Series recording woes

[sub]

Both were set to Microsoft DTV-DVD Audio Decoder.
I just downloaded and installed the LAV package and set the AC3 to that. Now get sound.

Ok - great.

the 'Microsoft DTV-DVD Audio Decoder' will only do AC3 on some Windows installs - I think those that have installed the Microsoft DVDPlayer app installed.

[sub]

In the Emby Web app (localhost:8096), under Live TV "Schedule" button, the "Series" top menu item shows icons for all series shown in the npvr.db3 file, including all 8 instances of the series in question!

I am going to make a S.W.A.G. that this dialog comes courtesy of the NPVR plugin. When any of those 8 series icons is clicked on, all 8 series show the "keep up to:" section selection as "As many as possible" despite the fact that all of those in the database are the value 1. All other settings shown in this dialog match the values shown in the database entries. (New, channel, air time, start pad, end pad). This would appear to be a bug in the NPVR addin. Only one of the eight series shows actual future recordings being scheduled, those being the shows today and Friday. That matches the other db table.

I am now wondering if I used that dialog last week instead of the NPVR guide. (No idea who supports that.)

What I am going to try is delete the 7 unused series entries. They do not appear to have any connection anywhere else in the db. I will then try to edit the last one. I will capture the db at various steps if it is not behaving as it should. Over the weekend, I will delete the last one and then create a new series that will start on Monday. (I will stay clear of the one in Emby.)

Can you check in NextPVR's own front end app?

I don't use Emby and know very little about Emby's NextPVR addon - it wasn't written by us. It was developed the Emby guys.

[SpinyGreen]

Can you check in NextPVR's own front end app?

I don't use Emby and know very little about Emby's NextPVR addon - it wasn't written by us. It was developed the Emby guys.

I assume your reference to "NextPVR's own front end app" means NextPVR.exe. Or is that something else?

Yesterday afternoon (October 4) I used the Emby NPVR addin interface to delete the unused series entries. NextPVR.exe has no obvious way for me to remove multiple entries for the same show in the recurring_recording table, and my reasoning was: It would be safer to use an application designed specifically for the NPVR database than to use a generic database application (SQLite Spy) to simply delete rows of a single table.

That step was completed in minutes without incident. It also had no effect on active live TV viewing with Emby/Roku.

After that step, I captured a copy of the database and renamed it.

Using SQLite Spy, I saw that the remaining entry for that show was the original entry created on September 18. That entry has the original parameters, with 2 minute padding each end, and keep 3 recordings. I decided to use NexPVR.exe to edit the entry. However, when I attempted this, the Update dialog showed "Recording Type" as "Record Once" and that setting was locked. It will not permit any change. I tried using both keyboard and mouse to navigate to a different setting, but that is the only permissible setting. Same result for the Friday time slot. I have no idea why NextPVR decided those dates are "Record Once". They were originally scheduled as series recordings. I was stumped as to waht to do next, so quit until morning.

Today, I decided to use the Monday October 8 time slot in the guide to create a new series. Unfortunately, this resulted in adding exactly zero recordings to the schedule. Inspecting the logs, I saw the reason: There are entries that state each show in the guide for the next two weeks is a repeat! I updated the setting in npvr to indicate new shows in the guide. As expected, that show does not display as new. For whatever reason, SD has no indication of new episodes of that show after today.

The only solution was to change the series to record all episodes. After making that change, I created an "Update Guide" shortcut in the NPVR start menu folder (using the -updateepg switch) and executed that. It had the desired effect of updating the schedule to record all episodes, together with the undesired effect of scheduling the recording of actual repeats despite having "Avoid duplicate recordings" checked. Apparently, the main issue is that SD seems unable to obtain episode identifiers for that show, which could solve all scheduling issues. (There is a nightly repeat of that day's show, and also a Saturday repeat of the Friday show.)

The only way around the duplicate recording situation is to restrict the time slot of the recording. This evidently is not an NPVR feature. (Restricting time slot also unfortunately creates a twice yearly headache in this time zone because the show is broadcast DST clock changes, whereas Arizona is always on standard time. Therefore not an ideal situation.)

The net: The mystery of the missing recordings was due to inaccurate guide info. My additional problems grew out of inability to perceive that as the cause.

However, beyond that there appears to be a major missing scheduling feature that I use/used heavily in Windows Media Center: Namely, the ability to list series, and from the series list, change the settings of the entire series. Pretty much all of my misadventures with scheduling came from trying to accomplish that from a single episode time slot. That methodology simply can't work. Recordings are fundamentally either a series or a single.

The NexPVR addin for Emby evidently attempts to provide that feature. Howeve, that seems to have at least one bug: the fact it can't seem to obtain the "<Keep>n</Keep>" setting accurately from the db. I will try to use debug logging in Emby (and perhaps the Chrome "inspect" feature) to see if I can figure out how it requests and presents that setting. Beyond that, I don't know if the database itself will support series updates without creating multiple "active" entries.

[sub]

I assume your reference to "NextPVR's own front end app" means NextPVR.exe.

Yep. I was just asking you not to use Emby for your tests.

Yesterday afternoon (October 4) I used the Emby NPVR addin interface to delete the unused series entries. NextPVR.exe has no obvious way for me to remove multiple entries for the same show in the recurring_recording table, and my reasoning was: It would be safer to use an application designed specifically for the NPVR database than to use a generic database application (SQLite Spy) to simply delete rows of a single table.

You should never have to manually do stuff in the database.

To remove season recordings go to the Recordings->Recurring screen, and hit 'Cancel' on the recurring recordings you want to delete. It'll cancel and remove the recurring recording, and any pending recordings associated with it.

Using SQLite Spy, I saw that the remaining entry for that show was the original entry created on September 18. That entry has the original parameters, with 2 minute padding each end, and keep 3 recordings. I decided to use NexPVR.exe to edit the entry. However, when I attempted this, the Update dialog showed "Recording Type" as "Record Once" and that setting was locked. It will not permit any change. I tried using both keyboard and mouse to navigate to a different setting, but that is the only permissible setting. Same result for the Friday time slot. I have no idea why NextPVR decided those dates are "Record Once". They were originally scheduled as series recordings. I was stumped as to waht to do next, so quit until morning.

After a recording is created, you can't change it's type. ie, you can't change a 'record once' to a 'recurring recording'. You can however change attributes about that recording - like the padding, or number of episodes to keep etc.

If you decide you want to change a one off recording to a recurring recording, just cancel it and schedule a new recurring recording.

Today, I decided to use the Monday October 8 time slot in the guide to create a new series. Unfortunately, this resulted in adding exactly zero recordings to the schedule. Inspecting the logs, I saw the reason: There are entries that state each show in the guide for the next two weeks is a repeat! I updated the setting in npvr to indicate new shows in the guide. As expected, that show does not display as new. For whatever reason, SD has no indication of new episodes of that show after today.

The only solution was to change the series to record all episodes. After making that change, I created an "Update Guide" shortcut in the NPVR start menu folder (using the -updateepg switch) and executed that. It had the desired effect of updating the schedule to record all episodes, together with the undesired effect of scheduling the recording of actual repeats despite having "Avoid duplicate recordings" checked. Apparently, the main issue is that SD seems unable to obtain episode identifiers for that show, which could solve all scheduling issues. (There is a nightly repeat of that day's show, and also a Saturday repeat of the Friday show.)

Ultimately NextPVR can only work on the information you're supplying it. If your guide doesn't identify shows as a repeat, NextPVR has no way to know it is. If your guide data doesn't explicitly identify a show as being the same as another show, then it is assumed to be new, and unique.

One thing to be aware of, which has tripped a few people up in the past, is that NextPVR remembers shows that you have recorded (and deleted) in the last 90 days, and wont re-record these if they've got the same show identifier. (there is a command line to tell it to forget the historic recording info)

The only way around the duplicate recording situation is to restrict the time slot of the recording. This evidently is not an NPVR feature. (Restricting time slot also unfortunately creates a twice yearly headache in this time zone because the show is broadcast DST clock changes, whereas Arizona is always on standard time. Therefore not an ideal situation.)

The net: The mystery of the missing recordings was due to inaccurate guide info. My additional problems grew out of inability to perceive that as the cause.

Regarding the timeslot recordings - you can select 'Record Season (Weekdays, this timeslot)' when scheduling your recording in NextPVR. This effectively tells it to record any shows with the same name, that start +/- 90 minutes of that original recording. ie, this will cope with daylight savings, or slight variances to the broadcast schedule (like airing an hour later one week etc).

That said, Schedules Direct is usually pretty good at have having unique show identifiers. If they don't have show identifiers for your show, it'd be worth asking them and there is a good chance they'll be able to get them added. .

However, beyond that there appears to be a major missing scheduling feature that I use/used heavily in Windows Media Center: Namely, the ability to list series, and from the series list, change the settings of the entire series. Pretty much all of my misadventures with scheduling came from trying to accomplish that from a single episode time slot. That methodology simply can't work. Recordings are fundamentally either a series or a single.

I'm not sure exactly what you're asking for there.

[SpinyGreen]

To remove season recordings go to the Recordings->Recurring screen, and hit 'Cancel' on the recurring recordings you want to delete. It'll cancel and remove the recurring recording, and any pending recordings associated with it.

Thank you. I thought the "Recordings" menu item listed recordings. As in "recorded media avalable for viewing".

After a recording is created, you can't change it's type. ie, you can't change a 'record once' to a 'recurring recording'. You can however change attributes about that recording - like the padding, or number of episodes to keep etc.

I understand. However, episodes scheduled as recurring appear as "record once" when accessed episodically using the guide. I wasn't aware of the series settings being in a different place. It just appeared to me that the database had somehow changed my series into a single recording. Things are now starting to fall into place. Understand that I am used to using WMC, where the same menu has entries "Change this episode only" and "Change entire series".

Ultimately NextPVR can only work on the information you're supplying it. If your guide doesn't identify shows as a repeat, NextPVR has no way to know it is. If your guide data doesn't explicitly identify a show as being the same as another show, then it is assumed to be new, and unique.

Yes, I am well aware of the complications of guide issues. I didn't recognize it here because they suddenly stopped being marked new from Monday forward, but of course I didn't know that until today.

One thing to be aware of, which has tripped a few people up in the past, is that NextPVR remembers shows that you have recorded (and deleted) in the last 90 days, and wont re-record these if they've got the same show identifier. (there is a command line to tell it to forget the historic recording info)

Thanks. I don't think that will be an issue for me.

Regarding the timeslot recordings - you can select 'Record Season (Weekdays, this timeslot)' when scheduling your recording in NextPVR. This effectively tells it to record any shows with the same name, that start +/- 90 minutes of that original recording. ie, this will cope with daylight savings, or slight variances to the broadcast schedule (like airing an hour later one week etc).

Aha! Excellent feature. That may solve a host of issues for me.

That said, Schedules Direct is usually pretty good at have having unique show identifiers. If they don't have show identifiers for your show, it'd be worth asking them and there is a good chance they'll be able to get them added. .

I will look into that.

I'm not sure exactly what you're asking for there.

You explained exactly where to find what I was looking for.

[sub]

Thank you. I thought the "Recordings" menu item listed recordings. As in "recorded media avalable for viewing".

The Recordings screen has lists of Ready recordings, New recordings, Pending recordings, Recurring recordings etc. Press left or right in the Recordings screen to switch been the different lists.

Personally, I've only ever browsed through the WMC user interface once, about 10 years ago. I've never setup a device in it, or scheduled a recording, so I really don't know much about it, or what different approaches it might use for doing things. I'm sure you'll get use to the NextPVR way of doing things fairly quickly. (ie, I was never developing NextPVR as a WMC replacement - it was just a similar app doing the same types of things)

[SpinyGreen]

Yes, I will eventually figure it out. (LOL)

Item 1:

The EPG seems to be shrinking daily. It now ends on October 14. I can't find the setting for the number of days in the future it should hold. Probably hiding in plain sight. I just can't find it.

Item 2:

The handling of the DB with respect to recurring is still somewhat of a mystery. I believe I have discovered a bug, or at the very least a bit of a design oddity in db management that could explain some mysterious behaviors I noticed last week.

Originally Posted by sub
Regarding the timeslot recordings - you can select 'Record Season (Weekdays, this timeslot)' when scheduling your recording in NextPVR. This effectively tells it to record any shows with the same name, that start +/- 90 minutes of that original recording. ie, this will cope with daylight savings, or slight variances to the broadcast schedule (like airing an hour later one week etc).

After reading that, I decided it was exactly what I needed, so I used it to create a new schedule while writing my previous post on Friday. At that time, one scheduled recording remained using the old recurring "new episodes" setup which had oid #62 in the db. That recording was scheduled for about an hour after my post.

Using the desired time slot in the Guide for Monday October 8, I created a recurring Monday through Friday recording schedule for that time slot only. It was set up with with different padding and number of episodes than the old series about to expire. I then refreshed the guide.

In the NPVR.log (with debug on), I saw entries setting up a new recurring schedule assigned number 78. It logged "Potential episode..." entries dealing with the new recurring schedule beginning with the Friday time slot. (good feature!)

As expected, the Friday slot was skipped as "already got this episode scheduled". Then Saturday and Sunday were also skipped for the obvious reason "doesn't match rules". Then the Monday slot was scheduled as it matched all of the rules. And then also for each remaining weekday in the guide. All working as expected. (The entries for each scheduled recording ending with @1, @2.0, @2.1,... @5 are somewhat mysterious, but I assume they refer to various steps in the recording setup, and are as expected.)

When reviewing the db this AM I noticed that the recurrence_oid column for every one of those entries in the SCHEDULED_RECORDING table in the db was set to the value 62. That value matches the oid of the original recurring schedule that requires "new" episodes. Whereas, as stated above the oid of the recurring_recording entry actually used to generate these entries has the oid with value 78 (as also shown in the log).

I can't see any good reason to explain setting that column in a scheduled recording entry to a value different than the oid of the RECURRING_RECORDING entry that pertains to the settings actually used to schedule the recording. Otherwise, what is the purpose of the column? (As mentioned in an earlier post in the thread, I have a lot of experience with relational database.)

This seems like either a bug or a very strange design.

You should never have to manually do stuff in the database. To remove season recordings go to the Recordings->Recurring screen, and hit 'Cancel' on the recurring recordings you want to delete. It'll cancel and remove the recurring recording, and any pending recordings associated with it.

Because the schedule for only "new episode" entries (with oid 62) was now obsolete, I followed this advice to delete the recurring schedule that requires new episodes. Sure enough, my suspicions were realized. All of the scheduled recordings vanished from the guide! (Also confirmed using SQLite Spy.)

This result obviously has a simple workaround. I manually refreshed the Guide and the recordings all reappeared, but this time with the value 78 in the recurrence_oid column.

However, my expectation of a DVR is that when I schedule a series and it schedule recordings, the schedule will not disappear when
I delete a series schedule having different rules. I am pretty certain that would not have happened if the recurrence_oid coulmn had been assigned the correct value 78 when the entries were first created. It doesn't seem to make much sense to allow mutiple entries for the same title in the recurring_recording table, but then use an arbitrary oid value in the recurrence_oid column of scheduled recording entries created using various different oids. Could you verify this behavior for me?

[SpinyGreen]

I wrote:

Item 1:

The EPG seems to be shrinking daily. It now ends on October 14. I can't find the setting for the number of days in the future it should hold. Probably hiding in plain sight. I just can't find it.

When all else fails RTFM. I found it. Config.xml

However, what is "SchedulesDirectDaysOvernight"?

[sub]

Could you verify this behavior for me?

Nope. I'm getting on a plane in few hours, and will be about 9000 miles from my computer for the next 3 weeks.

[ElihuRozen]

I wrote:

When all else fails RTFM. I found it. Config.xml

However, what is "SchedulesDirectDaysOvernight"?

I believe that one is used for the overnight update of the EPG that you schedule and the other value is used when you manually update the EPG.

Also, note that the scheduling happens only when it updates the EPG. So, if you make changes, they will not take effect until the next time the EPG is updated. My understanding is that after it updates the EPG, it first removes anything it has scheduled and then uses the priorities to schedule things. The next day, it removes everything again and reschedules.