Kodi Community Forum

I am a long time user of Kodi and XBMC. It must have been 10-11 years since I first installed it on my Xbox, and I loved it from the beginning. Some years later I got a HTPC with a TV card and at the time it seemed Mediaportal was my best option to watch live TV. I never was very satisfied with it, though. So I was happy to jump back to XBMC when PVR functionality was available. But I've never managed to get the recording functionality to be stable. I kind of gave up for a while and just watched live TV, but it seems a shame to just have this nice TV card sitting there unused. So if anyone would be able to help me I would be very thankful. I honestly don't know much about the technical things in Kodi or NPVR, so it's been difficult for me to troubleshoot it by myself.
I am currently running Kodi 16.1 and NextPVR 3.7.7 on Windows 10, but the problem was the same with earlier versions on Windows 7. Whenever I try to record a TV show it's hit and miss, mostly miss. If I am lucky the program is recorded, but usually I end up with an empty file of 0 bytes or a file that is unreadable. Could someone point me to which logs to look at? I can't really find what went wrong when the recording didn't work. Here is an example NRecord.log from a show that I just tried to record as a test:

2016-08-21 21:10:59.695 [DEBUG][9] DefaultDirectoryChoice: first
2016-08-21 21:10:59.703 [DEBUG][9] allocating recording target filename: C:\video\recording\Insider ®\Insider ®_20160821_20302130.ts
2016-08-21 21:10:59.704 [DEBUG][9] About to start recording (1562 on 20): C:\video\recording\Insider ®\Insider ®_20160821_20302130.ts...
2016-08-21 21:10:59.705 [DEBUG][9] Free space 526365519872 (C:\)
2016-08-21 21:10:59.712 [DEBUG][9] Starting digital host
2016-08-21 21:11:00.717 [DEBUG][9] Allocating IPC channel
2016-08-21 21:11:00.717 [DEBUG][9] Registering channel
2016-08-21 21:11:00.718 [DEBUG][9] About to get: ipc://DigitalHost-20/RecorderRemote
2016-08-21 21:11:00.718 [DEBUG][9] Got: ipc://DigitalHost-20/RecorderRemote
2016-08-21 21:11:00.718 [DEBUG][9] Asking NDigitalHost to start: C:\video\recording\Insider ®\Insider ®_20160821_20302130.ts
2016-08-21 21:11:02.175 [DEBUG][9] Temp at 21.08.2016 21:11:12
2016-08-21 21:11:02.175 [DEBUG][9] Started recording (1562:1:C:\video\recording\Insider ®\Insider ®_20160821_20302130.ts)
2016-08-21 21:11:02.299 [DEBUG][9] No C:\Users\Public\NPVR\Scripts\ParallelProcessing.bat
2016-08-21 21:13:31.929 [DEBUG][9] Reloading recording schedule
2016-08-21 21:13:31.934 [DEBUG][9] CancelAllWakeupRequests
2016-08-21 21:13:31.935 [DEBUG][9] Cancelling wake up request for for 'RecordingOID1558'
2016-08-21 21:13:31.935 [DEBUG][9] Cancelling wake up request for for 'RecordingOID1558-backup'

I don't really see any errors, but the resulting file is 0 bytes and unplayable. That also happened with three scheduled recordings earlier today, but one recording went fine. Should I be looking at a different log file? The recording functionality is great when it works, but it's been so unstable for me that I just gave up. So please help!

If you want to post the problem over at the NextPVR forums, and zip and post the NextPVR logs with it, I'm happy to take a look for you. We'd need the full logs, not just the little snippet above.

Most likely reason for a zero byte file is poor TV signal, but we can help you look into that on the NextPVR forums.

Thank you! I will post this question in the NextPVR forums instead.

Did you start the Npvr recording service?

Now this is a bit embarrassing.
I have had problems with recording in the past, but it looks like the issue this time was that the cable company has changed the frequencies (?) for the TV channels. So I had very few channels that actually worked.
I have cleared all the TV channels from the NextPVR config and I am trying to add them back, but it's not easy finding the correct numbers.
I am sorry everyone! I will get back to normal and the next time I run into an actual recording problem I will post again.


If anyone is still reading, could you tell me why it's so difficult and time consuming to search for TV channels with all the TV backends/applications in Windows? I also have a CA module in my TV, and the TV finds and updates the channels in almost no time. The cable company makes changes now and then, and it seems very cumbersome to update the channel list in NextPVR?

(2016-08-24, 17:53)echoing Wrote: [ -> ]If anyone is still reading, could you tell me why it's so difficult and time consuming to search for TV channels with all the TV backends/applications in Windows?

Just hit the 'scan' button and it should do any for you. It can take anywhere from 10 seconds to a couple of minutes depending on how you've got your tuner configured.