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AR on a per-recording or per-service basis

The reason that I only record HD channels on my Humax boxes is because the Toppy boxes are so much better with SD channels.
 
Definitely - using the Humax remote or web page service to access the EPG is awkward compared to the Toppy's EPG (and I do not have any Taps running). Seeing what's coming for the week ahead on a channel, or across channels is much quicker on the Toppy. Those who have not experienced this will not appreciate how good a 6yr old system was - and it's even better with Taps.

Back to humax - tonight was the first time I set two series linked AR HD recordings, Sherlock and the Great Barrier Reef. The 1st episodes recorded fine, as did Ch'4's Hacks, and I hope the series linked AR continues work fine.

Blackhole - where AR is proving to be unreliable, making some test HD recordings alongside SD ones is what I believe people were suggesting. AR should work for both, but if results are different then it may show that the regional data is not correct.
 
Okay, well I've eliminated my multiple regions and am now exclusively Mendip. We'll see what happens.
 
First results in: BBC FOUR "Beautiful Equations" (60 mins) started OK, but recorded for 104 minutes. Now here's an odd thing: I was actually replaying Sherlock at the time, and the Beautiful Equations recording ended coincidentally with when I terminated the playback of Sherlock (which had padding).
 
I've never had anything playing or paused when recordings are scheduled. I just leave the box recording, esp. with 2 HD recordings on the go. I don't even log onto the Web IF during that time.

You mentioned that you've seen problems when your playing/pausing other content - but I believe you see issues even with unattended recordings?
 
Quite so, but previously I was also receiving multiple regions. I realise peeps think I'm being verbose on this, but I'm trying to present all the data and find the pattern. All the help I'm getting is people saying "I love AR, never let me down" and then it turns out they haven't been stress-testing.

What's more, I'm testing in a normal operating environment - in other words not going off-line and trying specific tests under specific conditions. Therefore the best I can do is gather as much experience as possible and eliminate the variables by analysis rather than selective testing.

So far we have a suspicion that multi-region tuning upsets AR, other box activity upsets AR, and unreliable broadcasters upset AR. I shall continue to convert some BBC recordings to AR and report what I find, and whether the box was doing anything else at the time. I think other interested parties should do the same.

What technology would we need to monitor the AR flags continuously (just on one channel if you like) and output a report on how well they correlate with the EPG?
 
Should anyone want to test-drive the automatic multi-mode feature, then install the new multimode package then find the Multi-mode Recording Setup button in the webif Settings screen and you'll see the screen shown below. The conversions are necessarily processed at boot time (just like recordings scheduled via the web interface or Remote Scheduling portal). The rsvsync log file will include some output relating to this feature for diagnostics.

arpad.png


The Scheduled Events screen in the web interface/portal also shows an icon against each recording to indicate whether that recording is in AR (red AR) or Pad (Blue double ended arrow) mode, see below - hovering your mouse over the pad icon will show the start/end padding times which can vary per recording.

arpado.png


The RS portal also has a new* option which allows you to specifically convert a scheduled recording from AR to padding and back and customise the padding values on a per-recording basis. At present, the automatic conversion will override any specific conversions done via the RS portal - I'm working on making the two systems work more closely but for now you are safe to make specific changes to any recordings on channels flagged as leave alone in the multimode settings, any others will be overwritten on next boot.

* - not new to the beta testers.

Please don't quote the images in any replies!
 
Looking good!

Query: is there / will there be a WebIF control to set/clear AR on a recording-by-recording basis, as per the RS beta?
 
Black Hole said:
Query: is there / will there be a WebIF control to set/clear AR on a recording-by-recording basis, as per the RS beta?
Click to expand...

There isn't, although that RS feature is now enabled for everyone who has updated their rs package. I do plan to add it to webif too once I've determined the best way to make the two things work in harmony.
 
For the record, I recorded the Strictly Xmas Special on HiDef by AR, and it worked fine. I was about to complain it had had the end cut off - but of course that's the 4GB problem again!
 
af123 said:
There isn't, although that RS feature is now enabled for everyone who has updated their rs package. I do plan to add it to webif too once I've determined the best way to make the two things work in harmony.
Click to expand...
Idea: is there any spare capacity in the database - some unused element that can be toggled as a flag but won't affect anything else? If so, use it as a "protection" flag so that any individual recording that has been tweaked for AR/padding also has the protection flag set so that the channel wiper doesn't then come along and alter it.
 
Black Hole said:
For the record, I recorded the Strictly Xmas Special on HiDef by AR, and it worked fine. I was about to complain it had had the end cut off - but of course that's the 4GB problem again!
Click to expand...
< I'm surprised a show like that would be larger than 4GB, and also why there would be a 4GB issue (sorry if I missed there is a limit on all Humax recordings - or was this a transfer to a removable drive?).
 
Frosty said:
< I'm surprised a show like that would be larger than 4GB, and also why there would be a 4GB issue (sorry if I missed there is a limit on all Humax recordings - or was this a transfer to a removable drive?).
Click to expand...
4GB doesn't even get you an hour of high definition, almost but not quite.
The 4GiB limit is in the DLNA client within the Humax software (it's a bug) - Black Hole streams recordings from his HDR to his HD via DLNA (as do I) so the bug is seen whenever you watch a long film or anything from a HD channel.
 
Black Hole said:
Idea: is there any spare capacity in the database - some unused element that can be toggled as a flag but won't affect anything else? If so, use it as a "protection" flag so that any individual recording that has been tweaked for AR/padding also has the protection flag set so that the channel wiper doesn't then come along and alter it.
Click to expand...
Yes - there are several fields that appear to be unused. I'm testing with a few of them at the moment to see if they are preserved and if they affect the recordings at all.
 
Thanks for the clarification re. 4GB and DLNA. I now recall that a lot of my 40min HD recordings come in around the 2-3.xGB and I seem to remember Sherlock Holmes being 1h30 or so came in around 6-7GB's.
 
Things are still not going well on AR. I had another burst of trials with my recordings last night (recall I am now exclusively Mendip), I had Kiss Me Kate scheduled at 8.15, Sherlock at 8.30, Sky At Night at 00.45, and the regular Weatherview in the early hours (all StDef). I default to padding, and used RS to convert Sherlock and Sky At Night to AR (Weatherview was converted to AR some time ago). I deliberately did not do anything with the Humax until I turned it on for server purposes around 11, and from about 11.30 I was streaming until quite late.

Imagine my annoyance this morning when I discovered Kiss Me Kate (padding, BBC FOUR), Sky At Night (AR, BBC1 StDef), and Weatherview (AR, BBC1 StDef) had all recorded, but Sherlock (AR, BBC1 StDef) had not. I have it downloading from iPlayer to the stream buffer as we speak.

I have yet to see whether HiDef channels are more reliable, but as I don't do very much in HiDef it is a moot point. Clearly I'm not going to be using AR as a default or even a white list; I shall be cherry-picking only those programmes which are live and liable to over-run or follow something that is live.
 
Sorry it's still not working for you.
I had three HD programmes scheduled yesterday evening all using AR and also overlapping - Sherlock, To Boldly Go and The Great Barrier Reef. All recorded just fine. Sherlock kicked into record just a few seconds before the actual programme started, rather than the normal start of the ident.
 
No problems here either. Black Hole, I don't believe stressing the box has impact on AR, I make all my recordings by AR, and some nights I make more than 10 a night on a variety of channels, 2 at 8, 2 at 9, 2 at 10 etc. I'm also always using my box to playback, time shift, archive recordings etc whilst the recordings are going on, so I think this can be ruled out as a cause...
 
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