Xrecord wacky behavior- repetitive entries

[pvrtinkerer]

In the past month or so, a strange behavior has developed on my GB-PVR box, and the poking around I've done makes me think it might be connected to Xrecord.

It seems that when priorityrecordings runs, it plows through the EPG data and adds entries to the recording queue. BUT, it doesn't take account of the entries that are already in the recording queue for some programs. Consequently I find myself with 10 identical entries for the same program at the same time. This is not a real problem, since it only records one instance of it, but it is annoying to look at my Pending tab and find that I've got 54 episodes of a weekly show pending in the next 2 weeks.

Any ideas on how to make this behave? I've used the SQlite browser and looked at the gbpvr.db3 file, and there are not multiple entries in the recording queue there... but there must be somewhere that all of these entries are getting made...

[fla]

Most people run priorityrecording.exe in postupdateepg.bat like this: "PriorityRecording.exe > recording.log". What's the contents of recording.log?

[pvrtinkerer]

Looks normal and unobjectionable, I think- see for yourself.

[KingArgyle]

It would also help to see your PriorityRecordings.xml file as well.

One other thing you can try as well is in UpdateEPG.bat, add in the deleterecordings.exe file as well. What this will do is delete any existing priority recordings that are in your PriorityRecordings.xml file that have been scheduled, and then reschedule them when PostUpdateEPG.bat runs.

Regardless, though it shouldn't schedule the same recording at the same time if it has already been scheduled.

[pvrtinkerer]

Thanks for the help!

Here are 1) priorityrecordings.xml and 2) a screenshot of pending recordings demonstrating the problem.

Also, I don't seem to have a DeleteRecordings.exe, but I do have a DeleteSchedule.exe. Are these the same thing?

[KingArgyle]

Yes, DeleteSchedule.exe is what you want to add to UpdateEPG.bat.

I'll take a look at the priority recordings file and see if I see anything odd.

[KingArgyle]

I think I know what is happenning. For the program Mystery, you don't have it set for how you want to handle scheduling duplicates. I.e. programs that have already been scheduled.

Code:

<Recording priority="6">
    <ProgramName>Mystery!</ProgramName>
    <Quality>Medium</Quality>
    <Suspended>False</Suspended>
    <Padding>
      <PrePadding>1</PrePadding>
      <PostPadding>2</PostPadding>
    </Padding>
  </Recording>

Set it up similar to how you have the program Nova scheduled:

Code:

<Recording priority="7">
    <ProgramName>Nova</ProgramName>
    <Quality>Medium</Quality>
    <Suspended>False</Suspended>
    <Duplicates>
      <Recorded>No</Recorded>
      <Scheduled>No</Scheduled>
    </Duplicates>
    <Padding>
      <PrePadding>1</PrePadding>
      <PostPadding>2</PostPadding>
    </Padding>
  </Recording>

With the Scheduled item set to No. What the intent for the Scheduled item, was to allow scheduling of a program later in the week if there was a conflict earlier in the week. It doesn't seem to be taking into account that the program has already been scheduled at that time on that tuner, it really needs to look for scheduling later in the week.

Hope that helps. Having the DeleteSchedule.exe will also help in these situations. Plus DeleteSchedule.exe will help in the situations in which the episode guide has changed since the last download. Just make sure to set GBPVR to empty the episode guide before it reloads it.

[pvrtinkerer]

Thanks for the diagnosis... but the Nova solution doesn't work. Nova is another problem program, so that change doesn't fix the issue. I'll give the deleteschedule.exe method a shot.

For what its worth, might some of the problem arise from the fact that the same Nova, Mystery, etc episodes are played on multiple channels in the EPG? I've got 3 PBS stations on my cable feed. But the problem arises in situations where there is only one guide entry on one channel too...

[KingArgyle]

Are the items that are scheduled for the same channel or for different channels? You might be able to handle it by putting a channel restriction on the shows.

But regardless, I'd open a bug at the Sourceforge site, so that fla can take a look at the code.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/cdkandxsuite/

[pvrtinkerer]

IT seems that the deleteschedule.exe trick does the job. Thanks for pointing that out.