Pad when possible and negative padding

[tvfiend]

It would be great if there could be an option to pad only when possible by show. Sort of like how WMC does without the back to back on same channel needs 10 minutes oddity. For instance if I have 2 tuners and recordings are setup like:

1. Channel1 8-9 Show1 weekly show
2. Channel2 8-9 Show2 weekly show that you want to make sure finishes
3. Channel1 9-10 Show3 that only airs once so you really want it
4. Channel2 9-10 Show4 weekly show

Currently you can setup 1 to not pad, 2 to postpad, 3 to prepad, 4 to not prepad. Then it would require a change in padding after air to either post pad 1 or prepad 4. If one or the other could be set to pad when possible these sorts of changes wouldn't be needed.

Another thing is some shows always end earlier than scheduled, it would be great if there was a way to automatically stop them early, 10s, 15s, 20s, 30s, 45s, 60s, 90s, 120s, 3m, etc. To free the tuner up for another recording maybe by using negative padding?

Thanks for the program it's the only pvr besides wmc that can use my assortment of tuners.

[johnsonx42]

padding is already done on an 'if possible' basis; you set the padding you'd like, NRecord does it if has a tuner available.

'negative padding' or a 'end x minutes early' option has been asked for a few times. I think you can request an early end time using NEWA or the TV Listings/TV Recordings plugin, but it's implemented as a bit of a hack (no derision to UJB or Alibert intended) as the NPVR scheduler doesn't have support for any such option.

[whurlston]

Since you are doing back to back recordings on 2 channels with 2 tuners, you should get pre and post padding on all 4 shows. Unlike WMC, NextPVR can simultaneously be recording the post padding for the 8-9 show on channel 1 while it is recording the pre padding for show 2 on the same channel using a single tuner.

[johnsonx42]

that assumes his tuners can do that; analog can't, cablecard can't, hd-pvr can't. basically only ATSC/QAM and DVB tuners can do it.

(theoretically tuners that can't multi-record could still do overlapping padding on the same channel, but I gather sub decided it wasn't worth the extra work to implement for those tuner types given the limited benefit)

[whurlston]

Good point.

[tvfiend]

Thanks for the replies. I didn't do anything except quick testing but I noticed recording a back-to-back used 2 of 3 ATSC tuners. Guess I should have done more thorough testing. It sounds like the current way is a great implementation of doing it and something I had never thought of but the basics of it are simple. It would be of great benefit to me if it could be done with cablecard tuners as well. Wouldn't it just look like one double length recording to the tuner and npvr cuts it with respect to padding times?

I have TV listings and TV recording plugins but never saw a way to set negative padding or stop early. Do you mean manual recording? While a possibility that could be quite a mess with shows that change times like FX shows, most of which end 3-4 minutes earlier than EPG.