Argus TV recorder stopped recording

[techmot]

I have an Argus TV recorder which connects to my TV. From the recorder you can connect a USB pendrive or HDD to it to enable you to record from the TV. I have used the machine a few times in the past for upto 30 mins. I wanted to record a TV programme 30 mins long and in HD, I pressed record and it started to record. After the programme had finished I then stopped the recording with the "OK" button. I then recorded a few mins of another programme on a different channel. After this was finished I then removed the pendive from the machine and inserted it into my laptop to copy the file onto my HDD. I discovered that it had only recorded 18 minutes of the 30 programme, why I don't know as it was still recording until I pressed stop. Never had this before. The file size at 1920x1080p was about 500mb and I had about 3GB of space on it. Can't think why it only recorded that much, maybe when I pressed stop and started to record again a few mins later it didn't have time to save the file? (didn't get finalised?). I'm just guessing there, or maybe there was a break up in the video which caused it to stop.

[usually_quiet]

Can't think why it only recorded that much, maybe when I pressed stop and started to record again a few mins later it didn't have time to save the file? (didn't get finalised?). I'm just guessing there, or maybe there was a break up in the video which caused it to stop.

There is not much chance that the 12 minutes missing from your recording were caused by buffering issue or a problem with finalization. A write buffer shouldn't be large enough to hold 12 minutes of video. An interruption in the broadcast transmission seems more likely to be the cause of your problem

[techmot]

Can't think why it only recorded that much, maybe when I pressed stop and started to record again a few mins later it didn't have time to save the file? (didn't get finalised?). I'm just guessing there, or maybe there was a break up in the video which caused it to stop.

There is not much chance that the 12 minutes missing from your recording were caused by buffering issue or a problem with finalization. A write buffer shouldn't be large enough to hold 12 minutes of video. An interruption in the broadcast transmission seems more likely to be the cause of your problem

It could be the reason. I did another recording of another programme (on BBC1, this time in SD) left it recording for about 40 mins (the programme was 30 mins) and after stopped the recording and left the machine alone for a few minutes. I then played the recording through the machine first and the duration gave a time of 40 mins which was about right when I stopped the recording. However, when I disconnected the pendrive from the machine and connected to my laptop, opened the file (which it records in mts format) I discovered that it had only recorded 28 mins of the programme, or a few minutes where missing.

Nothing indicated when it was recording that it had stopped, the red rec icon at the top left was flashing indicating recording was in process and when I stopped it said "recording was interrupted, do you want to stop pressed OK" which I did. Very strange. Maybe there was some copy protection on the broadcast.

[usually_quiet]

Can't think why it only recorded that much, maybe when I pressed stop and started to record again a few mins later it didn't have time to save the file? (didn't get finalised?). I'm just guessing there, or maybe there was a break up in the video which caused it to stop.

There is not much chance that the 12 minutes missing from your recording were caused by buffering issue or a problem with finalization. A write buffer shouldn't be large enough to hold 12 minutes of video. An interruption in the broadcast transmission seems more likely to be the cause of your problem

It could be the reason. I did another recording of another programme (on BBC1, this time in SD) left it recording for about 40 mins (the programme was 30 mins) and after stopped the recording and left the machine alone for a few minutes. I then played the recording through the machine first and the duration gave a time of 40 mins which was about right when I stopped the recording. However, when I disconnected the pendrive from the machine and connected to my laptop, opened the file (which it records in mts format) I discovered that it had only recorded 28 mins of the programme, or a few minutes where missing.

Nothing indicated when it was recording that it had stopped, the red rec icon at the top left was flashing indicating recording was in process and when I stopped it said "recording was interrupted, do you want to stop pressed OK" which I did. Very strange. Maybe there was some copy protection on the broadcast.

If you are recording a Freeview or Freesat channel, could there be any copy protection?

On a Windows computer, data might be lost if a USB device is removed without first ejecting the drive using "safely remove hardware" or turning off the computer.

I don't know which Argos TV box you have so I can't look for a manual to find out if there is a procedure that must be followed to safely remove an attached USB drive.

I did look at a manuals for some of the current models at www.argos.co.uk. According to the manuals I looked at, users could not record to an attached USB drives. The manual for some models said that connection was only to be used for updating the box's software. For one model, the USB port could also be used to play media files stored on a USB drive but could not be used to transfer files to or from the recorder's internal hard drive.

[techmot]

Can't think why it only recorded that much, maybe when I pressed stop and started to record again a few mins later it didn't have time to save the file? (didn't get finalised?). I'm just guessing there, or maybe there was a break up in the video which caused it to stop.

There is not much chance that the 12 minutes missing from your recording were caused by buffering issue or a problem with finalization. A write buffer shouldn't be large enough to hold 12 minutes of video. An interruption in the broadcast transmission seems more likely to be the cause of your problem

It could be the reason. I did another recording of another programme (on BBC1, this time in SD) left it recording for about 40 mins (the programme was 30 mins) and after stopped the recording and left the machine alone for a few minutes. I then played the recording through the machine first and the duration gave a time of 40 mins which was about right when I stopped the recording. However, when I disconnected the pendrive from the machine and connected to my laptop, opened the file (which it records in mts format) I discovered that it had only recorded 28 mins of the programme, or a few minutes where missing.

Nothing indicated when it was recording that it had stopped, the red rec icon at the top left was flashing indicating recording was in process and when I stopped it said "recording was interrupted, do you want to stop pressed OK" which I did. Very strange. Maybe there was some copy protection on the broadcast.

If you are recording a Freeview or Freesat channel, could there be any copy protection?

On a Windows computer, data might be lost if a USB device is removed without first ejecting the drive using "safely remove hardware" or turning off the computer.

I don't know which Argos TV box you have so I can't look for a manual to find out if there is a procedure that must be followed to safely remove an attached USB drive.

I did look at a manuals for some of the current models at www.argos.co.uk. According to the manuals I looked at, users could not record to an attached USB drives. The manual for some models said that connection was only to be used for updating the box's software. For one model, the USB port could also be used to play media files stored on a USB drive but could not be used to transfer files to or from the recorder's internal hard drive.

Apologies for the mistake, but I've jus realised I spelt the name of the machine, it's called called August not Argos (nothing to do with Argos the shop). It's a small recording box that receives both SD and HD signal, though many of the HD channels aren't very good with the signal. Yes it could be that I ejected the pendrive without shutting down the machine first and it lost data, though I haven't had this problem in the past with other recordings, all I did was removed the device from the USB input on the front of the machine. Maybe there's something wrong with the pendrive I was using.

[techmot]

I have now discovered that the August recorder did record the whole show, but for some strange reason it created a separate file which was unrecognisable on my laptop. It created a MTS1 file (no idea what that it).


[Attachment 68343 - Click to enlarge]

I discovered this when I imported the file into Handbrake. So I then encoded both files to an MP4 file. I then used Lossless Cut to merge the two files together, but when I played the file back through my TV the audio was fine at first but then went out of sync, but towards the end the audio was in sync again, no idea how but maybe when the second part was played it may've brought the audio back into sync again. I then discovered the merged file was 24fps, yet I had made sure that both files in Handbrake were set to 25fps, which they were. And also, when I tried to copy the file over to an external HDD (file was about 4gb using the lossless setting in Handbrake) it said the file was too large to fit onto the HDD, yet there's over 100GB of space on it. I could copy over the two separate files though which were same size anyway.

No idea why the recorder created two different files, but my guess is that the recording stopped mid way through the broadcast and resumed straight away but created an unreadable file, or maybe it couldn't finalise the recording for some reason. I'm sure more knowledgeable people on here will have an answer to this.

[techmot]

Can anyone also tell me why the two merged MP4 files are created a outputted file of 24fps instead of 25fps?. Both files are 25fps but for some reason when they are merged in Lossless Cut the file says it is 24fps.