Have you tried playing back the raw file directly in VLC (or other Video Player) to see if the recording is complete?
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Right. It shows that it records for the amount of time that the show is scheduled. That’s the issue.
For example, CBS mornings is a 2 hour show. I had no padding for this record “this time”. It started at 7 am and ended at 9 am.
I go to play back and at around the 90 minute mark, it stopped. The recording never finished.
It closes out. I go back to open it again, there is no play from the beginning so every time I hit ply, it goes back to that 90 minute mark and stops.
I finally hit “mark as watched”. And then tried to play again, same thing happens. It shows that it is a 120 minute recordings but it only played for 90 minutes then stops.
I opened it from the video player from my iPhone from the server side, same thing. Only played 9 minutes then stopped.
I opened the settings for that recording and clicked “fix time stamps” and then after pressing that, the 120 minute recordings is now displayed as a 90 minute recordings.
This is the same exact thing that has been happening to all my recordings.
It records and it shows the correct time but stops prematurely. When I go to try and fix it, it then shows the “Actual” time that it prematurely stops at.
I have never had a complete recording since I began. That’s the issue.
Yes. I have tried on multiple recordings to play through VLC or a video player, not through channels, and the same thing happens. It stops prematurely.
I wouldn't do that unless the devs tell you to and then make a backup of your recording before doing it.
What are you running Channels DVR server on and where are the recordings being written to?
This is so strange and definitely not normal. Since you are new to channels and probably don’t have many recordings yet I would start over by deleting and reinstall channels.
I’m using Nvidia Shield 2017 and it’s being written to a 2 TB external Hard drive dedicated to Channels.
I’ve been testing recordings and passes.
Everything seams to be working correctly on the back end. I can go in and still see the recording in place all the way up until the show ends. But when I go to play it, it’s just always cut short.
Today I tried something different Because it’s a big night for Big Brother tonight and I can’t afford to have the DVR crap out for my family members, so I tested recordings and set the end padding out for 30 minutes.
Same thing happens. On a 60 minute show, it records 30 minutes over, so the recording displays 90 minutes. But when I go to play it, it stops at about 75 minutes. But I was able to finally watch the recording of the show that I set out to record which was 60 minutes of the 75 minute playback of the 90 minute recording.
This is my “temporary” resolution for now so that the recordings can actually play what we set out to record.
I would suggest it you have another device to test as a server, try installing it on something else to see if it works (it should).
I would move the DVR server to a different platform.
This is nuts! I'm mulling over in my head what could possibly be contributing to this behavior in the stack. I'll have to ponder it further to figure out a good course of action to figuring out what's going on.
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That is a good idea.
I’ve actually tried this last week. However, I did a fresh install and formates the hard drive but did a backup.
Maybe this time I’ll do a fresh install with no back up and see how that will turn out. I can’t do it tonight because it’s a big night for a few people at my home for Big Brother so I’m not playing around with the TV tonight. I can re-install tomorrow morning and give you all an update.
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Thanks. I appreciate all of the help everyone is giving.
I can try that too. Maybe I can test it out on my computer and see how it works. I can test that out tomorrow as well.
I will try this tomorrow.
Thanks.
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If you have any of these recordings that exhibit the behavior that you have not used Fix Timestamps on, I would love to inspect it.
If you would be able to upload the whole recording here I'll check it out:
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You can run 2 dvr’s at the same time that are separate. Leave the shield be for now and install another channels server on your pc. After installing disable bonjour under basic setup and under remote dvr, turn to off. Then set up another big brother recording.
Thanks for the tip. That is helpful.
I’m going to mess with it later on tonight or tomorrow morning.
I’m with people who are getting ready for this event tonight.
Again, thanks for all the help. I’ll update this forum later on.
Thanks for understanding.
I'm curious if you can start the recording from the beginning and quickly fast forward to, say, 10 minutes after the playback stops for you and see if it plays from there? I've had some files like this where there was an interruption in the file data for some reason or the other and that is what I had to do to get past the trouble point. Then I slowly rewound until it failed again, usually ending up with 30-60 seconds unable to be played.
Still, this has generally happened with some ripped files, very very rarely with recordings. Since it is happening with you all the time, I'm not so sure, but worth checking out.
Thanks. Yea I’ve tried that along with many other things and no matter what, it was still cut short and caused problems at the end where it would cut off short, it would then freeze.
However, here is an update. Based on the suggestions from everyone such as putting the server on a different device like a computer instead of using the nvidia shield, and what I found to have sort of made the recordings pay better such as turning off commercial detection, what I decided to do before moving the server to a different device was:
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Turn off commercial detection.
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Set padding back to 1 minute before and 1 minute after.
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Made sure the transcoded was set to hardware and deinterlacing was set to blend (before I had it on linear).
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Made sure playback was set to direct instead of stream (as I played with these settings several times to try to resolve the issue).
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Deleted every single app from the nvidia shield and disabled every pre-installed app such as Netflix and prime video and prime music… so that I would make sure that the ram and internal storage was used solely for Channels to do what it needs to do and write to the external drive.
I didn’t want to have my server on a computer or even an old laptop where it has to stay charged because I’ve had swollen batteries in the past from always charging a laptop… and I wanted to keep it on the shield so after removing everything other then system files needed for the shield to work, I’ve tested out some recordings and they all have been playing back correctly.
I never thought that it could have been the nvidia shield causing the issue. But after the suggestion to move it to a computer, I decided to try this and now it is working as it should.
I honestly believe that with the commercial detection and the writing the video file to the hard drive, some how the file got corrupted, hence why it was cutting it short. I’m thinking it maybe started to write the file to the hard drive before the recording even finished. Possibly? I don’t know. But freeing up space and ram solved the issue and cutting off commercial detection.
Just want to give an update. So after I did what I stated above, the recordings were playing as they should until they weren’t. So I knew that I might just be that the external hard drive being that is was external may have not been fast enough for the Nvidia Shield… so what I did was format the external drive as internal storage.
I don’t care about keeping recordings forever, I just need a DVR. And if I need to record, I can just use a file manager on the shield to move it to cloud storage or move it to an actual external drive for safe keeping.
I just wanted to make this last post to anyone who may have any recordings issues with the shield. The DVR and recordings have been working as should without any flaw when I added “Internal Storage” to the Shield. No issues since.
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