Watched recordings in progress are canceled

[nerys]

Well I found a nasty bug in sage today Grrrr

I logged into to set up some recordings and decided to do my periodic flush. I got into recordings set all watched so it wont record these shows again before I move the mpg's out of the sage folder and into my recordings folder out of sage's reach (I am paranoid about the aspect of sage where it even has the ability to delete my files :-)

anyway found out suddenly it was NO LONGER recording Without a trace and ER (ER especially I wanted to see badly looked good !! :-(

it seems if you set a program that is being recorded as watched while it is being recorded sage NOT ONLY stops recording it (not so bad if you catch it) but it ALSO delete what it has recorded thus far !!!!! that is NOT good

The obvious work around is to not set anything watched till sage is NOT recording anything but this is cumbersome as many times I do not even realize its recording something and it just made sense that sage should ask my permission before doing something like this (canceling a recording AND deleting the partial recording it had aquired so far)

is there a way to stop this from happening ?

At first I wondered why it even had a partial recording in the recordings screen since its not done yet but then I remembered sage timeshifts live too :-(

Suggestions ?

Chris Taylor
http://www.zodiacreview.com/

[korben_dallas]

err.. well.. I think this may be a feature not a bug. On several occasions I have caught the beginning of a show and then part way through realized I had already seen the remainder.. so I set Watched to keep it from recording any more.

[nerys]

why bother just stop it and delete it :-) it should have at least warned me it was going to do this.

to me thats a massive bug. I have to set them as wartched in order for sage to record it as such and not record that same showing again. It never danwed on me that it would CANCEL a recording in progress and then also delete the partial !!!

Chris Taylor
http://www.zodiacreview.com/

[Wheemer]

since you are already doing something that is not required in a properly functioning SageTV enviroment (moving the files), I can understand your confusion. But if you us Sage in the way it was designed, your situation would not come up.

It would be better to get to the bottom of your fear of Sage going on a deleting frenzy.

[glbrown]

I just hit archive in the prog detail menu and Sage will never delete the file, ever.

[nerys]

well I am not worried about it deleting after the fact - it bugs me so much that sage even has the ability to delete files that almost daily I move the recordings into my OWN recordings directory that sage has no access to so it cant delete them

problem is I first have to remember to mark them as watched and I was not aware that doing this would CANCEL and DELETE a program currently being recorded :-)

that is why I wish I could make sage auto mark a program as watched when it was finished recording them WITHOUT deleting them off course :-)

Chris Taylor
http://www.zodiacreview.com/

[Lucas]

I find it useful. Whenever there is a favourite recording that is sceduled for recording or being recorded I set it to "Watched" and it goes away.

That's the only time I toggle the Watched flag.

[nerys]

yes alas that is the only way to get it not to record a specific favorite recording (annoying since it cancels ALL iterations of that episode so I have to wait till it records at least one iteration before I can cancel the duplicates)

the reason I want to set watched is so that it will not record the same episode twice for first run only favorites this is not an issue but for shows where I record all showing its needed so it does not record the same episode over and over again

for example $40 a day I want all of them. I make collections of them. (as well as other shows) and I do not want 10 copies of the las vegas episode etc.. if I set it to watched from what I understand it will never record that episode again since it KNOWS it already recorded it

Chris Taylor
http://www.zodiacreview.com/

[Lucas]

I found that even with first runs, although SageTV schedules all showings of the same episode, after it has recorded the first airing, it does not record the others.

Having said that, there were some cases that a show that I had already watched got recorded again, but that was because the show description was different and Sage TV thought it was a different episode.

Ditto for being able to cancel one airing of an episode(to avoid conflicts or postpone the recording for any reason). I currently set it to watched then go to the airing time that I want and manually record it.

[nielm]

Let me check:

• Sage is currently recording a show.
• You set that show to watched
• Sage sees that you have already watched the show, so it stops recording it half-way-through, and will never schedule it to be re-recorded (normal behaviour: Sage tries not to re-record what you have already watched)
• Sage now sees that it has a 'partial recording' of a show, which it considers a waste of disk space, so it deletes it.

If I have this sequence right, this is normal behaviour... There is an option not to delete partials immediatly, but this will not help you because it has still stopped recording half-way-through.

How to stop this from happening: Do not set shows to watched unless you have watched them?
Or do not set currently recording shows to watched unless you want the recording cancelled.

[gplasky]

You need to try to use the program as designed. You mark a show watched so it doesn't record it again. If there is a partial recording Sage will delete it to clean up. This is the way it is designed to work. Not a bug. If you set your favorite to record from one channel at only a particular time you won't have many iterations of the same episode. I don't see how that happens. Many STV's offer that option.

Gerry

[nerys]

then let me reiterate. this is how tivo works this is how replay works this is how dish dvr works and how comcast dvr works

all these programs NEVER EVER delete something without your prior or current consent.

if an action will cause something to be deleted or canceled it ASKS you for confirmation. I would have expected sage to say HEY do you know this will both cancel the recording and delete the partial

TIVO and others do NOT delete partials automaically.

why would that have helped me ? easy an action I PERFORMED caused the cancelation of the recording (even though it should not have) it was second until I realized this and RESTARTED the recording. alas since it deleted the partial instead of a 2 part show with little or maybe nothing missing (if it was commercial) I get only the second half.

unless it is SET TO (keep at most for example which I set for no limit) or it directly ASKS me sage should never delete ANYTHING except for the temporary cue (meanng the temp recording it makes when watching something NOT recorded ie live tv) besides those files sage should never delete ANYTHNG without my permission.

this is normal behaviour. do not get me wrong sage is AMAZING !!! it blows my mind how good it is. but its NOT perfect and there are things IMPORTANT things I would like to see fixed.

hauppauge did it right. it has TWO FOLDERS one for live tv "cue" and one for recordings. hauppauges software has NO ability at all in any shape or form to delete any files in the recordings folder

alas every other aspect of the hauppauge software (except the way it names recordings which I LIKE) just plain sucks :-)

Sage should work the same way. it should be VERY difficult to delete anything in sage without verification and except for 2 things auto deleting WHEN you set to only keep so many episodes (and it should always DEFAULT to keep all unless the user sets it otherwise) and deleting its temporary cache which should ONLY include live recording cache.

ANY other time should mandate VERIFICATION from the user with NO action taken without verification. Period.

Having the greatest PVR around does me no real good if I have to fear it deleting stuff on me :-)

this is not about using it like it supposed to be used this is just the way "IT" should work :-)

I should never have to worry about sage deleting or canceling stuff

Chris Taylor
http://www.zodiacreview.com/

[CyRex]

If you are going through the trouble of setting the shows to Watched, with about the same amount of work you could be archiving these shows and then setting them to watched. Archiving them will keep them from being deleted, as previously mentioned. Even after moving your files, if that is the route you are going to stick with, you can always go into your viewing history and set the episodes at Watched from there...

[glbrown]

I should never have to worry about sage deleting or canceling stuff

I never worry. I archive stuff I want to save and Sage never touches it. When I copy/edit/delete outside Sage, Sage figures it out and removes the missing content.

Lots of us have multiple tuners recording hundreds of hours of programming a week. I don't want to worry about disk space or deleting stuff, I want to watch TV and save the stuff I like. Sage makes it really easy to do just that.

No offense intended but you need to relax a little bit. Don't worry, be happy

[salsbst]

I think the watched functionality is great! Its power is dangerous if you try to game the system, though.

BTW, my 2 cents on the thread title: Posting about viscious bugs in a public forum should probably be reserved for cases where there are viscious bugs. Perhaps if you are unsure why something has happened, then it would be polite to ask about why it happened before proclaiming it a viscious bug.

[Lucas]

For some reason my setup missed or recorded and deleted a show that my wife wanted to watch.

When I discovered it I felt really insecure.... about my shows that could also be missed...

Wife didn't even worry about it....

BS (Before Sage), my vcr would miss recordings due to to power-interruptions, my set-top box re-booting or because of heavy rain blocking the sat signal.....

I guess accidents will happen... its just TV after all..

[glbrown]

I agree and using Viewing History to set watched and don't like flags allows you to 'steer' the IR engine. The history screen is a bit cumbersome but it's worth the button pushes. Worry free for me.

[stanger89]

You can set Auto Delete to Never (IIRC) in the Favorite opitons. Combine that with the clear_partials_when_ir_disabled=false (I know that's wrong but it's close) should help.

FWIW, the auto delete behavior comes from two facts:

1) Sage is designed to be self-contained/self-managing, it is designed so that you never have to worry about the disk space situation.

2) Sage's LiveTV behavior, where it records each show and not a buffer (like other PVRs), many requested that Sage delete partials (usually channel surfing/livetv fragments) quickly to not clutter things.

[nerys]

I do not mind it deleting live recording information I never use live tv so its not a big deal to me.

With the exception of deleting old content when the drive nears full my TIVO NEVER EVER deletes anything period without verification from me. it never cancels anything without verification from me.

if I perform an action that will result in something being deleted or canceled I get a WARNING from the system saying as much and verifying whether I want to continue or not.

this is BASIC safeguarding that should be in ANY pvr hardware or PC based.

My arrangement is strange with my PVR I do not watch TV at home very much. everything I watch gets dumped to dvd or moved to my PVP and watched mobile. I work 12 hours night shifts so I take it with me and watch it at work. (this is also why I needed mpeg1)

I can store well over 300 hours of tv on my hard drive in mpeg1 I really have little to no concern about "running out of space" so the first thing I is disable autodelete it annoys me that there is no auto set for this that I have to manually set it for each and every recording.but its a small annoyance I just have to remember to do it for each favorite.

I do not as of yet use the IR engine. I do not have the time to watch the amount I record already so adding more would be silly :-)

Every day or so I move the recordings out of the sage folder specifically so sage can not touch them

but sage is powerful and I WANT to take advantage of its ability to remember a show and not record it again.

Do I or do I not have to use the WATCHED command to make this work ?

ie if it records $40 a day las vegas tonight and 3 months from now (favorite set to record all showings) will it record that same show again if I set to watched ? if I do not set to watched ?

also ANY time a program sumarily cancels and or deletes a recording on my system without verification from me is by definition a VISCIOUS BUG :-)

not just a bug a VISCIOUS BUG

the whole "point" of sage is recording my desired shows so an undesired act of deleting shows is a CRITICAL system issue. it should never happen without verification.

try it. try it on a TIVO ? COmcast DVR ? goto radio shack and play with the DISH DVR (they won't mind just make your own recording to play with :-)

try to delete a program without the system prompting are you sure you want to do this and making you have to MOVE the cursor (it always properly defaults to NO) to YES to verify a delete a program.

the only time it should delete ANYTHING is temp buffer from live tv, over a episode limit IF the user sets that (and it should default to NO LIMIT) and if the system is running our of recording space (and again DEFAULT should be no do not delete)

otherwise sage should NEVER touch a file without my ok. thats just common sense basic safety functionality.

even TIVO warns you about auto deletes those shows get a YELLOW when its getting close to full and a YELLOW ! when they are in imminent (within 24 hours) danger of being deleted to make space for new stuff.

I can live with a LOT of idiosyncrocies (sp?) in sage because its a WONDERFUL program and does an INCREDIBLE JOB !! but messing with my files is a NONO hence this post :-)

sage should have alerted me. warning setting a current recording in progress to watched will cancel and delete the partial of this recording are you sure you want to proceed ?

Sure I know now but it too late I lost 3 programs :-( not cool :-(

Chris Taylor
http://www.zodiacreview.com/

[Opus4]

Originally Posted by nerys

also ANY time a program sumarily cancels and or deletes a recording on my system without verification from me is by definition a VISCIOUS BUG :-)

not just a bug a VISCIOUS BUG

There is no bug here regarding how SageTV is currently designed to operate:

1. ** Note that SageTV does not record Watched shows, unless you set it to be a Manual Recording, which can override such things. **
2. ** Note that SageTV automatically deletes incomplete recordings. **
3. You manually and knowingly set an incomplete recording as Watched.
4. Note item 1. SageTV sees that it is Watched and realizes it doesn't need to be recorded. It is not a Manual Recording, so the recording is ended.
5. Note item 2. The recording is incomplete, due to being cancelled by your action of marking the show as Watched, thus SageTV then deletes it.

You have manualy pulled the plug on the recording by marking it as Watched prematurely and then are wondering why its power has gone out. Moral of the story: don't mark future shows or recordings in progress as Watched. If you do, they will not get recorded.

For the way SageTV currently is designed to operate, this is user error not a bug.

If you want to have it function differently, submit a feature request to Frey. They may or may not decide to change functionality.

Edit: After reading my own post again, I see that it probably sounds a bit harsh. My intent is just to say that what you are experiencing is SageTV operating within its normal parameters, as it now stands.

- Andy