Server Version#: Latest
Player Version#: Latest
Tuner Make/Model: HDHomerun
Guide/Lineup name: Plex Live DVR Service
Using XMLTV?: No
Channel number/Name: 8.1 NBC
I, along with multiple other people am extremely frustrated by Plex’s handling of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. First, I set up my DVR to record the entire event, all airings. That failed. Every file from every day is name Date-season-event title-date-050000. Every time I try and play a file it starts from the first file of the day (I’m not the first to have that issue). I missed prime time the first night. So I read the forums and recreated all of my recording separately. Still have the issue of files playing incorrect videos, despite having the correct metadata. Now today, I have it scheduled to record from 10-3 PDT for the mid day show. It recorded the first 1:10 and then has apparently stopped. I cannot get the recording to restart at all, despite allowing partial airings and such. I know this isn’t a new issue, but I would think after 2 years of waiting we could have fixed some of it. I’m not using android, and I have the latest versions of server and client on my AppleTV. I’m happy to provide any more information the powers that be may want. This has been an extremely frustrating experience and if I had another option, I would likely be putting it to use. Any help anyone can provide would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.
My troubles have been due to my postprocessing script. I use Handbrake to transcode my recordings to MP4, but my Plex server couldn’t keep up and a few mysteriously failed. I noticed transcoding wasn’t saving much space, so I just modified my post processing script to exit if the show has “olympics” in the title and now it just copies them over without issue.
I haven’t had any problems with playback. It is a hassle to have to figure out which recording is in which order, but it seems to work ok.
My biggest gripe is with the EPG. I’d expect each recording to be uniquely named, but the first 2 days I saw a few had identical names despite being different “episodes” which resulted in the earlier one being overwritten and lost. I’d expect each show to have a unique name. It would have been nice if the EPG provider had created an artificial season-episode naming scheme which would have kept each recording unique, and made it easier to determine the correct ordering. You’d think with years to plan ahead, and it being such a popular event, more attention would have been paid to polishing the overall experience.
I’ve spent the last 3 days sorting out my post processing script to get the Olympics recording correctly. It’s working. Today’s recordings so far have worked flawlessly, Olympics being passed through and non Olympics being transcoded to MP4.
Now I look at my DVR schedule and noticed there’s a gap. Recorded this mornings show just fine. 9pm and later are on the schedule, but today’s primetime is not. When I look at the guide I see the program on NBC. It’s marked for recording. But it’s not showing in the DVR schedule, and it’s not actually recording.
I have a day job. Trying to get a DVR to record a show is not it.
This is embarrassing. I now regret purchasing a Plex pass. My family thinks I’m a idiot, and I’m beginning to agree with them.
@sa2000 Any advice? Hard to imagine in the only person having this problem
I would like to add, that I’m also experiencing massive audio/video sync issues at this point. This is getting worse every single moment at this point. As I said in my original post, if I had another option, I would be using it. These same issues were brought up during the 2018 Winter Games in South Korea and it now seems that absolutely nothing was done to address those issues. I realize that this is not the most expensive DVR system on the market, in fact I find the price to be rather reasonable, especially for lifetime subscribers, With that said, I still expect it to work in the most basic of ways. It currently is not doing that. I’m extremely disappointed and am continuing to miss content because of these issues.
Argh! And now that I’m looking at the actual guide and not just my DVR recording schedule I see I’m missing all the overnight Olympics recordings. e.g. tonight (7/28) 11:35p-3:35p Gymnastics, Diving, Swimming and 3:35a-4:30a Gymnastics, Diving, Swimming. Both NOT marked as new, but I have my recording set to record new and repeat airings. Marked as “recording scheduled” in the guide but not appearing my my DVR schedule. I’m assuming Plex is getting confused because the 7/28 5p-9p is also called 'Gymnastics, Diving, Swimming". But I would still expect it to be recorded given my settings.
I suppose I’ll try refreshing my DVR guide next to see if that helps. But at this point given how much time I’ve put into this Plex DVR, I’m going to have ignore my sunk cost and start looking at Emby or other solutions to see if I can find something more reliable.
I can’t believe I forgot to set this to record… I setup my schedule on PMS 1.23.6.4810 to record new and repeat airings. So let me get some events in DVR to see how they match up with yours.
Can you go to an episodes preplay page and see if there are multiple versions available?
I believe, partially because I went and checked some other guides, that almost all of the overnight shows are repeats of prime time, prime plus (west cost only), and Olympic late night. The exceptions are the opening and closing ceremonies. That’s why there is no “new” flag. But it is frustrating to not be able to record all content regardless of what the title says it is. I just can’t figure out why it’s not smart enough to name each file individually.
After reading the forums, I stopped recording “all and repeat airings” because it wasn’t working . I have set up each recording I want individually (but even that isn’t working as @solstyce9 points out, I can’t record the overnight stuff because the file names are the same). I have also attempted to modify some of my file names to try and deal with the problem (mostly the time at the end of the name) and it has helped slightly, but I still have at least one file that has 2 versions. Most of my other files do not have multiple versions, but I still have the problem of no matter what file I select from a specific day, the first recorded file from that day plays (or whatever file the system deems as being first). As a new and added difficulty, files are taking a very long time to begin playback and if I fast forward through a bunch of content it also takes quite a bit of time to catch up. I have not had an issue with the transcoder in the past, so I’m not sure what the problem is now.
Lets try to break this down into manageable pieces.
First can you provide your PMS version? The actual version number please.
A screenshot of your DVR settings page?
Record all not working
You’ve tried to set the “Show” 2020 Tokyo Olympics to record all events? But it wasn’t working? What wasn’t working? Did you receive an error message? Did the record request not get updated in the Guide? Did it update in the DVR Schedule pivot? When this happens can you capture and share your server logs?
Files playing incorrect videos
Can you provide some more details? Can you share the XML of an episode? Screenshot of the episode’s pre-play page?
Restart DVR service
Are you able to delete the DVR, shutdown the server, then add the DVR? If everything is the same, in my experience your previous recordings will be retained.
Feel free to DM me any of these files and pictures.
It’s good to know that I’m not the only one that’s very frustrated with the Olympics and Plex recording them. I’m having a slightly different issue. For some reason everything is recording but nothing is showing up in the library. I can physically see all of the files but when I go to the show within my Plex server there’s only 1 episode listed. I will end up sorting this out outside of Plex, but it’s very frustrating. I’m guessing that my system is simply struggling with these massive files. The server is a 5th gen I5 and has never struggled until now. But the 50+ gig files are killing the machine.
I wouldn’t know, I can’t get them to record. I was looking at the “2020 Olympics” item in the DVR “Browse” space and these overnight sessions aren’t shown. Very confusing.
I was going to create separate libraries and record different items in the guide to different libraries, but can’t do that since they don’t show up here. I suppose I might try selecting them from within the Guide itself, but I’m done wrestling with this.
I’m still using MCE Buddy to convert all of my recordings to h.265 MKV files and thankfully I have it setup to copy all converted files to a backup folder. So because of that I have copies of all of my recorded files. However MCEbuddy is failing because of my custom file renaming structure and the number of characters being greater than 200 with the file name. ZOINKS! Oh wells.
Yeah, the sync issues and all are really annoying and it just gets worse as the day goes on. I’m not even using the DVR at this point, just trying to watch TV. FWIW, Roku client and FreeBSD server.
Appreciate your attention on this. I’m primarily interested in the first one, “Record all not working”. I’ve sent you my server logs via DM. PMS 1.23.5.4862 on Win10 Pro.
My screenshots are above. No warnings or errors in the UI but haven’t checked the logs. Here are my recording settings and how it appears in “Browse” tab of Live TV/DVR, note the 7/28 11:35pm recording is not listed.
I’ve only been watching recordings after they complete, not live TV or recordings in progress. I’ve noticed two times where the audio and video got out of sync so far. I haven’t tried watching directly on my TV or the HDHR tuner to try to identify the root cause.
In my market on the East Coast, the broadcast in that time slot is just a (time-compressed) re-airing of the primetime broadcast (the one at 5PM in your screenshot). Is that not the case in your market? Based on your earlier screenshots it seems they’re the same for you, as well.
Is it not recording either of the airings, or do you want to record the duplicate as well?
I’ve configured my DVR to record all events. Yesterday, I watched the primetime airing and deleted it after viewing. Later, it recorded the re-airing and marked it as played.
While in the series page (last two images) is there a Scheduled tag under the poster? Can you confirm that the series is scheduled to record in the DVR Schedule pivot?
