[mythtv-users] Problem with Hard and Soft Padding on recordings

[Anthony Giggins]

On 9 February 2011 13:08, Michael T. Dean <mtdean at thirdcontact.com> wrote:

> On 02/08/2011 08:11 PM, Nick Morrott wrote:
>
>  On 9 February 2011 01:09, Anthony Giggins wrote:
>>
>>> Thanks for the confirmation Nick I'll update the wiki to reflect this
>>>
>> Note that I'm not a MythTV dev, so maybe Mike Dean will confirm?
>>
>
> That's pretty much correct, except we really don't have "soft padding," per
> se.  Instead, we have what you might think of as a "capture card/HDD
> spin-up/shutdown allowance."
>
> More specifically, the, "Time to record before start of show (secs),"
> setting says, "If this is the first use of this capture card in a while,
> start recording this much early so that hard drives can spin up or
> slow-to-init capture cards that require firmware uploads can complete before
> the scheduled show begins," or whatever. (And, really, I the, "Time to
> record past end of show (secs)," setting is probably more for symmetry than
> anything else--I'm not really sure what use it could be in the context of
> how it's actually applied.)
>
> So, remember, they're capture card related than recording related.  If your
> capture card is being used for the entire block of primetime, they say,
> "Start this capture card 30s before primetime and keep the card running 30s
> after primetime."  (Or whatever.)
>
> The settings are not meant as a means of capturing the end of a
> show--that's what the per-recording rule start early/end late ("hard
> padding") are for.  It's meant to be a relatively small value (20-30s), but
> for years, it's been abused (OK, maybe I should say, "misused") as a kind of
> super-unreliable "soft padding," probably more because people figure, "Why
> not?" than because it's useful this way.
>
> Note that I'm purposefully not using the term, "soft padding," to refer to
> the settings, "Time to record before start of show (secs)," and, "Time to
> record past end of show (secs)," because, "soft padding," implies behavior
> we don't have.  For example, if you have a recording scheduled at 8:00-9:00
> and another at 9:00-10:00 and you have 2 capture cards and set these
> settings to 30s each, you'd use 1 capture card to record the first show from
> 7:59:30 - 9:00:00 and the same capture card to record the second show from
> 9:00:00-10:00:30.  Whereas, saying, "soft padding is only applied when it
> can be," would imply that we would actually use 2 different capture cards
> for the recordings and each would have 30s extra before and after the
> show--because a soft padding /could/ have been applied to both recordings.
>  So, because of that, I feel, "soft padding," is a terrible word for
> describing these settings.  Unfortunately, "Time to record before start of
> show (secs)," and, "Time to record past end of show (secs)," are extremely
> long, cumbersome names for them (and not really descriptive of their true
> purpose, even).  But, until someone comes up with a good name for them...
>  (And I am way too lacking in creativity to do that.)
>
> And, for more details than you could possibly want on why we don't have
> soft padding--or, more correctly, why soft padding can't possibly work--read
> (all 5 pages of)
> http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/mythtv/dev/195124#195124 .  :)
>
> Sorry.  This turned out to be a lot more verbose than I intended--but I
> suppose that complexity is exactly why these are probably our most
> misunderstood settings.  (Granted, the bad naming doesn't help, either. :)
>
> Mike
>
>
Thanks Mike
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mythtv.org/pipermail/mythtv-users/attachments/20110209/f2e36435/attachment.htm>