Sage deletes all recordings made with HD tuner

[Jesse]

Hello,

I have just got my OTA antenna set up and my VBox usb HD tuner installed and configured. I am able to receive 5 of the 8 local HD channels. I can watch live tv on these five channels just fine. The PQ is awesome .

The problems start when I record. After some careful observation I can say I have a repeatable problem. Last night (01/31/06) I scheduled "According to Jim" as a favorite. I told sage to only record it on the digital station, to save until I erased it, to record first runs and re-runs, and to save as many as possible. I also set up "Rodney", but only as a one time manual recording, to record right after "According to Jim" on the same digital channel.

I checked "Available Video Diskspace" in sage and it showed 220.58 gb available. I checked the properties for this hdd in windows and, sure enough, it showed 222,582,865,920 bytes of un-used space.

At around 10:00 pm I checked sage and verified that these shows had been recorded. They were there and both would playback just fine. Neither was the expected show. Both were the memorial for the Late Mrs. King. In any case, the programming on that channel at those times were recorded, showed up in sage as recordings and could be played back. When I went to bed arround midnight I checked again and both recordings were still there.

When I got up this morning they were both gone. I then checked available diskspace and I was still showing around 220gb in sage and a similar amount in the hdd's properties. I checked the HDD itself and looked at the files on it. Neither file was still there. Sage does not appear to have erased any of my other recordings. Both of these recordings were set to keep until I erase.

This happened the other night with Desperate Housewives, Medium and Surface. I did not actually try to playback any of those files, nor could I say with absolute certainty that they had recorded (Except for Desperate Housewives--I know for sure it recorded).

This is only happening with shows recorded with my VBox usb HD tuner. None of the shows recorded with my pvr500 are being deleted out of hand.

Sage version 4.1.3.67
No padding set up
Always tune = true

Needless to say this is a serious problem. If I can just get this fixed I will be golden. Once the wife and I got to see real HD on the new Plasma we were so hooked.

Any help will be greatly appreciated.

TIA

Jesse

[Opus4]

Did the EPG data change for that show last night? If so, perhaps it noticed it was not what recorded & got rid of it. (?)

But, if it is happening consistently, try setting the "debug_logging=TRUE" property in sage.properties (exactly as shown) while SageTV or the service is not running & then restarting. The next time it happens, perhaps the log (sagetv_0.txt) will have some info.

- Andy

[Jesse]

Hello and thanks Andy,

I plan on trying some more HD recordings tonight. I will set the debug log to true before the shows record.

Can you confirm that 4.1.3.67 is the latest non-beta release? If not I will certainly update. Any point in just doing a re-install or maybe trying the latest beta?

I am so close now. I just need this last little part to work and I can bask in the glory of High WAF........

Thanks again,
Jesse

[Opus4]

I believe that is the latest non-beta, but the betas do fix/improve some things so v4.1.6 may be worth trying.

- Andy

[Jesse]

Hello,

Recorded Lost and ERing last night. Watched a good bit of both to confirm all was well. At midnight they were both there. This morning they are both gone.

I did enter the debug line in the props file. This morning there is quite a bit of stuff in the "sagetv_0.txt" text document. I also found this line in the prop. file: "debug_input_events=false"

I will go through the text file, but alot of it is greek to me. Any advice?

Thanks,

Jesse

[Opus4]

Keep a copy of the sagetv_o_txt file. You can send it to tech support. You could also upload it here, but tech support would be able to check it out better. Did you search the file to see if ther were any references to the shows that were deleted?

I would try the latest beta to see what happens with it.

- Andy

[Jesse]

Hello Andy,

I did look through the file, but did not see anything that looked like "delete". Lots of stuff there . Interesting thing. I did, initially, try to install two of these tuners. Becuase sage did not want to configure them I un-installed both tuners and the drivers (something of a pain with these things) and started over with just one tuner. In the sage config menus it shows just the one tuner and I obviously got it set up. Strange thing is, from what is in the file it looks as if sage is still looking for the second tuner. I have to guess that this is somehow causing the problem.

Now I am a little torn between a fresh install of the current release version or the latest beta. Betas usually are not my thing, but jptaz is successfully using two of these tuners with the latest beta, so maybe I will give it a go. I can always go roll back if I have to.

Attached is the file. Maybe something obvious will jump out at someone more knowledgeable than I.

If a new install does not solve the issue then I will, of course, contact suppport.

Thanks again,
Jesse

[Opus4]

That log looks like it is only from a few minutes of this morning -- logging would have to be on while the recording is made & then disappears. Is there sagetv_1.txt from overnight?

- Andy

[Jesse]

Hello Andy,

I did not know to look at the other text file. I will have to check it out when I get home. I did enter the debug line into the prop file before the recordings were made. We did not awaken sage on the server until this morning. I verified that the recordings had been made and would play back using my client machine.

I will post here with my findings.

Thanks again.

Jesse

[Jesse]

Hello Andy,

Attached is a file with way more info. Looks like it runs from about 7:30 pm to about 7:30 am. Maybe some clues here, looks like some "hangs" occured.

Thanks,
Jesse

[Opus4]

You either forgot to attach the file, or it is too large to be an attachment. Just try searching it for Lost to see if it has any entries for that show.

- Andy

[Jesse]

Hello Andy,

Yes, I realized just as I posted that the file was too large. A slight meltdown at home (2 small children's bath and bed times) prevented me from correcting my error.

I meant to try the latest beta last night, but said meltdown and falling asleep while rocking the little guy to sleep (my wife often asks who is putting who to sleep) kept that from happening too. Hopefully tonight....

Here are the files.

Thanks for all your help.

Jesse

[Jesse]

Part two of the file.

Jesse

[Jesse]

Part three of the file.

Jesse

[Opus4]

If you search for Lost or Ering, you eventually find:

Thu 2/2 4:05:02.619 Removing MediaFile because it failed verification:MediaFile[id=7252199 A[7205974,7153501,"E-Ring",19587@0201.20:00,60] host=jukebox encodedBy=VBox Vb35xx Capture Best G:\Sage Recordings\ERing-TheGeneral-7205974-0.ts, Seg0[Wed 2/1 20:00:00.080-Wed 2/1 21:00:00.076]]
Thu 2/2 4:05:02.622 Deleted media segment file G:\Sage Recordings\ERing-TheGeneral-7205974-0.ts dtime=1 len=0
Thu 2/2 4:05:02.623 Removing MediaFile because it failed verification:MediaFile[id=7252200 A[7205515,7153057,"Lost",19586@0201.21:00,60] host=jukebox encodedBy=VBox Vb35xx Capture  G:\Sage Recordings\Lost-Numbers-7205515-0.ts, Seg0[Wed 2/1 21:00:00.143-Wed 2/1 22:00:00.001]]
Thu 2/2 4:05:02.625 Deleted media segment file G:\Sage Recordings\Lost-Numbers-7205515-0.ts dtime=0 len=0

You will still have to follow up with tech support to see why they might be getting deleted (I'm not sure what "failed verification" means), but perhaps there is something wrong with the files. I also saw something that looked like it marked Lost watched around 21:44, or at least part of it was watched.

- Andy

[Jesse]

Thanks Andy,

Yes, Lost was partly watched. But it was flagged to keep until I delete.

I guess I will just send this on to tech and see what they make of it.

Thanks again for all your help.

Jesse

[Opus4]

When you tried playing these recordings, are you sure the HD recording is what you played? The log says that the length is 0 when it is being deleted, as if the file is empty... does the HD recording file actually contain anything right after the show is done recording?

- Andy

[Jesse]

Hello Andy,

When I checked windows explorer the file for ERing was either 5.8 or 6.8 gb in size and we watched probably the first ten or fifteen minutes of it. I do not recall the size of the Lost file, but we did watch probably 15 minutes of this file too. And yes, they were definitely in HD .

Thanks,

Jesse

[Opus4]

To get back to you on this... all I can suggest is to restart SageTV so that you start with a fresh log, record a show in HD, then after it disappears, send the entire log to SageTV tech support. Also include any details that describe how things are set up, including the type f file system where the recordings are stored & whether it is a network drive, etc.

- Andy

[Jesse]

Hello Andy,

Thanks again.

I sent the log you looked at to support. That was Friday so I dont expect I'll hear from them for another day or so.

In the interim I decided to try the beta. On the server I un-installed the vbox tuners (what a pain--cant be done in device manager, had to manually search for and delete driver files) and removed all traces of sage. I then re-installed the vbox tuners. Seemed to go ok so I loaded up the beta and went through the entire config wizard. All seemed good so I dropped in my wiz files and hoped for the best. The old problem seems gone. I should be able to say for sure tomorrow.

I do have new problems though. I have only managed to get the mvp to connect once. I have done some more research and have something new to try when I get home tonight. I thought it was the whole IP address/subnet mask thing, but my router does seem to be configured properly. Who knows.

I did have one crash since I went to the beta. Details here: http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=16032

Looks like I just traded old problems for new ones. Good thing it will be easier to live with the new ones .

Thanks again,

Jesse