Does anyone have an idea of what setting I might be missing that causes each and every recording of HDHR Connect channels onto Plex to be truncated. The times are random, but always way less than the original show. ie: a one hour program might only be 9 minutes, or 6 minutes, or 32 minutes. I’ve never had one record right. I’ve tried various revisions of Plex from 1.8 through the latest 1.9 series and seem to have the same problem. Is there a setting somewhere, or do you think I have a hardware or software problem. I’m lost and frustrated! Thanks in advance.
You might want to check the signal strength of channels that you have coming in. I believe weak signals cause some Plex oddities.
I’ve seen others mention this as a potential problem. As far as I can tell, all signals are quite strong. The TVs the antenna are connected to show signal strength as very high. I would expect that somewhere there is a channel strong enough to work and I’ve tried multiple channels. Other tuner boxes work well (not interfaced to Plex) too. I encountered a similar problem with a different tuner box (Mediasonics Homeworx) that recorded small .mts files which it could play back by merging the files, but Plex would see only the first .mts file and show up as a truncated program just like I’m seeing with HDHR. Once I was able to merge those multiple files together, Plex was happy. I don’t know I would do that with the HDHR box if that was really the problem.
anybody have a thought. I have added a signal amplifier to the antenna signal just to make sure. The TVs connected show 5 out of 5 for signal strength. Just cannot make this thing record right.
Keep in mind addng an amplifier can make things worse. Before going this route you should look at the signal strength at the device itself
I don’t have a connect but do have a Prime but would think they are similar. Without the amp inline when you go to http://HDHR_IP_Address/tuners.html and then click on a tuner you should see something similar to:
What does yours look like? Especially interested in:
Signal Strength
Signal Quality
Symbol Quality
I’ve been getting this since about the time I upgraded to the “live channels” beta version. Using HomeRun HD Extend, I’m seeing “Network tuner disconnected”, “Scanning Channels” and “Recording terminated”. I did a search on the internet for “Network Tuner disconnected” and a post near the bottom of the following message implies that it’s a connection issue:
https://forum.silicondust.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=119&t=67010
cayars,
Not sure what I might be doing wrong, but that URL could not connect. I went to the HDHR setup and clicked on the box which recognized two tuners. It listed the box model number, ID number and the firmware. I then clicked on the tuner status and neither tuner was recognized. I went to the HDHR view screen and could look at any channel I wanted. Clearly the tuners are there and operational. My android app sees the programs and scheduled recordings through PLEX but again the recordings only last minutes rather than the half hour or hour they should. This is very confusing and frustrating.
cayars,
I rebooted the PC and now I see the tuners again. I have rebooted many times over the past few weeks of fighting this, so I’m sure that is not specifically causing my issue. After the reboot, though I still can’t get the URL to find the device as you typed it. Using the setup technique though, I could see both tuners and checked their strength. Both tuners showed 100% in both signal strength and signal quality as well as symbol quality. Streaming on 1 was 12.044Mbps and 2 was 8.559Mbps. I will admit that I still have the amp inline (sort of a pain to get to), but if you really need me to pull it, I will. This problem was there long before I added the amp so I can’t imagine how that can be causing my problems. Help!
I don’t have the same tuner you have so I don’t know if it supports that URL or not (thought it would) but it’s not important as you can get the signal strength and info another way which is all I really cared about.
If you could get the signal levels without the amp in place I would appreciate it for a problem channel.
On your other issue. Instead of rebooting the PC what happens if you stop/start Plex? Does that fix the issue or does it require a full reboot?
I will reconnect the tuner input and check the signals. The duration of the program recordings is always less than the show. I have NEVER gotten a program to record properly. I exit the Plex app and restart it each night at 3am with a PC scheduler but it never returns with the right time for the program. I recorded two programs earlier this afternoon and have watching the .grab folder to see how long the transcoding takes. It is painfully slow even though my PC is pretty capable. Started checking an hour and 35 minutes ago on the two files which have have grown from 288Mb to 813Mb on one file and 173Mb to 542Mb on the other. Could it be that this just takes so very long that the overnight scheduler is terminating the transcoding. Wouldn’t think so, because I have tried dozens of tests on multiple days at different times. It has never worked! Still not sure why the HDHR tuners were watchable with the HD app on the PC, yet the PC couldn’t find them through the HDHR Query. Hmmm.
Just checked the .grab folder. The one file is now 921Mb and the other is up to 616Mb in the last 10 minutes. I would expect a half hour show (they both were) to be a couple of gig or so, so we’re getting there. But in the past, I know they program has ejected them out of the .grab folder into the main folder when done, and they’ve never been correct. I wouldn’t expect disconnect the box would affect the transcoding, but just to be sure, I’ll let it finish before I change the RF input. Don’t want any variables. I’ll let you know what I find.
Thanks by the way for extending some help. Sure need it.
Cayars,
I noticed that I really didn’t answer your question about the reboot correctly. When I couldn’t see the tuners, I tried to exit the Plex server and restart it and it didn’t help. Only when I rebooted the entire PC did I see the tuners again. But… I still could watch any channel during the entire process…
Cayars,
Wow! I actually recorded the two 1/2 hour programs. This is a first. I monitored the transcoding and it ran at the rate of 4 minutes of recording per hour transcoding. That’s 400Mb per hour!!! It took 6 hours to finish, but it got it all. That’s why the evening recordings or any thing during the day that was longer couldn’t finish before the shutdown at 3 or 4 am (whichever!) terminates it. That explains the random times I keep getting. A one hour recording would take 15 hours to convert!! That’s crazy! Now, where does the transcoding take place. Is there a folder somewhere I can peak into. Do you know? If I can find it, I can replace it with something that works faster - much faster!! We’re making progress!!!
I did one more recording last night from 9-10pm. I removed the scheduled event to reboot the Plex server at 4am so it could run continuously. It finished at 7am this morning successfully. That was about 560Mb per hour with only one transcoding taking place vs the 400Mb per hour with two. Still insanely slow! But at least I feel like I’m making progress. Now to find why the speeds are so slow. The PC isn’t new by any stretch but it’s a quad core 64 bit processor with only 4G of RAM. Perhaps I’ll change that today to 8GB to see if that helps. Are there any Plex settings for transcode that would help?
What’s your host running PMS look like? Processor/RAM?
I can normally do a half hour show in about 5 minutes. Hour long shows take 10-15. Specs in signature.
It’s an Intel 2 Quadcore 64bit Q6600 2.4Ghz with 4G RAM. Interestingly, it’s showing 4.5G on the RAM. Not sure how it gets the other .5G? I’m going to upgrade to 8G if that might help. Has no difficulty serving 4-5 family members at the same time. No stutters. Internet speed doesn’t matter here, but it is about 150Mbps.
BTW AmazingRando24, I am not writing to my NAS drive. I’m writing to a file on my desktop. That doesn’t matter, does it?? The operating system is Windows 8.1. I’m still using that OS because of other reasons. That shouldn’t matter much here either should it?
If I understand correctly, you’re using essentially a local folder for your DVR library? I think that would actually work in your favor. I might choose a different location than the desktop, but that’s just me being picky.
Also, I believe the big factor for running Plex is the processor. This might be your pain point. I don’t know if this ties to the DVR remux, but do you have hardware acceleration enabled? Settings > Server > Transcoder > checkbox Use Hardware Acceleration…
(Your processor may not qualify)
I think RAM matters a lot less. Also, I think OS is nearly insignificant other than to help diagnose issues.
I really appreciate all the input. Thanks…Yes, I have hardware acceleration enabled. I also set a setting for Ultra High Speed transcoding (which I understand might degrade quality), and it did improve the time (doubled), but still way too slow. A 1/2 hour show would take at least 3 hours to transcode at that rate. I have updated my RAM to 8GB now and am running two more 1/2 programs to see how long they will take. So far in 20 minutes, almost 600M has been converted. That is 4 times faster than last night and about an 80% improvement over this morning, but still way too long. My programs will take 1 1/2 hours at this rate. Interesting that the the task manager shows that the PLEX transcoder is never busy more than 2.5% of the time and the CPU is never more than 9% full. Can’t see that as a processor problem. What do you think?
I think I feel spoiled with the times I quoted you… and the times I quoted are with the commercial skip enabled, so it’s remuxing the file after processing.
I have the HDHomeRun Extend, which does some prework before sending the file to Plex. In the end, I think all this does is keep the file sizes a down a bit.
Your issue is getting a bit beyond my level of expertise. I’ve never heard of post processing times taking that long. Have you ever fiddled with the DVR quality settings? You could try cranking those down, but you shouldn’t have to. Also, in the gearbox next to the DVR, I think there are settings for transcoding in there. I would disable that. Anything you can do to take work off the CPU/GPU would be the goal.
If post-processing is taking a long time, it could be due to having hardware accelerated transcoding enabled on an older processor. Try disabling hardware accelerated transcoding in your PMS settings: Server > Transcoder and deselect Use hardware acceleration when available.
