[mythtv-users] Recordings start & end 10 seconds too soon, on all channels

[Michael T. Dean]

On 03/23/2016 06:45 PM, steve wrote:
> On Mar 22, 2016, at 9:01 AM, Michael T. Dean wrote:
>> On 03/22/2016 08:45 AM, Tim Draper wrote:
>>> ---- On Tue, 22 Mar 2016 11:59:07 +0000 Michael T. Dean wrote ----
>>>
>>>   >
>>>   > FWIW, most of the time, the "Time to record before start/past end of
>>>   > show (secs)" turns out to be a placebo that satisfies most users--and
>>>   > really has far less benefit than people believe.  If you can't count on
>>>   > it, it's not much offering much at all, but it's amazing how many people
>>>   > swear by it (without ever looking to see how infrequently it actually
>>>   > benefits them).  The only people for which it generally works are people
>>>   > who have twice as many inputs as they need--and those people would
>>>   > actually be better served by just using the Start Early/End Late
>>>   > settings on the recording rules (because they have plenty of inputs) and
>>>   > could even record more shows without problems. If you do want to
>>>   > over-record by 1 minute at the start and end of each show, you should
>>>   > set Start Early/End Late to 1 in the default Recording Rule Template to
>>>   > make it easier to set up new recording rules.
>>>   >
>>>
>>> good points. i tend not to have that many shows in concurrent recording so back-to-back doesnt affect me. most of my shows have a limit of 3 to avoid recording everything, and more channels seem to be +1/mid-week repeats so it just gets recorded then.
>> Oh, and I should mention that if you do switch to using the per-Recording-Rule Start Early/End Late settings and you want to record with more than half your inputs, you'll end up seeing conflicts in Upcoming Recordings and will have to manually manage them.  You do so by doing one-time overrides that change the Start Early/End Late, thereby telling MythTV, "Although I really want to record both Supergirl and NCIS, end Supergirl early so I can start NCIS a minute early so I don't miss out on the dramatic explosion in the first couple seconds that sets the scene for the NCIS episode." In other words, with this approach, rather than MythTV just blindly starting and stopping everything at the scheduled time, you can actually tell MythTV what's important to you.  If you always want to follow the same approach, eventually, you'll just modify the rules to do what you want (in which case you're good until the network(s) move one of the shows or something).
> Trying to understand all this.  If you do the "Time to record before start/past end of  show (secs)" method do you not also end up seeing the same conflicts in the Upcoming Recordings screen and can't you manage them similarly?

No, you don't get conflicts with that approach--you just miss the end of 
one show or the beginning of another and you don't get to choose which.  
Because this time is unscheduled it will not cause conflicts--it's just 
dropped when you need back-to-back recordings and you miss what you miss.

The only way to ensure you get the extra time is to schedule it with 
Start Early/End Late.  When you do, you tell the scheduler it must get 
that time, so it will do so, even if it causes conflicts.

> Also, does Myth display live conflict popup dialogs, that you can reply to on the spot, or is the only way to know about conflicts to actively seek them out on the "Upcoming Recordings" screen?

No, generally on-the-spot live conflict dialogs wouldn't be helpful 
except for the current listings (and could get annoying as you're 
setting up recording rules).  And having to deal with conflicts "on 
MythTV's schedule" if it popped up a message in mythfrontend whenever 
there were conflicts could be annoying--rather than just managing them 
when you plan to.  Instead, once every couple of weeks (depending on how 
much listings you get), you go into Upcoming Recordings and see if it 
says "No conflicts" at the top.

Alternatively, you can set up a miscellaneous status script ( 
https://www.mythtv.org/wiki/Miscellaneous_Status_Information and, 
specifically, https://www.mythtv.org/wiki/Myth_upcoming_recordings.pl ) 
for the backend status web page (available through MythWeb under Status) 
and verify you get no conflicts.

Or you can go to the mythfrontend System Status screen and look for 
conflicts there.

Or, you can actually use myth_upcoming_recordings.pl (from the 
miscellaneous status script section) in a cron job to send an e-mail 
with mailx or sendmail or whatever you like for notifications.  You 
could set it up to send the e-mail only if there are conflicts or always 
or ...  You could show all the upcoming recordings or only those for a 
couple days or only conflicts or ...

Mike