# Watch recording while Postprocessing

**URL:** <https://forums.plex.tv/t/watch-recording-while-postprocessing/932934>\
**Category:** Live TV & DVR\
**Tags:** livetv-dvr, server-linux\
**Created:** [October 27, 2025, 7:36pm UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/watch-recording-while-postprocessing/932934 "2025-10-27T19:36:07Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 8\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![ottoguy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/a6a055/32.png) [@ottoguy](https://forums.plex.tv/u/ottoguy)\
**Post date:** [October 27, 2025, 7:36pm UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/watch-recording-while-postprocessing/932934/1 "2025-10-27T19:36:07Z")

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Server Version#: 1.42.2.10156  
Player Version#:  
Tuner Make/Model:  
Guide/Lineup name:  
Using XMLTV?:  
Channel number/Name:  
\<If providing [server logs](https://support.plex.tv/articles/200250417-plex-media-server-log-files/) please do NOT turn on verbose logging, only [debug logging](https://support.plex.tv/articles/201643703-reporting-issues-with-plex-media-server/#toc-1) should be enabled\>

Is it possible to watch a recording while the Postprocessing is still running? Or is there a way to skip post-processing for some shows? I could skip Postprocessing on NFL games.

I record NFL games, but the post processing on a 2-3 hour recording can take a few hours. If I catch it while the game is still happening, I can watch it. However once the game has ended I can’t find a way to watch it until the Postprocessing is complete and it shows up in the regular Recordings library.

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**Author:** ![pshanew](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/plex/user_avatar/forums.plex.tv/pshanew/32/160555_2.png) [@pshanew](https://forums.plex.tv/u/pshanew)\
**Post date:** [October 27, 2025, 7:53pm UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/watch-recording-while-postprocessing/932934/3 "2025-10-27T19:53:47Z")

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I removed my comment because it was inaccurate. Sorry.

You can configure ad detection when you set up your recording.

And you can disable credit detection at the show level.

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**Author:** ![MovieFan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/779978/32.png) [@MovieFan](https://forums.plex.tv/u/MovieFan)\
**Post date:** [October 27, 2025, 7:54pm UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/watch-recording-while-postprocessing/932934/4 "2025-10-27T19:54:19Z")

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> [@ottoguy](#):
>
> post processing on a 2-3 hour recording can take a few hours

That doesn’t sound right. Nothing should take that long.

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**Author:** ![ottoguy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/a6a055/32.png) [@ottoguy](https://forums.plex.tv/u/ottoguy)\
**Post date:** [October 28, 2025, 7:27pm UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/watch-recording-while-postprocessing/932934/5 "2025-10-28T19:27:46Z")

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It was running the comskip and then transcoding it to h264 using the CPU. There is also a lock in the postprocessing script to prevent multiple postprocessing scripts from running at the same time due to a plex bug where it would sometimes delete the temp files of all recordings when one postprocessing script finished. So with all of that and an NFL game recording often times being a 3 hour long 13-35Gig file it was taking quite some time to finish.

I’d like to keep doing the postprocessing using plex because that’s the easiest way to get the NFL metadata to show up.

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**Author:** ![MovieFan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/779978/32.png) [@MovieFan](https://forums.plex.tv/u/MovieFan)\
**Post date:** [October 30, 2025, 9:53am UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/watch-recording-while-postprocessing/932934/6 "2025-10-30T09:53:56Z")

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Are you running a 3rd party script? If you enabled transcoding to h264, that should be done live while recording, so comskip is the only post processing and it shouldn’t take more than 5-10 minutes.

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**Author:** ![ottoguy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/a6a055/32.png) [@ottoguy](https://forums.plex.tv/u/ottoguy)\
**Post date:** [October 30, 2025, 3:58pm UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/watch-recording-while-postprocessing/932934/7 "2025-10-30T15:58:01Z")

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Yes I’m using a postprocessing script to do the transcode. The hardware based transcode is only available on some versions of HDHomerun and my HDHomerun Prime does not support it.  
My transcoding script is basically this one with a few tiny changes: [PlexPostProc/PlexPostProc.sh at master · nebhead/PlexPostProc · GitHub](https://github.com/nebhead/PlexPostProc/blob/master/PlexPostProc.sh)

So is it possible to watch a show that has finished recording, but is in the PostProcessing status? I haven’t found a way. Or to run PostProcessing on all files except NFL games?

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**Author:** ![MovieFan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/779978/32.png) [@MovieFan](https://forums.plex.tv/u/MovieFan)\
**Post date:** [November 1, 2025, 5:10am UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/watch-recording-while-postprocessing/932934/8 "2025-11-01T05:10:59Z")

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If your tuner doesn’t have the built in transcoder pms will do it for you, just enable it in the recording settings. I didn’t look what your script does but it you use plex to do it, the file won’t be available since it knows the file is busy. If you use ffmpeg directly pms wouldn’t know and shouldn’t care.

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**Author:** ![system](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/plex/original/3X/2/a/2acb9765406f63293d357b4ec509ec39aa28f2ad.png) [@system](https://forums.plex.tv/u/system)\
**Post date:** [January 30, 2026, 5:11am UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/watch-recording-while-postprocessing/932934/9 "2026-01-30T05:11:52Z")

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