[mythtv-users] Loads of failed / empty recordings.

Clay ctmythtv at pacbell.net
Thu Nov 4 02:53:48 UTC 2010


Tom Dexter wrote:
> On Sun, Oct 3, 2010 at 1:24 PM, Tom Dexter <digitalaudiorock at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Sun, Oct 3, 2010 at 10:14 AM, Peter Foulkes
>> <peter.foulkes at nilpanic.co.uk> wrote:
>>> I've spent months trying to solve this and I'm getting nowhere so I am
>>> looking for help!
>>>
>>> Very frequently I go to play a recording and although the recording appears
>>> on the list, when I select it I get the error message
>>> "Recording Unavailable. The file for this recording can not be found"
>>>
>>> If I view the recodings via mythweb these missing recordings are listed but
>>> show as being 0 bytes in size.
>>>
>>> Looking in the mythbackend.log I cannot see any errors at the time the
>>> recordings are made.
>>> The error given when trying to play a missing file back is:
>>> 010-10-03 13:22:18.401 ProgramInfo(1004_20101001072400.mpg), Error:
>>> GetPlaybackURL: '1004_20101001072400.mpg' should be local, but it can not be
>>> found.
>>>
>>> The problem happens in bursts. Once one program has failed to record in this
>>> manner, generally all subsequent programs will do the same until I reboot
>>> the backend machine.
>>>
>>> I have tried raising the PCI and IDE latency settings but this did not
>>> appear to have any effect.
>>> I have always suffered from this fault over the last 4 years of using
>>> MythTV, changes of kernel and updates to Ubuntu do not seem to have changed
>>> the problem. Neither has going from MythTV 0.19 through to 0.22. I am
>>> currently running mythbackend version: branches/release-0-23-fixes
>>>
>>> The capture card is a Hauppauge WinTV Nova-TD 500 Dual digital DVB-T PCI TV
>>> Tuner card. I am using the drivers from the restricted package.
>>>
>>> Any help greatly appreciated. I feel like I am going around in circles with
>>> this problem and not getting anywhere at all.
>>>
>>> Thank you,
>>> Peter
>>>
>> I used to have that occur, and much like you described, it was in
>> bursts where if it happened, it would happen on more than one show.
>>
>> At the advise of others I tried going into mythtv-setup and in the
>> Input Connections settings I changed the "Use Quick Tuning" to
>> "Always" for all the inputs.  In my case it seems to have all but
>> totally stopped the issue.
>>
>> Tom
>>
> 
> Wow...this just happened to me today on ABC (7.1 out of New York) on
> two programs my wife wanted (Oprah and ABC World News).
> 
> It just doesn't add up.  The reception on that channel is just about
> perfect.  Immediately after this happened I went into Live TV and that
> channel came in perfectly on all three of my HD-5500 tuners.
> 
> I've read here on several occasions that no recording file at all
> means that Myth was unable to get anything from the tuner, but again,
> that seems so unlikely, as reception is perfect and the cards are all
> able to pick it up no problem.
> 
> Like I said in my first reply, switching quick tuning to always helped
> this a lot, but it certainly didn't fix it.  Is this possibly some
> really obscure bug that's not getting found?  Obviously I'm not alone.
> 
> Tom

I recently had a re occurrence of this zero byte file issue.
In 0.21, my DVB cards would do it constantly. PVR-150s were rock solid 
though.
0.23 has been good all around until this.
This time it was all cards, PVR-150s and DVBs.
I've read about full disks causing it so I freed up some space. I can't 
imagine 30% free on a 1.5TB disk is not enough but I got it to 40% anyway.
I changed quick tuning to always.
It got better but one PVR-150 was still recording zeros.
Turned out it had assigned itself /dev/video27 or something, during a 
reboot and setting it back to /dev/video3 fixed it.
Anyway, can't say if it was disk space or quick tune, but all has been 
well for a couple weeks now.
fwiw, disk has been hovering around 30% free during that time...


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