DVR claims to successfully record certain shows; no resulting file to be found on hard drive.

[robot.family.media]

Hi,

I have been having the same issue as described for some time now. I’ve used three different HDHomerun Tuners, have performed multiple Plex installs (completely deleting database between installs) and have even tried a complete re-install of OS (different Ubuntu versions).

Unfortunately I’m experiencing this for almost every show. I’ve provided screen shots of the series Shark Tank from the other night as an example:

The Plex Library I use for my DVR Recordings (only one folder mapped):

The Linux Folder Permissions and missing directory and files:

After recording, Plex showing the recording occurred successfully but with no file:

And here are the recording options I have set:

I’ve checked my signal strength, and I have good signal.

Any help you can provide is much appreciated. I’ve enabled verbose logging in Plex to help debug this issue.

Let me know if there’s additional items I can provide to help debug this.

J

[lasandel]

I seem to have fixed it on my server by avoiding the “30 day” setting.

A recording would finish and then immediately be deleted following metadata lookup.

Verbose logging seemed to indicate that Plex uses the original air date instead of recording date as part of the 30 day window. I record a lot of vintage television and almost nothing was being saved, except for a single episode of Mr Belvedere… apparently Gracenote didn’t have an original airdate for that episode?

I switched all of my shows to “Keep 5 episodes” they are now sticking around. Now if I could just change 5 to a different number…

[sashusha]

Have the same issue, and have watched what happens right as the show is about to finish recording. It gets deleted immediately after, regardless of settings. I believe this is a bug, but would be happy to be corrected.

[jrfarrar]

Exact same issue as above. Some shows record and some don’t. However they show that they were recorded. The files are just not there. The folder however is, it’s just empty.

Also this happens for “movies” and not just TV shows. Meaning that some movies record most don’t. Some TV shows record most don’t. So I don’t think it’s the “Keep” settings as I don’t see that for the movie recordings.

[nonsensical]

I can now confirm the shows in which I’ve added deletion properties to are in fact auto-deleting right after being recorded. I even saw the notification pop up on the bottom of the screen saying show has been deleted after the DVR recording ended.

So here’s my conundrum : If no more episodes of say, ‘Cops’ exist on my plex server due to Plex deleting them because of the TV library’s auto delete settings, which for the series Cops, are set to delete episodes (by original air date) if older than 30 days and changing the DVR’s scheduler auto delete settings won’t carry over to the TV library’s show delete settings—how in the world can I reset the TV library deletion settings for Cops? It will always self-delete Cops before you have time to click on the Cops series to change the settings to not auto-delete.

Edit: To create a fix I started a second Plex server virtual machine mapped to my media drive, recorded an episode of Cops and after the recording was finished I changed ownership of that recording from user plex to my own user in the terminal. Then I restarted my main Plex server, let it scan the TV directory to find Cops. Since it couldn’t delete Cops due to unprivileged permissions I was able to change the library’s advanced settings on Cops to keep all episodes and delete only watched episodes after five days. It seemed to work because it recorded another Cops episode and Plex did not delete it afterwards.

[sashusha]

@nonsensical , your post gave me an idea for a different workaround. I’m happy to report that it worked. I put a dummy file into my library, with a name/folder structure that made Plex server think it’s an episode of the show I wanted to record. Once the library scan happened, the show, along with the “keep” settings showed up.

[nonsensical]

@sashusha said:
@nonsensical , your post gave me an idea for a different workaround. I’m happy to report that it worked. I put a dummy file into my library, with a name/folder structure that made Plex server think it’s an episode of the show I wanted to record. Once the library scan happened, the show, along with the “keep” settings showed up.

Sweet! I tried to do the same thing at first—creating a dummy file, but perhaps I wasn’t naming it correctly because the Plex scanner wouldn’t pick it up. That’s when I decided to record from another Plex server.

Anywho, It looks like we found the cause of TV shows & Movies mysteriously being deleted. I hope Plex takes note and adds a fix for this behavior in a future update.

[stevespigarelli]

The setting to “Keep episodes from the past 30 days” is really confusing if it removes episodes based on first air date. I thought it was to keep episodes recorded in the past 30 days. Anyway, I’ve changed all of my recordings to “Keep All” so it won’t remove any.

[robot.family.media]

@sashusha said:
@nonsensical , your post gave me an idea for a different workaround. I’m happy to report that it worked. I put a dummy file into my library, with a name/folder structure that made Plex server think it’s an episode of the show I wanted to record. Once the library scan happened, the show, along with the “keep” settings showed up.

Once you added the “dummy file” and your keep settings appeared, were you able to then remove the dummy file and operate as expected? I’m trying this today; hopefully it’ll also address the issues I’m having.

[nonsensical]

@robot.family.media said:

@sashusha said:
@nonsensical , your post gave me an idea for a different workaround. I’m happy to report that it worked. I put a dummy file into my library, with a name/folder structure that made Plex server think it’s an episode of the show I wanted to record. Once the library scan happened, the show, along with the “keep” settings showed up.

Once you added the “dummy file” and your keep settings appeared, were you able to then remove the dummy file and operate as expected? I’m trying this today; hopefully it’ll also address the issues I’m having.

On a Unix-like operating system such as Linux or FreeBSD, create a dummy file inside a TV library NOT OWNED BY PLEX using the following command:

dd if=/dev/zero of=/your/media/library/path/tvshowname_S01E05.mkv bs=1m count=1k

This will create a file 1GB in size named as your tv show, season 1, episode 5.

Keep in mind: Your dummy file must be of some size. Creating an empty dummy file doesn’t work.

If you have only one TV library path setup on Plex and ownership also happens to belong to Plex, it may be possible for your Plex server to delete the show before you have the chance to change your deletion rules. In this case, just create a new directory owned by your own username, create the dummy file inside that new directory and point Plex to it.

After letting Plex scan and pick up the show, change your deletion rules in Plex. Afterwards, you will have to delete your dummy file manually using:

rm tvshowname_S01E05.mkv

That’s it. You should be good to go.

[robot.family.media]

@nonsensical said:

On a Unix-like operating system such as Linux or FreeBSD, create a dummy file inside a TV library NOT OWNED BY PLEX using the following command:

dd if=/dev/zero of=/your/media/library/path/tvshowname_S01E05.mkv bs=1m count=1k

This will create a file 1GB in size named as your tv show, season 1, episode 5.

Keep in mind: Your dummy file must be of some size. Creating an empty dummy file doesn’t work.

If you have only one TV library path setup on Plex and ownership also happens to belong to Plex, it may be possible for your Plex server to delete the show before you have the chance to change your deletion rules. In this case, just create a new directory owned by your own username, create the dummy file inside that new directory and point Plex to it.

After letting Plex scan and pick up the show, change your deletion rules in Plex. Afterwards, you will have to delete your dummy file manually using:

rm tvshowname_S01E05.mkv

That’s it. You should be good to go.

Thanks for the clarification; this makes sense. I was able to duplicate with successful recording on one of my shows. Now to repeat on the other programs.

I really hope the Plex team has the bandwidth to further investigate and fix in an upcoming release.

I was able to capture a failed recording today with verbose logging enabled, and it exactly matches the previous reports: it appears the garbage collection is (incorrectly) kicking in almost immediately. Selective excerpts from the log include:

Jun 20, 2017 17:02:01.198 [0x7fa3deffb700] DEBUG - DVR:Grabber: Postprocessing, we’re going to put Gilligan's Island - E18 - X Marks the Spot in /media/DATA/TV_Recordings/Gilligan's Island (1964)/Season 01/Gilligan's Island (1964) - S01E18 - X Marks the Spot.mkv
Jun 20, 2017 17:02:01.218 [0x7fa3deffb700] DEBUG - DVR:Grabber: Moving /media/DATA/TV_Recordings/.grab/431b76dd4b96e9d6f2e3d91983b470f9464ba2a0/Gilligan’s Island (1964) - S01E18 - X Marks the Spot.mkv to /media/DATA/TV_Recordings/Gilligan’s Island (1964)/Season 01/Gilligan’s Island (1964) - S01E18 - X Marks the Spot.mkv
Jun 20, 2017 17:02:01.219 [0x7fa3e63fb700] INFO - Library section 1 (Robot - DVR) will be updated because of a change in /media/DATA/TV_Recordings/Gilligan’s Island (1964)/Season 01
Jun 20, 2017 17:02:03.338 [0x7fa3deffb700] DEBUG - DVR:Grabber: Operation for Gilligan’s Island - E18 - X Marks the Spot completed with status complete (Success)
Jun 20, 2017 17:02:03.338 [0x7fa3ea7fb700] DEBUG - Garbage Collector: Deleting expired unwatched content for Gilligan’s Island (policy: -7 before 2017-06-13)
Jun 20, 2017 17:02:03.341 [0x7fa3ea7fb700] DEBUG - Garbage Collector: Deleting episode 18 - X Marks the Spot (beyond window of 7 days old)

[johnm_ColaSC]

Garbage Collection is working as intended. Seven days from Original Air Date episode is deleted.

[robot.family.media]

@johnm_ColaSC said:
Garbage Collection is working as intended. Seven days from Original Air Date episode is deleted.

Maybe there’s some confusion on this. The series being recorded is Gilligan’s Island, with an Original Air Date in the 1960s. If Plex is always looking at the Original Air Date, then any older show will always immediately time-out if the “Episode from the past X days” is selected.

If under the “Keep” option for recordings the “Episode from the past X days” is intended to evaluate Original Air Date and not date of broadcast (whether original date or rerun), there should probably be a simple clarification that is “New Episodes from the past X days”.

Just a suggestion. It seems like there’s some wider confusion as to what the “Episode from the past X days” option is intended to evaluate as the start date.

[johnm_ColaSC]

No confusion on my part with how Plex processes here which is why I never use the delete policy on recordings. If I want to remove a recording I will manually remove the file for the episode from the Plex folder system. .

If you are confused about the settings I would suggest looking at the Library settings for the show. You might be able to use the Delete after watching setting:

[robot.family.media]

@johnm_ColaSC said:
If you are confused about the settings I would suggest looking at the Library settings for the show. You might be able to use the Delete after watching setting:

Right now I have approximate 15 different programs set to record throughout the day, trying different combinations of settings to see what does and doesn’t work. Most of my programs are set to “All Episodes” for KEEP and “Never” for the Deletion policy, and I’m still having the issue.

@nonsensical said:

On a Unix-like operating system such as Linux or FreeBSD, create a dummy file inside a TV library NOT OWNED BY PLEX using the following command:

dd if=/dev/zero of=/your/media/library/path/tvshowname_S01E05.mkv bs=1m count=1k

This will create a file 1GB in size named as your tv show, season 1, episode 5.

Keep in mind: Your dummy file must be of some size. Creating an empty dummy file doesn’t work.

If you have only one TV library path setup on Plex and ownership also happens to belong to Plex, it may be possible for your Plex server to delete the show before you have the chance to change your deletion rules. In this case, just create a new directory owned by your own username, create the dummy file inside that new directory and point Plex to it.

After letting Plex scan and pick up the show, change your deletion rules in Plex. Afterwards, you will have to delete your dummy file manually using:

rm tvshowname_S01E05.mkv

That’s it. You should be good to go.

I’ve been able to get this work around to get some of my shows recording again, but other shows are still performing the automatic delete. Across all shows I have a range of options set for the KEEP and DELETE EPISODES AFTER WATCHING which includes shows with Keep All Episodes and Never Delete. I’ll see if removing all the issue-shows from my recording schedule, making the temp file as described then resetting the recording options fixes this.

[niasadmin]

@robot.family.media said:

@johnm_ColaSC said:
If you are confused about the settings I would suggest looking at the Library settings for the show. You might be able to use the Delete after watching setting:

Right now I have approximate 15 different programs set to record throughout the day, trying different combinations of settings to see what does and doesn’t work. Most of my programs are set to “All Episodes” for KEEP and “Never” for the Deletion policy, and I’m still having the issue.

@nonsensical said:

On a Unix-like operating system such as Linux or FreeBSD, create a dummy file inside a TV library NOT OWNED BY PLEX using the following command:

dd if=/dev/zero of=/your/media/library/path/tvshowname_S01E05.mkv bs=1m count=1k

This will create a file 1GB in size named as your tv show, season 1, episode 5.

Keep in mind: Your dummy file must be of some size. Creating an empty dummy file doesn’t work.

If you have only one TV library path setup on Plex and ownership also happens to belong to Plex, it may be possible for your Plex server to delete the show before you have the chance to change your deletion rules. In this case, just create a new directory owned by your own username, create the dummy file inside that new directory and point Plex to it.

After letting Plex scan and pick up the show, change your deletion rules in Plex. Afterwards, you will have to delete your dummy file manually using:

rm tvshowname_S01E05.mkv

That’s it. You should be good to go.

I’ve been able to get this work around to get some of my shows recording again, but other shows are still performing the automatic delete. Across all shows I have a range of options set for the KEEP and DELETE EPISODES AFTER WATCHING which includes shows with Keep All Episodes and Never Delete. I’ll see if removing all the issue-shows from my recording schedule, making the temp file as described then resetting the recording options fixes this.

Ditto here! I watch the file save to the appropriate folder and then plex promptly deletes it. I have everything set to never delete and it does it anyway. I think deleting by original air date is probably not a great idea. Why not use the file date? Also why can’t there be more choices in the drop down box (like keep for 10 days, 20 days, 30 days)? Can that be in an future update?

Everything else with the DVR has been pretty flawless so far. I just can’t watch anything I record because I only get 1 second and I wasn’t ready. Other than that…all good!

[johnm_ColaSC]

Did you verify the library setting for the show? DVR recording may say never delete but once show hits the show settings in the library are then checked. From what I have seen in the past DVR changes or sets the library setting initially when the recording is setup but doesn’t alter it afterwards when the recording is changed.

[robot.family.media]

So I applied the proposed work around and was able to get shows recording again. However, once again I have shows that are deleting themselves, but they weren’t doing this a week ago. I haven’t made any changes to Plex or the operating system.

I see this thread is marked as answered, so I assume we won’t get much (if any) review from the community.

Should this thread be set as unanswered once again, or should we start a new thread that points back to this as the origin of discussion?

I love Plex and would love for the DVR feature to be dependable. I could always fall back on DVBLink or the HDHomeRun DVR, but I prefer the Plex implementation much more than those other two.

As always, I appreciate any support from the community!

[johnm_ColaSC]

I would say to start a new thread. The user that started the thread marked it as answered because for them the problem was apparently resolved.

[robot.family.media]

Hi,

Just to conclude the issues I was having, I did a reinstall of the OS and Plex. I installed Fedora 26 instead of Ubuntu and I rebuilt all libraries from scratch. I am no longer having this specific issue anymore.