[mythtv-users] Composite-Input Recordings End on the Half Hour

Michael T. Dean mtdean at thirdcontact.com
Tue Aug 21 03:24:39 UTC 2007


On 08/20/2007 07:29 PM, Dave Sp wrote:
> I choose Watch TV, then choose my composite input on my tuner, attach a
> video source to the composite input, and I can see the video just fine.
>
> Why does the backend status show that my "recording" on the composite
> input will end at the next half-hour time (xx:00 or xx:30)?
>   

When a channel on a source has no guide data, MythTV breaks up LiveTV at
the half-hour marks.  The right way to get proper-length recordings
without guide data is to create a manual recording rule.

You may be thinking, "That makes it much harder for me to record my old
VHS tapes to MPEG."  If so, you're exactly right.  Myth was not designed
for that job, so it doesn't do it well (though it excels at recording
television automatically using guide data).  Instead, you may find other
tools much more useful (i.e. "dd if=/dev/video0 of=/path/to/my_mpeg.mpg
bs=1M" for a Hauppauge PVR-x50 or *zap and dd for DVB cards and I'm sure
there's some tool for frame grabbers).

> (When that happens, the backend starts another file and keeps recording,
> but the frontend display goes black until I hit the Escape key to take me
> back to the main frontend menu.)
>   

Freezing at (some of) the program boundaries in LiveTV is a known issue
and is being actively worked on by several people right now.  However,
since you'll be doing manual recording rules, the LiveTV bug won't
affect you anymore.  :)

> (I've searched the mythtv-users archive and found no similar issue so
> far.)

Thanks for searching first.  And, I will admit that finding this answer
would have been hard (until now--with your nicely summarized question
prominently displayed in the subject list :).

Mike



More information about the mythtv-users mailing list