I’ve posted this in the DVR section, but I’m hoping to get the attention of Plex development…
With the 1.7x versions of Plex, the attempt to allow playback while recording seems to have also introduced a serious amount of instability in the recording process. Many times broadcasts just quit after a few minutes, fail to record at all, or get stuck in the .grab folder…to the point where the community recommended “fix” is to go back to 1.61x versions of Plex. This is all over the DVR section of the forum, and I have personally experienced it. It is less likely to get a good recording than a failed one.
This highly unstable DVR feature, even though beta, is a black eye for Plex. I wish I could recommend Plex to record OTA TV, but right now I could not do so.
I would ask you add a toggle if possible that would allow selection of the older, more reliable recording method that would wait until there was a capture of an entire program before allowing playback, vs the more unstable method that allows playback while recording.
The DVR feature is the primary reason I took a chance on Plex and bought the full “Plex Pass”, even though the DVR function was still in beta. I had high hopes, but unfortunately the DVR function is the most unstable element I’ve seen with Plex.
I would ask for a development focus on making the DVR feature more reliable…even if this is at the cost of “live playback”. Even better would be to include the feature I outlined, where the end user could decide if they want to switch from a reliable recording method that may not allow live playback, or one that allows live playback but is less reliable for now.
I have had very little trouble with the DVR function through the several updates. I have a Plex Server running on an i-7 and another running directly on a Seagate Personal Cloud. The upgrade to 1.7 on the Seagate NAS and the update broke it and I had to just go back to the one version that came with the NAS. It either Looked like it was recording but never writing the file or getting failed recording indicator for an unknown reason, etc. The version that came on the NAS does all that I need it to do. I have not tried Live TV because it is not available on my browser on my i-7 or, of course, on my NAS
I actually have a HDHR extend and a HDHR Connect and a Hauppauge WinTV stick. The Extend is with the NAS and the other two are on my i-7 and other than not being able to pick the tuner, Plex has no problem using the 4 tuners on the i-7
Wow! Which Personal Cloud are you running and which PMS version are you running if you don’t mind me asking? I’ve been hesitant to set the DVR up on mine as I didn’t know if it had the horsepower to record and then transcode for playback (no need for Live TV). I’ve got the 2Bay with PMS 1.7.6 which works great for serving up ripped/pre-transcoded video. I’ve got two HDHR Extends so the video would all be H.264 coming to the Personal Cloud.
Right now my DVR is on an i5 2014 Mac Mini with PMS 1.5.5. It works well for what I use it for, don’t need Live TV and don’t see the need to update for now.
I have he Seagate Personal Cloud 101 2 bay and it is very under powered. It will not play unprocessed TS or MKV file. If you want to save that file and have Plex optimize it after, then be willing to wait a long time to get one file optimized. So you cannot use Plex to play back a file from a HDHR Connect. You will have to use VLC or I happen to have WinTV. I like to have the unprocessed file because Plex cannot display Closed Captions. 1.76 broke my Extend and I went back to the one that came with the Personal Cloud. H.264, the Plex highest setting (extend - Heavy) will play back but some think Mobile (High Quality 720 because it deinterlaces) is the way to go.
Native (none) 1920x1080 60fps ~16Mb/s
Native ("Original quality" setting for the HDHomeRun Extend in Plex) does not do anything to the incoming stream. The HDHR passes through what it gets from the antenna (MPEG-2 stream, untouched) to the client. This is what the Connect does too.
Heavy 1920x1080 60fps ~7Mb/s
Heavy ("Highest quality" setting for the HDHomeRun Extend in Plex) leaves framerates and frames untouched, but transcodes the video to AVC H.264 format.
Mobile 1280x720 30fps ~3Mb/s
Mobile ("High quality (30fps limit)" setting for the HDHomeRun Extend in Plex) does a lot of stuff, so I will break it out next.
For the "Mobile" transcode profile, the Extend does a few things:
For interlaced sources (480i/1080i), it drops one of the two interlaced frames to compress the frame horizontally and making it progressive.
For 1080i sources, it compresses the frame down to fit into a 720p frame.
For 720p60 content, it drops every other full frame converting 720p60 videos into a 720p30 videos.
For all video streams, it compresses the video down to around 3Mbps.
Internet720 1280x720 30fps ~3Mb/s
Internet480 848x480 30fps ~2Mb/s
Internet360 640x360 30fps ~1.5Mb/s
Internet240 432x240 30fps ~1Mb/s
None of the modes are perfect for me. Plex player (at least on Apple TV and in a web browser) does not de-interlace videos, so the Heavy setting does not help when channels are interlaced. But, Heavy setting is great for native progressive streams because it allows for the full stream to come through with no added compression.
The Mobile setting de-interaces everything, so it makes interlaced videos viewable on Plex apps which do not do de-interlacing (like the Apple TV 4 app). The Mobile setting though applies heavy compression to the video stream and this creates compression artifacts -- a good example of this is when Stephen Colbert first steps out onto the stage for The Late Show, compression artifacts are everywhere. The Mobile setting also creates weird motion artifacts when it converts 720p60 video to 720p30 and that sometimes creates stuttering during panning shots.
Well, I see the new 1.8x version of Plex has hit, and it specifically mentions improvements to the DVR function…so I am hoping for the best with this new version…
No toggle between old and new recording systems, but if they improved reliability so that it “just works”, that would be fantastic!
I’m seeing the current Plex DVR holding open channels on the HDHomeRun for hours after the recording should have finished. I’m seeing gigabytes of tiny files accumulating in the \Users<username>\AppData\Local\Plex Media Server\Cache directory. I see the server having problems completing recordings. I see remnants of the files accumulating in the .grab directory, slowly growing but never completing.
Something is seriously wrong as these recordings used to show up in the library moments after completing. Hopefully the new patch will help.
As I mentioned, I just upgraded to 1.8.0.4109, however I can’t get recording to complete.
As a test, I went into the Program Guide and found something that was scheduled to be over in 15 minutes and told it to record.
I verified that on the server it created a temporary file in the .grab directory under my library and also began to accumulate files under c:\Users<username>\AppData\Local\Plex Media Server\Cache\Transcode\Sessions. (File names are media-#####.ts and vary in size between 512K and 1MB).
15 minutes after the recording show should have completed, the connection to the HDHomeRun is still active. The temporary files under AppData continue to be created. The file in the .grab directory is still there and has not been moved into the proper directory so that it can be indexed as part of the library.
Also, I should note that in the Recording Schedule, Plex believes that this recording is 100% complete.
Update: My 15 minute test eventually did work. I’m not sure exactly how long it took, but it definitely took a lot longer than it should (and longer than it did in the past). When I got back this evening, all of the cache files were gone, the HDHomeRun session had completed, and the video had been properly added to my library. Guess I’ll just keep an eye on it…
With this new version of 1.8x, everything seems to be working for me, though this is just day 1…that never happened with 1.7x. Thank you (so far) Plex developers!
I do have transcoding off on the HDHomerun tuners…I think I’m going to try to see what happens with it back on…
1.8x is showing the same problems as 1.7.x was. It worked fine for 2 days and then showed the same behavior with the recordings at 100% and never finishing.
