I have had a few recordings that while in the middle of playback the times in the timebar suddenly go to 0:00 and I can't skip forward or back anymore (although it continues to play the file ok). Strangely, this only happens on 2 of my client PCs while it doesn't happen on my server or 1 of my client PCs. I have attached the logs from the "good" client and "bad" client. Notice in the bad one, after a few skips it reports the current position as a very small number. I also have included the server log but for some reason there is no evidence of the "good" client playing back the file in the log even though all the clients are set up the same to access the server??
When you make a recording, it also stores some extra timing information (in a NT ADS called "timing.info"), which is generally much more reliable timing info than the clocks in the broadcast stream. When you play the recording directly on the server, it can see this timing.info ADS and uses it. When you play from a client, it cant see this, and instead has to rely on the clock information in the .ts file, which can often be very shonky. When you get a bad timeline you'll often see symptoms like incorrect duration reported, and bad skipping.
I'm hoping to make a change to client/server support in the next release, to let clients retrieve this extra info from the server.
sub Wrote:When you make a recording, it also stores some extra timing information (in a NT ADS called "timing.info"), which is generally much more reliable timing info than the clocks in the broadcast stream. When you play the recording directly on the server, it can see this timing.info ADS and uses it. When you play from a client, it cant see this, and instead has to rely on the clock information in the .ts file, which can often be very shonky. When you get a bad timeline you'll often see symptoms like incorrect duration reported, and bad skipping.
I'm hoping to make a change to client/server support in the next release, to let clients retrieve this extra info from the server.
Does the client see the timing info if it is in a separate file?
No. The client cannot current see the timing.info.
I was trying to figure out why the server was not streaming from the server to the one client PC that doesn't exhibit this problem. It seems that the client will directly access the file if it can resolve the file location which it can since I map the root of the recording drive. The other client PCs have this drive mapped too but I launch NPVR on them through Eventghost. I have to run Eventghost with elevated privileges on Win7 so it can catch MCE remote commands so apparently NPVR cannot see the mapped drive in this scenario. In any case, if I launch NPVR manually from the Start Menu on the other clients then the problem is solved - plus it improves the skip ahead performance during playback significantly!
cncb, there is a registry setting that allows the Timing.Info file to be created externally and the client should use it if you play from the Video Library.
Martin
mvallevand Wrote:cncb, there is a registry setting that allows the Timing.Info file to be created externally and the client should use it if you play from the Video Library.
Ok, thanks. But I have solved my problem by allowing the clients to access the .ts files directly from the network drive so I can play them from the recordings screen without issue now.
I am pretty sure if you play via the Recordings being able to access the file via a share will make no difference to the streamin.. Likely you just experienced a bad file timestamp when the TS file resets which happens from time-to-time in broadcast streams.
Martin
mvallevand Wrote:I am pretty sure if you play via the Recordings being able to access the file via a share will make no difference to the streamin.. Likely you just experienced a bad file timestamp when the TS file resets which happens from time-to-time in broadcast streams.
Why wouldn't the client have access to the timing info if it is accessing the file directly just like the server? In any case this is very consistent - if I run NPVR with elevated privileges there will be evidence of streaming in the server logs and playback will be messed up but if I run NPVR normally from a client there seems to be no streaming and no problems with playback.