[mythtv-users] Scheduler seems to think I am recording too many programs at once

[Stephen Worthington]

On Thu, 02 May 2013 09:25:17 -0500, you wrote:

>On Fri, May 03, 2013 at 12:04:03AM +1200, Stephen Worthington wrote:
>> On Thu, 02 May 2013 07:18:50 -0400, you wrote:
>> 
>> >On 05/02/2013 12:56 AM, Stephen Worthington wrote:
>> >> I was just checking the scheduling for the new EPG received today, and
>> >> I found that one program "Seven Sharp" was not recording at its usual
>> >> time of 19:00 on TV ONE, but instead was recording at 20:00 from the
>> >> TVONE PLUS1 channel which retransmits TV ONE an hour later, but in SD
>> >> instead of HD.  I have occasionally seen this sort of thing happen
>> >> before, always when I am recording lots of programs at the same time.
>> >> It has always seemed to me that the scheduler must have some limit for
>> >> the number of programs it will record at one time and when it goes
>> >> over that limit, it tries to reschedule one or more of them.  If I add
>> >> an override to force "Seven Sharp" to record from TV ONE at 19:00, the
>> >> scheduler is happy to do that and does not seem to make any other
>> >> changes.
>> >>
>> >> Here is the schedule for that time period, without the override:
>> >> [Time]       [Callsign]-[Program name]
>> >> 17:30:18:30  DISCO - Mythbusters
>> >> 18:00-19:03  TV ONE - One News At 6pm
>> >> 18:00-19:03  TV3 - 3 News
>> >> 18:30-19:03  ChoiceTV - Bath Crashers
>> >> 19:00-19:33  TV ONE - Seven Sharp  (yellow, "Find Daily -3 Later
>> >> Showing")
>> >> 19:00-19:33  TV ONE-S - Seven Sharp (yellow, "Find Daily -7 Later
>> >> Showing")
>> >> 19:00-19:33  TV3 - Campbell Live
>> >> 19:30-19:33  TV2 - Police Ten 7
>> >> 19:30-20:30  HISCH - Mysteries At The Museum (yellow, "Channel Record
>> >> +0 Later Showing")
>> >> 19:30-20:30  KNOWLGE - Who Do You Think You Are? Aus
>> >> 19:30-20:33  PRIME - Great Rift: Africas Wild
>> >> 19:30-20:33  TV3 - Grand Designs Revisited
>> >> 20:00-20:30  CRIME&  - Traffic Blues (yellow "Channel Record +0 Later
>> >> Showing")
>> >> 20:00-20:33  TV2 - RBT
>> >> 20:00-20:33  TVONE PLUS1 - Seven Sharp
>> >> 20:29-21:33  TV3 - Bones
>> >>
>> >> In the above, TV ONE, TV2 and TVONE PLUS1 are transmitted on the same
>> >> DVB-T multiplex, PRIME and ChoiceTV are on the same DVB-T mux, and TV3
>> >> is on the third DVB-T mux.  TV ONE-S is an SD version of TV ONE on a
>> >> DVB-S mux.  The other channels are all on Sky TV which is recorded
>> >> from a set top box via one S-Video card (so there is only one tuner
>> >> for those channels).  The three DVB-T muxes are on one source, the
>> >> DVB-S muxes on another source, and Sky TV is on the third source.  All
>> >> the DVB-T and DVB-S tuners are set up with 4 multirec virtual tuners
>> >> each, and I have 3 DVB-T tuners and 2 DVB-S ones.  Since I have as
>> >> many DVB-T tuners as there are DVB-T muxes being transmitted, I should
>> >> never have to use the TVONE PLUS1 channel at all as I should always
>> >> have enough tuners to record everything I need on the first showing.
>> >>
>> >> So, does anyone know if there is some sort of limit in the scheduler
>> >> on the number of programs that will record at any one time?  And if
>> >> so, what it is and how it works?  Is there a setting I can adjust for
>> >> it?
>> >
>> >No limit.  The only limit is the number of tuners (physical and virtual) 
>> >you have.  MythTV will gladly work your system so hard that the hardware 
>> >fails to keep up and everything fails miserably if you tell it to.
>> >
>> >> I have 5 recording drives, so whatever is causing this sort of
>> >> rescheduling is not taking that into account, as I can easily record
>> >> at least 10 programs simultaneously, and probably more, as long as the
>> >> recordings use all the drives (and they normally do).
>> >
>> >It is almost definitely a priority modifier on the other showing causing 
>> >it to be preferred.  This could be channel or input or HDTV or any of a 
>> >number of other priority modifiers.  You can see what's happening by 
>> >running:
>> >
>> >mythbackend -v schedule --loglevel debug --printsched
>> >
>> >before the shows air and without the override in place.
>> >
>> >> Also, is there a way to mark the TVONE PLUS1 channel as SD and the TV
>> >> ONE channel as HD and tell the scheduler to always record the HD
>> >> programming unless there is an actual clash?
>> >
>> >No, there's no such thing as an "HD" channel--only channels that have 
>> >programs which may or may not be HDTV.  So, it's up to your guide data 
>> >to properly mark programs as HDTV or not.
>> >
>> >You can set priority modifiers on channels (and starting with 0.27, 
>> >they'll work the way you think they would work), but then again, 
>> >priority modifiers you've already set are probably what's causing MythTV 
>> >to record shows in such a way that you think the scheduler is wrong...  ;)
>> >
>> >Mike
>> 
>> The --printsched option looks like it is really useful.  I have put
>> the result on my web server here:
>> 
>>   http://www.jsw.gen.nz/mythtv/sched.txt
>> 
>> If I paste it into a post, its gets word wrapped and unreadable.  For
>> readability I also cut down the output to just the bit between times
>> where there is nothing recording, so in theory nothing before or after
>> the bit posted would affect the scheduling at the problem time.
>> 
>> If, as I am assuming, the P=Priority column is the fully calculated
>> priority value for the scheduled recording, the I do not understand
>> what is going on.  The "Seven Sharp" scheduled to actually record from
>> TVONE PLUS1 has a priority of -4, but the one that is not going to
>> record from TV ONE has a priority of -3.
>> 
>> The channel priorities are: TV ONE is 0, TVONE PLUS1 is -1, which
>> explains the difference between the two recording priorities.  But it
>> is still going to record the wrong one.
>
>I'm pretty sure Mike meant that to be --testsched and not
>--printsched.  And don't snip any of the output.  It's the cryptic
>details that explains what is going on and why.
>
>David

OK, that has a lot more detail.  I have put it here:

  http://www.jsw.gen.nz/mythtv/testsched.txt