Tvheadend

For those of you who have used a Topfieled STB here in the UK running the "MYStuff" user-written UI, you will be familiar with this feature request. It had this functionality and worked very well.

Basically, at the moment in TVH you have the choice of using pre/post padding for recordings, or, if your broadcaster supports it, EIT Running Status (Accurate Recording as it's known in the UK). Both have advantages and disadvantages - the biggest disadvantage with AR is it's reliant on the broadcaster sending the start/stop signal at the correct time, which some channels don't.

This request is to sort of combine the two. Firstly, you must be recording to an MKV, and you set a pre-padding time. TVH will start recording at that pre time, however, when the broadcaster sends the AR start signal, TVH should drop a chapter mark into the MKV. This means that when you play the file back, you can simply jump to the first chapter mark which should be the exact start of the programme. However, if the broadcaster has mucked it up and sent the start too late, you can still jump back in the file to the real start.

On the Topfield this worked very well. It had the advantage of being able to automatically jump to the first chapter on playback, but obviously this is client dependent with TVH.

A similar thing could be done at the end of the recording. If an AR signal is received before the end of any set post-padding, a chapter mark could be dropped into the MKV again and the recording allowed to continue until the post-padding time is reached. If not, the recording should be extended as now until the AR stop signal is received (to allow for over running programmes).

Hope this can be implemented as it doesn't seem that difficult (I hope).