Trying to figure out why Sage deleted a movie

[gveres]

My wife is pissed off at me for switching from BTV to Sage. The latest reason is that she was in the middle of watching a movie (1/2 per night) and Sage decided to delete the movie.

I am trying to figure out why Sage decided to delete the movie on her. After the reading I have done (nothing helped in the user guide, other than I think I should be marking all my recordings except the kids shows as archived), I found this FAQ item:

Q: So... SageTV is only supposed to delete files when I tell it to or when it runs out of space?

A: No. Version 2 is now set by default to delete everything that is not a Favorite or Manual Recording. This automatic deletion occurs fairly soon after the show is done recording.

After reading this item, I think what happened was that she recorded the movie as a series (because it is the only way, using SageMC, to do a search by title). Then once the movie was recorded, I went in and removed all the movie series she had entered that were already recorded. At that point in time, I think Sage thought the movie recording was an orphaned favourite and pegged it for deletion.

Does that make sense? I hate the behaviour, I don't think it should work that way at all, but I think that explains what happened.

BTW, the movie would have been recorded with the "keep until I delete" setting.


Greg

[Brent]

No Greg that does not make sense. You can remove a series favorite and it will not delete the shows that recorded while that favorite setting existed.
That faq you are quoting - where did it come from? I see it references "version 2" and if that means SageTV 2.x then it would be a bit old since you are likely using SageTV 6.x right?


Do you have logging turned on? If so, check your log to see why it deleted the file.

Another thing to check is this: How much disk space is available on your recording drive?
Also, go into your Detailed Settings>Video Recording Directories and check to see what your "diskspace usage rule" is set. Is it set to "use all diskspace", "use only" or "leave free"?

[gveres]

Hi Brent,

I did run out of disk space so it did have to run the deletion algorithm. I seem to remember reading a post that backs up that FAQ entry.

Once you remove a favourite entry, all things recorded under that favourite becomes fair game for deletion and I guess it becomes high up on the deletion order. (who would program it that way???)

Search for delete in the FAQ entry and you will find it. That's what I did this morning.

BTW, I know you came from BTV Brent. Which skin do you use and how are you finding the UI compared to BTV?

[Brent]

Originally Posted by gveres

Hi Brent,

I did run out of disk space so it did have to run the deletion algorithm. I seem to remember reading a post that backs up that FAQ entry.

Once you remove a favourite entry, all things recorded under that favourite becomes fair game for deletion and I guess it becomes high up on the deletion order. (who would program it that way???)

Well to be honest, I've never run into the problem of not enough disk space so I'm not sure of the deletion algorithms. Ultimately though your best bet is to get a larger recording drive or a second one. Drive space is just too cheap these days to let that get in your way.

BTW, I know you came from BTV Brent. Which skin do you use and how are you finding the UI compared to BTV?

I'm a happy user of the SageMC UI. I find it superior to BTV for my home - integrated movies, music and TV, ability to customize the way I want it etc. I ran SageTV and BTV on separate PC's for a while and once I had things just so, I moved Sage in and replaced BTV on our main system. I had a week of grumbling from the family (mostly my fault for messing a few things up) and since then everyone is happier with SageTV - including me. Just curious, what other issue are you (and your family) experiencing with SageTV vs BTV?

Add to that the extenders, SageTV's Placeshifter, the much more frequent updates and feature upgrades and finally the larger pool of forum users to get help and I'm a very happy camper. I still test BTV beta's and keep up with it, but it's only on my test PC now.

[Brent]

I looked into this a little further and found this FAQ on how SageTV deals with a full drive

I don't see anywhere where it says it would delete shows that USED to be on a favorite list but now aren't. But as I said above, I've never run into the problem before either.

One thing you might find useful in the future is this tidbit from that faq:

Manual Recordings and Favorites set to "Manual Delete" can never be automatically deleted.

[Opus4]

See Appendix C of the PDF manual for information about file deletion order when more space is needed for a new recording. It may contain a little extra information compared to the above FAQ.

If you remove the Favorite, that means the recording really is no longer a Favorite and doesn't qualify as a Favorite for deletion purposes. It would essentially be the same as IR: neither a Manual Recording nor a Favorite.

- Andy

[GKusnick]

Appendix C of the manual covers deletion order. In your case, if it wasn't a manual recording, and you removed the favorite that covered it, then Sage will treat it as an IR recording and put it near the head of the deletion queue. (Edit: I see Andy beat me to it.)

If SageMC doesn't allow you to set manual recordings on movies, that sounds like a UI design flaw that you should take up in the SageMC section of the forum.

[MeInMaui]

FYI,

In SageMC, to convert any recording to a manual recording, just press the record button in its detailed info screen or during playback. Pressing record again will toggle the recording back to its previous state.

You can use with the Search screen or the Movies screen to search for a particular show/movie. I usually find the show/movie I want and hit 'Other Showings' to generate a list of all showings coming up in the next 2 weeks. From there I select the one I want to record and select 'Record'. That creates a manual recording for that showing. 'Record Series' is also an option. I hardly ever (read never) go to the Series Manager screen to search for programs to record. HTH

Aloha,
Mike

[gveres]

What I have realized recently is that recording a movie off the movie channel is different from recording a series. In BTV, they were the same thing and BTV did the right thing. In fact, it did a great thing of allowing you to say "record this movie in the next 30 days" and it would try to fit it into the schedule.

So coming from that environment, we started recording movies by going into the series area, because there didn't seem to be a good way to record a movie otherwise. The Movies screen gives you a huge list that all you can do is page through.

But Mike just pointed me to the search screen and I can see how that is what we should use all the time. To record a series, I had been going into Schedule / Series / New by Title. But just going into the search is easier.

I still think it is a flaw that when you delete the favourite that all the recordings for that favourite become top candidates for deletion if the favourite was set to keep until I delete.

But anyway, thanks for all the help guys. This should make it easier to use.

Now if Sage would just tell me why it is isn't recording something like BTV does I would be a really happy camper.

And Brent, I agree with you partly. The media extenders and the R5000 support are the reason I am sticking with Sage.

Greg

[Brent]

Originally Posted by gveres

Now if Sage would just tell me why it is isn't recording something like BTV does I would be a really happy camper.

I totally agree that this is needed in SageTV - Snapstream made a lot of improvements in the conflict resolution and error reporting in the past few years. I would also like to see the log file accessible on the web server for easier troubleshooting.

[gveres]

Originally Posted by MeInMaui

FYI,

In SageMC, to convert any recording to a manual recording, just press the record button in its detailed info screen or during playback. Pressing record again will toggle the recording back to its previous state.

Thanks Mike. I just read that yesterday in another thread.

You can use with the Search screen or the Movies screen to search for a particular show/movie. I usually find the show/movie I want and hit 'Other Showings' to generate a list of all showings coming up in the next 2 weeks. From there I select the one I want to record and select 'Record'. That creates a manual recording for that showing. 'Record Series' is also an option. I hardly ever (read never) go to the Series Manager screen to search for programs to record. HTH

Aloha,
Mike

Thanks again Mike. That is very useful.

The one thing that I really wish was displayed on the "other showings" screen is a reason why that recording is not going to be recorded, or any conflict I am about to create. I hate going in to create a manual recording like a movie because I never know what series episode is going to be recorded at that time. So I have to add it and then prey. This is only partly the responsibility of the UI. I think the real feature request would be to add the ability of the schedule to pick any of the available movie airings.

For instance, if I want to record the movie Surf's Up and it airs 10 times in the next 2 weeks, right now I only have the ability to pick one of those 10 airings to force it to record at that time. The problem is that I have no visibility into what other shows are already going to be recorded during those 10 airings. And if I pick one, I might pick one that conflicts with a series episode that is only airing at that particular time. Now Surf's Up is preventing me from getting that season premiere of Heroes when I could have easily recorded both of them if I picked a different Surf's Up.

The way it worked in BTV is that I would go in and say I wanted to record Surf's Up at a particular time and the scheduling algorithm would run and it would come back immediatley with "there is a conflict with Heroes" at that time and it would give me the option to schedule the movie to be recorded in the next 30 days.

Again, thanks for everybody's help.
Greg

[gmijackso]

Hi Greg, I ran BTV for a short while before switching to Sage as well (my server is STILL named BTVServer), while I'm not nearly as well versed as the other guys you've been talking to, I'll add that more tuners fix the conflict problems lol. I too miss BTVs conflict resolution, but I'm up to 4 SD tuners and 2 HD tuners and just don't have conflicts anymore. Anyway, just thought I'd say hi and offer that bit of wisdom/fun thought.
Fred

[MeInMaui]

FYI,

In the next release of SageMC, when you cancel a favorite, all existing recordings for that favorite will automatically be converted to manual recordings. There will also be an option to disable this feature, but it will default to enabled.

Aloha,
Mike

[gveres]

Originally Posted by MeInMaui

FYI,

In the next release of SageMC, when you cancel a favorite, all existing recordings for that favorite will automatically be converted to manual recordings. There will also be an option to disable this feature, but it will default to enabled.

Aloha,
Mike

Wow, Mike. That is a great idea!

I just wish that Sage would provide the reason for not recording a show as I have mentioned before. I looked at the upcoming recordings last night before I went to bed and all was good. Then I looked again when I woke up and there were a bunch of things that were completely screwed up. It turned out this morning my wife added one show and that just messed up all the recordings - some shows weren't taped on HD, some shows were just moved around, some shows wouldn't be taped at all even though nothing else was being recorded during their hd airing slot. If Sage would tell me why it wasn't recording all those entries, then I could file a reasonable bug report.

Greg

[gveres]

Originally Posted by gmijackso

Hi Greg, I ran BTV for a short while before switching to Sage as well (my server is STILL named BTVServer), while I'm not nearly as well versed as the other guys you've been talking to, I'll add that more tuners fix the conflict problems lol. I too miss BTVs conflict resolution, but I'm up to 4 SD tuners and 2 HD tuners and just don't have conflicts anymore. Anyway, just thought I'd say hi and offer that bit of wisdom/fun thought.
Fred

Ya, that's all great except that a tuner for me costs $700 ($200 for the HD tuner and $500 for the R5000 mod) That's too expensive to have more than 1. I barely justified a single one.

Right now I still have BTV running to catch the recordings I really can't afford to miss. over the 8 months I have been running Sage, I would say I had to go to BTV every week for 1 - 2 recordings. Now a lot of that was the flakey R5000 software, which David has fixed now so I expect this to decrease now. But even this morning, I was about to miss about 3 different shows because the schedule screwed up.


Greg

[Brent]

Originally Posted by gveres

I just wish that Sage would provide the reason for not recording a show as I have mentioned before. I looked at the upcoming recordings last night before I went to bed and all was good. Then I looked again when I woke up and there were a bunch of things that were completely screwed up.

If you're seeing this very much, I'd make a point to check the conflicts page of Nielms web server each afternoon to see if it shows any conflicts in the upcoming recordings.

It turned out this morning my wife added one show and that just messed up all the recordings - some shows weren't taped on HD, some shows were just moved around, some shows wouldn't be taped at all even though nothing else was being recorded during their hd airing slot. If Sage would tell me why it wasn't recording all those entries, then I could file a reasonable bug report.
Greg

I would definitely review your logs (you should turn on logging if you haven't already) to look for clues as to why this is happening. The logs aren't accessible from the web server, but lots of detail in there for sure.

a tuner for me costs $700

Have you considered the Hauppauge HD-PVR as an option?

[Opus4]

If you have conflicts where the schedule is completely open so that it looks like the show could have been recorded, have you contacted support to get their input on it?

One thing to check is make sure that this option is set to 'No': Detailed Setup -> Enforce recording quality in schedule.

- Andy

[gveres]

Enforce recording quality in schedule was set to Yes. I changed it to No.

I only have a single tuner so I am not sure why this would make a difference.

Greg

[mistergq]

gveres: welcome to Sage TV.

have you installed Nielm's Web Server plugin? This is a must have, especially for those of us switching from BTV.

Also, for conflict resolution, I recommend changing you "scheduling_lookahead" in properties file to "scheduling_lookahead=1209600000". This will give you 14 days in advance. That way, you will be able to see conflicts pretty far ahead.

As to the WAF, I think it will increase once you get everything set up. My wife never watched live tv with BTV. Now the only thing she uses is STV.

[Opus4]

Originally Posted by mistergq

Also, for conflict resolution, I recommend changing you "scheduling_lookahead" in properties file to "scheduling_lookahead=1209600000". This will give you 14 days in advance. That way, you will be able to see conflicts pretty far ahead.

SageTV recommneds NOT doing this for performance reasons. If you make this change and run into any problems please remember to change it back to the default 3 days before contacting support.

I still suggest contacting support if there are conflicts for what appears to be open recording times. When you check a conflict, the conflict resolution screen should show a grid with the show(s) in conflict. Don't forget that padding can increase the number of conflicts, especialyl when using a single tuner.

- Andy