(2013-10-24, 03:03)TechLife Wrote: Prestart Tuners - I know what it does, I just don't know what the advantage is.
If the tuner is already running (in reality I mean the window's Stream Buffer Engine is running) , it takes less time for the server to switch to another channel. It seems to be variable system-to-system whether it makes a noticeable improvement, so its an option for people to experiment with.
(2013-10-24, 03:03)TechLife Wrote: Only remux this language to output (if available) - Again, I know what it does, I just don't know what the valid available options are other than eng (english).
Wtv files use three letter codes to specify the language for the audio stream, the ones I have seen are eng=English, spa=Spanish (broadcasts in the UK have an alternative audio stream labeled 'nar', but when I switch to it- in the files I have- it still seems to be english). I have not been able to find a list of the possibilities for this label on the web. So the only way to find them (at least for now), is to start a live-tv stream and look at the server log's list of audio descriptors the remux found: here is an example:
2013/10/23 18:37:35.515 Remux::FindDescriptors> wtv scanned (0.15 sec), Streams found:
2013/10/23 18:37:35.517 > Other: ID:1 MPEG2 Sections and Tables
2013/10/23 18:37:35.518 > Other: ID:2 MPEG2 PES
2013/10/23 18:37:35.519 > Audio: ID:3 (eng) AC3 2.0 48000 Hz 192 kb/s
2013/10/23 18:37:35.520 > Video: ID:4 AVC High-4.0 1920x1080i fps: 25
2013/10/23 18:37:35.522 > Audio: ID:5 (nar) MPEG Audio V1L2 Stereo 48000 Hz 256 kb/s
2013/10/23 18:37:35.524 > Other: ID:6 MS TV Caption
Looking at the audio streams, the language label is inside the parentheses.
(2013-10-24, 03:03)TechLife Wrote: Force padding on recordings - Why would the padding specified in the other options available on this page need to be 'forced'?
In wmc when you add default paddings they are just requests for the scheduler to give you these paddings only if it doesn't cause a conflict. The easiest example is you have only one tuner, but you want to record two consecutive episodes. In this case, its not possible for the scheduler to give you the padding you want - say an extra 10 minutes at the end of an episode - because the tuner is needed to start recording the next episode.
If you 'Force' the padding, you are telling the scheduler it is not free to ignore the padding - even if it causes a conflict - so in the case above it will mark the second recording as conflicting with the first - and second one will go unrecorded.
So then the obvious question is 'why force padding?'. The wmc scheduler does something weird, suppose you have multiple tuners and they aren't in use. Go back to the case above where you are recording consecutive episodes BUT they are on the same channel. In this case, the scheduler will use one tuner and therefor it will not give you the padding you requested at the end of the first episode - even though you have a free tuner. Presumably its because it sees no reason to, since this 'padded' data you requested is at the beginning of the next episode. So we have users who don't like this behavior and want to force the scheduler to use a different tuner and give them the padding in all cases, hence forced padding.
So the upside of the 'requested' padding is less conflicts but the padding is not guaranteed. The upside of forcing the padding is its guaranteed but you will have more conflicts (unless you have a lot of tuners or not a lot of timer requests).
Interesting to note that wmc does NOT let you force padding by default, I am overriding its normal behavior here. At no extra charge I might add.
(2013-10-24, 03:03)TechLife Wrote: Log WTV headers - I assume this is the first 8 bytes of the stream file? How do these help troubleshoot?
This is an option scarecrow added. It solely has to do with debugging the parsing of wtv files. Each chunk of data in a wtv file is preceeded by a header that has an identifying string that ms uses for a lot of their software. Its called a 'guid'. There is no documentation that has a comprehensive list of all the possible guids that ms could use for a wtv file. But we have learned most of them, the ones we know we don't bother printing out in the log. If you turn this on, all the guid's found in a wtv file are printed in the log as soon as they are found. Its really only useful for developers to debug with, not so much the users. In some cases though, we may ask the user to turn it on before they send us the log, that's why its there.
Just want to say again how much I dig knowing that this stuff is getting written down in a wiki instead of getting lost in a long thread. Thanks again.