Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[muzicman0]

I have my TV Recording folder set to 'c:\Recorded TV' Every week or 2 it appears to be reset to 'C:\Video\JRiver\TV Recording'.  I can't figure out why.  The original folder is still there, and is obviously the same drive...any ideas?

I have a nightly batch file that runs on all recorded shows that won't work if the folder structure changes.

[CountryBumkin]

Did you upgrade to a new version lately?
If yes, perhaps the upgrade process is not recognizing that you have already selected a recording location - so it is setting it to the MC default location.

[muzicman0]

Just the normal latest release stuff (IE: the builds at the top of this board).  If I installed the latest build, it would have had to have been on Friday, and Friday nights recordings all went to the correct folder.

[DocLotus]

I have my TV Recording folder set to 'c:\Recorded TV' Every week or 2 it appears to be reset to 'C:\Video\JRiver\TV Recording'.  I can't figure out why.  The original folder is still there, and is obviously the same drive...any ideas?

I have a nightly batch file that runs on all recorded shows that won't work if the folder structure changes.

Had the same problem a couple of months ago on 'F:\TV Recordings'. It would change for no reason to 'F:\Video\JRiver\TV Recording'. That was the original default for TV Options "Folder for recording & time shifting files" in MC's TV setup. I had changed it to 'F:\TV Recordings' but MC seemed to prefer 'F:\Video\JRiver\TV Recording' so I finally accepted the default location & have had no other problems with it changing.

I think there is a bug somewhere in the code that wants to default to ':\Video\JRiver\TV Recording'. Don't know why it will stay at your desired location for a few days & suddenly change but as muzicman0 suggested...

Did you upgrade to a new version lately?
If yes, perhaps the upgrade process is not recognizing that you have already selected a recording location - so it is setting it to the MC default location.

That seems to be the most obvious cause. For me, I got tired of re-changing it back so I just accepted the default location.

It does need to be fixed however.

[muzicman0]

I have a test Server that I am using to test various things...that is the one that keeps changing.  I also have a live server that runs the same version, and it has not changed recording paths.  The only thing I can think of that is different (besides CPU/GPU), is that the live server record drive is not C:.

[Yaobing]

I can't find any reason why the path would change except when MC could not find the configured path.  Did you reset all settings on this test server and forgot to set the recording path?  That would result in the default path being used.  The default is [drive with largest free space]\Video\JRiver\TV Recording\.

[muzicman0]

No changes were made...I was actually in the middle of a long term test, and when I came in to my office this morning it had been reset.  Things recorded, just to the wrong folder.  so some point between Friday night, and Sunday night it changed.

[Yaobing]

The setting is at (run RegEdit) HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\JRiver\Media Center 21\TV Settings\Shared\Recording - Base Path

[RoderickGI]

I can't find any reason why the path would change except when MC could not find the configured path.

I suspect that the definition of the bolded works is at the heart of the issue.

The problem seems to be PC specific. If drives are allowed to sleep, are slow to start, have small buffers, or the PC has a slow SATA connection, or the motherboard is slow to handle hard disk activity or communicate hard disk readiness state, or the BIOS isn't the best, or . . .

You get the idea. There is a lot of stuff in the chain from receiving a signal in a tuner to writing the recording on the disk, and a lot of it is hardware and/or related drivers, chips, etc.

The fact that the default directory was created on the same drive as the original configured directory would imply that the timing difference between first request and fall back to the default directory is enough for the configured disk drive to become available. That must be a pretty short period of time. Perhaps MC needs to wait just a little longer, or try the original configured directory one more time, and the problem may disappear. But that would have to be balanced against the need to start writing a recording quickly, before all buffers are full.

Note that I have my recordings saved to a non-OS spinning hard drive that is allowed to sleep, and I haven't seen this problem.

[Yaobing]

Well, when I said "MC could not find the configured path" I actually meant "MC could not find the configuration", in other words, we revert to default path only if we can not read the registry for the configured path.

Does the conditions you mentioned also affect registry?

I have to check my code again, but I am pretty sure that when MC fails to access the properly configured drive, we would get a hard failure.  My recordings are set to be on an external drive that always fails to show up after a reboot.  So I get these failures after a reboot.

[muzicman0]

I did check the registry, and it is correct.

[Yaobing]

I did check the registry, and it is correct.

You mean that the setting is where you want the files to be, i.e. 'c:\Recorded TV'?

Then it seems that at the time of recording MC could not read the registry.  Is that possible?

[muzicman0]

Possible?  sure...I don't think it is likely though...

But yeah, the setting in the registry is in the correct place, and the correct value.

[RoderickGI]

Does the conditions you mentioned also affect registry?

No, I wouldn't think so.

Then it seems that at the time of recording MC could not read the registry.  Is that possible?

As Muzicman0 says, highly unlikely. Something else must be going on. Contention for the record or something? Could two MC threads/workers be trying to access the registry setting at the same time? I would still think it would be highly unlikely to get a failed read of the value.

But it must be PC specific, or lots of people would see it. Perhaps there is a little registry corruption, or a hard disk corruption where the registry is stored? Still highly unlikely. Worth running some analysis of the registry perhaps, although most registry repair tools are a waste of time.

I know when I upgraded MC20 to MC21 and hadn't uninstalled MC20, there were still some settings, specifically file type associations, that were pointing to the MC20 registry settings. Have all previous versions of MC been uninstalled from the affected PCs? Is the registry then clear of all reference to MC20?

Just throwing ideas out here. 

[muzicman0]

thanks RoderickGI...this is a fresh OS install, I may have upgraded from build 123 to 124, but MC20 has never been on this machine.

[greynolds]

I'm running into the same problem with my "Folder for recording and time-shifting files" randomly changing every once in a while.  Recently, it has happened a couple of times in the last few weeks.

As others have said, the registry being unreadable seems highly unlikely and if that were to happen, I suspect the PC would be exhibiting more catastrophic symptoms.

[JimH]

As others have said, the registry being unreadable seems highly unlikely and if that were to happen, I suspect the PC would be exhibiting more catastrophic symptoms.

Are you running any antivirus or similar?

[greynolds]

Are you running any antivirus or similar?

Microsoft Security Essentials and Windows Firewall are running, but nothing overly aggressive such as Norton Anti Virus.  MC would be the first program I've ever used that runs into problems reading the registry with Microsoft Security Essentials running.

Given how potentially disruptive changing this setting is, do you guys have any sort of retry logic implemented if the first attempt at reading the setting fails?  Do you read the setting only when MC starts up or do you read it each time a recording starts?

[Yaobing]

Given how potentially disruptive changing this setting is, do you guys have any sort of retry logic implemented if the first attempt at reading the setting fails?  Do you read the setting only when MC starts up or do you read it each time a recording starts?

Good suggestion on retrying.

We read this particular setting only when we need it, not at the start of the program.