MP starts recording too late... (1 Viewer)

[karniemi]

Hi,

Is there some reason that recording of 3 movies scheduled at 21:00:00...only start recording at 21:00:09, 21:00:12 and 21:00:27? A bit late for all of them...check log...

Of course, it's easy for me to work around the problem by setting the recordings to start 1 minute earlier than the real start...but still, it's a bit odd behaviour. Just wondering if it could sometimes be even worse than those delays above...

(And yes, I did not even have tuners for the last two of them ...and I posted that problem to Kodi PVR forum...because Kodi did not warn anything about the conflict. Kodi just let me do it...so I thought the channels were on the same group/transponder/whatever-its-called.

 

[Edalex]

Well, I'm not familiar with technical details in this case but if you tv show starting in 21 it's reasonable to plan recording several minutes before especially if you're dealing with waking up pc like in your case. In my country event 10 minutes gap can't guarantee full recording

 

[mm1352000]

Hello again karniemi

Is there some reason that recording of 3 movies scheduled at 21:00:00...only start recording at 21:00:09, 21:00:12 and 21:00:27? A bit late for all of them...check log...

First, I only see TV Server attempting to start recording 2 movies at 21:00 instead of 3: "Elokuva: Star Wars: Pimeä uhka" and "Inception (12)". The 3rd movie ("Elokuva: The Expendables 2 (16)") is scheduled to start at 21:30.

...but the answer to your question is that TV Server does not provide the ability to record accurate to the exact second (eg. 21:00:00). Generally TV Server is only accurate to the correct minute.

Normally I would not explain the technical details, but from our last discussion I know you can understand them and might be interested, so...
The TV Server scheduler thread cycles every 15 seconds. In each cycle, it first stops the recordings that are due to be stopped, then starts the recordings that are due to start. Based on this implementation, we can see that what happened for you is:

1. The scheduler thread ran at 20:59:54. It wasn't time to stop or start any recordings yet, so it slept for another 15 seconds as usual.
2. The scheduler thread ran again at 21:00:09. Now it is time to start recordings.
3. The first recording to be started was "Elokuva: Star Wars: Pimeä uhka". This took 3 seconds.
4. The scheduler thread now tried to start the second recording ("Inception (12)"). However, you only had one tuner available, and it was tuned to a different frequency in order to record "Elokuva: Star Wars: Pimeä uhka". Therefore the second recording could not be started.
5. The scheduler thread ran again at 21:00:27 (15 seconds after the end of the last cycle). Again, TV Server knows that it is time to record "Inception (12)", but nothing can be done because there are not enough free tuners.
6. The check (like step 5) is repeated every 15 seconds until 21:30:13. Now it is also time to start recording "Elokuva: The Expendables 2 (16)". This recording is also on a channel from a different frequency (compared to "Elokuva: Star Wars: Pimeä uhka"), so it also can't be recorded.
7. The check for both "Inception (12)" and "Elokuva: The Expendables 2 (16)" (like step 6) is repeated every 15 seconds until the end of the log.

Of course, it's easy for me to work around the problem by setting the recordings to start 1 minute earlier than the real start...but still, it's a bit odd behaviour. Just wondering if it could sometimes be even worse than those delays above...

As above: this is normal and expected behaviour for TV Server and every other PC recording software that I'm aware of.

Based on the technical details that I shared, the worst possible delay for starting the first recording would be 14.999 seconds; delay for other recordings depends on how long it takes to start the earlier recordings (eg. 3 seconds in the case of "Elokuva: Star Wars: Pimeä uhka").

And yes, I did not even have tuners for the last two of them ...and I posted that problem to Kodi PVR forum...because Kodi did not warn anything about the conflict. Kodi just let me do it...so I thought the channels were on the same group/transponder/whatever-its-called.

Yes, I can see that. MediaPortal 1 would have warned you.

Regards,
mm

 

[karniemi]

I had totally missed that there was another reply on this thread.
Thanks for such a complete answer, mm. I got the picture. Just debating further...if Mp would start recording when the forthcoming 15s contains scheduled recordings, it could basically start on time. Of course, stopping should be still done only when the end-time was actually passed. But, I do understand this would add a seek-ahead step in the logic - quite a simple thing to implement probably, but of course, each additional step makes it more complicated.

For commercial channels this has been no problem...they usually start broadcasts late anyway. But the tax-paid channels start usually on spot - and I noticed to have some incomplete recordings.

I can live with it ...now that I know to never set pre-record time to "0". I did set that when I noticed that all of my recordings had started way too early.