Soft Padding (1 Viewer)

[starfire]

Here in the UK programs frequently finish late, by 1 to 5 minutes usually.

Adding the ability to soft pad as a 'global' option would mean ALL recodings get the soft pad value, say 5 minutes, added onto the record time as long as no other program is scheduled to immediately follow.

eg.
program x runs 7:00 to 7:30
program y runs 7:30 to 8:00

here soft padding would only add 5 minutes to program y only

program x runs 7:00 to 7:30
program y runs 7:40 to 8:00

here soft padding would add 5 minutes to both program x and y

Soft padding is so much better than 'hard' as with hard you would not even record program y in the first example as program x would be running 7:00 to 7:35


Any plans to do this, would it be simple?

Cheers

 

[ASiDiE]

I would like to request this feature also... I would like to go over it again just so we all understand what we would like to have. I am going to make this simple and only have 1 tuner and going to use my Replay TV as an example.

I was recording two shows the other night, back to back. I wanted to watch the second show first, because it was a better show. As soon as I told it to start from the beginning it started the show already in progress. I has missed at least 30 seconds of the show (usually a real funny part). I then had to go back to my first show and fast forward too the end so that I could watch the beginning of my second show.

I don't care where you live, you are always going to have the issue where the show starts late or early. That’s where padding comes in. I don't know what MP does now when you have pre-record or post-record set up. I am thinking if you have post record set up and something to set up to record... it basically just cancels it and doesn't even record it. That’s no GOOD!

I am hoping in the future was and implement some sort of padding feature. This feature would allow you to use the pre-record and post-record (Padding) and have the shows overlap, but still recording both with padding.

I am thinking this is very possible because of MP ability to grab the time buffer and add it onto a show that you want to record. I am hoping that we can grab both the pre-buffer and post-buffer and then attach them to both files.

If any of you would also like to see this feature within MP.... Give this thread a shout!

 

[jawbroken]

Umm, I think you are both talking about different things.

I belive that starfire is talking about two shows on different channels, not the same channel. At the moment, MediaPortal treats the post/prerecord settings with the same priority as the main show. This means that if I have 5 minutes of post record set up (as Australian TV shows hate running on time) and have a show from 7:30-8:30 and 8:30-9:30 on different channels, it will record the first show from 7:25-8:35 then the other show from 8:35-9:35. The best way to deal with this would be to treat the pre and post record recordings as having a lower priority than the "real" record time, and thus it would record the first show from 7:25-8:30 and 8:30-9:35, as you would expect.

 

[Paranoid Delusion]

Thought long and hard about this one and came to the conclusion only answer is dual tuners. otherwise you are going to loose some part of a program recording.
No software solution that i've heard of can get around the problem because of the recording engine limitations.

8)

 

[jawbroken]

Yes, I have dual tuners. But sometimes this still comes up. Like if I record 2 shows at 7:30 and another at 8:30. I know you are going to miss some of the show if it doesn't run to schedule, but if you change over at the boundary you minimise the probability of missing a large chunk. (at the moment you are pretty much guaranteed to miss a chunk because it just blindly records to the end of the post recording time).