Recording completes, but only first half can be played back

Paul Walsh

Raspberry Pi 3
Build: 4.2.8-36 ~ LibreELEC Tvh-addon v11.0.0.0 (2023-03-05T16:32:04+0000) (though this issue has occurred with previous releases)
Country: UK

TV Channels: ITV2, 5Star (maybe others)

There have been intermittent occasions where I've recorded a movie apparently successfully, and Kodi shows the length as what would be expected, but playback stops too early - as if the end of the recording had been reached. This almost always coincides with a commercial break about an hour into the recording, and only on some channels.

Example:

I recently recorded "Pacific Rim" on 5Star and was watching it last night. There were several commercial breaks, but when it came to a break about an hour into the recording, playback stopped at the end of the break.

I can only surmise that some sort of code is transmitted by the TV channel which TVH interprets as being "end of programme," thus stopping recording, even though the amount recorded doesn't match the expected length of the programme

ITV2 seems to be particularly bad at this, So much so I no longer try to record a movie on that channel

# Has anyone else noticed this behaviour?

# Is there anything that can be configured in TVH to stop this happening?

davep

Looking at the EPG for 5Star, their evening film is interrupted by "Entertainment news on 5" one hour into the programme. Similarly ITV2 has an insert "FYI Daily". Is this what you are seeing?

I believe the current Tvheadend is able to recognise this situation and record both halves of the programme, but 4.2.x is now really old and may not. If possible I suggest updating to latest master.

A possible workaround is to manually record both halves of the film.

Paul Walsh

Thanks

That's the sort of behaviour I'm seeing. At the moment I'm running the version of TVH bunled with LibreELEC. I'll see if I can update it. Failing that I'll just wait until I build a replacement system with all the relevant packages :)

Jonas Lang

What’s your recording like when you play your recording using VLC. Are you experiencing the same behaviour. The LibreELEC TVH server add on has both 4.2 stable and 4.3 alpha. Try the 4.3 alpha if you haven’t already done so. It’s still a bit behind the TVH master but might include the fix you require to solve the problem

DaveH

If you use TVH's web site to set the recording (i.e. port 9981, Electronic Program Guide tab) then you can see whether it is going to record both halves or just the first part. And you can make sure it doesn't record the "Entertainment news on 5" program. Even if you set up the recording some other way, you can use the TVH website to check exactly what it is going to record.

davep

I've just scheduled a recording for "Enemy of the State" on 5STAR at 22.00 tonight. The UI shows the start time 22.00 and the run time 2hrs 46min (both correct), but the stop time is given as 23.05, suggesting it will only record the first segment. We'll see what actually happens later.

DaveH

Dave Pickles wrote:

> I've just scheduled a recording for "Enemy of the State" on 5STAR at 22.00 tonight. The UI shows the start time 22.00 and the run time 2hrs 46min (both correct), but the stop time is given as 23.05, suggesting it will only record the first segment. We'll see what actually happens later.

Why 2 hrs 46 min? The first part is 1 hr 5 min and the second is 1 hr 30 min. There's a 5 min intermission in between. Where does the extra 6 min come from? FWIW my TVH records the two parts separately - a very old 4.2.6 :(

davep

> Why 2 hrs 46 min? The first part is 1 hr 5 min and the second is 1 hr 30 min.

I have 1 minute pre-recording and 5 minutes post-recording padding set.

My test recording has worked as expected, with the whole film plus the insert recorded to a single file. The only oddity is the stop time on the timer but it doesn't seem to have had any effect.

Paul, do you have "accurate recording" set (Configuration -> Recording -> Use running state)? That might not work properly with segmented recordings.