Tvheadend

The only minor problem is that if you hit record on a tv programme (such as from the epg) then it would use the same path specifier (by default), but it would presumably not be an autorec, so $a would be empty, so those recordings would end up in the root of that storage.

Of course the user could create a separate recording profile for epg and autorec records; or perhaps $a should fallback to being title if not an autorec?

Em Smith wrote:

The only minor problem is that if you hit record on a tv programme (such as from the epg) then it would use the same path specifier (by default), but it would presumably not be an autorec, so $a would be empty, so those recordings would end up in the root of that storage.

Of course the user could create a separate recording profile for epg and autorec records; or perhaps $a should fallback to being title if not an autorec?

Yes, certainly if the name filed is empty, the title should be used. And if you do not like that fallback. you could create, as you suggest, a separate record profile for autorec.

I may prefer them to go into the root record directory, then I could later manually move them to the directory I want. With inotify, tvheadend will automatically see the move and update the database (sic) to reflect the new location.

BTW - I made a quick hack to dvr_inotify to recognize the creation of a new directory in a watched directory and add it to be watched. With this hack I was able to create 50+ subdirs and move my 3000+ recordings into them without having to manually modify any dvr log files and restart tvheadend... I did this because I was not sure when (or if) this feature would be implemented. [[https://tvheadend.org/issues/3763]]

The dvr_inotify sounds really useful to me for when people tidy up their recordings. If you have time, submit it as a pull request.

I split my recordings by "age rating" once thinking it would be a good idea, but un-splitting/tidying it was a pain.

I think there is some issue with inotify with too many watches, but I don't think the change would add many more watches than we have already.

Hm. A check suggests /proc/sys/fs/inotify/max_user_watches is the maximum, which on my system is 8192. I guess that's global, even so, it's unlikely to be hit with many dirs being watched, so should be ok. I don't know what the limit is on the LibreElec platforms.

I guess watching the whole hierarchy means it will also handle the case where your "mv 'the cat' 'The Cat'"?

Re: $a, yes, I don't mind either way (I never record from EPG so it would never affect me), so I don't know what other people prefer as the default. I can see people could want either way, or even in to a "no-autorec", directory. Submit however you think best, and people can always comment or add modifiers in the future.

I don't know if you know about the "Directory" field in autorec (might be hidden in expert options), but I think your $a would be easier for most people to just globally change recordings.

Em Smith wrote:

I don't know if you know about the "Directory" field in autorec (might be hidden in expert options), but I think your $a would be easier for most people to just globally change recordings.

Ahh, no I did not, thanks! I have expert mode, but the line was below the bottom of the screen. (another small annoyance with the webif...)
Anyway, yes, that does pretty much what I want - just a little more work to fill it in for my 50+ autorec instead of using the already filled in "name". But a small script should do most of the work.

I guess this feature request can be closed unless, like you said others feel the $a would be a better way to implement...

(I will post about the inotify stuff in the forum later when I get a chance...)

The tool "jq" is your friend (though not something I use often enough to offer an example). There are some examples on the forum somewhere. Personally I'd just try using sed or perl on the autorec files when tvheadend isn't running, but after taking a backup for when it didn't quite work...

[[https://stedolan.github.io/jq/]]

Something like this on an autorec file may get you close:

 perl -nape 'print qq/        "directory":$F[1]\n/ if $F[0] eq qq/"name":/' < MYFILE > MYFILE.new

Thanks.

I usually use sed (with in-place) to change paths in the dvr/log files which is easiest for multiple files.
For example, when I changed the mount point for some of my recordings, I used something like:

sed -i 's/old\/path\/new\/path/g' /home/hts/.hts/tvheadend/dvr/log/*

But I already had a script I used to change the "comment" field from the default "Created from EPG query" to the title.

#!/bin/bash

cp -rp autorec autorec.sv

for file in autorec.sv/*
do
    fname=$(basename "$file")
    jq '.comment = .title + "  - AUTOREC" ' $file > autorec/$fname
done

Which I now modified to:

#!/bin/bash

cp -rp autorec autorec.sv

for file in autorec.sv/*
do
    fname=$(basename "$file")
    jq '.directory = .name' $file > autorec/$fname
done

Then to check, use:

diff -r autorec autorec.sv |less

Note that if "directory" does not exist, it will be added. Yes, it would be nicer to insert a new "directory" to where it usually is instead of appending it to the end, but another day...

Fantastic. That's nice and easy with jq and saves messing about with quotes in perl.