DVR schedules don't record; no error, nothing obvious in the log...yet, nothing.

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1

I’m having some significant issues running the Plex DVR.

So far, I’ve managed to get automated recording to work three times (the last of which only sort of worked). My other schedules are failing with no diagnostic.

I’ve got the current version of Plex running on a Skull Canyon NUC under Windows 10. It has lots of CPU and GPU available. (I moved to that from a Synology NAS, which still stores the data files, to try to get some more CPU headroom vs. the 2415+.

I’ve got an HDHomeRun tuner, which works fine from the HDHomeRun app.

Usually, just “tuning” seems to work OK. I’ve got recordings for a few “Late Night” Shows (Colbert, Kimmel, Myers). There are two tuners available, so there shouldn’t be any issues with contention or busy tuners.

In the morning, there’s no new content available. I checked the .grab folder, and there are a bunch of entries there, but only one of them had content - a Colbert episode. I tried rescanning TV, but that didn’t work. Tuning from the Plex web app gave errors (even while HDHomeRun worked fine). So, I cleanly quit and restarted the Plex app. That brought in the Colbert episode (which said “An error occurred while post processing the recording”, without saying what).

No other recordings happened. Early in the morning, the iOS app indicated that recordings were “going” for Kimmel, Colbert and Myers, each of which was well over 100% complete (on the order of 700%), but those recordings didn’t happen, and there’s nothing in the Agenda or Calendar schedule at all, save for the Colbert entry post-reboot.

I grepped all the logs for DVR and didn’t see anything particularly bad, and it seemed to indicate it actually did the recordings. Here are all the entries for 1/10:

Plex Media Server.1.log:Jan 10, 2018 00:37:00.438 [4340] DEBUG - DVR:Grabber: Cancelling operation for 'The Late Show With Stephen Colbert - E66 - James Franco; Lena Waithe; Anderson East' with status complete.
Plex Media Server.1.log:Jan 10, 2018 00:37:00.438 [4340] DEBUG - DVR:Grabber: Operation was active, stopping recorder.
Plex Media Server.1.log:Jan 10, 2018 00:37:00.438 [8940] DEBUG - DVR:Grabber: Cancelling operation for 'Jimmy Kimmel Live - E170 - Gary Oldman; Phil Rosenthal; Huncho Jack' with status complete.
Plex Media Server.1.log:Jan 10, 2018 00:37:00.438 [8940] DEBUG - DVR:Grabber: Operation was active, stopping recorder.
Plex Media Server.1.log:Jan 10, 2018 00:37:00.438 [8940] DEBUG - DVR:Recorder: Asked to stop recording 'Jimmy Kimmel Live - E170 - Gary Oldman; Phil Rosenthal; Huncho Jack'.
Plex Media Server.1.log:Jan 10, 2018 00:37:00.970 [6868] DEBUG - DVR:Grabber: Starting operation for 'Late Night With Seth Meyers - E49 - Jordan Peele; Patrick Wilson; Lewis Black; Allison Miller'.
Plex Media Server.1.log:Jan 10, 2018 00:37:00.970 [6868] DEBUG - DVR:Grabber: HDHomerun starting a media grab on device device://tv.plex.grabbers.hdhomerun/10493205 (Silicondust HDHomeRun CONNECT, supported) tuner 0.
Plex Media Server.1.log:Jan 10, 2018 00:37:00.970 [6868] DEBUG - DVR:Subscription: Failed to resolve subscription for 'guid: com.gracenote.onconnect://show/10409716 thumb: http://tmsimg.plex.tv/assets/p14596316_b_v5_aa.jpg title: Late Night With Seth Meyers type: 2 year: 2014' to library item
Plex Media Server.1.log:Jan 10, 2018 00:37:00.970 [6868] DEBUG - DVR:Grabber: Saving recording to \\DiskStation\Plex\TV Recordings\.grab\99d42a83e0301cc78c9df51872459090944d9bbf
Plex Media Server.1.log:Jan 10, 2018 00:37:01.001 [6868] DEBUG - DVR:Grabber: Going to record for 3659 seconds, final URL is http://192.168.1.225:5004/auto/v60.5
Plex Media Server.1.log:Jan 10, 2018 00:37:01.001 [6868] DEBUG - DVR:Grabber: Setting timer to stop grab of 'Late Night With Seth Meyers - E49 - Jordan Peele; Patrick Wilson; Lewis Black; Allison Miller' in 3659 seconds.
Plex Media Server.2.log:Jan 09, 2018 23:35:00.955 [6868] DEBUG - DVR:Grabber: Starting operation for 'The Late Show With Stephen Colbert - E66 - James Franco; Lena Waithe; Anderson East'.
Plex Media Server.2.log:Jan 09, 2018 23:35:00.955 [6868] DEBUG - DVR:Grabber: HDHomerun starting a media grab on device device://tv.plex.grabbers.hdhomerun/10493205 (Silicondust HDHomeRun CONNECT, supported) tuner 0.
Plex Media Server.2.log:Jan 09, 2018 23:35:00.955 [6868] DEBUG - DVR:Subscription: Resolved subscription to library item 'The Late Show with Stephen Colbert' (17863)
Plex Media Server.2.log:Jan 09, 2018 23:35:00.971 [6868] DEBUG - DVR:Grabber: Saving recording to \\DiskStation\Plex\TV Recordings\.grab\6692960120a72237e7fc8d6a88a8f5d3e331e694
Plex Media Server.2.log:Jan 09, 2018 23:35:00.971 [4064] DEBUG - DVR:Grabber: Starting operation for 'Jimmy Kimmel Live - E170 - Gary Oldman; Phil Rosenthal; Huncho Jack'.
Plex Media Server.2.log:Jan 09, 2018 23:35:00.971 [4064] DEBUG - DVR:Grabber: HDHomerun starting a media grab on device device://tv.plex.grabbers.hdhomerun/10493205 (Silicondust HDHomeRun CONNECT, supported) tuner 1.
Plex Media Server.2.log:Jan 09, 2018 23:35:00.971 [4064] DEBUG - DVR:Subscription: Resolved subscription to library item 'Jimmy Kimmel Live' (74768)
Plex Media Server.2.log:Jan 09, 2018 23:35:01.033 [4064] DEBUG - DVR:Grabber: Saving recording to \\DiskStation\Plex\TV Recordings\.grab\9ee0e0c71a7c30bf73bf236259135594a7215142
Plex Media Server.2.log:Jan 09, 2018 23:35:01.424 [6868] DEBUG - DVR:Grabber: Going to record for 3719 seconds, final URL is http://192.168.1.225:5004/auto/v4.1
Plex Media Server.2.log:Jan 09, 2018 23:35:01.424 [4064] DEBUG - DVR:Grabber: Going to record for 3719 seconds, final URL is http://192.168.1.225:5004/auto/v5.1
Plex Media Server.2.log:Jan 09, 2018 23:35:01.424 [6868] DEBUG - DVR:Grabber: Setting timer to stop grab of 'The Late Show With Stephen Colbert - E66 - James Franco; Lena Waithe; Anderson East' in 3719 seconds.
Plex Media Server.2.log:Jan 09, 2018 23:35:01.424 [6868] DEBUG - DVR:Segmenter: Creating a new recorder for http://192.168.1.225:5004/auto/v4.1.
Plex Media Server.2.log:Jan 09, 2018 23:35:01.424 [4064] DEBUG - DVR:Grabber: Setting timer to stop grab of 'Jimmy Kimmel Live - E170 - Gary Oldman; Phil Rosenthal; Huncho Jack' in 3719 seconds.
Plex Media Server.2.log:Jan 09, 2018 23:35:01.424 [6868] DEBUG - DVR:Grabber: Waiting for a tuner (1 available).
Plex Media Server.2.log:Jan 09, 2018 23:35:01.424 [4064] DEBUG - DVR:Segmenter: Creating a new recorder for http://192.168.1.225:5004/auto/v5.1.
Plex Media Server.2.log:Jan 09, 2018 23:35:01.424 [6868] DEBUG - DVR:Grabber: Allocated a tuner (0 left)
Plex Media Server.2.log:Jan 09, 2018 23:35:01.424 [4064] DEBUG - DVR:Grabber: Waiting for a tuner (0 available).
Plex Media Server.2.log:Jan 09, 2018 23:35:02.674 [6868] DEBUG - DVR:Recorder: It took 1.2 sec to start the session for http://192.168.1.225:5004/auto/v4.1
Plex Media Server.2.log:Jan 09, 2018 23:35:06.284 [6868] DEBUG - DVR:Recorder: It took 3.6 sec to start the session for http://192.168.1.225:5004/auto/v4.1

So, I don’t know what’s going on. Help?

2

So, more info, and some kinda-fixes.

I changed the DVR to not transcode during recording. That seemed to allow the recordings to start and finish. But then, when I played them back, the Plex server would crash and exit.

I then turned off the option to use the GPU when transcoding. Once that was done, the server was stable and I was able to get through four test recordings.

Don’t know if all that is expected, but there you go. Answered my own question, basically.

3

Maybe related to this: https://forums.plex.tv/discussion/303422/dvr-failed-to-record-tpu-hardware-transcoding-enabled-but-no-hardware-decode-accelerator-found#latest

4

Maybe? It’s hard to know…