Setting timer padding
TV programs in Australia frequently don't commence at their scheduled time in the published programs. Most often they start late, but some multicast HD programms start earlier than scheduled.
To help with this, the Beyonwiz lets you set "padding" around a timer, so that it starts before its scheduled start time, and stops after the scheduled stop time.
This can help with the problem, though some "reality TV" shows are notorious for running a long time past their scheduled end time.
To set padding: go to SETUP>Misc.>Preference, navigate to Soft Padding, and select Enable. Then navigate to Pre-Padding, and select the amount of padding you want before the program, and then navigate to Post-Padding and select the amount of padding you want after the program.
There's no one answer to the "right" settings for these padding values. It's a trade-off between the extra space you use on your HDD against how likely you are to miss part of the program. Common settings are 2-5 minutes for pre-padding and 10-30 minutes for post-padding. There are some posts of examples of people's padding setups in Padding Priority - Which do you use?
Pre- and Post-padding set desired extra time before and after the scheduled time for a program. So, for example, if Pre-padding is set to 5 min and Post-padding is set to 15 min, a timer set to record a program from 20:30 to 21:30 will normally run from 20:25 tp 21:45.
There's one further option, and it's to cover the case when you want to record two programs on the same tuner, and the padding for the two programs overlap. This most commonly happens when you want to record two consecutive programs from the same tuner.
Two timers with overlapping padding will be assigned to the same tuner if:
- They are on the same service (e.g. both on ABC1); or
- There is third timer that overlaps the start of the second timer
Code: Select all
Set Timer Desired timer
ABC1 20:30-21:30 20:25-21:45 *
ABC1 21:30-22:00 21:25-22:15 *
ABC1 20:30-21:30 20:25-21:45 *
Seven SD 21:30-22:00 21:25-22:15 *
Nine SD 20:30-22:30 20:25-22:45
ABC1 20:30-21:30 20:25-21:45 *
Seven SD 21:30-22:00 21:25-22:15 *
Nine SD 21:30-22:30 21:25-22:45
ABC1 20:30-21:30 20:25-21:45 *
Seven SD 21:30-22:00 21:25-22:15
Nine SD 21:30-22:30 21:25-22:45 *
This still doesn't exhaust all the possibilities, because when recordings are made from different services from the same broadcaster, they only use one tuner, but there are still rumes that prevent more than two recordings being made at the same time.
Soft Padding Priority allows you to change the behaviour of the padding when padding overlap happens, but I don't consider that any of the options actually "do the right thing".
None: Post padding continues for the first timer until it either completes, or the scheduled start time for the second timer begins. In this mode the scheduled time for each timer will always be recorded in full.
Pre-padding priority: The second timer will start at the beginning of its pre-padding time, stopping the first timer, even if the first timer is still within its scheduled time.
Post-Padding priority: The first timer will continue to run to the end of its post-padding, and stop the second timer from starting until then, even if that causes the second timer to start after the end of its scheduled start time.
The poll mentioned above had about 2/3 of the respondents using None and 1/4 using Post-padding.
The actual recordings made for the example above are, for each of the settings:
Code: Select all
---------- Padding priority --------
Set Timer Desired timer None Pre-padding Post-padding
ABC1 20:30-21:30 20:25-21:45 * 20:25-21:30 20:25-21:25 20:45-21:45
ABC1 21:30-22:00 21:25-22:15 * 21:30-22:15 21:25-22:15 21:45-22:15
ABC1 20:30-21:30 20:25-21:45 * 20:25-21:30 20:25-21:25 20:25-21:45
Seven SD 21:30-22:00 21:25-22:15 * 21:30-22:15 21:25-22:15 21:45-22:15
Nine SD 20:30-22:30 20:25-22:45 20:25-22:45 20:25-22:45 20:25-22:45
ABC1 20:30-21:30 20:25-21:45 * 20:25-21:30 20:25-21:25 20:25-21:45
Seven SD 21:30-22:00 21:25-22:15 * 21:30-22:15 21:25-22:15 21:45-22:15
Nine SD 21:30-22:30 21:25-22:45 21:25-22:45 21:25-22:45 21:25-22:45
ABC1 20:30-21:30 20:25-21:45 * 20:25-21:30 20:25-21:25 20:25-21:45
Seven SD 21:30-22:00 21:25-22:15 21:25-22:15 21:25-22:15 21:25-22:15
Nine SD 21:30-22:30 21:25-22:45 * 21:30-22:45 21:25-22:45 21:45-22:45
When the overlap is because of consecutive timers on one service, the problem with all of these choices is that no matter which you chose, you're likely to get the end of the first program recorded in the first part of the second recording, or the start of the second program recorded in the end of the first recording. There's no way to guarantee that it won't happen, and the fact that now many commercial broadcasters run straight from the end credits of one program into the start of the next program, with the first ads in the second program coming a few minutes later means there's little margin for error.
There are three workarounds if the clash is because of consecuitve timers on the same service:
- adjust the timers manually (taking the padding rules into account) to make the switch between recordings at your best guess at the actual start time for the second recording - this has the same problem as the automatic padding, but at least you can make your guess based on how late the second program usually starts;
- combine the two recordings into a single recording. The simplest way to do this is to use the EPG to set the timer, then manually adjust it to cover both programs - unfortunately, it's not possible to do this with IceTV Remote, and if you're a watch-and-delete household, the second program might get deleted accidentally;
- record one program on the SD service and one on the HD service, if at least one of the programs is simulcast on SD and HD.
If the first program being recorded of a pair of recordings (where Padding Priority needs to change the desired timers) is running further later than the second recording, there are no timer possible timer settings either sing automatic padding, or using completely manual timers settings, that will record all of both programs. Time to get another recorder
A couple of final observations
- "Instant" recordings(pressing the REC button in Live TV mode) never have padding added to them; and
- Once a timer with padding starts, its padded start and end times are calculated and made unchangable. If you create a new timer whose padding overlaps with a running timer, it will only be able to start running when the currently running timer completes.