Server Version#: 3.95.2
Running PMS on Ubuntu Server 18.04.2 LTS.
Server is running an a re-purposed workstation - i7 2600 and 16GB RAM with a 4TB Western Digital Red.
The server is used soley as a media centre running Sonarr, Plex, Transmission and that’s about it.
Getting seriously frustrated with the Live DVR feature.
I recently bought the Hauppauge WinTV-quadHD so I could record some shows my wife enjoys that collide with each other. I got this card specifically because it was reported to run on Linux and Plex as well as having the ability to tune to 4 channels at once which should be well above my needs.
I expected this to be a fairly simple process but literally every step of the way just seems to be another road block and it’s driving me mad.
Issue #1
First up is recordings that are literally only 0:0s or 0:1s long…
So I’ve scheduled a recording, it has started the recording but left out 99.9999999999999% of the show… So completely pointless. This has happened twice now on the same show.
I don’t really understand why this could possibly happen. The HDD still has TB’s worth of space left. It obviously has no permission issues since the file exists and it can play the few frames it managed to capture. So yay, I guess my wife just misses out on this episode.
As I was having issues with it, I even logged into Plex as the show was on to check if it was recording and Plex assures me that everything is fine and it showed that both shows were indeed recording with their progress bars moving along.
I checked multiple times and each time there was no sign of issue. Then later I go to check the recordings and one show has recorded ok and the other has about 3 frames. Awesome.
Issue #2
Speaking of which… The show that DID record ok I had to manually move the file from its hidden temp file because for some reason it didn’t want to move by itself after it finished recording. So even the show that did record I had to intervene so it would actually show in the library. Plex just reported it was 100% complete for an hour before I got fed up and realised it wasn’t going to move itself. Again, obviously no permission issue since a previous episode had recorded just fine.
Issue #3
The shows seem to record in some format that most of my devices hate. In Plex it shows the bitrate as about 4000kbit/s which should be fine across our network. I don’t understand why it doesn’t just record it in a format which can actually play on most devices. Sure, I can have Plex convert the file while playing to another format, but I really don’t understand why that should be necessary.
On my PC the file would play fine and on my wifes PC using the Plex web app in Chrome it just outright would never load the file. This is on a gigabit LAN - wired. Other devices had the exact same issue while others would just play it normally. There didn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to it.
On my personal PC I have no issue recording using Nvidia shadow play or an Elgato capture card and having it save .H264 MP4 files at much higher bitrates so I don’t understand why Plex DVR records in such a weird format.
Sure, I could transcode the file after, but that seems like a huge waste of resources which could interfere with other tasks when it could just record in a decent format to begin with.
So at this point I’m looking for an alternative as it feels like I’ve not only wasted money on a Plex lifetime pass but now a $200 AUD TV tuner card as well.
If anyone has Linux friendly software they could recommend that would work with this tuner I’d appreciate it… At least if I can use other software to record that’s actually stable I can move it into the Plex library later.
