Separate folders for Movies & TV Shows
Added by Philip Jeffery over 7 years ago
I've recently migrated from a MythTV Backend to TVHeadEnd and I'm really impressed how good the experience is compared to Mythtv. I'm using a Kodi frontend to access the recordings.
I've hit on a few challenges and wanted to ask if other people have face these issues and how they are resolving them.
At the moment all my recordings are being stored in one directory, with a subdirectory for each folder. This works really well as kodi can pick up the recordings and present them in the TV Show/Movies sections on the interface. But kodi seems to get confused when you do this and best practice seems to be splitting the Shows/Movies into two separate folders.
How do other people split the recordings? I'm assuming there is some post processing going on and I'm aware of a few scripts that might be able to help but thought I'd ask the TVHeadend community first.
Thanks for any help you can provide.
Replies (14)
RE: Separate folders for Movies & TV Shows - Added by Mark Clarkstone over 7 years ago
If you're using 4.1.xxxx change the "full pathname specification - format string" option to include $g content type formating.
Something like..
$g/$c/$t%F$n.$x
Which would for example create..
<base_dir_path>/Movie/The Movie Channel/Spaceballs.mkv.
The content type must be defined in your EPG data for it to work.
RE: Separate folders for Movies & TV Shows - Added by Philip Jeffery over 7 years ago
Thanks for the tip, I'm using osmc so think I'm still on 4.0, will check when I get home.
Will need to check the content type in my EPG, when I tried searching just for movies the results weren't very good.
RE: Separate folders for Movies & TV Shows - Added by Fet Fer over 7 years ago
I use different "Digital Video Recording profiles" found under Configuration, Recording. You can specify where you want the recordings to go. You can then have separate directories for Films and TV Shows.
However you will need to use the Web front end to set your recording schedule to utilise these as Kodi does not appear to support them and will always use the "Default profile"
RE: Separate folders for Movies & TV Shows - Added by Philip Jeffery over 7 years ago
So checked last night and currently on 4.0 that comes with OSMC so can't change the full pathname.
Also I'm pulling data from Schedules Direct and the category/content type definitely isn't going to help, there isn't a movie specific category and even if there was only a small portion of programmes currently have a category. It sounds like the categories are hardcoded in TVHeadend instead of being created dynamically from Schedules Direct. Would this be correct?
RE: Separate folders for Movies & TV Shows - Added by Tony Ward about 7 years ago
Hi,
Having upgraded to LibreElec 8.1.2 & TvH 4.2 (from 4.0) the settings for creating a folder from the programme title has disappeared.
Indeed, most of the filename options have gone (please seen screenshot attached).
Is this a UI bug, or have the features gone/moved? Should we just edit the configuration profile by hand in the meantime?
Many thanks for any clues, insights...!
Tony
Screen Shot 2017-10-13 at 22.28.50.png (204 KB) Screen Shot 2017-10-13 at 22.28.50.png | Screenshot |
RE: Separate folders for Movies & TV Shows - Added by Mark Clarkstone about 7 years ago
Tony Ward wrote:
..snip..
Change the view level (to "Expert") next to the help button.
RE: Separate folders for Movies & TV Shows - Added by Em Smith about 7 years ago
There is feature #4667 that I've been using for a while, but it isn't available in the 4.2 release.
It implements a new recording format specifier "$q" for automatically splitting recordings in to tvmovies or tvshows. You would normally specify the format as "$q$n.$x" ($n for appending a number if duplicate recordings, and $x for file extension).
That feature assumes good (xmltv) guide data with tvheadend's "scrape extra information" enabled in the xmltv grabber so it grabs categories such as "movies" from the xmltv data so it can place files appropriately.
It also gives a couple of other format options for use with recording profiles so you can say this recording profile is only movies.
RE: Separate folders for Movies & TV Shows - Added by Tony Ward about 7 years ago
Hi Mark;
Thanks for the tip & the quick response.
Indeed, I saw the "ExpertMode" in the screenshot in the pop-up help, but it is not there in the install: see screenshot attached.
Tried with both Chrome & Safari desktop browsers.
Screen Shot 2017-10-14 at 14.14.19.png (162 KB) Screen Shot 2017-10-14 at 14.14.19.png | Screenshot / No "ExpertMode" next to "Help" |
RE: Separate folders for Movies & TV Shows - Added by Tony Ward about 7 years ago
BTW, I also tried creating a new named user & password, logging in as that user, toggled the rights to change User Interface, etc -- still the Level selector does not appear.
Screen Shot 2017-10-14 at 14.34.46.png (69.2 KB) Screen Shot 2017-10-14 at 14.34.46.png | User access rights |
RE: Separate folders for Movies & TV Shows - Added by Philip Jeffery about 7 years ago
Em Smith wrote:
There is feature #4667 that I've been using for a while, but it isn't available in the 4.2 release.
It implements a new recording format specifier "$q" for automatically splitting recordings in to tvmovies or tvshows. You would normally specify the format as "$q$n.$x" ($n for appending a number if duplicate recordings, and $x for file extension).
That feature assumes good (xmltv) guide data with tvheadend's "scrape extra information" enabled in the xmltv grabber so it grabs categories such as "movies" from the xmltv data so it can place files appropriately.
It also gives a couple of other format options for use with recording profiles so you can say this recording profile is only movies.
Thanks for this Em - It looks like exactly what I'm looking for, is there anyway for me to give it a try myself or has this been incorporated into 4.2?
RE: Separate folders for Movies & TV Shows - Added by Em Smith about 7 years ago
@Tony
Sorry, I didn't see your message. I can see from your screenshot it's saying "(login)" so perhaps the advanced setting is only available if you are logged in as admin.
@Philip
Sorry, it's only in development branch and it's a bit tricky to get in to the 4.2 since it uses the new "xmltv category" options on the xmltv grabber since xmltv providers such as SD explicitly tag programmes as movie or series so we use that information if available. The 4.3 also allows you to autorec by categories, which is quite nice. I see a number of people using 4.3 but it is the unstable/dev branch and I'm not sure how easy it is to downgrade if you find it not suitable.
RE: Separate folders for Movies & TV Shows - Added by Tony Ward almost 7 years ago
@Em, Mark Hunting,
I've updated to the very latest LibreElec 8.2.112 w/ TVHeadend 4.2.3-20.
Even when logged in as Admin, I do not get a Level=Expert selector (that I can see at least).
Please see screenshots attached.
Is there some other way to enable / access the expert settings?
Failing that, is it possible to manually edit the underlying config e.g. with a simple text editor, or are they protected by e.g. hashes to prevent 'tampering'?
Thanks in advance for any input.
Tony.
Screen Shot 2017-11-12 at 13.21.21.png (220 KB) Screen Shot 2017-11-12 at 13.21.21.png | Admin user definition | ||
Screen Shot 2017-11-12 at 13.22.00.png (181 KB) Screen Shot 2017-11-12 at 13.22.00.png | Profile definition - no sign of expert level |
RE: Separate folders for Movies & TV Shows - Added by Em Smith almost 7 years ago
I don't know why the Expert button isn't shown. The only thing I can think of is perhaps in the Admin user definition, maybe the "change parameters" drop-down is missing the tick for "user interface level".
In Configuration->Base there is also a drop-down for "user interface level" that probably defaults to "basic". You could try changing that to "expert" and see if it helps.
The configuration files aren't deliberately obscured, but of course, editing them is a bad idea since it is easy to make a mistake.
For what you need, they are in the .hts/tvheadend/dvr/config directory. I'm not sure exactly where that is on your machine, possibly somewhere under .kodi directory? A "find . | grep dvr/config" may help you find it.
The files are weirdly named (do not rename them!) and there is one file for each profile you have (you might only have one). In the file there is an entry called "pathname". Make sure you don't accidentally change the file's permissions or owner if you edit it (do "ls -la" before and after edits) and make sure the trailing quotes and comma are in place. Then you need to restart tvheadend, probably a reboot is easiest.
RE: Separate folders for Movies & TV Shows - Added by Tony Ward almost 7 years ago
Thanks Em,
It was your second suggestion: Configuration->Base -> "user interface level" was "Advanced" so I changed it to "Expert", and that enabled all the options.
The Admin user had all rights already (your first suggestion).
Many thanks for the quick turnaround too!
Regards
Tony.