[advocate99]

Krusty (and anyone else):

in XBMC Frodo, Settings/Live TV/Recording, there are two settings relating to "Margins."

Margin at the start of a recording: 2

and

Margin at the end of a recording: 10

Neither appears to have any effect on how Windows Media Center behaves. But, they do cause XBMC to report that the recording has started 2 minutes before it actually does start in WMC, and to report that the recording is active (and not finished) for 10 minutes after the recording actually finishes.

In the context of ServerWMC, because they don't appear to affect Windows Media Center at all, is there any reason why we shouldn't set both of these to 0

[scarecrow420]

In ServerWMC on the Record tab you can set whether ServerWMC will get its pre/post padding from WMC, XBMC or set it's own. So if you choose "XBMC" it should use those settings I thought... Otherwise if its set to WMC or it's own then it doesnt matter what you put in XBMC (if the idea is to make the popups meaningful then you should assumedly set them to the same settings you have in WMC/ServerWMC)

[advocate99]

Well, it does matter a little. I use the default option in ServerWMC, but it appears that XBMC behaves as if these settings are genuine, when they actually are not.

So, for example, 2 minutes before WMC start recording, the list of recordings will show "Recording Now," but if I try to access it, the file is not found. And 5 minutes after WMC stops recording, the file will still show up in Recording Now and ServerWMC will remux it (I think that's the right term) even though the recording is finished...

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Based upon my experience, it appears that your statement that "(if the idea is to make the popups meaningful then you should assumedly set them to the same settings you have in WMC/ServerWMC)" is not quite right.

Rather, if you set ServerWMC to use WMC's padding, then you should set these to 0.

Just out of curiosity, if you set ServerWMC to use it's own, or to use XBMC, how does it override the padding set in WMC

Or is the padding settings in ServerWMC only for newly created timers (which is what I have assumed all along)...

[scarecrow420]

What I meant was it has no effect on the actual timing of the recording. If you want XBMC to match up with reality then as I said, setup XBMC timings to match with what you have ServerWMC set to (or better yet, tell ServerWMC to use the XBMC settings)

[advocate99]

For now, I've set them both to 0 and things are working as expected with the default settings in ServerWMC.

[scarecrow420]

Based upon my experience, it appears that your statement that "(if the idea is to make the popups meaningful then you should assumedly set them to the same settings you have in WMC/ServerWMC)" is not quite right.

Rather, if you set ServerWMC to use WMC's padding, then you should set these to 0.

Just out of curiosity, if you set ServerWMC to use it's own, or to use XBMC, how does it override the padding set in WMC

Or is the padding settings in ServerWMC only for newly created timers (which is what I have assumed all along)...

OK... So you are saying that you have some (non zero) padding value set in WMC... and you have ServerWMC set to use WMC... and XBMC needs to be on 0 in order to line up with that?

In answer to your question, ServerWMC sets the padding on the scheduled recordings it sets up, so it only applies to new recordings done by ServerWMC. It wont affect any existing timers created in WMC natively or created by ServerWMC with previous padding settings...

[advocate99]

Here's what I am seeing:

1. I have my timers in WMC set to pad 2 minutes early and 3 minutes late.
2. XBMC has the default of 2 minutes early and 10 minutes late.
3. I have CBS Evening News set to record from 6:30 p.m. to 7:00 p.m.

At 6:26, XBMC reports that the recording has started and a file appears in the recording list under "Recording Now." If you attempt to watch this file, the file cannot be started - because WMC isn't actually recording anything yet.
At 6:28, WMC actually begins recording the show.
At 7:03, WMC stops recording the show. However, XBMC continues to report that the show is "Recording Now." and if I attempt to watch it, ServerWMC does the whole copying to .tv and then streaming.
At 7:13, XBMC moves the show from the Recording Now folder to a regular folder.

If I change the margins to 0, then I suspect that the oddities I described above won't happen...

[scarecrow420]

Cool, and just to confirm, this recording was scheduled by ServerWMC when it was set to "use WMC padding" ?

So basically XBMC is adding the pre and post values onto the actual recording time we are giving it.

I wonder if you configured ServerWMC to use XBMC timing, then scheduled a recording through ServerWMC... whether XBMC would still addon it's pre/post padding on top of things again! Eg it would end up displaying things 4 minutes prior and 20 minutes after. I guess if this is the case, we might need to modify the times we tell XBMC to take into account it adding the padding on itself...

[advocate99]

No.

I set these timers up using WMC directly.

I have not changed ServerWMC from the default, so I believe it is set to use WMC's padding...

[advocate99]

Krusty, can you jump in here and let us know exactly what these settings do in the context of XBMC and ServerWMC?

[krustyreturns]

Oh, I thought you guys had it sorted out. Scarecrow and I have been discussing it offline too. Not sure what the question is anymore, so if I don't hit it, enlighten me.

I have known there was something fuzzy about what xbmc thinks is happening relative to the start/end of a timer vs what is actually happening on the rec service and it was on my todo list to look into it.

We hand the timers to xbmc, then xbmc uses this data to do the popups and such, no intervention on our part. In other words, we don't signal xbmc that a recording has actually started, xbmc is deciding that on its own based on the timer data we sent it the last time it asked for timer data. Your analysis of xbmc signalling early/late due to its internal padding makes sense.

If we could, we would zero these xbmc paddings ourselves for the case where the user wants to use wmc or swmc padding but we can't. So we have been discussing adjusting the start/end times of timers to compensate for the xbmc padding (unless the user does like you do an zeros them out manually).

The recordings list is different, xbmc does get this list from us. So when a recording starts it should show up in the recordings list. However we don't send commands to xbmc, it sends us commands. So it won't show the new recording until it decides to rescan. There are ways to make this happen closer to the actual recording time and we have been talking about ways to trigger than too.

[advocate99]

Thanks. What you've said is consistent with my experience, which is why I tried (and my guide recommends) setting the padding to 0 in XBMC.

The final paragraph of your reply brings up another interesting issue: If new recordings appear in a watched folder, it appears that XBMC (or perhaps ServerWMC) will find them and assign them a date and time based upon when they were found, until such time as you actually open Windows Media Center and it scans the watched folders and grabs the correct date and time from the metadata. Any idea why this is happening? I'm guessing that I should simply leave the Windows Media Center app running on my headless server...

[advocate99]

Never mind on that last point. It appears that this is strictly a Windows Media Center issue.

I occasionally manually move shows that I record from the Recorded TV Folder to a Netgear ReadyNAS. Apparently, when I do that, Windows Media Center ignores the data of the show from the metadata and instead uses the date the file was modified (i.e., the data I moved the file), which ServerWMC then picks up and sends to XBMC.

A reboot of everything didn't fix this issue. However, if I go into Windows Media Center and remove the watched folder, and then add it back in, then the date is picked up correctly by Windows Media Center. I assume it'l propagate to XBMC after I delete the PVR Library.

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Didn't even have to delete the PVR library.

If I had to guess, I'd guess this is related to how Linux (ReadyNAS) reports file dates to Windows....

[krustyreturns]

This is a problem with wmc recservice (as you noticed). The recservice has a folder watcher to tell it when new recordings show up that it is isn't responsible for, i.e. you place a wtv in a watched folder - the recservice didn't create it for you by doing a recording. When the recservice sees this new file it places it in its database (this database is read by swmc).

The problem is, when the recservice notices the file, if there is no metadata tags in it, it just does what you already noticed: ugly name, no info, and just uses its creation date. The bad part is, it only tries it once, it won't recheck the file later for metadata. The only way to get it to do it, is to unwatch the directory and re-watch it, or touch the file in some way. My wife - the only user of wmc in our house - gets this problem all the time on client windows machines that have wmc watching the main media servers recorded tv folder. When shows are being recorded, the metadata isn't written to the file until the end - so if she starts the client machine while this is happening, these in progress recordings are added with no metadata and they stay that way. (I actually wrote a little program for her so to correct this).

So I think in your case the recservice is seeing the file you are moving before the metatags are written.

Maybe a new feature of swmc would be to auto-touch files like this, or read the metatags itself if they aren't in the database.

[advocate99]

Yes, your explanation is entirely consistent. In my case, I'm assuming that WMC "sees" the file as its copying - and before it is finished - so there's no metadata when it first sees the file...