WMC is re-recording shows

MarkJohnson

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#21

Post by MarkJohnson » Fri Aug 26, 2016 4:12 pm

DSperber wrote:I'm sorry... I'm confused by your English words.

When you say "I notice them being re-encoded over and over", are you talking about MCEBuddy and its production of MP4 files? Is that what you mean by "re-encoded"? Are you saying MCEBuddy is incorrectly re-encoding the same show over and over?
I'm saying both. WMC is recording the same shows over and over (I look at my server and it says it is recording a show that is already recorded) and when MCEBuddy reads the Recorded TV folder it sees a new episodes and starts encoding it.
If that's what you're complaining about, then I would say the problem is with MCEBuddy, not with Windows Media Center. Your screenshot shows a collection of Walking Dead episodes recorded during a "marathon", and it looks perfect to me. I know nothing about MCEBuddy, but if you're not getting it to do what you want it to do... then that's the issue, not WMC incorrectly making "duplicate recordings".

So again, can you please very clearly describe what it is that isn't right about what WMC is doing... as far as you're concerned? Your post-production with MCEBuddy and its rightness or wrongness isn't really pointing a finger at WMC somehow being responsible, if WMC is doing exactly what it is supposed to be doing including in creating absolutely unique WTV file names with a properly unique date/time suffix.
MCEBuddy only reads/copies to a temp folder and manipulates it, then saves it to my shared video folder for everyone to watch. I can clearly see WMC recording these files during the marathon by the little red dot in the system tray and when I hover over it it says it is recording the show that is a rerun.

Now, MCEBuddy encoding the same show over and over is another issue as well, but I'm sure that is a rovi issue no providing the proper info for the show. The author has complaints of that and recommends dump rovi as well. But I figured if windows didn't record the show in the first place, then there would be an issue.

Maybe both shows are just choking on rovi. But it is odd WMC doesn't create a duplicate entry instead of overwriting an old one. It should think it is a new show and make several duplicates. Just odd.

Recording old shows is a much bigger deal, as it is now recording too many shows at once causing me to lose show recordings as my tuner can only record 3 shows at once.

Sorry for all of the confusion and frustration. Language barrier doesn't help either.

Thanks for all of your guys help. It is really helping me understand what is going on a lot.

Space

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#22

Post by Space » Fri Aug 26, 2016 4:15 pm

The "Date Modified" column is not the date they were recorded. The date they were recorded is in the filename and also the "Date Created" (if it is the original recording and not a copy you've made). It is unclear what date is used in the "Date" column, it appears to maybe be the OAD in some instances but is inconsistent.

As for it re-recording these shows that you recorded last year, it should not re-record them, but only if you are using the same Series as you did last year. If you deleted the Series and then re-created it, then it would have cleared the history and would start recording all episodes again.

Are you sure that you did not delete the Series for this show at some point and then create a new one?

EDIT:

WMC is not overwriting an old recording, not sure why you think it is. It is creating a new recording.

MarkJohnson

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#23

Post by MarkJohnson » Fri Aug 26, 2016 4:32 pm

Space wrote:The "Date Modified" column is not the date they were recorded. The date they were recorded is in the filename and also the "Date Created" (if it is the original recording and not a copy you've made). It is unclear what date is used in the "Date" column, it appears to maybe be the OAD in some instances but is inconsistent.

As for it re-recording these shows that you recorded last year, it should not re-record them, but only if you are using the same Series as you did last year. If you deleted the Series and then re-created it, then it would have cleared the history and would start recording all episodes again.

Are you sure that you did not delete the Series for this show at some point and then create a new one?

EDIT:

WMC is not overwriting an old recording, not sure why you think it is. It is creating a new recording.
I haven't updated anything since last years in April when I reinstalled win7 for hardware upgrade. This is a headless server so it get no action at all and is completely untouched except for some new recordings to add (remote desktop) or update the system (usually remote in, but sometimes I connect a monitor when I have more serious issues)

I think it is overwriting it because it shows a modified date being updated, so it is being manipulated in some way. Plus I physically see it recording the same shows again and again everyday. And it's all of my shows, not one one or two. It's just most shows are relatively new and don't have reruns yet. I think it's usually 5 years to do reruns (about 100 episodes).

DSperber

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#24

Post by DSperber » Fri Aug 26, 2016 9:44 pm

MarkJohnson wrote:I couldn't seem to get a screenshot of the series settings, so I'll type them in:

Show and Type: New & rerun
Channels: 771 AMDHD only
Airtime: Anytime
Keep: Until space needed
Keep up to: As many as possible
Stop: 3 miniutes after, when possible
Thanks.

Ok. Then we're agreed. This setup tells WMC to record every episode on this channel that airs, new or repeat, as long as it had never recorded this same episode previously... BASED ON THE GUIDE FOR THAT PROGRAM AIRING.

I already had all of those episodes recorded from last year as new episodes. Then it recorded them over again the other day.
My guess is that last year your recordings were when MS/WMC was still using Zap2it. This year WMC is using Rovi, and the Guide Info is very different.

The Rovi Guide transition has been a very unpleasant and unhappy one for many WMC users, as the quality of the Rovi data is truly terrible compared to that of Zap2it. Again, this is exactly what has motivated many of us to transition out of Rovi and into EPG123/SD, with its many previously enumerated benefits.

Anyway, I'm going to guess that the Zap2it->Rovi transition and the "apparently never recorded before" Rovi-Guide nature of the episode airings of this most recent marathon compared to last year's Zap2it-Guide info is what triggered the most recent burst of all episodes recording. But I'm also going to intuit that you will not get any more additional recordings of these episodes in the future, as long as you remain using MS/Rovi for Guide info going forward.

You can see in the "date modified" column that the show has been recorded again. The file name date is different than the "Date Modified" and the "Date" columns.

Also, shouldn't the show date in the filename be the same as the original air date?
Well.. finally I now see what is confusing you.

(1) The date/time in the file name is the actual broadcast date/time of the airing which you recorded into this WTV file. It has nothing to do with the actual original date/time of the truly first-run original episode air date from many years ago (as shown on Wiki). If this had been your recording from last year's marathon, the date/time in that file name would have been last year's actual recording date/time, again unrelated to the true first-run original episode air date from many years ago (as shown on Wiki).

The file name date/time is created from the original "date recorded" on your WMC, when the actual physical WTV file was created on your system and placed in the primary "recording" folder specified in WMC setup. These files go in the "Recorded TV" folder designated for recording.

You can see this because the date/time suffix in your file names matches exactly the "Date Created" column shown in Windows Explorer. That's how the WTV file name date/time suffix is created, i.e. from the original true "Date Created" value shown by Windows Explorer.

(2) The "Date" column is from the WTV metadata (understood by Windows Explorer), and corresponds to "original air date" of the episode per the Guide info data. There is no time available, since OAR is only a date. So the metadata value shows "midnight" as its default null time value. But the "Date" value is truly the OAR date from the metadata (i.e. Guide info, as from Wiki).

Note that this "OAR date" is part of the "metadata" for WTV files, similar to how MP3 file ID3 tags contain additional information about track title, artist, album, genre, bitrate, etc. Windows Explorer can also be configured to show any of these additional metadata/tag fields for any type of multimedia file that supports metadata/tags.

(3) The "Date modified" column is something entirely unrelated to either "Date" or "Date Created". This is a totally independent third entity, corresponding to possibly several things:

(a) initially, "date modified" is set to match "date created".

(b) if you COPY'd/MOVE'd the file to its current location from where it originally might have been recorded, then a new "date created" is established for this new secondary location, and again "date modified" is set to match. The original "date created" from the original recording is lost for this second location instance of the file.

For example, WMC only supports one "recording folder" for new recordings, but it supports any number of "recorded TV" folders in "Library of recorded TV". So, for example, you might have a folder on a partition that has 1TB of free space available, which seems like plenty for normal usage. But during Olympics weeks this might be inadequate. So you might also have three other 1TB folders defined on three other partitions, as part of the "Recorded TV Library". So all together you really have a total of 4TB available for WTV files to be played back from (i.e either the primary 1TB used for new recordings, plus the 3x1TB=3TB from the other three Recorded TV folders on other partitions).

So, if you cleaned things up in anticipation of Olympics and MOVE'ed all of your current contents from the primary Recorded TV "live new recordings" folder into one or more of your other three "playback-capable" Recorded TV folders on your other partitions, you would now have caused a new "date created" and "date modified" for those files in their new target folder location from the MOVE.

(c) When WMC looks through the content of a WTV file to create the thumbnail shown next to the program name on the "Recorded TV" list, that will actually cause a refresh (i.e. update) to the "date modified" (as the thumbnail is stored in the WTV file "tag" as another part of the WTV metadata). Once the thumbnail is created and available from the metadata, that "date modified" will not change again (unless something else you might do triggers re-creation of thumbnails again).

So, for example, if you did MOVE lots of WTV files from their original recorded TV location to a secondary folder, and then opened WMC to see your Recorded TV program list, this first situation for WMC to encounter these WTV files in this secondary location would prompt it to run through them all to create brand new metadata thumbnails. If you had MOVE'd these files yesterday but not opened WMC yet, then the original "date created" and "date modified" would be yesterday. But now that you opened WMC and it just created thumbnails that got stored back into each WTV file's metadata tag, well now you've just updated the "date modified" for each of them.

(d) I think WMC may also create thumbnails again when you go to PLAY a recording and at least get as far as going into the Synopsis page before you push PLAY. I notice that my own "date modified" can be all over the place, even though I know I haven't actually re-recorded anything. This date is simply kind of an unpredictable value, but certainly reflects whenever WMC actually makes some change to the metadata for that file. That's why Windows updated the "date modified"... because the file was actually modified (by WMC, for a reason very likely related to trying to read/decrypt for purpose of generating a thumbnail into the metadata for "Recorded TV" listing display purposes).


Bottom line:

(1) "date" is "original air date" from Guide info, plus 12:00AM as time. It will not change no matter the values of "date created" or "date modified".

(2) "date created" is whenever the physical file was created in the folder it now resides in, no matter what its "date created" might have been in the original folder it got recorded into.

(3) "date modified" is initially set to "date created", but can change if WMC has to generate thumbnails for that program in which case "date modified" is the then the most recent date thumbnails were created so that the WTV metadata tag had to be updated. It can therefore change as time goes on, depending on where the file happens to be living at the time. It has nothing really to do with an actual recording or re-recording of the WTV file, other than when initially created. But it does reflect when WMC produced the thumbnail for that WTV file.

(4) WTV file name date/time suffix is set to match the "date created" when the original WTV recording was made.


Just for example, coming back to my 20 accumulated episodes of all Season 5 and 6 of GOT... all of Season 5 were originally were recorded in my primary M:\Recorded TV folder location. At some point that folder began to fill up, and on July 5, 2015 I MOVE'd all 10 of them from M:\Recorded TV to my secondary F:\Recorded TV location (also part of my Recorded TV Library along with M:\Recorded TV). So the July 5, 2015 "date created" shows for these in their new F:\Recorded TV location, even though they were actually created earlier in 2015 when Season 5 truly aired between April 24 and June 14.

So the WTV file names have the original April 24 - June 14 first-run air dates which were the actual April-June nights on which I truly recorded them into M:\Recorded TV. These are the same dates as originally showed for "date created" when the files still lived in M:\Recorded TV. When I MOVE'd them to F:\Recorded TV on July 5, 2015, they got new "date created" in the target folder while their WTV file name suffix of course remained unchanged (and still reflected the original "date recorded" from WMC).

The following year the first 4 episodes of Season 6 also got recorded in M:\Recorded TV... until again, the folder began to fill up. So once again, on May 17, 2016 I again MOVE'd whatever had accumulated in M:\Recorded TV over to F:\Recorded TV as I'd done the previous year. So now F:\Recorded TV had 10 episodes from Season 5 and the first 4 episodes from Season 6.

Eventually, the final 6 episodes from Season 6 accumulated in M:\Recorded TV, where they still live today. I haven't had a need to move them over to F:\Recorded TV. So these are the original recording locations for these 6 episodes, hence their WTV file names will exactly match their "date created" in Windows Explorer. And their "date modified" is a short time after the recordings got completed, apparently triggered by my looking at the Record TV list for that series to ensure I'd recorded it successfully. This was the first opportunity for WMC to examine the WTV file for DRM authority and to create the thumbnail for the metadata. Hence why "date modified" for these files in M:\Recorded TV is close to "date created", but just a bit later (except for the last one, which is explained by yet another story).

Last month, in anticipation of Olympics 2016 and all the recordings I was going to be doing, I replaced an old 1TB drive I had (where F:\Recorded TV partition lived) to a new 6TB drive. I had to copy the contents of all partitions on this physical drive (and there were several) off to an intermediate backup temporary storage location (on an external backup drive), make the hardware drive swap, and then copy-back all partitions from their intermediate temporary storage location on the external backup drive to their new home on the just installed 6TB drive... with its now much larger 5TB F:\Recorded TV folder. I used Macrium Reflect and "system image" for the backup/restore, so that the restored target folders looked IDENTICAL to their original contents. I didn't use Windows Explorer (which would have produced all new "date created" for everything I was copying in this manner). This all took place on July 9, 2016.

So, the initial restore of the "system image" for F looked just like the original F, with the same "date created" and "date modified" for all WTV files in F:\Recorded TV. But WMC detected that this was a new location than where they had previously lived the last time thumbnails were produced for these copy-protected DRM-protected files. So when I opened Recorded TV listing for the first time on July 9, 2016 and WMC saw the new version of F:\Recorded TV, it went ahead and re-read each WTV file (to be sure DRM could read it), and regenerated new thumbnails again. Thus each of the files on the newly enlarged F:\Recorded TV folder on the new 6TB drive now reflect July 9, 2016 as their "date modified", since that truly is the last time WMC generated thumbnails for these files.

Just the other day, I was working with WMC (trying to upgrade memory in my HTPC, which "broke" DRM so that I could not watch any previously recorded copy-protected content, so I had to remove the added memory to get back to a "working DRM"). In the process I happened to look in Recorded TV and got browsed two episodes from season 6. Apparently WMC was still recovering from my DRM-breakage episode, and apparently re-generated the thumbnails for these two episodes when I got as fas as looking at their Synposis pages. So for these two episodes (one living in F:\Recorded TV and one living in M:\Recorded TV) I now have an 8/23/2016 "date modified". Obviously I did not re-record them three days ago... but WMC apparently actually did "modify" the files then for some reason, most likely when it replaced the thumbnails in the metadata of those two files. It didn't do this for any other of the episodes, just for these two that I clearly must have "touched" in some way.

So, here are snippets from Windows Explorer showing the complete 20 GOT episodes I've previously discussed, in the two folders, F:\Recorded TV and M:\Recorded TV. I've customized Windows Explorer to show the three relevant date columns as you've shown. So you can look at the FOUR "date values" presented: (a) WTV file name date/time suffix, (b) date modified, i.e. the last time WMC created thumbnails for that WTV file, (c) date created, i.e. when it either was originally recorded if still in its original recording location, or when it got MOVE'd to its new secondary location, and (d) date, i.e. "original air date" from the Guide Info metadata, as from Wiki.

(1) Here is the list of WTV GOT files on F:\Recorded TV, consisting of all 10 episodes from Season 5 in 2015, and the first 4 episodes from Season 6 in 2016.

Image

(2) Here is the list of the WTV GOT files on M:\Recorded TV, consisting of the final 6 episodes from Season 6 in 2016.

Image

MarkJohnson

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#25

Post by MarkJohnson » Fri Aug 26, 2016 10:43 pm

OK, I think I'll chalk it up to replacing my recorded TV drive. I replaced my 2TB with a 6TB back in April of this year. Hopefully it is rerecording because of this.

I'm going to upgrade to epg123 and it seems it will wipe WMC again and re-record everything again.

Maybe I'll just reinstall windows 7 as well. This way I can change my recording schedules and eliminate some as I have all episodes on some series already, and others have been cancelled.

Thanks again for your guy's help

DSperber

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#26

Post by DSperber » Sat Aug 27, 2016 12:30 am

Final thoughts here...

(1) You are lucky that Comcast doesn't deliver your cable channel programming from AMC as "copy-protected" (as Time Warner Cable does for everything, both premium and basic). This would prevent you from doing anything with these DRM-protected WTV files. The only reason you are able to even use MCEBuddy to do what you are doing is because your WTV recordings for "Walking Dead" are being provided to you as "copy-freely" (i.e. unprotected). Otherwise you could not do what you are doing at all as no software product from anybody can actually READ/EDIT/PLAY copy-protected content covered by DRM and PlayReady built into WMC. WMC is the only software that can actually decrypt the encrypted WTV recordings (and even that is subject to VERY strict rules).

(2) Your Windows Explorer screenshot for your Walking Dead collection or recordings does not tell me you have re-recorded duplicate WTV files at all, at least not in this list. It simply tells me that a complete set of "marathon" recordings was made on July 24, 2016, apparently starting at 6:30AM and running pretty much hourly up through 8PM that night.

(a) The "date created" column reflects the recordings made on that "marathon" day of July 24, 2016. These same date/time values are also reflected in the date/time suffix of the WTV file names themselves. All looks perfect to me.

(b) The "date" column shows the "original air date" of each episode (from Wiki), which is a national first-run air date on AMC no matter what your local cable provider or channel number is and no matter what time of day it actually aired. The midnight time shown by default (for "null") because OAR only is a date and doesn't also provide a time. So this all looks perfect to me.

(c) The "date modified" column is completely unrelated to when you did the actual recordings on July 24 or when those episodes originally aired many years ago. The "date modified" value simply reflects the last time WMC produced a thumbnail for that WTV file, to present in the "Recorded TV" list when you look to see what you have in your collection.

The very first time you open "Recorded TV" the thumbnail square will be blank briefly, until WMC reads 1-2 minutes of the file and decides which frame to pick to be that thumbnail. Then that thumbnail is re-written into the WTV file itself as part of the "metadata" (i.e. "tag", like ID3 tag for an MP3 file). That is why Windows updates the "date modified", because WMC really did update that file (or at least updated some data in the metadata tag, which is physically part of that file).

WMC will also re-generate thumbnails if the physical location of the WTV file changes, e.g. if you move it to another \Recorded TV folder on another partition, or even if you just relocate it on a physical drive that you may have enlarged, as for example you say you did yourself back in April. The next time WMC sees this WTV file at its new location for the first time it will once again re-generate a new thumbnail for the metadata. And that update the "date modified".

Apparently that's what must have happened yesterday, 8/25/16, because all of your "date modified" values show 08/25/16 at 09:22AM. Something you must have done while you were researching for your post #12 on this thread must have triggered WMC to regenerate thumbnails (or at least to make a complete pass of those WTV files for some reason and update each one), because it clearly did something to every file in order to produce a new "date modified" from just yesterday.

This doesn't indicate that the WTV recordings were made again, since the "date recorded" is part of the WTV file name suffix, and these are still the July 24 dates from the "marathon". It just means something you did forced WMC to regenerate metadata for these files, hence the new Windows "date modified".

(3) If your MCEBuddy setup says that whenever "date modified" changes that this signifies a brand new recording (and hence it must start its commercial-skip and encoding-to-MP4 process for this supposedly new recording), then THIS IS YOUR PROBLEM!!!

The "date modified" value is NOT the indication of a new recording entering your Recorded TV repository, since "date modified" can be repeatedly updated as WMC has a situation causing it to re-generate thumbnails for the file. Each of these updates is not a new recording justifying MCEBuddy scan/re-encoding.

It is the "date created" which indicates a new recording but even then only as long as you don't relocate it to another folder. If you do COPY or MOVE it to a new location in another \Recorded TV folder then it will pick up a new "date created" for its new location, same as any Windows file will do if you copy it to a new location.

The one truly unique value that DOES NOT CHANGE ONCE IT IS CREATED is the actual WTV file name itself. This shows (a) program name, (b) channel logo ID, (c) date/time suffix reflecting the actual date/time the WTV recording was originally made, which will of course match the initial "date created". All of these values come from the very original recording on that very original recording date, and these will never change no matter whether you copy or move the file elsewhere.

So if you have scripting or configuration options for MCEBuddy that determines when its scan of your \Recorded TV folder detects a "new recording", you should absolutely NOT be using "date modified". You should be using "date created", if not "WTV file name".

(4) If your real point is that the entire July 24, 2016 marathon should NOT have been recorded because you had already recorded all of these episodes during last year's similar marathon, I submit that you must have done something to cause WMC to lose knowledge of this fact. Remember, your MP4 repository for output from MCEBuddy is obviously unknown to WMC. It is only your \Recorded TV folders and the History WMC keeps of series recordings which can be evaluated for "should this be recorded or not". When you say "new + rerun" as you've done, well that's a very open door.

As was pointed out, it is an existing series recording configuration and recorded program history which is monitored by WMC forever, in order to prevent duplicates from being recorded at any time in the future. But if Comcast (or Rovi) now provides different info than might have previously been available last year when WMC was still using Zap2it, WMC cannot tell that this July 24, 2016 airing is actually the same episode as you'd recorded last year. If you had deleted last year's series recording, and then now this year created another new one... well, these are really two different series recordings and don't "sum" just because we also know it is actually for the same program.


Anyway, "date modified" is NOT a proper item to look at to detect "new recording just entered \Recorded TV" and it's now appropriate for MCEBuddy to work on it.

You should be using "date created" (assuming you leave the WTV file in the same \Recorded TV folder it was first created in), if not WTV file name itself (which never changes from its initially created value no matter where the actual file may be copied/moved to). This is what is truly unique and should be used as the trigger for MCEBuddy processing to start.

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