Tvheadend

It seems that VLC doesn't like the M3U format that VDR uses for recordings.

Looking at a sample recording entry:

#EXTM3U
#EXTINF:1800,The Repair Shop
#EXT-X-TARGETDURATION:1800
#EXT-X-STREAM-INF:PROGRAM-ID=da01a7de69dfd8d09241c045d6fbaeb6,BANDWIDTH=5115
#EXT-X-PROGRAM-DATE-TIME:2018-03-23T18:30:00+0000
http://192.168.0.1:9981/dvrfile/da01a7de69dfd8d09241c045d6fbaeb6?ticket=0b9bdcdec9f7f95392bf82f34d9908a6e99697af

It is necessary to delete the lines beginning "EXT-X-", VLC will then recognise the file as a playlist.

The recordings list from TVHeadend also includes recordings to be made in the future (ie timers). These have "bandwidth=0" in the EXT-X-STREAM line and should also be deleted.

Http://tvhip:9981/playlist/recordings
put even deleted and failed recordings.

Thanks guys.

Sorry for my confusion. What URl do I need to enter into VLC.

Ideally it would be nice to show only successful recordings and not failed or future recordings.

The issue seems to be that VLC won't accept the playlist format produced by TVHeadend.

The workround is to download the playlist to the computer running VLC, something like:

wget Http://tvhip:9981/playlist/recordings

then open that file in a text editor. Delete all entries which have "Bandwidth=0"; these are timers. For the other entries delete all lines beginning

#EXT-X-

Save the file and open it in VLC as your playlist.

I can't find any information on why VLC won't accept the playlist; you could try asking on a VLC forum.

Thank you.

I will give that a try.

Does that mean that every time there are new recordings or the recordings list has changed I'll need to create a file and edit?

Does that mean that every time there are new recordings or the recordings list has changed I'll need to create a file and edit?

Yes, although it would be possible to write a script to do it.

If you compile Tvheadend from source, try this (untested) patch:

https://github.com/dave-p/tvheadend/commit/147f5b61368942186efd5fd8c3a1d256bcfbd755

I'm not sure this will get committed anytime soon; the maintainer doesn't want any breaking changes ahead of a possible 4.4 release, and it's questionable whether Tvheadend or VLC is in the wrong.

Thank you Dave. That's very kind of you.

I'm not an experienced programmer. Could you advise how I go about compiling from source and then add your patch.

Best

What hardware and distribution are you using?

The process of building from source is described in https://tvheadend.org/projects/tvheadend/wiki/Building. You need to edit the code after the 'Configuring' step and before 'compiling'.

I've now checked that the patch works. It also removes the timers and failed recordings.

I'm using a pi 3b+
I use the light distro from raspberry pi website.