Occasionally recordings fail to play until I exit Kodi

[cncb]

I am running X-Newa in Kodi (16.1) on the NVidia Shield Android TV. Occasionally when trying to play a recording it fails to play for no apparent reason. If I exit Kodi, and then go back in the same recordings play without issue. The logs seem to indicate that it fails to open the file but doesn't seem to give a reason. I am using path substitutions so maybe these are acting flaky? I have attached log files for both cases when it fails to play and plays fine. I would be grateful if you could take a look. Thanks.

[mvallevand]

I am running X-Newa in Kodi (16.1) on the NVidia Shield Android TV. Occasionally when trying to play a recording it fails to play for no apparent reason. If I exit Kodi, and then go back in the same recordings play without issue. The logs seem to indicate that it fails to open the file but doesn't seem to give a reason. I am using path substitutions so maybe these are acting flaky? I have attached log files for both cases when it fails to play and plays fine. I would be grateful if you could take a look. Thanks.

Sorry I don't understand what it going on. Both of those logs show failures starting x-newa and then another failure the first time the file is loaded. I can't explain that one, it is almost like a previous Kodi session's info is being queued.

Martin

[cncb]

Thanks for looking. Hopefully Kodi v17 will avoid this strange problem.

[mvallevand]

Thanks for looking. Hopefully Kodi v17 will avoid this strange problem.

I also saw this http://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=...pid2368238 recently which maybe is an option if the problem with Samba and Kodi on the Shield.

I am not as confident about the future of Kodi for Android as you are or I would buy a shield myself to see.

Martin

[BrettB]

I am running X-Newa in Kodi (16.1) on the NVidia Shield Android TV. Occasionally when trying to play a recording it fails to play for no apparent reason. If I exit Kodi, and then go back in the same recordings play without issue. The logs seem to indicate that it fails to open the file but doesn't seem to give a reason. I am using path substitutions so maybe these are acting flaky? I have attached log files for both cases when it fails to play and plays fine. I would be grateful if you could take a look. Thanks.

I have been seeing the exact same behavior with Kodi on my RPi3. I did find that when it fails in X-NEWA, I can go to the Kodi videos menu and open the file directly. (I've got the SMB shares mapped as video libraries in Kodi.) After that, I can go back into X-NEWA, and it will play successfully there. Or, I can simply reboot the RPi3, then go directly back into X-NEWA and it will play successfully.

It only seems to affect a few recordings, and I haven't been able to discern a pattern, cause, etc. Interestingly, though, it has consistently affect EVERY recording of The Late Show With Stephen Colbert this week. (And I'm pretty sure last week, too.) Since that's the show you were having problems with, it seems like more than a coincidence.

[cncb]

That is interesting that you are having the same problem with the same show. In my case, I think I have only noticed it on CBS shows but I record the Late Show nightly so it has the most recordings. It also just seems to affect the most recent recording for me. That is, if I have several Late Show recordings, only the most recent will fail to play and the others play fine.

[mvallevand]

The only thing I can think of if both of you have them in the initial Video Library too is the Kodi Library scan is messing with playback.

Martin

[BrettB]

The only thing I can think of if both of you have them in the initial Video Library too is the Kodi Library scan is messing with playback.

I'm not sure what you mean by "initial Video Library." I do have all of the NPVR recording folders (one on each of 3 different drives) included in the Videos Files list to be able to get to the easily if needed. But I don't normally use those. And I don't currently have Kodi automatically scanning those folders to update its database. So, I don't think that a Kodi library scan would be the problem.

It feels to me like it is some sort of bug with the SMB client. I did notice that with 3.7.7, NextPVR is apparently including the subtitle in the filename for recordings. And since the subtitles for The Late Show With include a semi-colon separated list of the guests, those file names get pretty long. Plus add in the fact that the path includes the long-ish folder name of "The Late Show With Stephen Colbert" and you get some pretty long full file names. (i.e. "F:\NPVR Recordings3\The Late Show With Stephen Colbert\The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.S01E177.Charlie Rose, Gayle King and Norah O'Donnell; DeRay Mckesson; Bonnie McFarlane.ts") Of course, then the path substitution to change from the drive letter to the UNC path makes it even longer.

The weird part to me is the consistency that the "problem recordings" will consistently not play from within X-NEWA until I either access them from the Videos library (where they will play just fine on the first try every time) or reboot the RPi. After doing one of those things, then they will always play just fine in X-NEWA. I do have X-NEWA set to try to scan folders into the Kodi DB before playing, so I guess it is possible that there is something with that--although where the error occurs in the kodi.log file as the player is trying to open the .ts file wouldn't seem to suggest that. Maybe I'll trying disabling those X-NEWA functions and see if it makes any difference.