Recordings doesn't use same channel tuners

[Handy.Man]

I'm still trying to figure out why he is screwing around with the padding. Canadian TV like US is very accurate because of the network scheduling and I'd be hard pressed to find an Infoman that needed adjustment.

Martin

Yes I know most program have some advertisements during the first 15-60 sec. So 0 padding works fine with a precise clock.

On my server, Win7 time service is not so reliable on reboot. On the client it is always in sync.
In order to get the clock synced to my firewall NTP server, I have to go : Date Hour settings / Internet Time / Modify Parameters / Update
After this the clock stay in sync until the next reboot.

I rebooted the server 2 days ago and forgot to sync the Windows Time service, I noticed today that its was 10 sec late.

Having functional extra pre/post padding would provide complete recordings when the clock shifts

I want to get complete recordings for the programs I encoded and share.
For the other programs, like News or entertainment, I often program them with negative padding to help the scheduler do the padding.

[johnsonx42]

From what I understand, during an EPG Update the scheduler will :

Program each Recurring Recordings using the ascending priority order and schedule recordings using first available tuner for that time-slot according to the priority without regards to padding or surrounding recordings.

sounds right.

Then it will schedule Quick Recordings in the order they present themselves chronologically, using the first available tuner for that time-slot without regards to padding or surrounding recordings. If no tuner is available, it will create conflict (remove it's scheduling) for the less priority Recurring Recording in the time-slot and schedule the Quick Recording.

completely wrong. the scheduler doesn't touch single or "quick" recordings (a quick recording is just a method in the GUI to schedule a single recording with default settings using one click or button press; after that it is no different than any other single recording). single recordings are scheduled at the moment you request them, and once scheduled are basically cast in stone unless you yourself go and change them. at the time you schedule a single recording, it is scheduled against the existing backdrop of all pending recordings. during the nightly EPG update, all pending recurring recordings are cleared while pending single recordings are left in place (the former have a non-zero recurrance_oid); then each recurring recording is re-processed and re-scheduled against the backdrop of the existing single recordings.

Looking at the db3 I find :

Code:

Start Tuner Pre Post CH Title
19:30 26    0   0    2  La Facture
20:00 26    0   1    2  Unité 9
20:00 24    0   0    6  Rick Mercer
20:30 24    1   1    6  22 Minutes
21:00 26    0   0    17 Banc Public
21:00 24    0   0    6  Schitt'S Creek

With this scheduling, the post padding on "Unité 9" can't be honored if next recording "Banc Public" stay scheduled on channel 26, maybe the logic will switch it to Tuner 20. However if no tuner is available, it will cut it short of it's post padding

last I'm aware, the software makes zero effort to make post-padding happen. if the tuner is scheduled to do something else it just stops doing the one recording and starts the other, and in fact does it rather unceremoniously. so there's really only two conditions where you will get post-padding: either the tuner is doing nothing during the post-padding period, or the tuner is doing another recording on the same physical channel. it only attempts to move a recording for pre-padding.

[Handy.Man]

completely wrong. the scheduler doesn't touch single or "quick" recordings (a quick recording is just a method in the GUI to schedule a single recording with default settings using one click or button press; after that it is no different than any other single recording). single recordings are scheduled at the moment you request them, and once scheduled are basically cast in stone unless you yourself go and change them. at the time you schedule a single recording, it is scheduled against the existing backdrop of all pending recordings. during the nightly EPG update, all pending recurring recordings are cleared while pending single recordings are left in place (the former have a non-zero recurrance_oid); then each recurring recording is re-processed and re-scheduled against the backdrop of the existing single recordings.

Well that make more sense during the EPG update, it can flush all Recurring recordings and rebuild them by reading the recurring-backup.xml, for the non recurring recordings, it has to let them in place.

Thanks for the clarification.

last I'm aware, the software makes zero effort to make post-padding happen. if the tuner is scheduled to do something else it just stops doing the one recording and starts the other, and in fact does it rather unceremoniously. so there's really only two conditions where you will get post-padding: either the tuner is doing nothing during the post-padding period, or the tuner is doing another recording on the same physical channel. it only attempts to move a recording for pre-padding.

Well that explain a few problems I had in the past. I can now manage by scheduling unneeded Recurring Recordings and setting the priority to keep them aligned on the same tuners.

Thanks you for you input.

[Handy.Man]

I am correct in presuming that pre-padding is only considered when the recordings is about to start (Scheduled time + pre-padding + 1 min or so) ?
At this point,
If the scheduled Tuner is available it will start with pre-padding.
If the scheduled Tuner tuner is already tuned to the same channel, it will start with pre-padding.
If the scheduled Tuner is in use on a different channel :
No other tuner available : It will start recording without pre-padding, when the previous recording end (probably dropping post-padding)
Tuner available : Move recordings to an available tuner and start recording with pre-padding.

If a tuner is presently recording the same channel, will it move the recording from the scheduled Tuner to the in use tuner ?

[johnsonx42]

Well that make more sense during the EPG update, it can flush all Recurring recordings and rebuild them by reading the recurring-backup.xml

no, what I mean is it flushes the pending recordings that were created from recurring recordings, then schedules them all again after the EPG update. The backup files are not involved. This way the scheduled recordings will reflect any scheduling changes in the newly loaded EPG data, like if a show is canceled or changes time slots; sometimes also you get shows that first appear in the EPG data two weeks out with only generic information, then after a few days as the broadcast date draws near the epg data gets more complete with a specific description, sub-title and most importantly the unique_id.

... for the non recurring recordings, it has to let them in place.

yes.

if I didn't mention it before, the difference between a pending recurring and pending non-recurring recording in the SCHEDULED_RECORDINGS table is that the recurring recording with have the recurrance_oid field filled with the number matching the oid in the RECURRING_RECORDING table. A non-recurring recording will just have a 0 there. Fun fact then, the Archive function both moves the recording to where you specify, and zeros the recurrance_oid field so that it's no longer associated with the original recurring recording and therefore not subject to automatic deletion.

[Handy.Man]

Fun fact then, the Archive function both moves the recording to where you specify, and zeros the recurrance_oid field so that it's no longer associated with the original recurring recording and therefore not subject to automatic deletion.

Good to know as I only have one folder for TV, I never saw the Archive button.

I encode the show to compress them instead of keeping the huge .ts files.

So this would better reflect the process :

[COLOR="#A52A2A"]When a EPG Update event occurs, it load the schedule, clear all Recurring Recordings, leaving non-Recurring (QuicK) recordings in place, update the EPG data, reload Recurring Recordings data.

Then it will program each Recurring Recordings using the ascending priority order and schedule recordings using first available tuner for that time-slot according to the tuner priority without regards to padding or surrounding recordings.

If it run out of tuner, it will schedule remaining Recurring Recordings with Tuner 0 indicating a conflict.[/COLOR]

[johnsonx42]

yeah, that's about right. while I've not experimented with it at all, my understanding is that the scheduler does consider negative padding (introduced just this release), as the intention was to allow slightly overlapping programs to be recorded on the same tuner without causing a conflict. I have no idea what all it does with negative padding. I suppose being the curious sort I am, I ought to test it out a bit.

[sub]

[COLOR="#A52A2A"]When a EPG Update event occurs, it load the schedule, clear all Recurring Recordings, leaving non-Recurring (QuicK) recordings in place, update the EPG data, reload Recurring Recordings data.

Then it will program each Recurring Recordings using the ascending priority order and schedule recordings using first available tuner for that time-slot according to the tuner priority without regards to padding or surrounding recordings.

If it run out of tuner, it will schedule remaining Recurring Recordings with Tuner 0 indicating a conflict.[/COLOR]

A couple of other factors to also keep in mind:

- one-off recordings can also get rescheduled, if it detects the show start/end times have moved since the time it was originally scheduled.
- looking for an available tuner also takes into account multi-record, ie, same or other channels on the same frequency. (not so common in North America, pretty common in the rest of the world)

[johnsonx42]

I am correct in presuming that pre-padding is only considered when the recordings is about to start (Scheduled time + pre-padding + 1 min or so) ?
At this point,
If the scheduled Tuner is available it will start with pre-padding.
If the scheduled Tuner tuner is already tuned to the same channel, it will start with pre-padding.
If the scheduled Tuner is in use on a different channel :
No other tuner available : It will start recording without pre-padding, when the previous recording end (probably dropping post-padding)
Tuner available : Move recordings to an available tuner and start recording with pre-padding.

If a tuner is presently recording the same channel, will it move the recording from the scheduled Tuner to the in use tuner ?

yes to the opening question, yes to the closing question. the original restrictions apply though: that tuner has to be available for the entirety of the scheduled recording, and it's only going to move the one recording.

A couple of other factors to also keep in mind:

- one-off recordings can also get rescheduled, if it detects the show start/end times have moved since the time it was originally scheduled.

I'd forgotten it can do that, mostly I guess because I schedule very few one-off recordings and start/end times don't change very often. I've never noticed logging for that step, it must do the check for changes silently and only logs something if a recording has to be moved?

[sub]

Yeah, there isn't really any logging around this.