[scarecrow420]

interestingly, swapping back to Frodo again, the exact same ServerWMC backend (as just released by krusty) seems to be giving me consitently 1 - 4s backend channel changes (seen from timings in log file) whereas when i was using Gotham XBMC the exact same backend was varying out to 9 seconds on some changes. I cant see how though because there arent any backend changes between the 2, and any client side changes i made for Gotham support were really just about making the new PVR API version compatilibity changes and couldnt possibly impact how the ServerWMC is processing the stream descriptors. Doesnt make sense But yeah I did over 20 channel changes on Frodo and they have all been 1 - 4 seconds at the backend.

That's great. Your channels are they all QAM or are you also running from a set-top-box?

I have both and I get 3 - 4s on QAM channels, and I get from 5 - 6.5s on digital (set-top-box connected) channels.
I'm running hauppauge tuners (hd-pvr for digital channels and hauppauge 1600 for QAM)

Im in Australia so we dont have QAM, we have DVB-T terrestrial over the air broadcast, to an aerial on the roof and coax cable into the TV tuner. So no cable boxes or decoding cards etc. There are about 33 channels, some HD and some SD. Im not actually sure of the differences in each channel ie encopding type etc. Maybe we can add that info to the ServerWMC UI to identify some particulars of the selected channel while live streaming or recording (currently we just show the name/number and show)

Also incase anyone cares im using PS3 PlayTV units via USB as my tuner cards, with a windows driver for another card that happens to use the same chipset... they seem to work brilliantly so I actually bought 2 now (one for dev machine and one for main HTPC). I then have another HTPC in a bedroom with no TV tuner so ideally once XBMC TV stuff is working well enough, I will hook that XBMC through to the one running the ServerWMC backend. My main issue I have is that both HTPC only have 60GB SSD drives so space is an issue, particularly with ServerWMC that records then demuxes and if you leave it on one channel for hours, it takes up GBs and GBs of temporary file space To solve that for now I have mounted via iSCSI a D: drive to the HTPC from my NAS but of course that means the storage access to the recordings and TempXBMC area is over GB LAN which probably isnt great.

My development machine which is where im testing the channel changes etc has local disks though, so the iSCSI stuff shouldnt come into play there.

[hoopsdavis]

Sorry about that. The remuxer crashed at something we call the '20 minute' problem, and it looks like the tuner wasn't successfully shut down after that. Restarting the server should clean these files up (or you can delete tempxbmc yourself if you want). Also the genre dictionary not being loaded was a bug in the redesign of the installer that wasn't caught before it was released.

That's the bad news. The good news is all of the above has been addressed in the new version of the server. I will be putting it up shortly.

I am not sure what's going on with your channel icons, it is supposed to just work on the remote client. I'll look into it and request more info if I need it.

scott967, check your networked client under > Settings > Live TV > Menu/OSD There you can check is the "Default Folder for PVR Thumbnails" is pointing to the wrong location. I had to point my networked client to the folder holding my channel icons.

Thanks. I could delete the .ts file but the .wtv file was locked so I did a re-boot.

On the icons, I didn't set anything on either local or remote client, and guisettings shows "searchicons" as empty. So I looked at the local XBMC12.2 TV22.db and it is showing the icons as

Code:

C:\ProgramData\MyChannelLogos\Logos\Color\filename.png

I don't know how the local XBMC found them, but it did (I assumed it was from the WMC server?). I used the app "my channel logos XL" on Win 8 to set up the icons so I'm sure that has something to do with it. From looking at the folders on the local where I have WMC server set to use

Code:

C:\Users\Public\Recorded TV\TempXBMC\

as the windows smb shared folder I see a subfolder "\imageCache\ChannelIcons\" which I assume that the WMC server should copy the icons for use by both local/remote clients? I'm not going to share C:\ProgramData but I could copy over the icons of course.

scott s.
.

You'll need to point the client PC to the "my channel logos" folder to get the icons to show. You should find the folder in your C:\ProgramData folder

[hoopsdavis]

interestingly, swapping back to Frodo again, the exact same ServerWMC backend (as just released by krusty) seems to be giving me consitently 1 - 4s backend channel changes (seen from timings in log file) whereas when i was using Gotham XBMC the exact same backend was varying out to 9 seconds on some changes. I cant see how though because there arent any backend changes between the 2, and any client side changes i made for Gotham support were really just about making the new PVR API version compatilibity changes and couldnt possibly impact how the ServerWMC is processing the stream descriptors. Doesnt make sense But yeah I did over 20 channel changes on Frodo and they have all been 1 - 4 seconds at the backend.

That's great. Your channels are they all QAM or are you also running from a set-top-box?

I have both and I get 3 - 4s on QAM channels, and I get from 5 - 6.5s on digital (set-top-box connected) channels.
I'm running hauppauge tuners (hd-pvr for digital channels and hauppauge 1600 for QAM)

Im in Australia so we dont have QAM, we have DVB-T terrestrial over the air broadcast, to an aerial on the roof and coax cable into the TV tuner. So no cable boxes or decoding cards etc. There are about 33 channels, some HD and some SD. Im not actually sure of the differences in each channel ie encopding type etc. Maybe we can add that info to the ServerWMC UI to identify some particulars of the selected channel while live streaming or recording (currently we just show the name/number and show)

Also incase anyone cares im using PS3 PlayTV units via USB as my tuner cards, with a windows driver for another card that happens to use the same chipset... they seem to work brilliantly so I actually bought 2 now (one for dev machine and one for main HTPC). I then have another HTPC in a bedroom with no TV tuner so ideally once XBMC TV stuff is working well enough, I will hook that XBMC through to the one running the ServerWMC backend. My main issue I have is that both HTPC only have 60GB SSD drives so space is an issue, particularly with ServerWMC that records then demuxes and if you leave it on one channel for hours, it takes up GBs and GBs of temporary file space To solve that for now I have mounted via iSCSI a D: drive to the HTPC from my NAS but of course that means the storage access to the recordings and TempXBMC area is over GB LAN which probably isnt great.

My development machine which is where im testing the channel changes etc has local disks though, so the iSCSI stuff shouldnt come into play there.

OK, kind of makes sense why your channel changing is quicker (no cable boxes or decoding cards) with my Qam channels, there's no set-top-box to slow down anything, but I can live with the 5 or 6 seconds it takes to change the digital (set-top-box) channels. My main reason for the server_wmc backend is to allow WMC to be able to record only new episodes on my tv show schedules seasons.
This project has come a long way, and its very impressive.

[krustyreturns]

Here it is https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/3065..._47_30.wtv

The file is definitely encrypted. Besides the encryption flag that is set in the metadata that you have already noticed, embedded in the guid packet headers of the file itself it has the guid for 'DVB scrambling' event. After these are read in, the parser doesn't find any recognizable data packets - I assume because its all scrambled.

Now when you use the windows service to record the channel, the data must be de-scrambled since you can view the active recording. Since these files are 'copy_free' I am assuming there is a way for my code to also de-scramble as it gathers wtv data, and its probably a COM level call. I will look for it, in the mean time though these channels won't be live-tv viewable.

A workaround would be to use the rec service to product the wtv file (since it de-scrambles) and stream these, but there would be a significantly longer delay before the stream starts. I might do it though if I can't find any other way.

[Dilligaf]

Cool, I don't watch a lot of live tv and only one channel that I may watch is in that group. I just know if I'm seeing it others will too, this is Comcast cable.

[krustyreturns]

as the windows smb shared folder I see a subfolder "\imageCache\ChannelIcons\" which I assume that the WMC server should copy the icons for use by both local/remote clients? I'm not going to share C:\ProgramData but I could copy over the icons of course.

scott s.
.

You are right, if the server finds channel logos on the server machine from the wmc database, it copies the logos to 'tempxbmc\imageCache\ChannelIcons\', it puts them there because this folder is visible to the clients. Do you see any icon images in this folder? That would at least give me a starting point.

[ferretlegs]

First of all, a big thank you to Krusty (and others) for finally bridging the gap between WMC and other media centers. I'm new to the xbmc community but I've been using wmc for over ten years. I've dabbled with just about every other TV backend and front end combination over the years (myth, mp etc etc), but have always ended up sticking with WMC and xbox 360 extenders due to the picture quality and 'just works' aspects of guide and scheduled recordings. It is a long overdue breath of fresh air to hope that this solid WMC back end can be retained for live tv / recordings whilst utilising the amazing (and lightyears ahead) front end of xbmc for everything else now including live tv streaming. So you can imagine since finding this thread the excitement of trying this approach and having it work first go! It works great! Sure the channel changing is not amazingly quick, but a reasonable price to pay if everything else works as advertised.

Obviously this is still in its initial stages so there are bound to be other things that come up. From my experiences so far the only issues I have encountered (using 1063 / 1009 build) are:
1. Unable to play one group of channels from one FTA broadaster (in Australia we use DVB-T cards and one broadcaster may have two or three SD/HD channels). All other channels work fine except the broadcasts from the '7' network (in Aus this is channels 7, 70, 72, 73 and 74). These channels work fine from within wmc itself.
2. I have noticed that the recorded tv\temprec\tmpSBE folder continues fill overnight and is cleared (partly with a few exceptions) when the wmcserver is stopped. The rest must be cleared manually. Note that this folder continues to fill with 250-300mb files even when the server has been started but not asked to do anything (ie no client connected)
3. I have noticed a few small wtv files (around 500K) in tempxcmc\savedfordebug folder which I suspect relate to problem 1 above

I have been blown away by xbmc since revisiting it after a number of years. This new integration with wmc means that my hated xbox360's may finally be retired and the whir of their disgracefully loud cooling fans may now be silenced forever.

Am happy to post log files, error wtv's etc if wanted, but just not sure how / where to put them.

Congrats again Krusty!

[scarecrow420]

First of all, a big thank you to Krusty (and others) for finally bridging the gap between WMC and other media centers. I'm new to the xbmc community but I've been using wmc for over ten years. I've dabbled with just about every other TV backend and front end combination over the years (myth, mp etc etc), but have always ended up sticking with WMC and xbox 360 extenders due to the picture quality and 'just works' aspects of guide and scheduled recordings. It is a long overdue breath of fresh air to hope that this solid WMC back end can be retained for live tv / recordings whilst utilising the amazing (and lightyears ahead) front end of xbmc for everything else now including live tv streaming. So you can imagine since finding this thread the excitement of trying this approach and having it work first go! It works great! Sure the channel changing is not amazingly quick, but a reasonable price to pay if everything else works as advertised.

Obviously this is still in its initial stages so there are bound to be other things that come up. From my experiences so far the only issues I have encountered (using 1063 / 1009 build) are:
1. Unable to play one group of channels from one FTA broadaster (in Australia we use DVB-T cards and one broadcaster may have two or three SD/HD channels). All other channels work fine except the broadcasts from the '7' network (in Aus this is channels 7, 70, 72, 73 and 74). These channels work fine from within wmc itself.
2. I have noticed that the recorded tv\temprec\tmpSBE folder continues fill overnight and is cleared (partly with a few exceptions) when the wmcserver is stopped. The rest must be cleared manually. Note that this folder continues to fill with 250-300mb files even when the server has been started but not asked to do anything (ie no client connected)
3. I have noticed a few small wtv files (around 500K) in tempxcmc\savedfordebug folder which I suspect relate to problem 1 above

I have been blown away by xbmc since revisiting it after a number of years. This new integration with wmc means that my hated xbox360's may finally be retired and the whir of their disgracefully loud cooling fans may now be silenced forever.

Am happy to post log files, error wtv's etc if wanted, but just not sure how / where to put them.

Congrats again Krusty!

Hey ferret. Thats weird because all of the 7 network channels are working OK for me. I just changed from 7 70 71 72 73 and 74 and all worked. All were reasonable backend times too:

7
2013/09/13 08:40:13.116 Finished request OpenLiveStream in 3.50s

70
2013/09/13 08:40:30.298 Finished request OpenLiveStream in 3.27s

71
2013/09/13 08:40:40.462 Finished request OpenLiveStream in 2.11s

72
2013/09/13 08:41:36.186 Finished request OpenLiveStream in 2.81s

73
2013/09/13 08:41:46.259 Finished request OpenLiveStream in 2.69s

74
2013/09/13 08:41:56.681 Finished request OpenLiveStream in 2.28s



In regards to 2) i dont seem to see that. There are a couple of streambuffer files there from yesterday but certainly not constantly creating new ones, nor doing anything too visible much when ServerWMC is open but no clients are connected (or even if clients are connected but not watching live TV). Ill keep a closer eye on this directory fro now on. ServerWMC only uses the TempXBMC folder so it must be the underlying WMC stuff that is creating temporary streambuffer files in this normal directory.

I have also encountered an issue when in some cases where ServerWMC cant get the wtv to ts remux, it leaves the wtv file behind forever. We can probably [put some maintenance code in to clean up old orphaned live tv recordings etc

[ferretlegs]

Thanks for the reply scarecrow. The tempsbe thing is strange because from reading the thread I did see that only the tempxbmc folder is used by the server, but i did verify this by looking at this list of sbf files in the tempSBE folder and I watched (most of) them disappear as soon as I closed the server.

The SBE folder now has about 10 files of around 500mb each........

[krustyreturns]

The SBE folder now has about 10 files of around 500mb each........

Hi ferret,

I appreciate the kind words about the project.

I'm not sure if there are forum rules about this or not, but its not a good idea to post large sections of a log file, the best thing to do with them is either pare it down to a few key lines or put it on a server somewhere and paste a link, pastebin.com works well for this. I know you are new to the forum - when I was new to this forum by my second post I had violated a forum rule and have carried that 'Warning Level 0%' with me ever since - and that was over a year ago! Plus isn't a warning level of 0% a good thing? Must be rounding issue.

The sbe files (stream-buffer-engine) are created by the windows rec service. These are always being created and disposed of when you use wmc. The reason they are happening now with the new version of the server is I found I could trim another 3-4 sec from the starting time of a stream if I start the sbe engine early, rather than wait for the engine to start when I start a stream. Wmc does something similar, that's way the first time you tune to a channel in wmc it takes longer than when you switch channels later. The creation and deletion of the files is handled by windows and should be stable - i.e. it won't grow without bounds. But if you don't like it, there is a setting to turn it off, unfortunately I forgot to put it into the server settings. I'll add it to the todo list and try get it out soon, once I have a few more easy things to fix. If you can't wait, PM me and I'll show you how to edit the settings file directly.

As for the channel 7** problems, can you start the server, try to start one of these channels only, and after it fails send me the link to the full server log?

thanks again

[Dilligaf]

@Krusty, everyone sees that warning level 0 on their own posts, nothing to worry about as long as it stays at 0. ferrets log looks strikingly similar to my logs, wondering if it's the same problem which is weird as someone else stated they tuned the same channels without any problems.

[ferretlegs]

Thanks for the tip re long pastes, I have edited the original post. Here is the link to the full log,

http://pastebin.com/y3AkvmZq

With regards to the sbe file, I have more than 100gb of free space so I am not worried, as long as they eventually clean themselves up I suppose. I haven't run the server for more than half a day at a time so far, so I dont know how well it will ultimately manage itself. But as I said, not a real issue atm, just wanted to provide the feedback.

Thanks for your help on this...

[scott967]

You are right, if the server finds channel logos on the server machine from the wmc database, it copies the logos to 'tempxbmc\imageCache\ChannelIcons\', it puts them there because this folder is visible to the clients. Do you see any icon images in this folder? That would at least give me a starting point.

I just installed server 1063 and clients 1009 on both local and network XBMC, and on first run of the remote client I got the icons, so far so good. Initial startup of the livetv on the remote client was about 4 sec, will get some better channel change data (this is on OTA/ATSC tuner).

scott s.
.

[hoopsdavis]

Krusty, one feature I'vd like to request. When watching live tv and a show starts recording on a different channel than what you're watching. Is it possible to add the feature to tune to the channel being recorded instead of getting the message "Stream Timeout" and the picture freezing.

The recording does start but I think tuning to that channel would make more sense. (If it can be done)

[scarecrow420]

Krusty, one feature I'vd like to request. When watching live tv and a show starts recording on a different channel than what you're watching. Is it possible to add the feature to tune to the channel being recorded instead of getting the message "Stream Timeout" and the picture freezing.

The recording does start but I think tuning to that channel would make more sense. (If it can be done)

presumably this (changing to the channel that scheduled recording just started on) should only happen if you dont have enough available tuners to continue watching live TV whilst this other recording occurs?