Can recordings be added to the library before they have completed?

There was a Plex blog post a few weeks ago about how you can start watching recordings before they have completed. This is great and brings Plex much closer to traditional DVR functionality, HOWEVER, the only way to find these recordings (that I have found) is to hunt for them in the On Right Now section of the Program Guide, they do not appear in the associated library and they are not playable via the Recording Schedule until the recording has completed.

Please can you add these links to improve usability?

you’re having better luck than I am. if I launch it from the “on now” screen, the buffer only starts where I’ve tuned in, not when the recording began… furthermore, if I’m already watching something, have established a lengthy buffer, and decide to record it, the recording doesn’t grab the whole buffer. it just starts recording when I set up the recording

@D-a-n-B, yeah it would be nice if there was a ‘virtual’ item added to the library right after the recording starts. As far as finding it via “Watch Now” you can only do that if the program time slot is still within the current time. If you set to record 60 mins past the end time, and you go to “Watch Now” after the EPG says the program ends, then there is no way to tap into that buffered stream. Sucks!

@“taylor.davidr” it really depends what plex client you are using (you did not mention that so no way to tell). In general the android side of plex clients seems to be more mature IMO (I have a Shield TV). Also re: recording, mid-live-tv-buffer, that is stated as one of the limitations. Hopefully they will fix that soon.

I’m just using the web-app via chrome to hit my PMS on my desktop and another one I have on my NAS. the NAS PMS is no good for watching live tv. it has to buffer about every 10 seconds, which is why I just installed it on my pc as well. but even on my desktop, when I’ve been watching something and wanted to record it, starting a recording does like I said: it only starts from when I start recording, not from when the buffer was initiated

but! I have found there is a way to watch what’s already been recorded. Just today I found that buried in the “.grab” folder of whatever show you’re watching is the file that’s being written to. I can open it in VLC media player and it’ll play up to the moment I opened it. I didn’t get too testy with it as I wasn’t sure if having it open while it’s still being written to would hose things up. but even if that were the case, I could just copy and paste it to another location and leave the original file alone, leaving it untouched so there’s no sort of save reserve put on the file. the thing I don’t get is that if I can do that manually, why hasn’t plex figured it out… seems pretty weak to me… in fact, in a lot of cases, VLC is a superior viewing platform. plex’s volume is always lower, and when there are minor hiccups in the recorded files (that plex put in, mind you) VLC can skip right over them. in plex, I have to do some skip aheads and backs and sometimes with plex, it’ll just hose up completely and I get the spinning wheel, never to be resolved.

I really admire the portability of plex, but for the lack of stability it has, I’m thinking my money would’ve been better spent on just getting the HD HomeRun DVR instead. I’d be surprised if I had even half as many issues with it… like a few minutes ago when I looked at a recording that should’ve started, it immediately errored out and said it had a transcoder error… so… just one and done? you can’t maybe try again once per minute? one hiccup at the beginning and the whole show is scrapped? I lost an hour and a half of olympics tonight because of that bs, and I’ll never get to see it because like most people here, I’ve cut my cable, and NBC is charging a premium to access their streaming services

Yep, I’ve stumbled across those files as well, but what I’m interested in is accessing those in-progress recordings from the library view (and probably a few other logical places as well). Clearly it’s possible as they allow you to do it from the Watch Now list (unless they’ve disappeared from there) and they are playable as files directly from the file system. Therefore I’m hoping this UI change is something that the Plex team are / will look at. I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s a little tricky though, as the library views are populated in a specific way, so they’d need to handled these recordings slightly differently.

so, fun fact. I was at the gym and wanted to make sure my olympics recording was going smoothly, and when I launched the program via the android app, it did give me the option to start from the beginning of the recording or to go to the live feed… so, wat da hayo? why isn’t that option available from the webapp? it should be the most robust since it’s basically the most direct interface