Very slow to open 'Recorded Radio', instant on 'Recorded TV' (1 Viewer)

[Andy Ford]

Hi, I've searched the forum/web but cannot find any similar issues reported.
I'm experiencing very slow (up to 45 secs) delay before the 'Recorded Radio' window opens. If I open 'Recorded TV', then it jumps immediately.
The Recorded TV and Radio folders are located on the same NAS drive.
If I try to access Recorded Radio while live TV is playing, the picture freezes while the sound continues, until it eventually opens the Recorded Radio window.
I've tried this on a client and single seat pc's and it is always slow when trying to access 'Recorded Radio'.
I've noticed in Task Manager on the single seat pc, that there is a large amount of activity from the TVService.exe whenever I try to access Recorded Radio, which doesn't happen when I access Recorded TV.

I've included the logs generated by Watchdog from the single seat pc.

Any help or thoughts on this would be greatly appreciated.

Andy

 

[mm1352000]

Thanks for the report Andy

It looks like the delay is related to the thumbnailer. TV Server is attempting to create thumbnails for the radio recordings... which obviously won't work because radio recordings won't contain any video. Bit of an oversight there I think.

 

[Andy Ford]

Thank you so much for taking the time to investigate this and for your reply.

If I manuallly create the thumbnails for the recorded radio files, do you think that would speed up access or are there other things that need to happen?

Thank you again for your help.

Andy

 

[mm1352000]

If I manuallly create the thumbnails for the recorded radio files, do you think that would speed up access...?

Yes, I do.

 

[Andy Ford]

Thank you. I will give it a go

 

[Andy Ford]

Hi, I've manually created thumbnails for the recorded radio files. There are just over 2000 files so it took a while!

The delay when selecting Recorded Radio has improved, but it is still around 20 seconds and I'm still seeing the TVService.exe rise to top of list in task manager whenever I select Recorded Radio. The TVService shows activity until the recorded radio window is finally visible on screen. This is the same on client and single seat pc's.

This delay happens whenever I access Recorded Radio window. If I'm watching live tv and then select recorded radio there is a 20 sec delay. If I then go back to watching (fullscreen) live tv and stop playback, there is another 20 sec delay before the recorded radio window is displayed again. This delay happens all the time, no matter if live tv is active or not, and happens everytime I select the Recorded Radio window.

I've looked in logs but cannot find any activity being logged during this 20 sec delay.

I've uploaded logs collected via Watchdog if anyone may be able to help. During the logging, I selected live tv, then selected recorded radio, then went back to fullscreen tv and then stopped playback. I cannot see in any logs what is happening during the 20 sec delay.

I should mention that this is actually a friends system that I have at my house. I installed MePo on his system a few years ago and I have it here while doing some updates/reorganizing. On my system I don't record much radio, so I have never seen this behaviour. Unfortunately my friend has huge archive of both recorded tv and radio. As I mentioned in previous post, the access to recorded tv is instant, but the access to recorded radio is always slow.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Andy

 

[mm1352000]

Hi again Andy

There are just over 2000 files so it took a while!

Ahhh, 2000 is quite a lot.

I suspect that the remaining delay relates to a recording cleanup process that is triggered each time you enter the recorded radio section. The process goes through all recording records - both TV and radio - in the TV Server database and deletes the records for which the corresponding file no longer exists on disk. Obviously the more recordings there are in the data, the longer it will take.

Note that process is not triggered on entry to the recorded TV section, which neatly fits the reported difference between recorded TV and radio section behaviour.

Approximately how many TV and radio recordings are there in total?

It's possible that the delay is entirely a function of a huge database of recordings. In that case there's possibly not much that you can do to mitigate it. Maybe defrag the HDD(s) and ensure there are appropriate indexes on the TV Server database recording table.

In my opinion it's also possible that security software (eg. Windows Defender) is monitoring the TV service process and/or recording folder and is causing the clean up process to run much slower and use much more CPU than it should. If this is what's happening, that security software could also be causing glitches in live TV and recordings, and generally causing MP performance to be sluggish.

 

[Andy Ford]

Thank you for your speedy reply

Your observation re the recording cleanup process would definitely make sense as the cause of the delay when accessing recorded radio. I take it that this function is hard-coded into MePo and there is no way to bypass it when entering recorded radio? I'm unclear as to why this is triggered on radio but not on tv.

Unfortunately my friend wants a huge archive of recordings, and has a different set of priorities to the majority of MePo users! At present there are around 4,500 tv and radio recordings in total, which are spread between 2 x NAS RAID6 devices and an internal HDD. If the cleanup process has to check all those files each time I enter recorded radio, I can see why there is a delay! Previously I had setup his system using MP-TVSeries to access his recordings of tv series, which were held in a different location to the recorded tv folders, and so they wouldn't have been subject to the cleanup process. He has since decided that he wants all tv recordings accessed via Recorded TV window, which would explain why I am now experiencing the delay when entering radio.

Both the client and single-seat pc's are running MSE anti-virus. I had excluded all MePo processes and file locations from scans. I just tried disabling the AV altogether and the delay remains around 20 seconds, so it would suggest that it's the sheer volume of files involved in the cleanup process that is causing the delay.

Regarding your suggestion to check appropriate indexes on the TV Server database recording table. I am not familiar with databases at all, and am unsure exactly what that means. Could you please clarify or point me in direction where I can learn more?

I just want to say how grateful I am that you came back to me so quickly again with helpful information. It makes me really appreciate the MePo community.

Regards

Andy

 

[Andy Ford]

PS I just wanted to add that the rest of MP performance is extremely fast...much faster than my own hardware...am quite jealous

 

[Andy Ford]

Sorry to post again, but I've had a thought regarding the huge archive of radio recordings that my friend wants to keep.

The tv server has the following cards 1 x Quad DVB-T2, 1 x Dual DVB-S2 and a Dual DVB-T card. The DVB-T2 and DVB-S2 cards are set to record to different directories than the ones used by the DVB-T card
The Dual DVB-T card is used solely for radio. One of the tuners is set to record to a folder on a local drive and the second tuner is set to record to a folder on a NAS. In this setup does the recoding cleanup only scan the folders containing radio recordings during access to the recorded radio window, or does it also scan the seperate folders containing tv recordings? If it does only scan the folders containing radio only recordings, I was wondering if it would be possible to move/import all his older radio recordings to the video section of MP? I was thinking that this option would still give him access to his 'archive' recordings via videos, and would speed up access to recent recordings in recorded radio. I noticed the idea of moving recorded radio to the video section in a different thread discussing ff/rew options for radio recordings.

Any thoughts appreciated.

Andy