Recording Goes an Hour, But Actual File is Only 16 Minutes

[pkscout]

This is a stumper for me.  I have a network based analog encoder that let's me record stuff from my cable box (I'm on Spectrum Cable TV in Hawaii).  I often watch LiveTV from this for hours on end (I leave HGTV droning on in the background).  I also do scheduled recordings on it a fair amount (various channels).  On a pretty regular (but non-predictable) basis, I get recordings from HGTV that NextPVR says went an hour, but the file itself is only around 16 minutes long (that 16 minutes is pretty consistent).

I'm attaching some logs.  The most recent case is in the nrecord.log.1 (look for Property Brothers: Forever Home that started a couple of minutes before 21:00 on 05/13/2020.  I don't think the log is telling me anything, but it's happened often enough that I thought I'd mention it.  I'm always able to try again (Property Borthers repeats *alot*) or get it off onDemand, so it's not like I'm actually missing anything, but it is annoying (more so because there is no pattern).

I do wonder whether this could be some filesystem interaction issue between Docker and Windows 10 Pro, but I'm not sure where to look to try and figure that out. Honestly, I'd expect it to happen more often if that was the case, but it's possible.

Thanks.

[mvallevand]

What apps is showing that the recording is 16 minutes?

It looks like you still have "unsupported by your device" hevc as your primary source not all apps like that. Also I see this

2020-05-13 22:02:06.736 [DEBUG][9] Starting: bash -c "'/config/scripts/PostProcessing.sh' '/recordings/TVShows/Property Brothers Forever Home/Property.Brothers.Forever.Home.S03E05.The.New.Hub.of.the.Neighborhood.ts' 1323 7083 25 'Property Brothers: Forever Home'"
2020-05-13 22:02:14.193 [ERROR][38] [hevc @ 0x1a67a80] PPS id out of range: 0

So that tells me there is an hevc error.

Martin

[pkscout]

Both Kodi and VLC show a 16 minute recording. I'll switch to H264, although I think I did that a couple weeks ago with no effect. I may pull that recording off the backup and see if I can run it through a VLC fix. That might fix it if the issue is just a timecode issue.

[mvallevand]

You can probably tell by the file size.

Also small point that isn't really Kodi that you are using it looks like OSMC on an RPi. For playback there is a difference.

Martin

[sub]

Remind me what uray.sh is running to supply the data?

I wonder if in that script we can send any logging to somewhere, so we could see if it lost connection or anything? Alternatively, I could try to add some logging in nrecord.log, so we can see if it stopped growing at a specific time?

[mvallevand]

I gave the basics to him it is going to be something like

blaster commands
curl -s URL of device

This is something I would change if you decide to implement my recent request that would allow an extra to pass back a URL.

Martin

[pkscout]

Remind me what uray.sh is running to supply the data?

I wonder if in that script we can send any logging to somewhere, so we could see if it lost connection or anything? Alternatively, I could try to add some logging in nrecord.log, so we can see if it stopped growing at a specific time?

Here's the sh file:

Code:

# change the channel
python3 /config/scripts/iguana-blaster/execute.py -c $1

# open the stream
curl  http://172.16.1.4/0.ts
wait
exit $?

The file is definitely small, so the data not making it to the file.  There's a possibility this is due to Docker on Windows.  A recent Docker update broke my MariaDB instance because it could no longer write to a locally mapped volume, and the response from the MariaDB folks was that the local driver on Docker for Windows Isn't Awesome ™ and you shouldn't expect it to work (that was 3 hours of my life I'm never getting back, and now MariaDb is running native on Windows).  So that could be happening here periodically.  I'm further away from getting a new NAS than I thought, so I may bite the bullet and move NextPVR back to native Windows, although getting things like this extras script converted to Windows might be a bit of a chore for me (Windows is not my thing).  I have to decide it it's worse to just re-record a couple things a week or go through the hassle of converting.

[pkscout]

OK, this is mostly just for completeness. I'm pretty sure at this point that this isn't a NextPVR problem. Or an encoder problem (I've tried both HVEC and H264). And I'm almost convinced it isn't Docker or Docker on Windows 10 Pro either. I've been looking at my failed recordings, and right now it's ONLY HGTV and ONLY between 9pm and 10pm on Wednesdays local time. I just recorded two shows today that didn't record properly over the last couple of Wednesdays, and they are fine.

I'm going to set up some other recordings for that time slot on different channels and see what happens.

[sub]

I wonder if they're changing resolutions on that channels? like during adverts or something, and it's upsetting the HDMI encoder?

Maybe the set top box has an option to output a fixed resolution?

[pkscout]

I wonder if they're changing resolutions on that channels? like during adverts or something, and it's upsetting the HDMI encoder?

Maybe the set top box has an option to output a fixed resolution?

I'll double check, but I think I already set the box to a single resolution back when I used NextPVR4 with an HDPVR.  I have recorded successfully on that particular channel (HGTV) many other times (and watched it live for almost an entire day) with no problems.  It's just that one hour on that one day of the week.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯