Server Version#: 1.19.3.2852
Player Version#: 8.1.0.17967
Tuner Make/Model: HDHomeRun Quatro
Guide/Lineup name:
Using XMLTV?: No
Channel number/Name: All
I’m curious how DVR live TV pause is supposed to work. I could be bad at searching, but I can’t find specifics. I see older posts, but nothing clear that is recent.
If I am streaming a live TV channel and click pause, it works. I can let it go for a few minutes, hit play, catch up, then skip to forward back to live TV at the next commercial and good to go.
But…
If I hit pause for a long period of time, and then come back, hit play, it will work and play for a time, no idea how long, then it dies. I’m not sure how long or what the pattern is, but eventually it just stops and freezes. I have to hit back, choose another channel, and then hit back again and choose the channel I was on again to get live TV for where I was.
The normal behavior on other systems I’ve used would be say there is a 30 minute buffer, maybe should be a config option based on your storage capabilities, then once you hit pause and it’s hit that 30 minute buffer (or use MB/GB as buffer instead of time), it just kills the buffer and resets the stream automatically back to live TV, so smooth transition and your not stuck on a frozen screen.
Right now I’m just not sure what it’s doing or what it’s supposed to do and can’t find clear documentation on it as a feature and whether this is normal or not.
I will reproduce and post logs tomorrow. I did not specify a folder, it’s on the default SSD OS drive, but there is over 230GB free on that drive and nothing else using it, and the drive is not running out of space or anything.
I also have the session timeout setting to 0, but it says that doesn’t apply to live TV.
What is default behavior? Stay paused until you run out of space? I can’t find it documented and no settings around it.
– edit: just checked, 227GB free on the drive, and I paused for a few minutes and it wasn’t growing crazy. tomorrow when I have more time I will pause for longer and then check disk usage and when it messes up, grab logs
–edit 2: even once it messes up, for whatever reason, seems it should delete temp buffer and reset stream to live TV, not just go to frozen screen, bad UX
Makes sense, I am pretty new to Plex, so not sure where it’s saving, I have it empty and whatever the default is, I will do a little digging to see where it’s writing things when I do another pause
So not a space issue, but I paused this morning and let it pause for 33 minutes. When I started it again, it played for about 3 minutes and then it stopped, waiting, eventually got the error message, and then was able to reload the channel again.
In the transcode folder the session is just gone, and I can see this in the logs when it hits the error.
TranscodeUniversalRequest: unable to get container: /livetv/sessions/fd5012e4-ef8d-4ea8-9bee-e248b007707e…
I don’t know the logs well enough, so looking for another log file with the transcode or recording information to see why it might have deleted it, but not a space or resource issue
How are you starting the Live TV session, by clicking on the channel number/icon or clicking play on the program. The difference is that starting via the program will kill the buffer 3 minutes past the end time.
I usually just go to the guide, find the channel, highlight what I want (name of the show) and just click enter and it loads up the session…
I would also be fine if 3 minutes was the buffer, and I plan to test this more, but it seems like a 3 minute thing. But the UX should be much better. After 3 minutes, it should kill session like it does, but then just make it go back to the guide with nothing playing, or make a new session back to live on that same channel, or something. Not just freeze and error out
edit… I re-read your post, I’m going to go try and click the channel number, never done that, but when I’m watching from clicking the name of a show, it does keep playing when the next show starts
edit 2… I just went, on my guide I cannot select the channel on the far left, just like a normal guide, I can highlight the current playing show
