Accurate Recording: Downton Abbey & Lewis

hairy_mutley

Active Member
This may or may not be custom firmware related (probably not), but since I have CF installed, it may have a bearing on diagnosis.

I don't record off ITV HD a great deal, but I have recently had some problems with accurate recording on recent episodes; Downton Abbey Eps 2 & 3 (but not 1) and the recent Lewis Ep 1.
In each case, the end of the programme is missing, the recording start time is 1 minute before scheduled start time (suggesting that it received a start signal?) and the duration is the expected 60 minutes.

AR seems to be working well on other channels, and I wouldn't have expected this many problems from a channel like ITV HD.

Has anyone experienced a similar problem? Are there any logs that may be of use?
 
Redring is the generally the most useful log for this if you have it installed.
 
You could go into settings>prefs>recording and change end padding time to 1 minute to add an extra minute of recording to your records but this can cause issues with overlapping recordings (say if you have one ending at 8:01 pm with paddling and 2 recording starting at 8:00pm, there would be a conflict.)


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af123 Good point... unfortunately I was clearing out last night and thought that 10 redring log files was excessive, so I deleted them :(.
I will bear it in mind in case I get a repeat of the problem.

Jailbrkr21 I have so many conflicts of that sort that using padding would be a problem. I get enough on-screen conflict messages at the 8 & 9 o'clock switch overs as it is. (really need a second recorder!)
 
Using padding will stop the AR feature (that doesn't seem to be very accurate for you), It won't add 1 min to the end of AR.
 
The TV Diary records show that recording actually started and ended at scheduled times
Code:
06/10/2015-21:00:01: Started new activity 13672, 'R', ITV HD, 'New: Lewis', 06/10/2015-21:00:01 - 01/01/1970-00:00:00, 06/10/2015-21:00:00, 60
06/10/2015-22:00:01: Finished activity 13672, 'R', ITV HD, 'New: Lewis', 06/10/2015-21:00:01 - 06/10/2015-21:59:01, 06/10/2015-21:00:00, 60
The Downton Abbey was equally (unexpectedly?) close to the scheduled start and stop times.
The TV Diary log shows that other channels often deviate from their schedule start and end times by as much as a couple of minutes (capturing the programme without any problems)...
is ITV just better or does this indicate that recording was activated by schedule rather than AR; if so, what would cause this?
 
My AR recording of Lewis (on Winter Hill) started at 21.03 just before the sponsor's ad and ended at 22.02 a few frames before the end of the credits. This is unusual as the recordings usually end well into the next set of adverts.
 
Is that a complaint, or a statement of the fact? As we know, AR is in the hands of the broadcaster for when the programme IDs get switched.
 
I am sorry that you had difficulty understanding my comments. I was indicating that my experience, unlike the OP, was that AR behaved as expected, with the exception that the end was a little earlier than usual.
 
BMAX Thanks, that is the sort of verification I was looking for.
Given that my recording appears to have started at 21:00 exactly, then replaying on my PC indicates that the sponsors ad ran between about 21:03:00 and 21:03:30, in line with your timing.
My recording shows that the previous programme overran, its end credits went straight to Lewis' sponsor intro with no ads between.
Obviously I can say nothing about my end except that is cut off at 22:00 (before the end credits even started).

I am not sure how the programme codes are handled nationally; they could/ought to be transmitted at the same times for Winter Hill and Mendip, but that may not be how the Network actually manages their regions.

It is still academic, since there seems to be no way that I can verify what the programme codes were at the time of transmission.
Maybe Mendip's code were just not as good as Winter Hill's on this occasion.
 
We've not watched that Lewis yet (we'll wait for the second half next week and watch it as a complete 2 hour episode, like wot they used to be).
However, I seem to recall having this sort of issue with ITV previously - possibly even the last Lewis series - and being surprised as they are a major channel. We don't generally watch a lot of ITV but we've been recording Doc Martin recently and that nearly always starts a little way into the titles, so ITV's AR certainly seems to be more Approximate than Accurate. (This is all HD BTW).

Edit: Just remembered, Doc Martin is recording on a FOX-T2 but Lewis is now going on the satellite box, so be interesting to see if the AR is any different there.
 
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What's this "TV diary log" thing? Looks useful ;)

I have an entry in activity.log which suggests AR worked OK for me too (on Beckley):
06/10/2015 22:02:13 - Recorded: New_ Lewis/New: Lewis (59 minutes - ITV)

However AR has definitely screwed up a few times in the last couple of months (can't recall which programmes or even which channels though :eek:).

PS: this whole bloody "New_ Lewis" type nonsense in the file/directory names is really getting on my t*ts. Makes it a pain in the backside to find programmes in the (long) list on our player.
 
PS: this whole bloody "New_ Lewis" type nonsense in the file/directory names is really getting on my t*ts. Makes it a pain in the backside to find programmes in the (long) list on our player.
There's an app for that! Take a look at newk. sweeper can also help.

What's this "TV diary log" thing? Looks useful ;)
I realise the wink means that was a knowing remark, but presumably you have the tvdiary package installed.
 
What's this "TV diary log" thing? Looks useful ;)

I have an entry in activity.log which suggests AR worked OK for me too (on Beckley):
06/10/2015 22:02:13 - Recorded: New_ Lewis/New: Lewis (59 minutes - ITV)

However AR has definitely screwed up a few times in the last couple of months (can't recall which programmes or even which channels though :eek:).

PS: this whole bloody "New_ Lewis" type nonsense in the file/directory names is really getting on my t*ts. Makes it a pain in the backside to find programmes in the (long) list on our player.

It gets on my t*ts that the order of recordings isn't sorted by newest first, the folders are always at the top. I don't mind folders but if they could be ordered so that newest recordings were top it would be so much better, especially when you record a 1 off episode of something and you have to pass all of the folders just to get to it. Pain in the ass.


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There's an app for that! Take a look at newk. sweeper can also help. I realise the wink means that was a knowing remark, but presumably you have the tvdiary package installed.
Ahem, actually that was just a wink - somehow I've never spotted the tvdiary package - will go and check it out now! :thumbsup:
The other two also sound very useful, thanks. Yay for CF :D

It gets on my t*ts that the order of recordings isn't sorted by newest first, the folders are always at the top.
Agreed. Not so bad once you've been into the list since bootup, but irritating from cold startup.
 
Ahem, actually that was just a wink - somehow I've never spotted the tvdiary package - will go and check it out now! :thumbsup:
The other two also sound very useful, thanks. Yay for CF :D

Agreed. Not so bad once you've been into the list since bootup, but irritating from cold startup.

Its always the same for me, nothing changes, do you have a custom package installed to list them differently?


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Ahh, no, I just mean that the first time I hit "Media" after a cold boot, it starts at the top of the list, but after that, the media list starts wherever I left it last...
 
It gets on my t*ts that the order of recordings isn't sorted by newest first, the folders are always at the top. I don't mind folders but if they could be ordered so that newest recordings were top it would be so much better, especially when you record a 1 off episode of something and you have to pass all of the folders just to get to it. Pain in the ass.
The newly-released flatview package may help you out here. It will place a folder at the top of the list containing redirects to the actual recordings (regardless of what folder they happen to be in), which are listed according to your preference (A-Z or newest-first).

http://hummy.tv/forum/threads/flatview-provide-flattened-view-of-recordings.6636/
 
We've not watched that Lewis yet (we'll wait for the second half next week and watch it as a complete 2 hour episode, like wot they used to be).
.....
Edit: Just remembered, Doc Martin is recording on a FOX-T2 but Lewis is now going on the satellite box, so be interesting to see if the AR is any different there.

Just watched both episodes of Lewis. We stopped the first one at the "Next week ..." as we didn't need that, so never checked where the AR stopped it. The second episode was terminated partway through the end titles, so it seems that the Freesat AR is similar to the Freeview .... a bit damn tight :eek:
 
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