[mythtv-users] Recording Started But Missing

[Michael T. Dean]

On 03/13/2010 02:24 PM, John Welch wrote:
> I apologize in advance if I'm missing something obvious, but I'm kind
> of in a bind here.  I have a MythTV system that has been working fine.
>   I'm currently running version 0.22 packages from ATrpms, and the
> latest version says "svn fixes (23323).".  I have a HDHR as my primary
> recorder, plus a pcHD3000 tuner card.  I also have a HD-PVR and a
> PVR-150, which really shouldn't be coming into play with what I am
> experiencing.  Today I scheduled several recordings (overlapping) to
> try to catch many of the College Basketball games that are on.  All of
> these recordings "should" be going on the HDHR and pcHD3000.
> Unfortunately the one time I really just need this system to "just
> work" I am having problems.
>
> Some of the recording I've scheduled have already started.  When I go
> into one of my front-end systems the recordings show in the "Watch
> Recordings" list, but when I try to select one I get a message saying
> "Recording Unavailable.... This recording is not yet available".  When
> I run the front-end from a command prompt and look back at the
> Terminal screen after I get this message I see an error message saying
> "<file name>  should be local, but it cannot be found".  When I look at
> the mythbackend.log as far as I can tell everything looks OK when the
> recording starts... I'm seeing messages like "Started recording:
> College Basketball "SEC Tournament, First Semifinal: Teams TBA":
> channel 9750 on cardid 13, sourceid 9" with no errors immediately
> following.  The lights on the front of the HDHR are showing like the
> device is recording on both tuners.
>
> After several reboots of the back-end and HDHR, plus deleting and
> re-adding the HDHR tuners from MythTV I finally got one recording to
> start (I think on the HDHR).  However, I should now have at least
> three recording currently going.  I'm totally stumped.  If I was
> getting some error messages on the back-end I would at least have
> something to go after.  I kind of afraid to blindly troubleshoot for
> fear of making things worse, both with the one recording I have going
> and with for future regular recordings.
>
> If anyone has any suggestions they would be greatly appreciated.  I
> still have about six more games left to (hopefully) record.
>    

When MythTV thinks it's recording (and the backend--ignoring preview 
generator error messages--shows no errors related to starting the 
recording and shows the recording ending at the proper time) but there's 
no file created, this is almost always (or, just plain always?) due to 
an error with the capture device (occurring below MythTV level).  It 
means that MythTV started recording and wrote all of the data that the 
capture device gave it to a file, but since the capture device never 
gave it any data, there's no file.

So, the problem is with your capture device, drivers, or your channel 
configuration (i.e. you need a rescan).  Check dmesg and test the 
capture device yourself (with that and other channels) and find out 
which is the problem.

Mike