Gray recording indicator, show not shown in schedule

[pwhodges 2012]

I am recording a series from PBS (for the first time), and was puzzled to see that as well as recording the first episode yesterday when expected, there was also a short (5 mins including my specified buffer) recording earlier in the day.  The later recording had its own nfo and ts file, with an extra -1 tacked on to the name

The second episode is today - this evening - and like yesterday, a short recording was already made this morning.  However, looking at the schedule, this evening's recording is not listed.  If I look in the guide, the series recording indicator is there, but is gray, not red.  

Now presumably the recording will happen this evening as expected (it did yesterday), but why is it not in the schedule?  And what does the gray indicator mean?

Also, when looking at yesterday's episode to play, it shows as five minutes long, but is actually 2½ hours long as it should be.  It appears to use the first nfo file but the second ts file - how does it decide?

I've attached yesterday's and today's logs.  The show runs at about 20:30 in the evening ("The Gene: An Intimate History"), and the brief unexpected morning recordings happened at around 10:30 according to the nfo files, though the (five minute long!) ts file has a date stamp 2½ hours later, as if it thought it was recording the whole show, but there was no signal.  It occurs to me that maybe the guide has the time in both PBS's time zone and mine, and Emby is using both, but both in my time zone, but actually that doesn't work either...

Paul

embyserver.txt embyserver-63731750400.txt

[Carlo 4561]

Did you schedule a one up recording or series recording?

[pwhodges 2012]

Series.  The series recording indicator was gray.  

When I saw this, because I was nervous about this evening's recording, I clicked on the record button for the individual episode - the series indicator then went red.

Paul

Edited July 31, 2020 by pwhodges

[Carlo 4561]

Ahh, so you did a manual recording of the duplicate show by doing that.

[pwhodges 2012]

Not yesterday.  I'm sure it would have worked today without intervention, but I clicked the button as I was there.

Maybe the grey indicates that it might not record because the episode concerned is already present (though in this case that's incorrect, because there was a fake triggering).  I have the setting enabled that tells it to record anyway and not mind duplicates - my guess is that in that case the indicator and the schedule tab aren't updated to reflect what will actually happen.

Paul

[Carlo 4561]

Exactly.  If it already has the episode it won't try to record it again and have duplicates of the same thing.

If you want to double check on the refresh, back out to the main menu and go back in.  That will most definitely give you a clean look at it and see if there is a refresh issue that needs to be looked at.

[pwhodges 2012]

No, the point is there is a setting so that it will record a duplicate.  I want it to for other reasons, but in this case if it didn't record a duplicate I wouldn't have got the recording at all because the first triggering of the recording was incorrect.  That, I guess is a problem with the data in the guide.

Now, I have the server set up to record a duplicate, but it hides that fact from me by omitting it from the Scheduled tab and graying out the indicator.  These are incorrect, because Emby will in fact make the recording.

I could be a problem, because I might rely on the schedule listing to see when I can work on the server, and in this case I could compromise a recording unexpectedly.

Paul

[Carlo 4561]

Of course if it's a series and the first didn't record when it does it's rescheduling the second one will get turned on to record since it doesn't exist.

[pwhodges 2012]

It seems to me that you're still missing the point.  It did record something in the morning; the recording was incorrect, but Emby thought it was in the can as it had what looked to it like the right nfo and ts files for s01e01.  Only because I have not enabled the setting to not record items already in the library did I get a correct copy of s01e01-1 (the duplicate gets a number tagged on the end) later in the day.  I'm pleased I did.

But what I noticed today was that after it had recorded s01e02 - incorrectly, but the files were there, even though it was still set up to record what it thought would be a duplicate, Emby did not show me that fact.  The later broadcast was not shown on the scheduled tab, and the series record indicator for that broadcast was grayed out.

I cannot tell if the initial incorrect recordings of each episode is because of bad guide information, or because there is something in the guide information which Emby is misinterpreting.

Paul

[Carlo 4561]

 

3 hours ago, pwhodges said:

Maybe the grey indicates that it might not record because the episode concerned is already present (though in this case that's incorrect, because there was a fake triggering).  I have the setting enabled that tells it to record anyway and not mind duplicates - my guess is that in that case the indicator and the schedule tab aren't updated to reflect what will actually happen.

grey means it's not going to record it

1 hour ago, pwhodges said:

No, the point is there is a setting so that it will record a duplicate.  I want it to for other reasons, but in this case if it didn't record a duplicate I wouldn't have got the recording at all because the first triggering of the recording was incorrect.  That, I guess is a problem with the data in the guide.

Will record an episode outside of recording/dvr library that's already on your system.

9 minutes ago, pwhodges said:

It seems to me that you're still missing the point.  It did record something in the morning; the recording was incorrect, but Emby thought it was in the can as it had what looked to it like the right nfo and ts files for s01e01.  Only because I have not enabled the setting to not record items already in the library did I get a correct copy of s01e01-1 (the duplicate gets a number tagged on the end) later in the day.  I'm pleased I did.

But what I noticed today was that after it had recorded s01e02 - incorrectly, but the files were there, even though it was still set up to record what it thought would be a duplicate, Emby did not show me that fact.  The later broadcast was not shown on the scheduled tab, and the series record indicator for that broadcast was grayed out.

I cannot tell if the initial incorrect recordings of each episode is because of bad guide information, or because there is something in the guide information which Emby is misinterpreting.

Paul

Emby thinks it already made the recording so it won't record it again on it's own.  It of course doesn't know it was wrong.  You can manually set another episode to record BUT if you get a guide refresh the scheduling will see the episode is already recorded and unmark your selection because it thinks it's already recorded.

Try this, schedule something to record that has both morning and evening rebroadcast of the same show.  The first should be red and the 2nd will be grey.  Now if you manually mark the 2nd to record it will turn red.  Now go refresh your guide and come back and look.

You should be able to look at the NFO file as Emby writes that at the start of recording and that will have the Guide data in it.  That might help you determine if it's bad guide data or not.

[Luke 42080]

Why do you feel it recorded s01e02 incorrectly?

[Carlo 4561]

Something to be aware of.  There are a lot of shows where the online guide will have different episode numbers or titles than the meta providers so that's something to be aware of.

Don't know if that's what you're seeing or not.

What show and channel was the  s01e02 recording?

[pwhodges 2012]

@Luke Because (a) it was recorded hours before the scheduled time, and (b) the file only contained the time of my before and after buffers (I set 1min before and 4min after, so the file was 5min long).  Also, the correct recording has now been made (it finished a short time ago).

Note that although the first recorded file is only five minutes long, its writing timestamp is 2½ hours after the time the nfo file was written, and this is the length of the program when actually broadcast - so in spite of the file containing only five minutes of video, Emby was doing something with it for all that time; it was also a larger file than I would expect for five minutes (though much smaller than the correctly recorded file).

@cayars PBS: "The Gene: An Intimate History"

Also, you are writing as if you are unaware of this setting ("Don't record episodes which are already in my library"):

I have that unset, so it does record them - even if the grayed out indicator implies that it won't.

Paul

Edited July 31, 2020 by pwhodges

[Carlo 4561]

OK now this sounds way different than what I thought you were saying. Going back reading your first post, it makes more sense now.

Checking your logs.

[Carlo 4561]

2020-07-30 10:28:59.644 Info LiveTV: Recording timer fired for The Gene: An Intimate History.

2020-07-30 13:04:59.992 Info LiveTV: Recording stopped: D:\Recordings\The Gene  An Intimate History (2020)\Season 1\The Gene  An Intimate History S01E01.ts

2020-07-30 17:07:35.844 Info LiveTV: Creating recording timer for 349ee7481ae99d8b1d8ef5f3efecf362, The Gene: An Intimate History. Timer will fire in 201.40259626 minutes
2020-07-30 17:07:35.855 Info LiveTV: Creating recording timer for ebdb9672602d7103c6099370bacd952a, The Gene: An Intimate History. Timer will fire in 1036.4024129633333 minutes
2020-07-30 17:07:35.866 Info LiveTV: Creating recording timer for 32992aa1ad633b9806a1c5e10bef50ea, The Gene: An Intimate History. Timer will fire in 1641.402230025 minutes
2020-07-30 17:07:35.878 Info LiveTV: Creating recording timer for 30c450341a289f3e9937e00bf945f328, The Gene: An Intimate History. Timer will fire in 3266.4020302233334 minutes
2020-07-30 17:07:35.888 Info LiveTV: Creating recording timer for 3ca34898b44dbc3e5d56642f47245bc3, The Gene: An Intimate History. Timer will fire in 4706.401853011666 minutes

2020-07-30 20:28:59.918 Info LiveTV: Recording timer fired for The Gene: An Intimate History.

2020-07-30 23:04:59.968 Info LiveTV: Recording stopped: D:\Recordings\The Gene  An Intimate History (2020)\Season 1\The Gene  An Intimate History S01E01 - 1.ts

Do you still have the NFO files that were generated for these two recordings?

If so can you upload those please?

[pwhodges 2012]

Here you are (and now I'm off to bed).

Paul

The Gene An Intimate History S01E01 - 1.nfo The Gene An Intimate History S01E01.nfo

[Carlo 4561]

No help from them. I hate to say it but it sort of looks like a guide problem. By that I mean there isn't any errors in the logs and it looks like Emby intentionally stopped at a predetermined time as if that's what the guide end time was.

Can you check on this for the next episode and make sure it's the full duration in the guide?

[ebr 16185]

Hi.  Do you now understand what the gray (dimmed) indicator means?  The episode is a part of a series but, due to your settings for that series, that particular showing will not be recorded.

Back when I used commercial DVRs this was a pretty standard indicator...

[pwhodges 2012]

@ebr That's what I took it to mean; however, my settings for that series (image above) were such that it should have recorded again, and for the previous episode that's what happened - and just as well, because Emby had no way to know that its previous recording was a dud.

@cayars Sure, there was a guide problem.  Two days running a recording was triggered at the wrong time, and that must have come from the guide.  The second time I saw the recording in progress, but the guide showed no reason - presumably the incorrect entry was for a short time only and the part of the guide I could see (as Emby doesn't let you see the past) no longer specified the show concerned (I think it was blank).

For some reason Emby knew that it should record for 2½ hours, but it seems there was little input in that time; hence my ending up with a file which had a timestamp matching the long recording time but which only plays for five minutes.  But it's a mess somehow - Emby sees it as five minutes, but MediaInfo says its 31ms; meanwhile Handbrake thinks it's 30mins long (which would match the size), but generates a recoded file of only 5½ minutes.

Ah well, I'll just hope it doesn't happen again.

Paul