NPVR "Recording Service Not Running at Recording Time"

[Graham]

Hi,
I don't see NPVR recording more than 2 channels together, ever. For example last night it successfully recorded a complex set of butting recordings, but only by removing the pre- and post-padding which wouldn't be necessary if it could record more than 2.

NextPVR creates a ndigitalhost task for each tuner and it is the ndigitalhost task that connects to the tuner and receives the broadcast stream. The ndigitalhost tasks create log files that are numbered. We see that you have logs for ndigitalhost-22 and ndigitalhost-23 with 22 being for one tuner and 23 being for the other tuner.

The 22 log has this ...

2018-02-11 19:57:00.067 [INFO][18] DigitalRecorder.StartStream(F:\Recorded TV\TempRec\Lost Cities of the Maya Revealed\Lost Cities of the Maya Revealed_20180211_20002100.ts)
2018-02-11 19:57:00.076 [DEBUG][18] Calling LockChannel()
2018-02-11 19:57:00.113 [DEBUG][18] locked=1, present=1, strength=63, quality=83 (took 31ms to check)
2018-02-11 19:57:00.113 [DEBUG][18] File size is 2012352
2018-02-11 19:57:00.113 [INFO][18] DigitalRecorder.StartStream() allocated handle: 0x2
2018-02-11 19:57:00.115 [DEBUG][18] Temp at 11/02/2018 19:57:10
2018-02-11 19:58:00.136 [INFO][21] DigitalRecorder.StartStream(F:\Recorded TV\TempRec\Endeavour\Endeavour_20180211_20002200.ts)
2018-02-11 19:58:00.142 [DEBUG][21] Calling LockChannel()
2018-02-11 19:58:00.198 [DEBUG][21] locked=1, present=1, strength=63, quality=83 (took 63ms to check)

and this indicates that a single tuner is recording both of these programmes.

The most recent 23 log has ...

2018-02-11 21:57:00.862 [ERROR][39] StartStream Exception: System.Runtime.InteropServices.SEHException (0x80004005): External component has thrown an exception.
at Native.DigitalRecorderBase.StartStream(String target, Int32 serviceID)
at NShared.DigitalRecorder.StartStream(ChannelMapping channelMapping, String target, String& reason)
at NDigitalHost.RecorderRemote.StartStream(ChannelMapping channelMapping, String target, String& reason)

and I have no clue what this error is saying.

Did you do a rescan when BBC4 changed frequency a few weeks ago? In any event, my suggestion would be to go to NextPVR Settings --> Channels ... delete all instances of BBC4 (there may be more than one) ... reboot to restart everything ... go to NextPVR Settings --> Devices and rescan to pick up a "clean" BBC4.

Edit: I'm not sure why there are oddities with padding ... we can look at that when we have both tuners working as they should.

[andrewj]

Hi Graham,
It took me a week or two to discover about the move of BBC4 HD, but I did then delete the old instances and re-tune. Recordings on BBC4 are now working OK, so I don't think that's the problem, although I have found the EPG to be a bit odd this week, which suggests that the Schedules are also catching up.

Interesting re the two tuners. Can you see any evidence of the same fault earlier on log 23?
- does anyone else recognise this error or what it means?

I have just received my second dual HD tuner, so I can try installing that in the morning and see what happens.
Andrew

[sub]

I don't see NPVR recording more than 2 channels together, ever. For example last night it successfully recorded a complex set of butting recordings, but only by removing the pre- and post-padding which wouldn't be necessary if it could record more than 2. The frequency for all four channels involved is 54600. Do I need to make an adjustment to enable this?

It's enabled by default. Does it let you go into the TV Guide and schedule recordings four more than 2 BBC channels at the same time? It should (assuming they're on the same frequency)

[sub]

Interesting re the two tuners. Can you see any evidence of the same fault earlier on log 23?
- does anyone else recognise this error or what it means?

At this stage we don't really have a lot to go on.

Did you try my suggestion of stopping the service and running NRecord.exe manually for a while, to see if there is any error messages on the screen?

[sub]

2018-02-11 21:57:00.858 [INFO][39] DigitalRecorder.StartStream(F:\Recorded TV\TempRec\The Sky at Night\The Sky at Night_20180211_22002230.ts)
2018-02-11 21:57:00.862 [ERROR][39] StartStream Exception: System.Runtime.InteropServices.SEHException (0x80004005): External component has thrown an exception.
at Native.DigitalRecorderBase.StartStream(String target, Int32 serviceID)
at NShared.DigitalRecorder.StartStream(ChannelMapping channelMapping, String target, String& reason)
at NDigitalHost.RecorderRemote.StartStream(ChannelMapping channelMapping, String target, String& reason)

What channel is this? Do recordings on this channel ever work?

[andrewj]

The Sky at Night was on BBC4, but I have just watched it - it recorded OK. Does that make any sense?

[andrewj]

I'll experiment with scheduling more than 2 recordings together tomorrow, before I try installing an additional tuner.

[sub]

The Sky at Night was on BBC4, but I have just watched it - it recorded OK. Does that make any sense?

It looked like that one failed, so it asked another tuner to do it. The second one must have worked.

[sub]

In the Settings->Devices screen, when you double click on your devices, you have the 'CI / CAM' setting set to 'None' right? Other options can cause issues.

[andrewj]

OK, I've done some tests, and the results look pretty good:

First I recorded 4 programs simultaneously, two HD on one frequency and two SD on another at overlapping timeslots. This all worked and padding seemed to be correct. The only oddity was that the first program to record got split into two - a short 3s snippet, followed by a second file with the main recording. There doesn't seem to be any explanation in the logs or Windows event logs for this, but I'm wondering if it was the process of "starting up" the second tuner. Is this a known behaviour?

Second I recorded three programs, one on one channel overlapping two on a second channel on the same frequency with adjacent timeslots. This all seemed to work OK with the correct padding.

The upshot is that things seem to be working at the moment, and I can't reproduce the problem. I did do a reboot yesterday, so maybe that has helped. I guess I will have to wait for a few days and see what happens.