Prevent orphaned recordings caused by comskip

[DebbieGibson]

It took me awhile to figure out what was happening, but I noticed that I was running out of disk space even after I had culled a lot of recordings. I saw that some recordings were being removed from the Recordings menu, but still physically existed on the hard drive. I finally figured out what was happening. I was removing the recording whist comskip was removing the commercials. So GBPVR removed the recording from the database, but was prevented from deleting the file because it was in use. Thus orphaning the file, taking up my precious disk space.

Is there anyway we can prevent GBPVR from removing the recording if it’s in the process of comskiping? Or, be able to stop the comskip process, and then remove the file along with the database entry.

I have an idea about how this could be done. When comskip starts to work on a file to mark the commercials, could it also create a marker file. Then when it’s finished, remove the marker file. Mean time, GBPVR checks for the marker file when it goes to delete a recording. And if the two bump heads, GBPVR would either tell me I have to wait for comskip to finish, or be able to stop the process and finish its work

Thanks for reading.

[David]

It took me awhile to figure out what was happening, but I noticed that I was running out of disk space even after I had culled a lot of recordings. I saw that some recordings were being removed from the Recordings menu, but still physically existed on the hard drive. I finally figured out what was happening. I was removing the recording whist comskip was removing the commercials. So GBPVR removed the recording from the database, but was prevented from deleting the file because it was in use. Thus orphaning the file, taking up my precious disk space.

Is there anyway we can prevent GBPVR from removing the recording if it’s in the process of comskiping? Or, be able to stop the comskip process, and then remove the file along with the database entry.

I have an idea about how this could be done. When comskip starts to work on a file to mark the commercials, could it also create a marker file. Then when it’s finished, remove the marker file. Mean time, GBPVR checks for the marker file when it goes to delete a recording. And if the two bump heads, GBPVR would either tell me I have to wait for comskip to finish, or be able to stop the process and finish its work

Thanks for reading.

GB-PVR should not be able to delete the database entry if the file still exists. That would take care of any number of concurrently processing applications. That's a much better solution than having Erik modify comskip and then have Sub modify GBPVR.

[DebbieGibson]

GB-PVR should not be able to delete the database entry if the file still exists. That would take care of any number of concurrently processing applications. That's a much better solution than having Erik modify comskip and then have Sub modify GBPVR.

I love public forums! It gets everyone's brain thinking about the same problem and the solutions and ideas flow like rain.

I agree, that is a much simpler way of getting the same thing done. Well done!

[mobiusnz]

That explains it - its rarely happened for me but I have had a couple of orphaned recordings. And they are the shows I can never wait to watch so often watch them with only a slight delay.

I second the idea of GBPVR deleting the file first and then and only then deleting the database entry if the file deletion was successfull and throwing up an error if it couldn't remove it eg "File in use - cannot delete"

[pBS]

using post processing?
you could also run your comskip while recording, that way comskip is no more than a few seconds behind the recording, and unless you delete it within a few seconds after the recording finishes, no problems..
[should lessen the chance anyways]
use parallelprocessing.bat i believe..

[mobiusnz]

Yeah - but I often record two channels while watching a program - I just wonder about the disk/cpu utilization of doing this. As it is response slows while its doing a comskip process at the end of a recording - I'd hate to see it doing two?

[erik]

Comskip runs at idle priority, just like a screen saver.
Any GBPVR activity will have higher priority
That is why paralelprocessing works so well.