Possible to watch an active recording?

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luvolondon
Posts: 6
Joined: Tue Jul 26, 2011 12:47 pm

Possible to watch an active recording?

Post by luvolondon » Thu Dec 27, 2012 3:08 pm

hi,

finally moved my clients from MP to XBMC.
only a few things left to correct for perfect WAKAF
(wife and kids acceptance factor ;-) ...).
one of them is:

running Frodo RC2 connecting to a TV Server with
Argus/Mediaportal TV-Server. is there a way to
view an active recording?

opening "Recordings" in the XBMC PVR Client only shows
finished recordings.
(I know the "Recordings" list updates slowly, e.g. when
deleting recordings, but the active recordings don't show
up at all.)

opening the channel from the EPG shows the live TV.

any idea how I can access the active recording via the
PVR Client?

thank you!

Lucas

Red_F
Posts: 533
Joined: Wed May 19, 2010 10:31 pm
Location: The Netherlands

Re: Possible to watch an active recording?

Post by Red_F » Thu Dec 27, 2012 4:53 pm

As far as I know, if you select (highlight) "Recordings" in the left hand side menu, and then press <Enter> you force the recordings list to update. That is the way I start viewing a recording when it has just started recording.

If this does not work, than that is a recent UI change with XBMC Frodo. And in that case as always: for anything UI related you need to go the XBMC forums.

The 'normal' refresh rate for the recordings list is once every 10 or 15 minutes if I remember correct.
Growing old is inevitable. Growing up is optional!

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wileecoyote
Posts: 84
Joined: Mon Feb 27, 2012 6:16 pm

Re: Possible to watch an active recording?

Post by wileecoyote » Fri Dec 28, 2012 3:54 am

@Fred,
I made a suggestion on XBMC's forum today -> http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=149732 to update when you open Recorded TV.

They mention there is a mechanism in which you (a PVR add-on developer) can update on the fly? Were you aware of this?

Edit: I personally feel it should be done by XBMC, but as long as the recordings are updated I guess it doesn't matter where/who does it.
XBMC PVR Addon Unofficial Builds for Frodo Nightly Builds.
http://www.dotnetdevelopers.net/xbmc/

Christoph21x
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Joined: Wed Oct 19, 2011 9:39 am
Location: Berne / Switzerland

Re: Possible to watch an active recording?

Post by Christoph21x » Fri Dec 28, 2012 9:34 am

luvolondon wrote: any idea how I can access the active recording via the
PVR Client?

thank you!

Lucas
Hi Lucas & Welcome to Argus & XBMC!

I like it the more simple way... :D
Depending on the way you want to access the live show you may
1. add the recording path to your XBMC files collection (then you see immediately the upcoming new (started) recordings there, too and can simply play them as every other recorded show from the beginning upto the live point)
2. if you want to watch from the live point, simply start live stream, ATV will generate a second stream out of the same mux that can be paused independently from your recording (leaving live point)

Greetz - Christoph
"One must still have chaos within oneself, to give birth to a dancing star." (F. Nietzsche)

Red_F
Posts: 533
Joined: Wed May 19, 2010 10:31 pm
Location: The Netherlands

Re: Possible to watch an active recording?

Post by Red_F » Fri Dec 28, 2012 5:02 pm

wileecoyote wrote:@Fred,
I made a suggestion on XBMC's forum today -> http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=149732 to update when you open Recorded TV.

They mention there is a mechanism in which you (a PVR add-on developer) can update on the fly? Were you aware of this?

Edit: I personally feel it should be done by XBMC, but as long as the recordings are updated I guess it doesn't matter where/who does it.
Yes I know how to trigger the update. But since there is a database with start times/dates in XBMC, and one in ARGUS TV either one can create an autonomous event. If the add-on starts doing this too, we don't have just two, but THREE captains on the bridge.

And to be honest, for me forcing a refresh using the LHS menu works fine.

With the current implementation within Frodo refreshing has become an 'expensive' operation (taking a long time and many server round-trips). Therefore I'm happy to keep updates to a minimum.
Growing old is inevitable. Growing up is optional!

luvolondon
Posts: 6
Joined: Tue Jul 26, 2011 12:47 pm

Re: Possible to watch an active recording?

Post by luvolondon » Tue Jan 01, 2013 1:38 pm

thank you for the comments.

something must have changed: with the latest built (re-)entering
the "Recordings" screen I can now see the active recordings.
this is great.

I've used the workaround (opening the recording-folder via a
share) before, but this is even better.

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wileecoyote
Posts: 84
Joined: Mon Feb 27, 2012 6:16 pm

Re: Possible to watch an active recording?

Post by wileecoyote » Fri Jan 04, 2013 7:45 pm

Red_F wrote:
wileecoyote wrote:@Fred,
I made a suggestion on XBMC's forum today -> http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=149732 to update when you open Recorded TV.

They mention there is a mechanism in which you (a PVR add-on developer) can update on the fly? Were you aware of this?

Edit: I personally feel it should be done by XBMC, but as long as the recordings are updated I guess it doesn't matter where/who does it.
Yes I know how to trigger the update. But since there is a database with start times/dates in XBMC, and one in ARGUS TV either one can create an autonomous event. If the add-on starts doing this too, we don't have just two, but THREE captains on the bridge.

And to be honest, for me forcing a refresh using the LHS menu works fine.

With the current implementation within Frodo refreshing has become an 'expensive' operation (taking a long time and many server round-trips). Therefore I'm happy to keep updates to a minimum.
I understand completely. This just seems to be one of the biggest sticking points for people to understand. My thoughts are the user should be able to open Recorded TV and all your recordings just 'show up', no matter the transport or how it happens.

I am just stuck on the old ways, when I used Media Portal ;)
XBMC PVR Addon Unofficial Builds for Frodo Nightly Builds.
http://www.dotnetdevelopers.net/xbmc/

planetix
Posts: 172
Joined: Mon Apr 20, 2009 10:13 pm

Re: Possible to watch an active recording?

Post by planetix » Sat Jan 19, 2013 12:15 am

I agree with Wileecoyote - this issue confuses a lot of people. This is because the method doesn't adhere to best practices for UI designs - it's only something that works if you know about it or cause it to happen by accident - and in the latter case you might not even know that's what did it. There are no indicators in the UI to point out that clicking Recordings in the right menu forces an update, nor is there any feedback (progress wheel, on screen message, etc) when you do. This isn't just bad design, it's also inconsistent with the rest of the UI and how it works.

I know none of this is the fault of Argus or the XBMC addon - it's one of those things that comes along with XBMC having an in-development unified PVR solution. So no blame here, at the same time it is a problem and we should treat it as such.

Where the Argus addon for XBMC does differ is this: Many other addons - TVHeadend, MythTV, NextPVR (soon) are using the method recommended by the XBMC team - have the addon trigger the update. There will be a cost to this, but it's minor. The alternative is to leave things the way they are (the XBMC team seems unlikely to change things on their end) and confuse end users constantly.

Red, is this something you'd reconsider? Again, this isn't a knock against you personally - I really appreciate your work, and I understand the limitations imposed by XBMC's PVR service you have to work under. I'd just like to see the underlying problem addressed.

planetix
Posts: 172
Joined: Mon Apr 20, 2009 10:13 pm

Re: Possible to watch an active recording?

Post by planetix » Sat Jan 19, 2013 1:03 am

In pvrclient-argustv.cpp line 252 there is a comment and then a function using TriggerRecordingUpdate, then on 802 a method that calls it when a recording is deleted. I don't delete recordings in XBMC so I didn't realize it did this, but reading the code that means the list is refreshed automatically on delete, correct? I know we're talking about going the other way (Argus notifying when a recording is done, then triggering the update, rather than this way, which is handled all inside XBMC space), and that is slightly messier, but wouldn't this be fairly trivial? I may take a crack at it myself, though since I am new to this code I'll have to track down how to check in Argus when a recording is finished (if you have any pointers I'd appreciate it!)

Thanks!

Edit: Actually, isn't it Argus itself that will have to trigger the update? This isn't something we'd want to poll for in the client, that would get ugly quick. I guess I could put it on a timer, which is more or less what Wile first suggested in the XBMC forums.

planetix
Posts: 172
Joined: Mon Apr 20, 2009 10:13 pm

Re: Possible to watch an active recording?

Post by planetix » Sat Jan 19, 2013 3:46 am

Hmm, I didn't think this all the way through, did I - should have taken the time.

Having Argus update the client(s) isn't a great solution, although they (XBMC) sort of imply that is the way to do it. Nor is polling - the first could get messy (because the clients are just pulling from Argus, Argus doesn't push anything currently to the addon as far as I can see) and the second (timed poll) will lead to inconsistent results. Having an open listener for Argus events is messy, as you yourself indicated Red.

A decent compromise, and the way I think other PVR addons do it, is to trigger it automatically off an event - such as opening Live TV, or for that matter, when the recordings page is opened. There are events we can use there to trigger the update. That way the addon only pulls when needed. It'd be trivial to add in some GUI feedback when it does ("Updating recorded programs list") when it happens so the user knows something is happening, too.

This wouldn't update the list in the background - say a user already had the list open, was watching a program, and a new recording happened in the meantime - but it's close enough. I'll take a peak at how TVHeadEnd does it and give it a shot.

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