Frustrations with Recording Scheduler

[Telecore]

Twice in the past week, I wanted to watch a favorite show which normally airs at 8 or 9 PM, only to find that it did not record, rather, SageTV decided to record an airing either later that evening, or later in the week. I don't fully understand why this happens because I have more than enough tuners for the show to have been recorded at the earlier time. I do know that at the time of the first airing, SageTV was fairly busy with 3-4 other recordings, and someone was watching TV, either live, or a delayed recording in progress. Can someone explain why this happens, despite the fact that there were unused tuners available that could have recorded the earlier airing?

(I have 6 cablecard and 4 OTA tuners plus two STB's that aren't currently being used because cableco turned off DRM)

I know one solution here would be to constrain the favorite to recording on a particular night and time, but couldn't SageTV be smarter than this?

Also, a related question: If I have 4 tuners and two shows are scheduled to record at 8PM, then two others at 9PM, why are they always scheduled to run on the same two tuners? Wouldn't it make more sense to user tuners 1&2 at 8PM and 3&4 at 9PM?

Thanks in advance for any insight on this...

[Steve52]

This may not be you answer, but I have learned over the years that if you have padding set on favs and If in detailed setup you have it set to not remove padding on back to back favs, then Sage will use two tuners even though only one channel is being recorded. Also sage gives priority to manual recording, so if it needs a tuner for a fav and none is available because a manual recording has been set, sage will skip the fav in favor of the manual. Again this may not have anything to do with your problem, it is just some things that came to mind when I read your post.

[Tiki]

There are lots of reasons this could happen.
Are you sure that these shows could have been recorded on one of the unused tuners? Adjusting merits on the tuners may help.

Inconsistent guide data can also cause this. If the show on tonight is not marked as HD, but one later in the week is, it will prefer the later one.

[Monedeath]

Originally Posted by Tiki

There are lots of reasons this could happen.
Are you sure that these shows could have been recorded on one of the unused tuners? Adjusting merits on the tuners may help.

Inconsistent guide data can also cause this. If the show on tonight is not marked as HD, but one later in the week is, it will prefer the later one.

This and the previous as well. When my current SageTV server was spec'd out, we took a look at the number of recordings we'd be likely to have going on concurrently, and then doubled that number because we knew we'd be using recording padding both before and after each recording, and with it set to retain that padding even on back to back recordings on the same channel.

I understand EnterNoEscape is working on addressing the need for two different tuners on back to back recordings(same channel) if you want before and after padding on a show. But that is still in progress at this time.

Otherwise, it's a hodgepodge of too many data points to check against with not enough data given to give a meaningful answer as to why SageTV's scheduler did what it did.

What are the tuner merits? How does sage regard the tuner? (Tuner merit isn't all decisive, Sage will prefer certain tuners over others without regard to what the merit is set to in some cases, not sure what triggers it, I just know I happen to have one such tuner)
What was the "ranking" of the favorites in question? (they have a in-built pecking order after all)
What did the guide data look like at the time for the recordings in question?

It also is entirely possible we had a confluence of recording padding + live TV viewing + tuner merit/preference + favorite "ranking" events happening such that the favorite in question couldn't be recorded because the only tuners that could record that channel were "busy" during at least part of the relevant time frame. So SageTV punted it into a later time bracket for recording.

It also is possible a lower ranked favorite only had a single airing pop up in that time frame, which made the scheduler bump your desired program in favor of that single airing, simply because it could grab the other one later.

There are a number of things that could account for what happened to generate that outcome.

[Telecore]

Well in my case the shows that got re-scheduled to record later were among my highest priority favorites - they should not have gotten pre-empted. No manual records were involved - all favorites. Initially, the 1st time this happened the encoder merit was as follows: Cablecard=2, OTA tuners=1, STB/HD-PVR=0 because previously I wanted to record locals from cable - I figured 6 tuners should be enough. But after this happened, I thought, it would help to have more free cablecard tuners, so I set OTA=3, Cablecard=2, STB=0. In both cases, there should have been enough cablecard tuners to record the shows in question (both shows are on cable). The specific shows were: last week The Expanse on SciFi - got delayed from Wednesday, 9PM to record on Friday at 11PM and Sunday, The Walking Dead, got delayed from 8PM to 11PM same night. In both cases, there was at least 1 or 2 completely unused cablecard tuners on the Ceton PCIe x 6 at all times.

I did read about the HD vs non-HD issue before but I mitigated that by (1) first of all, I don't have any non-HDs in the guide and (2) don't select the prefer HD over SD option.

One other bit of information, earlier in the evening, I'm fairly certain that I noticed the recording schedules were set to record the earlier airing of the shows. On the two nights in question, there are a lot of recordings scheduled. In both cases, someone was watching live tv at the time the recording was to have started - so that may have something to do with it.

One thing for sure, the way SageTV is currently utilizing tuners leads to an occasional pop-up message about "is it OK to change the channel..." even when there are plenty of free tuners that could be used to avoid this altogether - so I think there is an opportunity for improvement.

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by Telecore

Well in my case the shows that got re-scheduled to record later were among my highest priority favorites - they should not have gotten pre-empted. No manual records were involved - all favorites.

Well first things first, Sage's prime directive is to record everything you asked it to record, and if it determines that a something you asked it to record is unable to be recorded if a high priority favorite is recorded first, it will move that high priorty recording to later to make sure everything you told it to record gets recorded.

Favorite priorities only come into play when there are conflicts (something will not be recorded), in which case the higher priority favorite will get recorded in lieu of the lower one.

Initially, the 1st time this happened the encoder merit was as follows: Cablecard=2, OTA tuners=1, STB/HD-PVR=0 because previously I wanted to record locals from cable - I figured 6 tuners should be enough. But after this happened, I thought, it would help to have more free cablecard tuners, so I set OTA=3, Cablecard=2, STB=0. In both cases, there should have been enough cablecard tuners to record the shows in question (both shows are on cable). The specific shows were: last week The Expanse on SciFi - got delayed from Wednesday, 9PM to record on Friday at 11PM and Sunday, The Walking Dead, got delayed from 8PM to 11PM same night. In both cases, there was at least 1 or 2 completely unused cablecard tuners on the Ceton PCIe x 6 at all times.

Merit also doesn't come into play in the scheduling, at least not in the way you're looking, Sage will use all the tuners if necessary, regardless of merit. Merit only comes into play when all else is equal.

I did read about the HD vs non-HD issue before but I mitigated that by (1) first of all, I don't have any non-HDs in the guide and (2) don't select the prefer HD over SD option.

One other bit of information, earlier in the evening, I'm fairly certain that I noticed the recording schedules were set to record the earlier airing of the shows. On the two nights in question, there are a lot of recordings scheduled. In both cases, someone was watching live tv at the time the recording was to have started - so that may have something to do with it.

One thing for sure, the way SageTV is currently utilizing tuners leads to an occasional pop-up message about "is it OK to change the channel..." even when there are plenty of free tuners that could be used to avoid this altogether - so I think there is an opportunity for improvement.

We really need a lot more information to diagnose your issue.

What are all your sources (tuner and lineup)?
When you get a change channel popup, what is scheduled to record on each tuner?
When a recording is delayed, what's scheduled to record on each tuner? Including padding overlap before and/or after?

You might want to try the Parallel recording view to help you visualize what's going on:


If I had to guess, you're probably running into a situation where, while there's a "free" tuner during the Wednesday 9pm block, there is some padding from another airing on that tuner that overlaps 9 or 10, or possibly the padding on The Expanse would overlap an airing on that tuner at 8 or 10.

[Tiki]

Originally Posted by Telecore

I did read about the HD vs non-HD issue before but I mitigated that by (1) first of all, I don't have any non-HDs in the guide and (2) don't select the prefer HD over SD option.

That won't solve the issue I'm talking about. I have found that EPG data is very inconsistent about marking specific airings as HD. So, tonight's episode of the Walking Dead might not be marked as HD, but when it repeats later in the week it is marked as HD. In that case, Sage will prefer the one later in the week.

To complicate things more, Sage downloads new EPG data at least once per day and this data can sometimes change, causing Sage to reevaluate.

Complicating things even more, Sage only looks ahead a certain number of days when scheduling shows to record. So, when it first looks, it may only see Sunday's episode (which isn't marked HD), and since it's the only one it sees, it schedules it to record. Then a few days later it sees there is another airing on Wednesday that is marked Hd, so it updates the schedule to record that one instead.

[joshuad156]

I used to have this problem during sports seasons, when football games would get replayed in the middle of the night in condensed format. I'd sit down after putting the kids to bed to watch my football game and find that SageTV decided to record the 3am replay of the game instead. Very frustrating to the say the least.

My only solution was to set the favorite to only record First Runs (no ReRuns). I still get rare burps where the metadata isn't accurate, but for the most part it's fixed this issue for me.

If ReRuns are important, you can always setup a 2nd favorite to grab those in case you miss them on the first pass.

[graywolf]

My wife would get this sometimes in the past. She has gotten in the habit that if she wants a particular airing time of a favorite she makes it a manual recording.

[EnterNoEscape]

Originally Posted by graywolf

My wife would get this sometimes in the past. She has gotten in the habit that if she wants a particular airing time of a favorite she makes it a manual recording.

This is your only reasonable guarantee that something will record exactly when you want it to record.

[Narflex]

The explanation that I've usually seen for this over the years is overlapping padding like others mentioned (even though it may look like it is OK, closer examination will reveal an overlap occurred). I know there are some cases where the Scheduler does not make the optimal decision; and those mostly happen when you have setups with multiple different lineups in them (which you do) because it can't solve for the optimal schedule directly in those cases and sometimes needs to just give up and take what it's figured out to prevent spending years (or even smaller, more reasonable amounts of time that cause problems) trying to find the best one.

[AlphaCrew]

I been having the same problems, for me it's a major deficiency between OpenDCT and my Ceton Card.

I am continuously getting 'Missed Due to Conflict.' I know there are no conflicts; as many times the are no shows being recorded.

It doesn't appear this problem can or will be fixed, so I've been thinking about moving back to SageDCT..

Such a shame...

[Monedeath]

Originally Posted by AlphaCrew

I been having the same problems, for me it's a major deficiency between OpenDCT and my Ceton Card.

I am continuously getting 'Missed Due to Conflict.' I know there are no conflicts; as many times the are no shows being recorded.

It doesn't appear this problem can or will be fixed, so I've been thinking about moving back to SageDCT..

Such a shame...

That... may not help. Part of the motivation behind my recent shift to OpenDCT was because of such events turning up the log with increasing frequency while using SageDCT.

"Missed Due to Conflict" is a slightly different critter, and I agree seeing it trigger on a recording where there might have been 1 other show recording, and you have 6 tuners is particularly vexing.

I haven't checked back to see if that behavior fully resolved with OpenDCT just yet, but in that case, it is very likely that SageTV detected the Ceton as "not producing any data" and delisted it from the scheduler at just the right wrong time. It's very possible this may be something unique to the interactions between SageTV and the Ceton tuners(depending on what the service provider is up to?), regardless of the DCT intermediary being used.

In either case, someone is going to need to produce logs of such an event happening, and if it is a Ceton problem, you're probably going to need both the SageTV logs, and the OpenDCT logs of when it happened. I'm unable to babysit my system at this time to grab and pull logs before they're overwritten in the event this happens again.

[Narflex]

Originally Posted by Monedeath

I haven't checked back to see if that behavior fully resolved with OpenDCT just yet, but in that case, it is very likely that SageTV detected the Ceton as "not producing any data" and delisted it from the scheduler at just the right wrong time.

SageTV doesn't 'de-list' a tuner just because it stops producing data.. it will just try to restart it and hope it works again, and continue to do that over and over. However, if it is a network encoder and it becomes unreachable over a network; then in that case it will remove it from the pool of tuners used by the Scheduler.

[Narflex]

Originally Posted by AlphaCrew

I been having the same problems, for me it's a major deficiency between OpenDCT and my Ceton Card.

I am continuously getting 'Missed Due to Conflict.' I know there are no conflicts; as many times the are no shows being recorded.

It doesn't appear this problem can or will be fixed, so I've been thinking about moving back to SageDCT..

Such a shame...

It should never happen where something is missed due to a conflict and nothing else was recording. If you can produce a SageTV log file from when that happens, I'd be happy to take a look at it. There'll be enough info in there to show whether or not that actually was the case (and if it might have been due to something other than the rare Scheduler issue I talked about).