I had a recording fail this morning for something that I won’t be able to record again (a family member had a segment on a live morning news program - they don’t air them again).
Failing to record because the transcode directory doesn’t have enough space is a terrible failure case. I would like to suggest that if there IS enough space at the final location of the file (and there was), that recordings are allowed to start and are recorded directly there instead.
If that’s too much, then at least TELL ME when I schedule it. I scheduled the recording last night and there was the same amount of space at that time as when the recording should have started. Why isn’t there a warning about this?
There should be a low space warning if a recording MIGHT fail, especially if it is due to the space of the transcode directory which is often different from the final destination where we know how much space there is. It never even occurred to me that the transcode directory was required for a recording that isn’t being transcoded. I learned the hard way, and at a time when the airing will not be repeated. Please make this clearer in the UI.
I’d like to add that the really annoying thing is I’ve been using DVR for over a year without an issue, but I have never recorded a single 2 hour program before. So there was always enough space on the transcode directory. The irony is that I only wanted about 10 minutes out of the 2 hour program, but because plex was short by just a little bit, I got nothing…
Jul 08, 2019 07:00:00.240 [0x7f32baff5700] DEBUG - DVR:Grabber: checking for 16520 MB of available disk space in grab path and transcode cache path
Jul 08, 2019 07:00:00.242 [0x7f32baff5700] WARN - Low disk space: 16.13GB source file, 18.62GB capacity, 14.92GB available on "/var/lib/plexmediaserver/Library/Application Support/Plex Media Server/Cache/Transcode/Sessions"
Jul 08, 2019 07:00:00.242 [0x7f32baff5700] ERROR - DVR:Grabber: Not enough free space in "/var/lib/plexmediaserver/Library/Application Support/Plex Media Server/Cache/Transcode/Sessions"
You did not indicate what PLEX platform used, but likely you will need to add internal storage like a USB SSD. Suggest Samsung 500GB USB 3.0 external SSD unit. Found I had to add same to NVIDIA Shield first time recording 2hr HD TV program. FAQ will guide you on installation and setup.
It’s a PC running Ubuntu 16.04 Server. The root drive is about 20g because the OS doesn’t need that much space. I have since moved the transcoding directory to another NFS share so that it is also essentially unlimited space. But I would still say that allowing a recording to fail just because the transcoding directory is small seems broken. Why not transcode in smaller chunks? Or just skip transcoding all together and store it directly in the library if there’s room? To just silently fail seems like the worst failure mode for something that you may never have another chance to record (which is the case for me here).
