Diagnosing root cause of interrupted recording

Channels DVR Server
#1

I'm new to Channels DVR. Using it on Windows 10, with Internet over Google FIber.
It usually works well, but I've had some programs that were interrupted to the extent of being unwatchable - 15 seconds recorded, 15 seconds missing, and so on.

I have a network monitor that logs pings to 8.8.8.8 that I use as an indicator of Internet access. There were no timeouts during the time when the interrupted program was recorded.

As I look in the channels dvr log, I see entries that reference URLs to some subdomains of uplynk.com.

at=2024-06-05T20:59:01.4390077-05:00 tag=fnc action=stream_created url="https://content-ausw2-up-1.uplynk.com/preplay2/channel/1e298c9d65a2.... <snip>

Would monitoring ping response to uplynk.com or specific subdomains be helpful in understanding whether the interrupted recordings are a network issue or something on the server/host side?

#2

More information would help:

  • What recording failed
  • The source of the recording such as tuner or TVE, or other custom channel
  • The text of error in the log
  • How your server is connected and what it is
  • Is that ping to google DNS from your channels DVR or another system?
#3

I've been trying to learn why I get some "interrupted" events, and one possibility is that my antenna signal (through an HDHomerun box) is sometimes not good enough. TV transmitters are pretty far away, and we also have an airport nearby, so plane traffic might disrupt the TV signal.

For those who happen to also use Home Assistant (HA) for home automation:

I just stumbled on a user-built addon for HA that interfaces with HDHomerun. Installed it and now HA "sees" all my HDHomerun tuners and continuously collects data from them, e.g., signal measurements, channel being received, etc. HA remembers this data and has tools to look at it over whatever time frames you like. By looking at the history of signal strength et al, and the information Channels keeps about interrupted recordings, I'm hoping to see if there's any correlation between the TV signal behavior and Channels recordings that got "interrupted".

My problem is when using the antenna feed, so this tool for HDHomerun won't apply to interruptions of recordings from other sources. But there's probably a way to get your HA setup to collect other interesting data such as network traffic, ping measurements, etc.

Any HA users out there with Channels using HDHomerun antenna feed, if you're interested see:

2 Likes