permissions issue?
Don’t see any issue with permissions in the logs.
I’ll check when I get home but as it is WHS 2011 (AKA 2008 R2 SP1) it should have PowerShell 2.0 at least.
Verified, PowerShell ver 2.0
Hopefully that version will have curl available. Can you try the following. On your E drive at the root create a folder called video. Then from Powershell enter the following command:
curl http://192.168.1.226:5004/auto/v33.1?transcode=heavy -o "E:\video\video.ts"
If the curl command starts wait about 1 minute then use Ctrl-C to stop the command. You should see a file video.ts in the folder created.
Second would like to see if you can start a network stream using VLC using the URL:
http://192.168.1.226:5004/auto/v33.1?transcode=heavy
Once VLC starts playing the stream if you could start a recording in Plex on channel 33.1.
If all of this works can you grab logs from Plex again. Post the video created using the Powershell curl command and the logs.
I don’t seem to have curl, it looks like I need PS 3 for Invoke-WebRequest, and PS 5 for the curl alias.
I did start playing 33.1 with VLC and started a recording with Plex. The logs are below. However, the two programs were not using the same tuner. The recording failed.
Plex Media Server Logs_2020-02-15_13-14-16.zip (2.7 MB)
Wait… I can run the curl command from a Windows 10 workstation…
The forum won’t let me upload the resulting file. It is too big. Hopefully this will work for you: https://drive.google.com/file/d/17FrJXt5oQUgyeKoYgWC2oKbnFDiSAN5F/view?usp=sharing
I hope this helps.
Chatting with an employee, they would like you to try repeating the curl command, note the exact time of the start of the capture. Then start the recording and note the time of the recording error. If you can again provide the video and logs I will get them to the the employee and he can get it to the Developers. The employee already has an issue raised just they have not been able to replicate the issue as reliably as you apparently can.
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Curl started at 14:55:30, Plex recording started just after. “There was a transcoder error” within seconds. Stopped curl capture.
Plex Media Server Logs_2020-02-15_14-56-33.zip (2.5 MB)
Thanks for the clear instructions, I think I did it right. 
I have sent a message to the employee. He will probably start looking at it next week. He is somewhere in Europe so it is almost Sunday where he is. He did ask if this also occurs on the other Extend settings. Have you tried with the HDHR set to Original so no transcoding is occurring. I know that is not what you would want to run at, I have 2 extends myself for the transcoding on the HDHR before it gets to Plex. If you wanted to try the same process in curl and then plex recording the curl command would be:
curl http://192.168.1.226:5004/auto/v33.1 -o "E:\video\video.ts"
Just make sure you set Plex to Original temporarily. Did these requests use a different tuner on the HDHR? If so that is not what I would have expected, I would have expected the HDHR to use the same tuner since it is the same channel.
It uses a different tuner. The curl command used tuner 0, and when I started recording with Plex it used tuner 1. (This may be because I’m using two different computers.)
Something I don’t understand. I tried using the curl command, and watching with VLC (again two tuners were used, even though it was the same computer running both programs). VLC looked great, but when I played back video.ts it was broken up. I’m afraid the curl command isn’t working very well, losing data, or something.
I’ll try other Extend settings after Sunday since the Channels DVR will be recording 12 hours of NCIS: Los Angeles episodes off of 33.1 and I don’t want to blow any of those recordings up.
Update: Recording channel 33.1 with “Original” setting on the Extend works! Recording with the setting set to Highest Quality or High Quality (30fps limit) fails.
@johnm_ColaSC Have you heard anything from Plex? I have migrated my PMS to a new system and this issue is unchanged. Further, I’ve done some test recordings on subchannels (33.2, 33.3, etc.) and they record fine. I can only reproduce this on 33.1.
The sub channels are HD or SD?
I did chat with the employee again and asked about the logs. One suggestion that was made was to turn on verbose logging. This will give some additional information. The problem with verbose is they can quickly fill up the logs so we may need to change the LogNumFiles advanced setting. A description of how to set this option is shown in the Advanced, Hidden Server Settings Support Article.
It was also suggested to try copying the contents of the transcode directory for the session. Which would have a bunch of short clips of what was sent by the tuner device. I am not at home now to look at the exact location for the transcoder but it would be in the Default Plex Media Server Data folder under a cache subfolder. If you have specified a Transcoder temporary directory under the Transcoder Settings it would be there instead of the Plex Media Server Data folder.
The transcode session information, log files, and if possible a new curl session of the same channel. The log files will need to be grabbed fairly quickly after failure as the logs can be cycled through and the start of the transcode session removed from the logs if not captured in time. If you could also note the start time of the recording so the logs can be easier to review.
I hope to be able to provide all of this on Wednesday.
@johnm_ColaSC Here is the verbose log. The recording failed so quickly there wasn’t anything available in the transcoder directory. The recording was started at 16:52.
Plex Media Server Logs_2020-03-04_16-53-00.zip (5.5 MB)
I’ll work on a new curl session.
@johnm_ColaSC Curl recording: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1lJOkoDQRS_OPS6mqQXc-pyXKC6pp4nSy/view?usp=sharing
Thank you for the logs and curl capture -
It appears to be premature exit of the transcoder job - within a second of starting
Mar 04, 2020 16:52:27.944 [5476] DEBUG - buildLiveM3U8: ended due to segment 31339.563978 past end time 2020-03-05 01:00:00.000000000 +0000
Can you confirm that 11 second curl capture was covering this time - ie started just before and stopped just after the failure
Please can you tell me which of those two url’s was used for the 11 second stream capture ?
http://192.168.1.226:5004/auto/v33.1?transcode=heavy
or
http://192.168.1.226:5004/auto/v33.1
The one I need which is for same time as the failure is the first one. I am assuming it was but need confirmation
and if this was a capture of channel 33.1 - why was the .ts file named 0314video.ts and not 331video.ts - just need absolute confirmation that this was 33.1 capture and not 31.4
@sa2000 The first, transcode=heavy.
curl http://192.168.1.226:5004/auto/v33.1?transcode=heavy -o “D:\video\video.ts”
The curl capture was not at the same time, by the time I started the capture the recording had already failed, so the curl capture is after the recording. The curl capture was for 33.1, I messed up when renaming the file.
If I do this again, and I can, I’ll start the curl capture before starting the recording.
What is really interesting is I can watch the channel using Live TV, but I can’t record it.
BTW, Silicondust has released new firmware, but it didn’t help. 
