 7 I am testing Stock Chrome and Dolphin browsers.

I'll get back to you when I have more to report.

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krustyreturns

I suggest setting up some near future recordings  in MBS and then looking in wmc and seeing if they are set exactly as you expect.  If they are, then there must be some other reason why you are not getting a recording.  Sometimes if a recording fails, when you start wmc it will tell you why it didn't record but not always (unfortunately)

 

There have been IE problems since day one with live streams, the MBS team are working on it.

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rikiwi

Last night I set up 3 1 hour long programs on 2 channels to record, and left the server alone. This morning 2 of them had been truncated at the start by 30 minutes, so only one was watchable. This morning I tried 2 more with similar results.

I used to always be on the Dev builds of MBServer, I am wondering if I should give it a try, or try stopping MBServer and Server WMC and set a record in WMC and see what happens.

As it is at the moment its basically unusable for recording, and If I set to record from WMC I get the same results.

I'm having to watch a lot of on demand TV at the moment - not ideal.

I'm not going to give up on MB, i't just that I like to get to the bottom of why things don't work.

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Last night I set up 3 1 hour long programs on 2 channels to record, and left the server alone. This morning 2 of them had been truncated at the start by 30 minutes, so only one was watchable. This morning I tried 2 more with similar results.

I used to always be on the Dev builds of MBServer, I am wondering if I should give it a try, or try stopping MBServer and Server WMC and set a record in WMC and see what happens.

As it is at the moment its basically unusable for recording, and If I set to record from WMC I get the same results.

I'm having to watch a lot of on demand TV at the moment - not ideal.

I'm not going to give up on MB, i't just that I like to get to the bottom of why things don't work.

 

 

well you just said if you set to record from WMC you get the same results. At that point media browser and server wmc have nothing to do with it.

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rikiwi

Thanks Luke. I've just set to record some channels from WMC and have stopped MBServer and ServerWMC. Then I'll do the same with them running and get back to you.

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rikiwi

I have set several recordings up with WMC and stopped MBServer and ServerWMC from running - result perfect recordings.

Then I set several programs to record with MBServer and ServerWMC running and left the house.

On returning, 3 programs had recorded OK and 3 had not been recorded at all.

I had 4 mins pre and post padding on all.

 

I am continuing doing more test recordings to see if anything changed over the next few hours.

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krustyreturns

That is weird.  Can you post the serverwmc log so I can see what your configuration is?  Posting the log captured right after serverwmc starts is fine.

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rikiwi

Sorry, I've been hiking up in the snow today (it's winter here in New Zealand).

Before I left the house I set to record The Commonwealth Games opening, a 90 minute program. In WMC it showed up to be recorded including the 4 mins. pre and post padding = 98 mins.

On returning there was nothing recorded.

Just now I have noticed that in the Live TV Guide of Media Browser all programs are listed 30 mins. behind the actual air time as showing in the WMC guide - very strange. :huh:

In ServerWMC I have set the following - On the Record Tab: Use this Padding: Pre 4 mins, Post 4 mins

Force Re and Post padding.

 

Please find a fresh ServerWMC Log attached.

Edited by rikiwi
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krustyreturns

No problem, I have been traveling myself.

 

On the guide thing, my programming partner in Australia sees his guide data shift frequently, in his area he gets the guide data form the tv source (where I am guide data comes form an internet download).  A half hour shift is pretty extreme though.  You might try doing a guide refresh right before you do these recording experiments.

 

Forced padding is hard on the scheduler, and that is a difference between wmc and mbs since wmc does not make it easy to set force padding.  Can you try turning that off and seeing if the problem goes away?

 

Also, why do you have it set to remux all recordings?

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rikiwi

Some background:

In New Zealand we get very limited guide data in WMC, so for years I have used a locally developed scraper, EPG Collectow which works very well. I turn off all collections from within WMC.

I will try your suggestions regarding the padding and get back to you.

I have also turned off remuxing recordings. I'm not sure why I had this checked.I 'll be away for afew days but will access my server remotely and my PC using Google remote desktop. So hopefully I can keep testing.

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krustyreturns

That would be interesting if that's the cause of the problem.  I think the most important thing to determine at this stage is if the problem is serverwmc started recordings - or - just having serverwmc running.  If its the later maybe it has something to do with this database weirdness.  So yeah, keep me posted. 

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rikiwi

Hi Krusty

 

I have been testing TV recording every day for a week, here are my findings:

 

When recording using WMC without Server WMC running I get perfect recordings including my set padding (now 5 min pre and post)

When recording with Server WMC running I get somewhat inconsistent results. Some days perfect, some days they are missing several minutes from beginning.

Also at times the specified recording disappears at the end of the airtime, but the next run of the program (next day or next week) appears in the Scheduled page.

I have never specified Record Series on the record page. I'll leave the scheduled list intact for now and see how they get recorded.

Some strange behavior  :huh:

 

I have re-scheduled EPG Collector to run at a time when I'm not likely to be setting a new recording so see if that's causing my problems. (conflicting with ServerWMC?)

 

Please find attached clean ServerWMC Log

 

I'm using the latest Dev build of MBServer: Version 3.0.5326.13255

Edited by rikiwi
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krustyreturns

Sorry for the delay.  That is one fricking weird result.  I am trying to understand why serverwmc just sitting there idle, waiting for a client to connect to it and either start a live stream or schedule a recording could have any effect on the wmc recording service. 

 

If you are still willing to test, please change this flag to false in the config.xml file of serverwmc:

  <UseRecLibraryWatcher>false</UseRecLibraryWatcher>

 

then save the file and restart serverwmc.

 

This will stop serverwmc from monitoring the state of your recorded tv folder.  See if that makes your recordings reliable, if it does that will help narrow things down quite a bit.

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rikiwi

That's Quite alright Krusty

I'm only too pleased to test as I've got time on my hands (retired)

 

Yesterday I set 3 progrms to be recorded while i went out. On returning, only the last in the series was left. The first 2 had been deleted. This was with ServerWMC running. 

 

I then set up 3 recordings during the night without ServerWMC running and they were all OK apart from some padding variations. This all confirmed that nothing has changed for me.

 

I have edited the UseRecLibraryWatcher flag to false, cleaned the log out and re-started it (ServerWMC)

I have 3 new recording set. The first is a 1/2 hr program, the second and third are an hour later and are concurrent time-slots, but are on different muxes.

​I'll leave WMC and MBServer alone until they complete.

 

Attached is the TV Guide view

 

I'll get back to you with my results.

Edited by rikiwi
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rikiwi

OK

The 3 recording were successful  :)

 

The actual recorded padding was as follows: Prog 1 - 8 min pre and 1 min post; Prog 2 - 9 min pre and 4 min post; Prog 3 - 7 min pre and 10 min post.

I've now set 3 more programs to record all at the same time to see how the 3 tuners handle it.

I'll report back when they finish.

Then I'll trim the padding back and check the results.

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rikiwi

Back again

My next 3 recordings were perfect  :)

I changed the padding to 2 min pre and 3 post and these were adhered to exactly - a very good result.

Thanks so much Krusty for your suggestion to modify the config.xml

 

Also: This may not be related to ServerWMC, but I have noticed at times a blank appearing in some the Live TV Guide program fields. These do not display in WMC. 

Please find 3 snips (all taken at same time) to illustrate what I mean. Has anyone else observed this behavior?

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rikiwi

Thanks Krusty

I will start a new thread tomorrow - just leaving for the day.

 

I have realized with  <UseRecLibraryWatcher>false</UseRecLibraryWatcher>

I now can't start watching a channel live that is still being recorded. But I can live with that at the moment. I'll do more testing on this factor tomorrow.

 

​Thanks again for all your help and for developing such great products. 

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krustyreturns

There may be other problems too, but I will try to figure out why it is causing a problem so we can enable it again.

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krustyreturns

Good.  I will look at how turning on the recording watcher can cause this.  If in the future if you find that it really isn't the cause, please let me know.

 

On the blank guide entries I bet its an error in the guide display functions and it probably has to do with the weird start/end times (ie. 5:25) of the programs.  I think you should post the images in a new thread to get the MBS guys to look at it.

Edited by krustyreturns
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rikiwi

It seems that my post just above was too hasty. I can in fact still watch Live TV whilst recording. I'll get back to you if this changes with future updates to the sever.

 

On further testing I notice that if I watch the same channel I'm recording it gets deleted at the end and a schedule for the same program at its next airtime gets set. Even though i never set series recording.  ^_^

 

More testing

Edited by rikiwi
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rikiwi

Recording is still buggy with ServerWMC running.

I just arrived home and had set 2 programs on the same channel to be recorded. But the first one wasn't recorded but is in the scheduled page for a re-run tomorrow. The second program was about to finish, so I watched the guide and when the end time came up the Rad record dot in the guide disappeared. On opening the Recordings page the active recording image had gone.

I'll do some more testing tomorrow without ServerWMC running.

 

I'm using the latest Dev. build of MB Server - Version 3.0.5332.42399

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