Poor man's EPG mode.

[mvallevand]

I wrote a little utility that will save the live tv buffer for a channel if recording is started while live tv is playing and it works pretty well
https://youtu.be/ex-aP0VFlVQ It actually doesn't matter who is watching it live.

I have a second part of the utility that allows me to combine the two parts and that works the only is issue is the PAT entries in the recordings don't have the same sequence number.  Is there any reason to fix this? I could insert a few PAT's to make them sync if necessary.

Martin

[mvallevand]

I decided to go with just adding some dummy PAT's when I join the buffer and recording. I seems to be working ok either way, but this way if I scan the file looking for error I don't find a continuity error on the stream.

Martin

[sgilani]

Please share the wealth when it's ready to be shared. 

[mvallevand]

I lost some interest in this when sports got cancelled and the live tv I watch seems to be news. If you are willing to help test sure, what O/S are you using?

There are two issues with recording a "full" show. Sub doesn't support multi-rec for IPTV and he choses not to use multi-rec to record a live show if you have a tuner available so in those cases only the buffered part of the show is available.

I don't go back and allow saving of earlier shows either so it is not the buffer but the show that is saved.

Martin

[sgilani]

I lost some interest in this when sports got cancelled and the live tv I watch seems to be news.  If you are willing to help test sure, what O/S are you using? 

There are two issues with recording a "full" show.  Sub doesn't support multi-rec for IPTV and he choses not to use multi-rec to record a live show if you have a tuner available so in those cases only the buffered part of the show is available. 

I don't go back and allow saving of earlier shows either so it is not the buffer but the show that is saved.

Martin

Yeah, I'm with you with the lack of sports (I take it you're a Raptors fan, I'm okay with that  )

But on the flip side, this means more time to test things out. I'm using Windows 10, running the Windows client and am happy to test. Lack of earlier shows is just fine with me, as that is what EPG mode is expected to be anyhow.

Can you elaborate on the multirec issue though? Let's say I'm using an IPTV source and started watching a one hour show at 3pm. At 3:10, I decide to record it and hit record. Would I end up with the entire one hour show recorded? (the previous 10 minute buffer + the recording from 3:10 to 4:00?)

[mvallevand]

For the match it will all depend on the stream you get. It tries to find exactly the same audio or video record in the ts payload (with PTS and a 188 byte match being pretty unique) and then as the recording grows so does the buffer. If your IPTV provider's second stream is exactly like the first then it might match and you'd get a complete recording in your database plus the partial one. If you stop a recording early the buffered recording stops too.

Martin

[sgilani]

Gotcha.. that's clever. If it can't find a match, could it at least prevent the watched buffer from being deleted?

[mvallevand]

You will always end up with two.   The recording marked with the (Buffer) may or may not be growing.  I don't tell NextPVR it is recording.

Unlike EPG mode this recording buffer can be anyone watching it live.  If two people are watch live tv behavior is not defined.

Martin.

[sgilani]

I only use the Windows client on the same machine as the backend, so no issues with concurrent live watching.

So that second part of the utility you talked about is what tries to do the merging? Even if that doesn't work, as long as the previously watched buffer doesn't get lost, that would be great.

Happy to beta test!

[mvallevand]

Ok I will check the code to make sure nothing is hardcoded to my environment and upload the file later on.

Further testing on that file which was from an extras file that called curl with my http hdmi encoder and sub did use multirec,

Code:

4/05/2020  18:26     149,514,520  The Situation Room With Wolf Blitzer_20200405_18001900-stitch.ts
4/05/2020  18:26     140,791,808  The Situation Room With Wolf Blitzer_20200405_18001900.ts

Martin.