TDpro2.5.1/TivoS3 -Now Playing list could not be displayed because it is unavailable.

[subat0mic]

I'm sometimes getting this error on my TivoS3:
- "Now Playing list could not be displayed because it is unavailable."
And sometimes, I can't get past it, no matter what I do...
The error is shown when i try to access my PC's videos through the Now Playing List (PC has TivoDesktopPro 2.5.1)... Sometimes I can get the playlist to show after a while of fiddling (and sometimes not). Been getting this problem intermittently ever since I first tried the new video sharing feature when it was unlocked on the Tivo S3...

1.) when I select my PC from the S3's "Now Playing list" It takes maybe 5 seconds, then the error message above pops up.
2.) if I try again, it takes less than 1 sec, and the message pops up again.
3.) I can repeat #2 as much as I want... no change... (I tried 20 times in a row)...
4.) if I wait maybe 5 minutes, and try again, then it seems to work. the playlist shows, and always shows, until I change the playlist on the PC... then all bets are off... (see next item #5...)

5.) depending on what I have shared... the playlist may _never_ show... (always get this message). I've let the server work it's magic for a 1/2 day on 30 files... in case sometghing needed "caching"... still no playlist... the playlist shows in TDPro, but the S3 has the error message.

6.) when I add a directory of video files to TDPro, it takes a quite a while for them all to show up in the TDPro's playlist... hmmm suspicious. seems like the TDPro is doing some caching?? I wish it wouldn't... all it needs to do is read the filenames... maybe grab some info/stats. but it's really slow right now...

this Tivo Desktop is very hit or miss with whether the video playlist will come through on the S3 or not. and I can't figure out what breaks it. but it seems related to what video files I'm "sharing"... if I add 4 video files shared, then I get what I described above (playlist finally shows after 5 minutes). if I add 20-30 files, then I can never get the playlist to come up (at least within a day). i'm sharing m4v, mp4, mov, mpg, divx, avi file types... I do have tivo desktop "Pro", paid and registered (filetypes like divx do convert properly)... I never have any problems once I can see the playlist on the S3 however... seems like once the TDPro calculates a "good" list, then it's good until I change that list...

Is there some background processing the TDPro is doing? this system is really really flakey (or just really really slow and opaque), it would be nice to see a status window on either end to tell me what the hell the TDPro is doing... or... why the error occurred.

I know I have a good net connection, because the "videos" playlist works sometimes... once the playlist displays on the S3 once, it always displays from then on (as if the PC has now completed "caching" it). If I modify the playlist on the TivoDesktopPro 2.5.1, then we seem to be in trouble again (the S3 again gets the error message, and may or may not get the playlist). I know my tivo connection to the local network is _solid_ because I can get music and pictures great, with never any problems...


what's going on? is the TivoDesktopPro 2.5.1 just buggy/not-robust/bad-at-error-reporting? is there something I should tweak? Is there some log I can read to find out what's happening? could my wireless bridge be screwing with it? (it doesn't break anything else in the tivo (music/pictures/unbox) or my x360), there's no firewall in the local network between tivos3 and PC, (but there is one external between internet and PC...)

?

[subat0mic]

more info:

The videos I'm sharing are:
1.) a ton of TED Talks (http://www.ted.com/talks) videos (20-30) .mp4 format
2.) a ton of old scifi serials from internet archive (http://www.archiveclassicmovies.com/movie_lib.html) (flash gordon, phantom empire, etc... 30-40) .mov and .m4v formats...
3.) a few .tivo movies saved off from the S3... (3-4) .tivo formats
4.) a few others... divx, avi formats...

some videos originate in external folders added as a shortcut link in the tivo video folder...

As an aside...
It becomes very apparent, as more than 10 or so videos are added, that Tivo sorely needs folders for the shared videos from TivoDesktop... oh wow, it's so slow to navigate!!!

[subat0mic]

Here's a test that illustrates the problem in a reproducible manner
(in case anyone would like to try...)

Download all 12 episodes of "phantom empire" (get the MPEG4 m4v (http://www.archive.org/download/phantom_empire_chapter_1/ep1.m4v) version, see left side of page):
http://www.archive.org/details/phantom_empire_chapter_1

Then rename each file to PhantomEmpire?.m4v (replace ? with 1 - 12)

fails:
case 1.) add a movies/ folder under the Tivo videos folder, add all 12 episodes to it. during the next hour, try to access the PC's now playing list using the TivoS3, it will always error out (I can only get the error message from the original post above).

success:
case 2.) add a movies/ folder under the Tivo videos folder, add only PhantomEmpire1.m4v to it. The TivoS3 will give the error message the first time. then I waited a minute, and the TivoS3 then shows the PC's now playing list successfully (containing the one file)...


clearly something is giving up here instead of giving me the list. clearly the connection is good. what's going on?

some additional observations...
Every time I have success (as in case 2), it's always the same, one initial failure, then success with no more failures (until the list changes on the server)... sometimes, it will fail many times, then have success. and sometimes it will fail for each newly viewed page of the now playing list, until I get through it all, then the entire list works from then on without the error again... it's like there's some caching mechanism, and it always fails the first time it's cached. and sometimes the cache just doesn't work...?

Maybe the TDPro server encounters something it doesn't like, and gives up on the entire list? this sounds like a bug (or a design flaw at least)...

[CuriousMark]

I suggest you start by telling your antivirus program to either skip doing on access scans of these folders or tell it not to do on access scans of these file types. It will take your A/V a considerable amount of time to scan each file, each time TiVo Desktop tries to touch it and that time may be long enough to cause things to time out and then error out.

That may not be the case here, but has been an issue for people who store a large number of videos on their computers.

If that doesn't help, broaden the search and disable all security software on that PC and see if things improve. Also, try keeping fewer shows in the My TiVo Recordings folder and subfolders (including linked folders). When TD starts it opens every single file and builds a cache, when you have a lot there, it can take a while.

If you are a big video user and don't like the way TiVo Desktop works for you, then you should consider using Galleon, TiVo dot net, or pyTiVo instead. They are more suited to power users like yourself.

CuriousMark

It also occurs to me that possibly one or more of the 12 files is broken. Try putting only one at a time in the subfolder, not just number one, and see if just one of them, causes this issue. If so, then there is something about that file that is freaking TD out.

[subat0mic]

>> When TD starts it opens every single file and builds a cache, when you have
>> a lot there, it can take a while.
maybe this is it. though i don't know what "a while" could be, seems like prohibitively long.

I've killed all AV apps. I also added 4430 to the software firewall (anything else I should add?) I forgot I was running winxp's software firewall...

adding the shows slowly, one at a time, then viewing again on the tivo s3, it "works" for each one (fails the first time into the play list... then next time in, it works.) but for the last 4 files of the 12, it worked right away, no fail...

removed all the files, readded them all at once... just to see if it would have trouble with them "all at once"... (same, failed first time, waited a bit, then it worked)...

then added Radar Men From the Moon, all 12. it took 1 minute of failure screens (probably tried it 10 times) before the list finally came up.

weird problem...
the PhantomEmpire12.m4v file is coming up as "potentially copyright", which isn't true, since media player says it isn't, and the rest of the files in the group aren't either... I've got this before on other videos, sometimes renaming the file helps force TD to re-scan the file and get it right, but in this case it doesn't seem to fix the problem. same thing with #4 of the "radar men"

anyway, maybe it's better now? i'm going to throw a lot more files at it, and see what happens...

good ideas though, thanks!

[subat0mic]

doesn't look like it's fixed.
I dumped a link to a folder with about 20 TED talks in it (see link above), and now the list doesn't come up again... when I dragged the link there, it took more then 10 minutes for the tedtalks to appear in the TivoDesktopPro window... (but they are all there now and all seem to be "good" no copyright problems, all green dots, etc...)

I'll try binary searching the list of tedtalks (add half, see if it fails, etc...) to see what the offending file could be... i suspect that adding them slowly will work as before...


It would seem the TivoDesktopPro needs some programming help here... maybe a user adjustable timeout, a status log, a progress meter, or more on screen status info while it's searching for the server... obviously the TivoS3 can connect to music/pictures/unbox, so it should at least say what's going on with the server, i.e. file timed out, no communication at all, etc... it just feels underdeveloped. kinda flaky... like it should display the video files regardless (just like the music browser does for me), but when you play _then_ the heavy lifting should happen. seems like instead the work is being done up front, and there it fails and stops you from ever seeing the file list, which just seems very wrong to me (i.e. poor design or a bug)...... hopefully the next version of TDPro will address this...

[subat0mic]

weird. looks like the list is showing now... maybe it just takes a realllly long time... :( i guess i'll just have to learn to futz with it (in the mean time, I'll check out those other server programs - sucks, since i just paid for Tivo Desktop...)

[Mach1_8]

weird. looks like the list is showing now... maybe it just takes a realllly long time... :( i guess i'll just have to learn to futz with it (in the mean time, I'll check out those other server programs - sucks, since i just paid for Tivo Desktop...)

I was having the same problem you were. Just now, I removed every file except one mp4 and presto, it was there. The problem was when I tried to watch it, the PQ was horrific. The mp4 was encoded in 720p, but apparently when it was transcoded the result was something less...480p maybe? At anyrate, the whole thing is unusable IMO. What TiVo needs is something like what BTV has called showsqueeze. It allows you to compress shows to Divx or WMV in several different qualities (including HD). Very useful for archiving. It was also handy for keeping all of my kids' Dora/Diego/etc shows without taking up much space. Oh well...