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Recording in progress - Playback doesnt know the file is growing - Printable Version

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Recording in progress - Playback doesnt know the file is growing - nmcaullay - 2012-09-05

Hi all,

Apologies if this is covered elsewhere, but I couldn't get a definative answer from a forum search.

Scenario:
I have TVHeadend recording a show, and wait 30 minutes before starting to watch it over NFS (to skip through the ads).
TVHeadend using the TS file format allows this ok.

Problem:
When you start the playback the file is only 30 minutes long, but by the time you watch (and skip ads) the recording is now 45-60 minutes long.
XBMC doesnt know that the file is growing while it is being watched.

Options?
Does anyone know what can be done about this (if anything), or is it an internal feature that might be addressed down the track?

Cheers Nathan


RE: Recording in progress - Playback doesnt know the file is growing - scottedstorn - 2012-09-05

I have the same problem with mediaportal, I want to move from windows media center to xbmc with pvr but unlike wmc, if I press record i cannot see the program.


RE: Recording in progress - Playback doesnt know the file is growing - opdenkamp - 2012-09-05

indeed, this info isn't refreshed yet. known issue. if there's no ticket about this on trac, feel free to create one


RE: Recording in progress - Playback doesnt know the file is growing - eleon216 - 2012-09-07

this is working with vdr-backend using xvdr-addon. I know xvdr isn't officially supported, but it is working.
But maybe the difference to your setup is that playback of recordings is running directly through the pvr-frontend/xvdr-addon and not over a fileshare (if I understand you setup correctly).


RE: Recording in progress - Playback doesnt know the file is growing - nmcaullay - 2012-09-07

I just tried watching the same recording using the TVHeadend PVR addon and also over NFS. Both don't appear to check the size/length as the playback continues. I guess there's two things here
1) The TVHeadend PVR addon doesnt re-check the size/length when playing back a recording
2) XBMC doesnt re-check the size/length when playing back a recording over NFS.

I've put in a trac request for what i think is related to point (2)
http://trac.xbmc.org/ticket/13309


RE: Recording in progress - Playback doesnt know the file is growing - Frank-NL - 2012-10-15

I have the same issue with Tvheadend but I'm not using NFS, just a local harddrive. Should I open a separate ticket for that? And can this still be fixed before the release of Frodo? Right now I have a simple menu link to the recordings folder, but my recordings are not shown nicely there, it's missing the EPG info that is shown via the MyPVR recordings screen. Fixing this would make up for missing timeshifting at the moment, since you can watch the recording live as if it's a timeshift buffer.


RE: Recording in progress - Playback doesnt know the file is growing - jdembski - 2012-10-17

(2012-09-05, 22:55)dushmaniac Wrote: indeed, this info isn't refreshed yet. known issue. if there's no ticket about this on trac, feel free to create one

Isn't the function
Code:
/*!   * @return The total length of the stream that's currently being read.  
      * @remarks Optional, and only used if bSupportsRecordings is set to true. Return -1 if this add-on won't provide this function.  
*/  
long long LengthRecordedStream(void);

for that? I played around with it, but I have never seen any call to this function. Or will it only be called if the addon also handles the demuxing on their own?


RE: Recording in progress - Playback doesnt know the file is growing - opdenkamp - 2012-10-17

will only be called when the add-on itself actually provides the stream


RE: Recording in progress - Playback doesnt know the file is growing - adamsutton - 2012-10-17

Sorry I've not put something on here before now, I've not been following the forums properly since things got moved around.

Anyway in TVH this is definitely a known deficiency as listed here https://www.lonelycoder.com/redmine/issues/1267

Unfortunately its because TVH currently uses very basic HTTP streaming which I believe can support both skipping and continuous output (but not both). However there are other technologies such as HLS built on top of HTTP which should solve the problem.

Unfortunately its all a matter of developer skill/time to get something working. Also we hope that by TVH 3.6 recordings should be streamed via HTSP (TVH's custom streaming protocol) as this is kinda a must to do proper integrated recording and timeshift streaming.

So I guess for now, watch this space, of course in the mean time you can always create a remote share directly to the recordings directory and play the files that way, which will get you skip and in progress support.

Adam


RE: Recording in progress - Playback doesnt know the file is growing - margro - 2012-10-17

(2012-10-17, 16:48)dushmaniac Wrote: will only be called when the add-on itself actually provides the stream
Correct.

@jdembski: It does not require that the addon does also the demuxing. The MediaPortal pvr addon only provides the raw MPEG-TS stream and also there you can use the mentioned function to update XBMC about a growing recording. I've tested this and I can confirm that streaming an ongoing recording via the PVR addon itself does work correctly. XBMC then uses the above function to detect a growing file.

@scottedstorn: I know. The current version of the MediaPortal pvr addon tells XBMC to bypass the PVR addon to play the recording directly if the file is available on the local system. I will fix that by telling XBMC to stream though the PVR addon.


Recording in progress - Playback doesnt know the file is growing - jdembski - 2012-10-17

(2012-10-17, 20:28)margro Wrote:
(2012-10-17, 16:48)dushmaniac Wrote: will only be called when the add-on itself actually provides the stream
Correct.

@jdembski: It does not require that the addon does also the demuxing. The MediaPortal pvr addon only provides the raw MPEG-TS stream and also there you can use the mentioned function to update XBMC about a growing recording. I've tested this and I can confirm that streaming an ongoing recording via the PVR addon itself does work correctly. XBMC then uses the above function to detect a growing file.

@scottedstorn: I know. The current version of the MediaPortal pvr addon tells XBMC to bypass the PVR addon to play the recording directly if the file is available on the local system. I will fix that by telling XBMC to stream though the PVR addon.

Hi Margro,

I just looked at the media portal-addon sources and have seen that you have ffmpeg and the tsreader in there. If it was just providing the raw packets to XBMC then using a socket would suffice? Or is this being used to have proper seeking support? If so, does this only work with rtsp-streams?

Sorry for all these questions, I just want to get this right because I'm wondering how to implement rudimentary time shift support to the vuplus addon.


RE: Recording in progress - Playback doesnt know the file is growing - nmcaullay - 2012-10-18

(2012-10-17, 19:37)adamsutton Wrote: So I guess for now, watch this space, of course in the mean time you can always create a remote share directly to the recordings directory and play the files that way, which will get you skip and in progress support.

Hi Adam, this is the way I watch all TVH reacordings - over NFS from a NAS. But the playback in XBMC doesnt seem to update to match the growing file. If I start watching a file over NFS when it is 30 minutes into recording, I get 30 minutes into the playback, and XBMC thinks it has got to the end of the file. I stop playback, and start it again, and then XBMC knows about the next 20-30 minutes of the file, that it didnt know about in the first playback. Is there a switch i need to pull, to enable "progress support"? I'm using OpenElec 2.0.0 (Generic). And again, thanks for all your hard work on the TVH side of things. I don't know how you have time to do it, and deal with some of the "demands" that people put into TVH space... Cheers Nathan



RE: Recording in progress - Playback doesnt know the file is growing - sfuchs - 2012-11-14

I'm really interested if there is focus or a ETA on a fix for this issue by somebody of the XBMC Team?

This is really a showstopper concerning the women acceptance factor for my HTPC solution at home and a fix for this would really be a great deal and one more step towards an almost perfect HTPC solution Smile

Any infos on this are appreciated!

Stephan


RE: Recording in progress - Playback doesnt know the file is growing - emveepee - 2012-11-15

Is the poor navigation of growing files on the file system (including nfs/cifs) being treated as a general XBMC issue or is it left in the realm of the PVR developers?

Martin


RE: Recording in progress - Playback doesnt know the file is growing - FernetMenta - 2012-11-15

I even know what exactly is causes the problem. It's ffmpeg which only analyses the size at the beginning. Fixing this means finding some kind of work around. I can not promise a fix for Frodo because it's a sensitive area of the code.