SageTV losing recordings

[ChrisNH]

Hi,

We are having an ongoing problem with SageTV starting to record something then have the recording dissapear when it finishes.

I have watched it happen.. where the "REC" icon will be up.. the show will be recording during the time period, then we go to look and the show has vanished. This does not happen with all recordings, but has been happening about half the time.

There is about 20-30 GB free on the drive, we do have a larger dedicated 640gb drive coming to replace the current one for sage, but that should be enough space to record what we have without reaching the 2gb threshold.

This has been very frustrating.. the wife is about to break out our VCR.. any thoughts about what could cause this to happen?

in at least one case I saw a bunch of length 0 mpgs for the show that then all disappeared, along with the show, at the end..

Chris

We are running in service mode (confirmed!) under windows xp home.

[Opus4]

See what the debug log shows.

What tuner is having the problem?

Among other possibilities, you could have hardware going bad or a bad signal level going to the tuner.

- Andy

[ChrisNH]

I have a pair of hvr-1250s for digital signals, I have a pvr-150 for analog. My memory does seem to recall that it is happening with the channels that would be tuned with the 1250s. One 1250 is brand new, the other was an ebay purchase and perhaps is suspect.

This weekend I was planning to redo my channel mapping after I installed the new HDD. I will investigate the signal quality to those cards and do a rescan. I will also look at that file troubleshooting file and post back.

Thanks for the suggestions. If one card is bad and one is not, that would explain why some recordings are not recording correctly and some are. It might also explain the length 0 mpg files.

THanks,

Chris

[freedml]

Originally Posted by ChrisNH

Hi,
the wife is about to break out our VCR..

I feel your pain.

[chrishallowell]

I have had this happen to me at least two times in the last 3 weeks.

I see the recording in the currently recording section. Then right after it finishes the recording, it disappears from the face of the earth.

I'm using SageMC (One of the later releases), HD200s (Mid Feb beta firmware). capture cards: HDHR, OnAir GT, and HVR-1600.
I've turned debugging on so the next time it happens maybe I'll have a lead.

Maybe it has to do with our first names....

[ChrisNH]

My problem seems to have gone away for now.

I installed a new hard drive with lots of space and formatted in 64k blocks as recommended for Sage. Performance with this new drive installed has been dramatically better. I experience none of the problems watching or skipping through HD programs I experienced before which makes me wonder if my dropped recordings were problems writing to the HDD.

I also uninstalled and re-installed SageTV. I redid my channel mapping and did not yet try to map SD digital channels which gave me so much trouble last time. I am just tuning HD channels with my two digital tuners.

Chris

[mtyme]

I've been having this problem for a couple months now. It always happens on HD OTA sources. Here's a snippet of the log file after the show has recorded. This was from last night!

Tue 4/7 21:00:06.748 Removing MediaFile because it failed verification:MediaFile[id=1339074 A[1148582,1134402,"Fringe",43481@0407.20:01,59] host=pvrserv1 encodedBy=Hauppauge WinTV 418 TS Capture KMIZDT2 format=MPEG2-PS 0:00:00 0 kbps [] D:\SAGE_RECORD\Fringe-InnerChild-1148582-11.mpg, Seg0[Tue 4/7 21:00:00.019-Tue 4/7 21:00:04.101]]
Tue 4/7 21:00:06.748 Deleted media segment file D:\SAGE_RECORD\Fringe-InnerChild-1148582-11.mpg dtime=0 len=0

[mtyme]

Did it again tonight. Different recording drive this time, so unless two of my drives are going bad, I don't think that's it.

[zakrzep]

I have also been having this problem for the last few months.

Wed 4/29 22:19:51.085 MediaFile failing verify testFile=\\192.168.0.3\data 2\tv shows\Lost-TheVariable-5537748-0.mpg isFile=false len=0 isTV=true isRecording=false
Wed 4/29 22:19:51.085 Removing MediaFile because it failed verification:MediaFile[id=5631888 A[5537748,5537734,"Lost",12007@0429.21:00,62] host=ha1

[zzmystique]

Not sure whether this is the cause but maybe worth sending the logs to sagetv. I had a similar problem when I installed 2 hauppauge dvb-s cards in the same pc. Could be an issue with having 2 of the same type HD cards.

With my issue, Qian confirmed there was a bug with multiple DVB-S tuners DiSeqC support and sent me a replacement DShowCapture.dll. This was some time ago though.

http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/show...56&postcount=1

[joh3004]

+1 I've just started having this problem as well. Missed 9 recordings this week. Just thought it was a slow TV week until someone mentioned that they watched a new episode of one of my TV shows, went back and saw that the TV show was highlighted as my favorite, was a first run, but had been deleted.

Any luck on why this is happening? I haven't changed anything in the past week. And last week it recorded my tv shows fine.

[joh3004]

Oh, and it seems to be limited to HD shows that I'm capturing OTA. Does sage reject a recording if it feels like the signal strength isn't strong enough? I have been noticing a few more artifacts in my HD shows of late.

[paulbeers]

Originally Posted by joh3004

Oh, and it seems to be limited to HD shows that I'm capturing OTA. Does sage reject a recording if it feels like the signal strength isn't strong enough? I have been noticing a few more artifacts in my HD shows of late.

Yes. If the recording is basically garbage, then Sage deletes it and will record it again when it comes around (aka re-runs). Sounds like you need to check your signal strength....

[joh3004]

Checked my signal strength and all the channels seem to be 88% or higher. And the pvr's I'm using are all less than 6 months old.

[paulbeers]

Originally Posted by joh3004

Checked my signal strength and all the channels seem to be 88% or higher. And the pvr's I'm using are all less than 6 months old.

Unfortunately Signal Strength isn't the only issue. Signal Quality has a huge piece. My OTA tuner can state that my signal strength is high, but the signal quality can drop out causing all sorts of issues.

[joh3004]

Well, for me restarting my computer seems to have fixed the problem. I don't think it had to do with signal strength at all. I'm not sure what restarting it did, but at least for the past two days my comp seems to be recording everything.

[freedml]

88% is pretty low for a digital signal. Can you watch it live? I'd get the signal strength to the tuner up to 100% before looking any further.

[DLPaddict]

On Memorial Day tried to record NASCAR on FOX OTA from Buffalo
it didn't start or recorded anything

Check the recording schedule nothing vanished ?

I don't know what happened I even record the show right before and after
the re-schedule race at 12pm (the race was canceled Sunday due to rain ) the next day (Memorial day Monday).

And yesterday (Sunday May 31 ) recorded another NASCAR race from Dover
and the recording is missing 1 hour of the 5 hours of the race ??

When I looked I saw SageTV was turned off not by me or anyone else
I turn it on again and the schedule recording was still there but not recording??

SageTV start in time for the race but 3 hours later when I check the race the thing was off

OTA signal was fine the weather was nice and sunny in Toronto I'm getting the signal from Buffalo and Buffalo's weather was fine too.

[DFranch]

This happened to me once. There was a power failure, and when the system restarted the HDHR had hung up somehow. all recordings from the HDHR had a 0 length and would be deleted when the recording was over. Rebooting the server and HDHR fixed it.

When the show is recording, can you watch it or do you receive "no signal"?

[DLPaddict]

Was able to watch the race during recording no problem it only happened
3 hours later.

I found out because I was in the basement to pick up something and I want to check the race for a second and I found SageTV was off

No power outage or bad weather the computer was running everything was fine I re-start the recording and it was fine until the end even the recording schedule was showing the shows I scheduled before and after the race in case the race would run a little late.