Actual, reliable, recording on Windows?

by servo386

So I'm trying to get record big chunks of time (sometimes up to 3 hours) of a given IPTV stream and every method I've tried has been unreliable at best. A brief summary:

VLC - I manually go and get the stream URL from the m3u8, load it up in VLC and hit record. Always works for a little while, but VLC is very bad at when theres anything more than a slight blip in the consistency of the stream and will either freeze completely or just close, in which case it doesnt auto resume and if it did it doesn't auto record so thats moot anyways. I'd be happy using VLC for short bursts, but sooner or later they'll be a hiccup in the stream and VLC will stop and thatll be that.

HLS Proxy - I feel like this SHOULD be the solution, because this program is just a great concept and usually works pretty well and is super useful for getting a good buffer on streaming ect. It has a built in recording function, with a timer schedule and everything, so I thought for sure this would work well. The problem is I go to schedule a recording and the same deal, eventually it will crash and the program stops responding and the web browser wont let me cancel the recording (to possibly restart it) or anything. This has happened to me several times. Its a tragedy because this really should be it but it simply crashes after maybe 45 minutes to an hour and then gets very hard to stop and restart the recording.

FFMPEG - Straight to the source, I used the master tool of HLS stream recording, FFMPEG, piping in the URL manually into the command like and using the COPY function (so no transcoding to slow down the process, i think...) and have had some moderate success. I've recorded over an hour with this but it seems like the same fundamental problem as any of these: If the stream lags for more than a few seconds, the program either quits or freezes and does not try again to resume. I feel like this could maybe be addressed with a slick command line script or something but I feel like there must be something out there than can record well and consistently and ALSO will auto-resume/auto-record upon any issues with the streams, to miss as little as possible in the recording.

I know about IPTV Extreme or whatever on android which supposedly records but A. I dont want to record on Android and b. ive heard it too is rather unreliable.

Any thoughts?

indianacpl

Nextpvr server, this is what I use in my pc, to record my wife’s shows daily via my iptv service.

servo386

Update: (if anyone cares) I trialed NextPVR last night, it recorded a whole 2 and half hour movie in its entirety (i think, I didn't watch the whole thing but scrubbed through it and it looked complete) so thats pretty promising.

Thanks all!

IPTVTek

Next PVR would be your best option.

troyortroy

I’m not for sure how ProgDvb/ProgTV hasn’t been mentioned yet. You should definitely try it.

DreadMcLaren

Have you tired adding you IPTV to Emby or Plex and record through that? I've added my IPTV provider to my Plex server and use the built-in DVR to record content I want.

flynreelow

Emby with Vaders works fine... also try StreaminDVR on android. works well

zkadoura

Get an IPTV box that has recording capabilities. My box does that with its built in IPTV app.

VillainX01

I used NextPVR for over a year until I found TVMosaic. Runs way smoother for me and haven't had any skips turn up in a recording yet. Alot of it does have to do with your service itself. But I have had less issues overall with TVMosaic than I did with NextPVR.

technazz

If you dont mind a bit of configuration.. I use SageTV with the OpenDTC tuner. I have 2 streams recording at once and its really stable. Not for beginners though.. I get full, accurate guide with my Schedules Direct account.

MattCookR1

Lol I was just about to put 8h of recording on VLC, without facing any of the issues you have had yet and considering my luck, I'll just go ahead and try the solution that you used. So how have it been so far? its been working good?

hls-proxy

Hls proxy has a newer release with recording fix.

Blue-Thunder

Android is unreliable?, and yet you have nothing but problems on windows....

You do realize there are android apps that specialize in doing what you want? They are also miles ahead of what you can do on windows.

In the end it will all come down to how reliable your stream is. I believe even on the Z7+ the buffer can only be set to a max of 20 seconds. After losing connection for that long, the recording will stop.

but yes stay with windows because you have so many choices!