Zero length recordings

[sub]

When it comes to playing .ts recording from digital devices, your timeline is at the mercy of broadcaster, and what they've done during the process of the recording. Some players take a simplistic look at the first timestamp in the file and the last timestamp in the file, and use that to determine the duration. It doesn't really help you if the broadcaster has spliced together two different bits of content with different timelines. ie, the end timestamp might be less than the first timestamp, or there could be a big gap somewhere in the middle.

[robertclemens]

Agreed. It seems odd that I've never had this issue before and have been recording for quite some time. The one thing that sticks out is that at one point I had the HDHR View utility to watch a program live on my computer (I never do this) and it froze the stream at one point. I can't quite remember if a recording was trying to access the device or not but that corresponds in time to my issues.

I'm hoping that a HDHR restart will provide some relief. I'll keep my eye on this and update if I have any further information.

Thanks for your responses!

[robertclemens]

So far a restart of the HDHR Prime might be doing the trick. It makes me wonder if the time length issues were occurring on the same tuner. I do believe NPVR records the tuner device that does the recording so I should be able to at least check on that much.
At any rate, one of the shows that was recording as 25 or 26 hours recorded today with the correct time length.

[ttfitz]

Okay, some new information. I just happened to check the recording status at exactly the right moment to notice something odd happening.

So, at 9pm I was recording Scandal and Sleepy Hollow, on tuners 1 and 2, leaving tuner 0 empty. At 10pm I had set to record How to Get Away with Murder (which is on the same channel as Scandal) and Haven. I just happened to check the status at 10pm, and found tuner 0 recording "How to...", with Scandal still recording on a different tuner, and it showed Sleepy Hollow AND Haven recording on the same tuner, even though they are NOT on the same channel. Needless to say, the Haven file was not getting any data sent to it.

It seems there was some confusion on the multirecord front, as I would have assumed that "How to..." would have been set to record on the tuner already tuned to the proper channel. Anyway, the log is attached, maybe this might get us somewhere on the original problem I started this thread about.

Thanks.

[ttfitz]

Don't know if any of this helps, but had this problem again. This time wasn't the same, no problems with multirecord, but in reading the log file it still seems something weird is going on. Marvel's Agents of SHIELD had the first problem, followed by The Bastard Executioner.

What seems weird to me is when it wants to record Marvel's Agents... the logs say there isn't a tuner available, but there should be. The Muppets finished at 8:30, and that tuner should have been free. So - if I'm reading this correctly - it eventually settles on tuner0, which is currently in use? Because the show being recorded there doesn't show up as ending until a minute later.

I think the same thing happens with The Bastard Executioner, but I didn't look at that much.

Here's what the Prime's config program thought was happening during Marvel's Agents:

[ATTACHMENT NOT FOUND]

I also ran the netstat command as asked to before, and nothing was using that port except NRECORD.

Not sure what I should do next. Thanks for any help on this.

[Graham]

... it showed Sleepy Hollow AND Haven recording on the same tuner, even though they are NOT on the same channel.

With apologies if I am preaching to the choir ... multi-record operates at the mux level so NextPVR can simultaneously record from two channels if both channels are on the same mux.

[Lao Pan]

With apologies if I am preaching to the choir ... multi-record operates at the mux level so NextPVR can simultaneously record from two channels if both channels are on the same mux.

Hi Graham
I think something got lost in the translation

In the UK we have Channels on Mux's - over the other side (of the pond) they have Sub Channels on Channels, so if programs are on different Channels they have to use different tuners. Sub Channels (as in 52.1,52.2 etc.) can use the same tuner ---- I think :confused:

[ttfitz]

With apologies if I am preaching to the choir ... multi-record operates at the mux level so NextPVR can simultaneously record from two channels if both channels are on the same mux.

This is true - and I make use of it with my QAM tuner - but things work differently on the HDHomeRun Prime. Because of the cablecard setup, my understanding is that there isn't any way to tell what might be on the same mux, so NPVR can only do the multirecord on the channel level. And this capability has only existed in the last few versions of the program, too.

[ttfitz]

Don't know if anyone is looking at this or not, since I haven't gotten any feedback, but some more problems tonight, so I thought I'd post just in case. I thought perhaps since it seems like this tends to happen when I have been running for a few days without a restart that maybe it was that, so I restarted the Prime a couple times, including last night, but still problems today. It seems to only happen (1) when all three tuners are in use or (2) after a previous problem. Both of those tonight, with Criminal Minds messing up first, followed by The Daily Show and The Nightly Show.

Log is attached. I guess now I'll try rebooting my entire machine every couple days and see if that clears anything up.

[ttfitz]

Just an update, in case anyone cares - I have tried rebooting my entire system every day, sometimes every other day, and so far it has proven successful, it's been a couple weeks now without a zero length recording.

Since it is annoying having to close all my open programs and restart, I wanted to try restarting NPVR and see if that takes care of the problem without doing a reboot. I should probably ask this question in a new thread as I'm not sure anyone has been reading any of this, but I'll try it out here first:

Is there any way to cleanly restart the NPVR system? I have tried going into Services and stopping then restarting NRecord, I have tried using the links in the NPVR folder to Stop NPVR Service, then Start NPVR Service, and I have tried using "Restart Recording Service" from the context menu on the tray application. In almost every instance (the "Restart Recording Service" worked the first time, but never again), after restarting the tray application is messed up - won't accept a right click. I've even tried exiting tray application first, then stopping and restarting, but no luck.

So, best case if I could get things to work cleanly from a scheduled task, that would be great. But even if I had to do it manually, as long as it didn't mess stuff up that would help.

Thanks.