TV thumbnails stopped generating

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webminster

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TV thumbnails stopped generating

#1

Post by webminster » Thu Nov 17, 2016 2:23 am

I just started having an issue with thumbnails not generating in Recorded TV. Comcast has been moving channels to MPEG4, but I think thumbnails were getting generated. I updated the video driver (Nvidia) to latest today (to see if would help problems on HBOHD etc) (which it didn't). After this, I started seeing that new recordings are not getting thumbnails generated. I rebooted the PC, but still not getting generated.

Hard to believe the video driver would affect ehvid generating thumbnails, right? Anyone seen anything like this?
-Alan
-Alan

cwinfield

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#2

Post by cwinfield » Thu Nov 17, 2016 3:11 am

You have a corrupted file. Move half of your new recordings to split the world then check and see when they reappear, repeat until the culprit file is identified.

Space

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#3

Post by Space » Thu Nov 17, 2016 5:42 am

In my experience (and it may not be everyone's) the first (chronologically) video that does not have the thumbnail is the corrupted recording, every video recorded after that will be missing the thumbnail, so either delete this recording (if you don't need it) or move it out of the "Recorded TV" folder to see if WMC will start generating thumbnails for the other recordings.

If this doesn't work, then you will have to do cwinfield's suggestion, remove half the recordings and if the thumbnails do not return, then remove those recordings and put the other half back. If thumbnails then return, you know the corrupted one was in the first group of recordings. Then put half of those back, etc. until you determine which single recording is the culprit.

coolwhip

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#4

Post by coolwhip » Thu Nov 17, 2016 9:25 pm

I have been having problems with thumbnails ever since the cutover to H.264. While checking into this I noticed that there were 2 instances of iehvid.exe running. I killed the older one and the other instance started using CPU and quickly created the missing thumbnails.
Since then I just close WMC and END iehvid.exe processes from Task Manager. I restart WMC and the thumbnails get filled in.
My take is that iehvid.exe will sometimes hang when processing H.264 WTV files. When this happens another ievhid.exe will start but cannot proceed because at least one WTV file is held by the hung iehvid.exe. So it goes nowhere.

So try closing down WMC, look for processes named iehvid.exe in Task Manager and end those processes. Start WMC and see if the thumbnails get filled in after a while. If you watch Task Manager you will see an instance of iehvid.exe start and consume CPU as it creates thumbnails.

webminster

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#5

Post by webminster » Thu Nov 17, 2016 11:32 pm

've noticed the following, since my initial post.. the thumbnails are getting created, but only after some delay after recording is finished. Possibly also if I start to play the partial recording. Before, I could see the thumbnails getting created in Recorded TV if I viewed the list, ehvid would create something from the partial recording... but now, just an empty box until the recording completes (and some arbitrary delay).
-Alan

webminster

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#6

Post by webminster » Tue Nov 22, 2016 3:16 pm

So, I found the core issue,, and it's the MPEG4 switch. ehvid is occasionally hanging on thumbnailing the new format. It's causing a cascade of issues on my system:
* fails to generate a thumbnail for the file, and gets stuck moving on to other recordings;
* holds the file open indefinitely - since I have a robocopy nightly to move recordings out onto my NAS, it gets stuck and files start to back up in the source directory. Of course, you can't delete the file by hand - access denied.

So far I've found finding an killing the ehvid process will unstick it, or of course a reboot. Fear I'll need to automate a process kill overnight. This sucks.
-Alan

genaldar

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#7

Post by genaldar » Fri Jan 20, 2017 6:23 am

I'm sorry I must be missing something, I can't find any instances of ehvid running in task manager either when WMC is open or when it's not. I see ehshell and sometimes ehtray but no ehvid.

btw if this hanging is causing the thumbnail issue could it also be causing the issue deleting files?

webminster

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#8

Post by webminster » Sat Jan 21, 2017 12:23 am

ehvid would run particularly after a show finished recording. Not sure if you are looking at the task manager process list, with 'show processes from all users' or not, or you've tried looking with resource manager or the command-line TASKLIST command.

Not sure what issue you're referring to about deleting files, I don't believe ehvid grabs any exclusive locks on files that would prevent deleting. Haven't seen that at any rate.
-Alan

bouvlover

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#9

Post by bouvlover » Wed Feb 08, 2017 8:02 am

I am also having the issue of the thumbnails not generating. It seemed like it started after Comcast started moving channels over to MPEG4. I've been trying to ignore it (the lack of thumbnails), but when I saw this thread, I thought I'd try some of the fixes mentioned. First I went to Recorded TV, then up to View by Date Recorded and started scrolling through our shows to see which one was the first one that had a problem, as in Space's suggestion. I noticed something really weird. As I scrolled through the titles, some of the missing thumbnails magically started appearing! Not all of them, but a lot of them. And I'm talking about a LOT, because our thumbnails have been missing for the last six months, on most new recordings, if not all. After a bunch of thumbnails appeared, I started looking for the oldest one that was missing, but it wasn't every thumbnail that was missing after the oldest, so I decided that probably was not my problem.

I didn't try a reboot, because our Media Center PC has been rebooted multiple times since the thumbnails started missing, and it didn't seem to help.

So then I tried coolwhip's suggestion of closing WMC, opening the Task Manager, and stopping ehvid.exe (I only had one instance running). I went back into WMC and some more of the thumbnails appeared. I waited several minutes, but there were still some thumbnails missing. So I closed WMC and stopped ehvid.exe again. When I went back in to WMC, all of the thumbnails were there, even for the programs which were in the process of recording!

Which leaves me wondering if there might be a maximum number of recordings for WMC and if I might be getting close to that number. We currently have 794 recordings. Maybe WMC is struggling to keep up? I know we have only used about half of our available recording space, so that is not the issue.

Anyway, thank you all for your help in figuring this out. It was kind of low priority for me because we could still watch our recordings, but it was still bugging me. WMC looks much more pleasing to the eye when it has thumbnails instead of plain blue boxes for everything! :roll:

webminster

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#10

Post by webminster » Thu Feb 09, 2017 1:24 am

Not a limit on number of stored recordings. At this moment I have 1247 recordings in Recorded TV, and it's not a problem.

I haven't had much issue since I last posted, myself. For awhile I was. It wasn't due to a corrupted recording, from the looks it had to do with some issue of viewing Recorded TV while recordings of MPEG4 channels were in progress. Almost like ehvid occasionally got confused and hung on a partial MPEG4 video file. I went as far as adding a scheduled task to kill any ehvid processes during early morning when I knew none should be running. Haven't really had any issues since.
-Alan

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