WMC Recording Defaults

Set up your series recording options to start 10 minutes before and end 10 minutes after (the specific time and not the "if possible" options). This will guarantee that you won't get any parts of the shows cut off. There's a glitch in Media Center that causes shows to get cut off when they're recorded back-to-back. If you set up the padding interval to anything less than 10 minutes it won't work properly and your recording will get cropped.

Note that when you initially set up your global default recording options you only get the option for the "if possible" time extensions. You can change this when setting up an individual series for recording. To set up a series for recording, select it from the guide and select "record series" (you can also perform a search to get to the following screens if you prefer). Wait until you see the red balls next to the show title and then scroll to the right and select the "actions" tab at the top of the screen. Scroll down the the Record Settings option and select it. On the next screen, select the option "Settings for the entire series". You'll be presented with a screen with a bunch of different options. Select the ones that suit your needs for the series. At the very bottom you'll have the option to change the end time to 10 minutes after instead of 10 minutes after, if possible. If you're setting up a manual one-time recording of a sporting event, this is where you can extend the stop time to whatever you like in case the game goes into overtime. Don't forget to save your settings before you exit.
Edited by captain_video - 1/11/13 at 4:04pm

I'll try out this tip. Thanks! Hopefully it works out for me.

It's one thing I never understood about WMC. I have 4 tuners in my system. So logically, one would think that if a show was at 8PM and a show was at 9PM, that with multiple tuners, you would never get truncated shows, no matter what your settings are. So that if you set record 5 minutes before and 5 minutes after, with multiple tuners, that 8PM show would be fully recorded and the 9PM show would be fully recorded because of multiple tuners. But no! With those settings, I keep getting part of the 8PM show in the 9PM recording (due to the setting).

Are you sure your clock is setting itself frequently? I might sometimes have the very beginning of a show pop up at the end of another, but I don't hardly ever have a show end after the recording stopped, unless I've had problems with the clock automatically setting.

The only shows I pad the ending on are sports and awards shows.

I'll set up a typical scenario:

I set all recordings to record 3 minutes before and end 5 minutes after
Fox Channel 11 8PM Kitchen Nightmares
Fox Channel 11 9PM Fringe

here's the result based on those settings:
The 8PM Kitchen Nightmares recording starts at 7:57PM. It includes 3 minutes of the channel 11 7:30PM show. it rolls over and continues recording the 8PM Kitchen Nightmares. At the 8:57 mark, it stops recording and begins to record Fringe. So the Kitchen Nightmares episode from 8:57 to 9:00 is contained within the Fringe episode. The Fringe episode then records until 10:05 PM mark.

Now, the timings may be a little off with regards to my memory. But it appears that WMC is trying to accommodate the scenario. But with multiple tuners, this shouldn't be an issue. tuner 1 should record the 8PM Kitchen Nightmares from 7:57PM to 9:05PM. and tuner 2 should record the 9PM Fringe from 8:57PM to 10:05 PM.

now, if they're separate channels, there's no issue.
if it's channel 5 8pm and channel 11 9 pm, i'll get a channel 5 recording from 7:57PM to 9:05PM and a channel 11 recording from 8:57PM to 10:05PM. but if it's the same channel, I get this problem.

Everything that I've read says you have to set the program to end 10 minutes after (not 10 minutes if possible). This forces WMC to use another tuner, presuming one is available. I have 4 tuners and using 10 minutes after & it works for me. And I'm starting programs only 2 minutes early.

Sometimes I record 3 programs in a row on the same channel & use 2 minutes early and 3 minutes late if possible.
The 7pm - 8pm records 62 minutes (60 minutes + the 2 minutes early).

The 8pm - 9pm records 60 minutes. No padding because it starts right after the first program ends. And the first one ends on time because it was set to end 3 minutes late "if possible". But it was not possible. And this second one ends on time for the same reason.

The 9pm - 10pm records 63 minutes. Starts on time, just like the second one did. But ends 3 minutes late because it was possible.

There is about a 1 second delay or dropout between recordings so I am missing 1 second (at least according to the recording times). So far I've been lucky because there has been a small commercial between these recordings so I don't miss anything. I do reset my HTPC clock every week to reduce any potential time shift or drift on its part. There is a way to have the PC's clock reset everyday or whenever it wakes up, but I have not done that yet.

I chose to do this recording schedule one day because I would not have had enough tuners if I had used the 10 minute padding method. It just happened to work for me so I kept with it.

thanks for the clarification. man, a 20 minute pad sounds crazy but if it gets the behavior I want, I'll do it. I can always crop off the ends in my editor.

as for time drift, I had that a long time ago. replaced the CMOS battery and the problem went away. but it is a fine habit to occasionally resync the time.

I use a utility called atomic.exe that I run about once a week. It syncs up my PC clock with a reference atomic clock somewhere and sets the precise time. I'm sure there are several others available that do the same thing.

FWIW, I currently have seventeen tuners available to my HTPC so I'm always guaranteed to have one available at any given time. I've got two InfiniTV4's and a pair of Hauppauge 2250's installed internally and both a HDHR dual and a HDHR Prime that are shared between multiple PCs for a total of eleven cablecard tuners and six ATSC tuners. I only use the HDHR dual tuners on rare occasions with the main HTPC. The HDHR Prime is picked up automatically by WMC when it scans for tuners because the HDHR app is the same for both models and automatically detects both versions.

you might be able to help me with this. is there any type of on-the-fly padding for events like sporting events? I'd be watching a football game and it's about to run over so the only thing I can see is you start recording the next program on the guide. but then later on, in a video editor, I'd have to stitch the 2 segments together which is annoying. I'd love a way to just manually pad by 5 or 10 or however many minutes at the end of the sports recording while the recording is going on.

I know you can do this in other DVR/PVR software but I'd rather not install more things than I have to.

 

You can right-click the recording in the guide (or bring up the recording via schedule). View the actions - program details - record settings - stop screen where you can add extra time.

thanks for the reply! much appreciated.

just so I'm clear. let's say the football game is supposed to end at 4:30 PM. I'm recording and watching the end of the game and it's definitely going to go over. It's currently 4:27 when I realize this. I bring up the recording settings of the recording-in-progress and I set stop to : 15 minutes after.

It's going to stop recording at 4:45PM at that point since the game was supposed to end at 4:30PM?

Now, let's say it's 4:43 and the game is in overtime and that 15 minutes I set isn't going to be long enough. I go back to the stop time. If I want it to go to 5PM, do I set it for stop at 30 minutes after (4:30 + 30 min)? Or do I set it to stop at 15 minutes (4:43 + 15)?

I use only the default 2 minute start early padding, and the 10 minutes at the end.

Here's a link explaining how to get accurate time.
http://www.pretentiousname.com/timesync/index.html

I go with the 10 minute padding before and after because this was determined to be the best working solution a couple of years back. There were huge discussions about this over at the Green Button during the early stages of Windows 7 Media Center. It's alweays worked for me so I never thought about changing it. Perhaps there was an update to Media Center that corrected the problem to some degree. The original issue was that even when you set up a recording to start or stop before or after the alloted time periond, it would not allocate a separate tuner to shows on the same channel being broadcast back-to-back unless you padded it by at least 10 minutes. The first show would record to the end of the specified time and then start recording the second show fater it had already started, usually creating a gap between them as the tuner reset for the next recording.

The 10 minute padding before is no longer needed, only the 10 minutes after - and like others have said, not the "if possible"...manually set it to the other selection of 10 minutes after.

I had this problem myself. The fix was to force all of my machines to synchronize time every day. I followed the instructions found at http://www.pretentiousname.com/timesync/index.html.