Tvheadend

I am not aware that Tvheadend would support Accurate Recording.

But I would like to see Tvheadend support it.

Accurate recording is possible from the "Running Status" signal broadcast with DVB. The "Running Status" sent by the public boradcasters in Switzerland and Germany is accurate to a few seconds, even when a sports event takes much longer than orginally scheduled.

In a set of scripts -- outside Tvheadend -- I am using this to get "accurate recordings". It is just a matter of constantly monitoring the "Running Status" and to start or stop recording when the signal changes status.

It is not very heavy on the CPU. In my case Tvheadend and the monitoring script run in parallel on a low end QNAP TS-212 NAS (Marvell 1.2GHz ARM CPU, 256MB RAM), with CPU load only at about 10 % to 15 %. Two "accurate recordings" in parallel are possible.

I am not sure how difficult it would be to implement this in Tvheadend. Someone knowledgable would have to look at it.

Hi Ulrich, your script sounds interesting as the addition of AR would be the final part of my perfect setup. Would you prepared to share the script please?

I'd also be interested in your scripts Ulrich. Would be nice if you could share them. In the best case with a little info on how to use them.
Cheers

I am prepared to share my scripts under the GPL.

It is a set of like 12 bash / perl / python scripts. It might be intricate for anyone else to make use of them.

On another note: I seem to remember that there was a response to my post above (or another one?) saying that more recent versions of Tvheadend would do accurate recording and that there was a setting for it. Unfortunately, I cannot point you to that post nor to that setting. Maybe someone else can?

This is what my scripts do:
1. Periodically collect EPG data (twice a day in my case).
2. Make the EPG data browsable and searchable in a basic web interface.
3. Schedule a recording from the web interface.
4. Perform accurate recordings using Tvheadend plus a monitoring script.
5. Show completed recordings in the web interface for deletion after viewing and searching.

This is what is required:
1. http://dvbsnoop.sourceforge.net to collect EPG data plus monitoring the "Running Status" during recording.
2. A web server (apache in my case) for the web interface. The web server must be able to execute perl scripts for EPG display, searching, scheduling and deletion after viewing.
3. Crontab on the machine doing EPG data collection and recording.
4. https://github.com/tvheadend/tvheadend/tree/master/lib/py/tvh to control Tvheadend recording by a python script.
5. Configuration file with channel information.

In my setup I manage recordings from the web interface and view them in Kodi.

Thank you very much Ulrich. Interesting to note your comment about accurate recording possibly working in a recent version of tvheadend. I'm on version 4.09, which is the latest version available on Openelec and there is no AR option that I can see in the config. I will check what other versions are available.

Checking the roadmap section of the TVH website I see that AR is included in the future release version 4.2. Not sure when it will be released.

Seems 4.2 is already out there and is in libreelec if anyone is interested
libreelec.tv/2016/04/libreelec-jarvis-v7-0-0-release

After updating Tvheadend to 4.1-1648~g9f44f72 on my QNAP I could find the accurate recording setting. Refer to the attached screen shot.

Set the view level to advanced or expert to see this setting.

I have not tried yet how accurate recording works within Tvheadend.

I can confirm that accurate recording does work, at least as far as BBC and Channel4 on UK freesat are concerned. I haven't had time to test on other channels yet.