Skipping inconsistent, forward sometimes skips back etc.

c128 m

I've posted this on the Kodi forum too, but thought it might get a bit of different/useful traffic here...

This is something I've noticed for a while, although doesn't seem to have been reported by others (that I can find) so I do wonder whether it's specific to my setup.

I'm running tvheadend 4.0.5 on OpenElec 5.95.2 with client 2.1.9.

If I skip forward in a partial/complete recording, or paused live TV buffer, the results are really inconsistent.
Sometime it skips forwards the correct amount, sometimes a smaller amount.
If I repeatedly skip then it often skips backwards a chunk! Occasionally this unexpected backwards skip is to the beginning of the programme (although, at the point of doing this, I'm no where near the end of the recording or buffer).

The top-right "Seeking" display always shows the correct "SEEKING +01:00" (or multiple of) as you'd expect to see, but more often than not I don't end up where I should do.

I ought to say that I've set the System | Video | Playback | Skip steps to be just -60 and +60, so my skipping is just 1 or more increments of 60s, but the behaviour was the same with the "new style" skip steps.

This doesn't happen when I watch the same recordings from "Videos" (via a share), or when watching other videos not recorded with tvheadend - skipping seems to work fine from there - it only happens when playing back partial or complete recordings from TV | Recordings or when pausing live TV and then trying to skip forwards.

Any ideas?

Saen Acro

Time-shift is more fickle mechanism
it depends more variables then regular video file watching
aka current time, time to return, real-time compared to return point etc.
Test "in ram" option where access times are faster

c128 m

saen acro wrote:
> Time-shift is more fickle mechanism
> it depends more variables then regular video file watching
> aka current time, time to return, real-time compared to return point etc.

> Test "in ram" option where access times are faster

The thing is, this also seems to happen withcompleted recordings when played back through the tvheadend Kodi client, recordings that don't suffer the same issue if played back as a normal Video within Kodi via a standard share (as above).

Unless there's an element of time-shift that's used in playing back completed recordings?

c128 m

Just noticed this happens with fast forward too.

I can fast forward quite happily, and it's doing so correctly.

However, when I press "play", I get a "Seeking" bit of text in the dialogue and it often drops me back at the wrong place - sometimes minutes earlier.

Again, don't see the same thing if I play back the recording as a file from "Videos" (as above, this is a completed programme).

Bernard DELAVILLE

Hello,
I just confirm c128 m the exactly same for me on intel i5 system tvheadend 4.0.5 on OpenElec 5.95.2 with client 2.1.9.
Regards,

c128 m

Bernard DELAVILLE wrote:
> Hello,
> I just confirm c128 m the exactly same for me on intel i5 system tvheadend 4.0.5 on OpenElec 5.95.2 with client 2.1.9.

> Regards,

Seems like we're in the minority Bernard :( .

The odd thing is that it doesn't happen all the time for me, but it does happen frequently, and there doesn't seem to be anything particularly telling in the logs. It does make it very awkward to skip adverts and the like though.

I also see it on two different machines.

Box Freak

I can also confirm this problem with timeshift buffer. It seems that either small or big step back or forward don´t usually go as they should. My system is Asus Chromebox (Celeron) and Sony PlayTV.
<<

Alexander Kamm

I can confirm the problem with finished recordings. I'll tried to update tvheadend, kodi and kodi-pvr-hts but the result is the same. Using skip steps or fast forward (greater 4x) gives in unpredictable results, some times it's working and some times the recording starts over again.

See you

Alexander

c128 m

There's something slightly weird about this...we all see this, but if it were a truly common thing then an immense amount of people would be moaning about it.

I had 2 occasions last night: first one was a "skip back of 10 minutes when I had just finished skipping forward a few minutes", second one was a "restarted from the beginning when I had just finished skipping forward a few minutes". Both on finished recordings too - so not a timeshift thing.

Leaves me wondering what the common factor is, but with nothing obvious in the logs it's hard to tell...

Sean Micklem

I just updated my system to Ubuntu 14.04 and Kodi Isengard and now I'm seeing exactly what is being described here. Never saw it with Kodi Helix under Ubuntu 12.04 but my understanding is they have rewritten all the PVR addons for Isengard (or at least the one for TVHeadEnd). I hope they fix this soon, because it's very irritating when it skips back to the start of the program.

roswell grey

Exactly the same problem here as described above (running Kodi 15.1 and tvheadend 4.1.349).

I initially thought it was just recordings that had a slightly dodgy timecode, but .... as stated above, the same file will skip forward/backward perfectly when the recording is played from the "videos" part of kodi, so it would appear very specific to the streaming (htsp ?) functionality rather than the normal playback of mpeg within a ts container.

K Shea

For anyone who is seeing this problem, and you can add me to that list, note that a ticket was opened and apparently quickly closed in the Kodi bug tracker. Apparently the Kodi developers don't seem to think it's their problem:

http://trac.kodi.tv/ticket/16199

"negge" posted this:

It is very likely that it's due to some changes in the addon between Helix and Isengard, if so you can open a ticket at https://github.com/kodi-pvr/pvr.hts/issues instead (please attach the debug log I requested if you do).

IMHO when a developer asks for a debug log he's waving away the problem, because he knows that most people either don't know how to create a debug log or don't want to do it for fear of exposing personal information. If you aren't worried about that, and know how to create the debug log, you may want to do so. But my suspicion is that this isn't going to get fixed anytime soon, unless it actually bites a Kodi developer in the butt.

c128 m

For reference here, an active ticket from Kodi-land (and that Roswell Grey has commented on):

https://github.com/kodi-pvr/pvr.hts/issues/92

c128 m

Just an update, the Kodi chaps have fixed this:

https://github.com/kodi-pvr/pvr.hts/pull/100

K Shea

For those without much in the way of Linux skills, you can upgrade to Kodi 15.2 Isengard – Release Candidate 3 - see http://kodi.tv/kodi-15-2-isengard-release-candidate-3/

Ubuntu Linux users will need to get it from the "unstable" repository, which can be added using

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:team-xbmc/unstable

Then the normal update manager should offer the Kodi and TVHeadEnd PVR updates.