[mythtv-users] best practices for recording scheduling

[Ryan Steffes]

On 10/24/07, Mark A. O'Neil <mark.a.oneil at dartmouth.edu> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I have noticed that recordings, mostly on the CBS, NBC, ABC, FOX etc
> have either been truncating the last few minutes - with the
> frustrating result of missing the ending of the show...It inhales
> greatly when the family misses the end of a 'Heros' episode!
>
> I am guessing that this is due to erratic (actual 'real' times vs the
> guide) scheduling on the part of the networks in question.
>
> Short of recording +/-5 minutes and the like is there another tactic?
> The problem I have with simply recording longer is that often this
> will result in overlap of recording on my three tuners, maintenance
> of network specific recording configurations, etc, thus creating
> another set of problems....
>
> I do use MythWeb for setting up recording schedules - could this be
> the problem (it has not in the past eg. v 0.19 - currently 0.20.x on
> Ubuntu)?
>
> Perhaps I am missing something trivial in my configuration - using
> defaults for most everything that I can think of while here at work.


If you want the long, drawn out, slightly flaming version, I recommend
this thread for some light reading:
http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/mythtv/users/293197?search_string=network%20execs;#293197

The short version is that, yes, this is most likely happening due to
network execs being "clever" and trying to retain viewers by making it
less convenient to watch their channels and other channels.   A few
networks are particularly notorious for this.

The current "correct" solution is to add a few minutes of global
overrecording time in the general options.  This is the "soft"
over-record time, which will be disregarded in case of conflicts with
multiple tuners.  For shows you know to be particularly bad, if they
are important enough to you, you then can add a "hard" over/under
record time directly to their schedule to adjust their timings to
match.  This hard timing can cause conflicts, so depending on your
WAF, it's most convenient to check the Allow Reschedule of Higher
Priorities option, but you may need to manually tweak some schedules
for the family (ie, recording the rerun of America's Next Top Model on
Sunday instead of the first run whenever the heck it is would prevent
my wife from chatting about it at work the next day, which would
result in my immediate destruction).

If you use MythWeb heavily to adjust your settings, the ones you're
looking for as the soft timing options are RecordOverTime and
RecordPreRoll.  You may need to restart the backend after touching
these, I'm not sure.