[mythtv-users] Events at the beginning of a recording

[Stephen Worthington]

On Fri, 10 Feb 2023 17:50:40 -0600, you wrote:

>On Thu, Feb 09, 2023 at 10:58:28AM +0100, Jan Ceuleers wrote:
>> On 09/02/2023 04:36, David Engel wrote:
>> >> But I still might!  Someday.  When I have a better solution to the
>> >> misuse.  I've never bought the "my guide data is bad" argument and I
>> >> still don't.  In the immortal words of Steve Jobs, "You're doing it
>> >> wrong?" :)
>> >>
>> >> Either you care about catching the beginning or ends or your
>> >> recordings or you don't.
>> > 
>> > Also, how many of you that claim you must have long pre- and
>> > post-rolls have actually tried using start early/end late instead?  I
>> > suspect most of you would get by just fine.
>> 
>> Just to state my understanding of your point: I believe you refer to
>> specifying pre and post-roll in recording rules, is that right? (Perhaps
>> I'm not using the correct terminology here; apologies if so).
>
>We settled on the following terminolgoy long ago, to avoid this
>confusion.
>
>Start early and end late are options in every recording rule.  They
>are specified in minutes and are intended for cases where the probram
>is expceted to or might begin early or run long.  The scheduler will
>attempt work around these constrains by moving recordings to later of
>lower priority tuners to honor the full recording time.  In cases
>where the full recording time can't be honored, the scheduler will
>report a conflict so the user can make the best informed decision on
>what to do.
>
>Pre foll and post roll, are global options.  They are specified in
>seconds and are intended to setup and tead down tuners if the tuner is
>not already busy.  They are entirely optional and are not guaranteed
>to be used.  This is what I contend is misused by many people as a
>scheduling feature.
>
>> If so, the reason why I am now using the global pre-roll feature is
>> that, in my understanding, it enables back-to-back recordings on the
>> same capture card, whereas with recording rule-specified pre/post-rolls
>> two capture cards are needed to record back-to-back programs.
>
>This is what doesn't compute for me.  Users say they absolutely have
>to have this feature because their guide data is inaccurate and
>without it, they'll miss the beginnings or ends of their shows.  Yet,
>there's no guarantee this feature will kick in so they still miss
>parts of their shows.  Then they go one step further and say without
>it being optional , they can't schedule show back to back which,
>again, will miss parts of their shows.
>
>Why not use the necessary padding in the first place?  In the case
>where there is a conflict, then you can make the choice of which part
>of which show to miss that best fits your needs.  Admittedly, MythTV
>doesn't do as good of a job of notifying about conflicts as it should.
>I've got an incomplete patch that remedies that.
>
>> The other reason is one of convenience: it is easier to specify
>> pre/post-roll periods in only one place rather than having to do so in
>> each recording rule. Particularly if a bad experience shows that the
>> pre/post-roll periods need to be extended. Please keep in mind that the
>> guide data unreliability we face here is universal and unpredictable, so
>> the pre/post-roll periods need to be applied to all recordings.
>
>Recording, rule templates already make it easy to apply custom,
>defaults to all new rules.  It wouldn't be hard to add the ability to
>optionally apply template changes to all rules.
>
>> I used to use recording rule-specified pre/post-rolls but switched to
>> the global approach for these reasons.
>> 
>> BTW (and I don't mean to annoy you), a dream feature sidestepping the
>> first reason above would be to add "multirec" capabilities to all
>> capture cards, by regarding a regular (currently non-multirec capable)
>> tuner as one that has as many "multiplexes" as it has channels it can
>> tune to (i.e. 1 channel = 1 multiplex), such that a channel can be
>> recorded from multiple times at once. This would enable recording
>> back-to-back shows, with each recording containing its own pre/post-roll.
>
>I don't fully understand your point here.  However, I have two
>comments that might address it.
>
>First, a former developer added a hack long, long ago (yes, this same
>discussion has benn going on nearyly 20 years) to quell the masses.
>It intentionally avoids putting incompatible recordings back to back
>except when it has to be done to avoid conflicts.
>
>Second, MythTV has had the ability for a couple of years now to create
>virtual tuners as needed to support overlapping recordings on the same
>channel or multiplex.  It currently only kicks in for hard overlaps
>but would be trivial to extend for back to back recordings too.
>
>> >> If you do care, you should use the start early/end late options.
>> >> That's what they are for(*).  If there is a conflict, wouldn't you
>> >> really rather have the scheduler choose a later showing that woh't get
>> >> chopped off?  IMO, that's much better hoping that the tetris blocks
>> >> just happen to fall in perfect way by accident.  If there is a
>> >> conflict, the scheduler will tell you so that YOU can make the best,
>> >> informed decision on what to do.
>> 
>> I'm afraid I don't understand this point. The scheduler cannot know
>> whether a show is going to be chopped off because it can only base its
>> decisions on the guide data it has at its disposal. If that guide data
>> is unreliable all bets are off.
>
>That's exactly my point from a above about not making sense.  Only you
>can make the best decision for your cases.  Why do you want to let
>MythTV essentially make a random decision?
>
>David

When you are using tuners that do multirec and automatically overlap
back-to-back recordings, then using the start early and end late
options in the recording rule works well.  That is what I do.  But
back when I had to record from a set top box using a single analogue
tuner, that would not work because the tuner could not do multirec at
all.  So in that case, the fact that the global pre- and post-roll
settings are not used for back-to-back recordings was the thing that
made it possible to record that way.  You did run into the situation
where the beginning of one program was recorded on the end of the
previous program, but you just learned to live with that and
remembered to not delete the previous program until you had watched
the bit on the end of it.  So my guess is that Jan is in the same
situation now, and what he really needs is the ability to set the
number of virtual tuners to 2 and have his single tuners do overlapped
recordings when they are back-to-back.  If he had that, then he could
then just use the normal start early and end late settings.  I do not
know what sort of tuners Jan is using, and it is actually possible
that they do now support that limited multirec mode.  It was added to
a number of tuners a long time ago and it is what I have been using
with my IPTV tuners for a long time now.