How to manage recordings of reruns?

DaveH

I don't understand autorecs very well and am having a problem managing how reruns of series are recorded or not.

I use TVH 4.2.6 from the openSUSE Leap 15.0 repository to record from Freeview.

I previously recorded some series, such as series 1 of The Strain on Paramount Network. It's just about to start a rerun of series 1, which I don't need to record but which TVH has decided to record. There doesn't seem to be any feature in the EPG other than to delete a specific recording, so I looked at the autorecs.

The only occurrence of the word strain on the autorec page is in an entry that has the Title (regexp) set to 'New: The Strain' (without the quotes). Now the rerun episodes don't have the word New at the start of the title, or indeed anywhere in the info so why are they being recorded?

I don't want to delete the autorec, because I do want TVH to record any other series that are broadcast but how do I get it to not record series 1 again?

Specific answers or pointers to any appropriate documentation are welcome.

DaveH

Nobody knows anything?

DaveH

OK, I've done some digging and I think I see what is going wrong. I believe the code is wrong and the documentation is wrong/incomplete.

I think my problem is caused by the dreaded & invisible serieslink.

Specifically this code in dvr_autorec.c:

/* Do not check title if the event is from the serieslink group */
if(dae->dae_serieslink == NULL &&

dae->dae_title != NULL && dae->dae_title[0] != '\0') {

IIUC this is saying that the contents of the title regexp are completely ignored if the first event happened to have a serieslink.

This seems ass-backwards to me. If I want to ignore the title regexp I can make it blank. Or there could be a toggle-button in the interface to ignore it or not, or something (anything!).

What makes this IMHO coding error insulting as well as injurious is that the interface doesn't make the presence of a serieslink visible in any way, and that the documentation is totally silent about this unwanted side-effect of their presence.

Now I'm aware that I'm running 4.2.6 and that is not the latest version of the program, so let me ask - is the latest version any better and if so how?

And I've been looking at the online docs, so they're just plain wrong. I'll happily submit a patch if we can agree what needs to be done.

Vik Toras

I have never tried this buy you could try a preprocessing script?

If title = the strain and season = 1, abort recording.\

Also try this regex ^New: The Strain$

DaveH

Vik Toras wrote:
> I have never tried this buy you could try a preprocessing script?
>

> If title = the strain and season = 1, abort recording.\

Where would it get the season from? I use UK EIT data.

> Also try this regex ^New: The Strain$

Yes, I tried that regex with no change.

Vik Toras

If the season is not there you cant get it... If its there hit the help button for variables available for your script.

On the regex... try escaping the ':' like so '^New\: The Strain$'

Also, you can try deleting the autorec. Instead of recreating it through your EPG guide, create it manually from scratch by hitting the add button in autorec tab. Try the regex then.

DaveH

> On the regex... try escaping the ':' like so '^New\: The Strain$'

Thanks, I just tried that. It still recognizes just 'The Strain' :(

> Also, you can try deleting the autorec. Instead of recreating it through your EPG guide, create it manually from scratch by hitting the add button in autorec tab. Try the regex then.

Yes, I've deleted the original autorecs a while ago. These are ones I've typed in by hand.

I can't explain it. I understood originally that it generated a hidden series link from the first match and used that in preference and to the exclusion of the regex for all subsequent matches. But I deleted those autorecs and typed in some new ones that include the word New and the only programs being broadcast donot include that word, but they're still matching somehow.

The only way I've found to stop the false matches is to disable the autorecs, which kind of defeats the purpose of having them!

mpmc

I just looked, there is no "New: The Strain", only repeats.


(^new\:\s)?the strain

should find new and old


(^new\:\s)the strain

should just find new

DaveH

> I just looked, there is no "New: The Strain", only repeats.

Yes, that's the whole point. Why are they being matched by autorecs with regex such as ^New: The Strain$ or ^New\: The Strain$.

What does (^new\:\s)the strain add? Will that make any difference?

mpmc

OK I dug into this a bit more and tested a bit more (with tipping point).

These should do what you want, ugly but it works for tipping point.


^(?!The\sStrain)^New:\sThe\sStrain

^(?!Tipping\sPoint)^New:\sTipping\sPoint

HTH

Em Smith

Let's take a step backwards.

Try your regex on the EPG grid first (not autorec rule) since it's easier to see changes.

If your text is "^New: " then it can not match something without that text (unless a bug, which I'd expect would affect lots of people).

Is the autorec rule definitely the one that is creating the recording? Or could it be that some other rule is matching? Can you include a picture of your rule?

Did your autorec rule have "full-text" box ticked?

The series link usually wouldn't have linked "new series 1" to "old repeat series 1", though it's broadcaster-dependent. The "ignore title" is probably correct since I recall "The Last Leg" once renamed a final episode to something else, but then had to rename back because it broke many series-link implementation which did check title.

Do you only have DVB-T, or do you have DVB-S too? Merged channels across different aerials/sources? In the past, I have seen occasions where the OTA guide differs so DVB-T has "new:" but DVB-S does not have "new:" (or vice-versa), though that seems unlikely in your case since you say these are repeats rather than new episodes.

In 4.3 (alpha/dev branch), we added "record show if unique", "extract season/episode from OTA description", and "only record season > X". It sounds like Paramount doesn't provide season/episode information, so these features probably won't benefit you for that channel. But if you decided to use an xmltv provider like SchedulesDirect (which does support most UK channels) then this provides good consistent guide data with season/episode details and fanart and so would definitely identify and record the right episodes.

DaveH

> Let's take a step backwards.

Sounds a good idea to me.

> Try your regex on the EPG grid first (not autorec rule) since it's easier to see changes.

> If your text is "^New: " then it can not match something without that text (unless a bug, which I'd expect would affect lots of people).

That appears to work as I would expect

> Is the autorec rule definitely the one that is creating the recording? Or could it be that some other rule is matching? Can you include a picture of your rule?

I believe it was. Originally the rule was 'New: The Strain' (without the quotes) and it started recording the repeats, which do not have New in the title. Since then I have tried many variations, including deleting the original autorec which was created from the button in the EPG entry and creating new ones by typing using Add or Edit in the autorec tab.

> Did your autorec rule have "full-text" box ticked?

> The series link usually wouldn't have linked "new series 1" to "old repeat series 1", though it's broadcaster-dependent. The "ignore title" is probably correct since I recall "The Last Leg" once renamed a final episode to something else, but then had to rename back because it broke many series-link implementation which did check title.

That seems like a good argument for a user interface feature to disable/enable series link checking and title checking. Are things any different in the current software? Can I see/edit series link matches?

> Do you only have DVB-T, or do you have DVB-S too? Merged channels across different aerials/sources? In the past, I have seen occasions where the OTA guide differs so DVB-T has "new:" but DVB-S does not have "new:" (or vice-versa), though that seems unlikely in your case since you say these are repeats rather than new episodes.

I just have Freeview, no satellite or other sources. Some channels are merged SD and HD but not Paramount where these problems have occurred.

> In 4.3 (alpha/dev branch), we added "record show if unique", "extract season/episode from OTA description", and "only record season > X". It sounds like Paramount doesn't provide season/episode information, so these features probably won't benefit you for that channel. But if you decided to use an xmltv provider like SchedulesDirect (which does support most UK channels) then this provides good consistent guide data with season/episode details and fanart and so would definitely identify and record the right episodes.

The broadcast description contains things like '(S1 Ep 6)' at the end for most series including the problematic ones but the EPG never displays any episode information, and a regex can't search both title and description AIUI. I have philosophical objections to subscription services.

Currently my hand-typed regexes are not selecting the repeats. :) I'll wait and see if that remains true when the next programmes appear in the EPG later in the week. I have no idea what has changed.

Vik Toras

Did you try to remake the autorec manually (not from epg tab) like i suggested?

DaveH

> Did you try to remake the autorec manually (not from epg tab) like i suggested?

You mean as in

> Since then I have tried many variations, including deleting the original autorec which was created from the button in the EPG entry and creating new ones by typing using Add or Edit in the autorec tab.

Vik Toras

Well thats odd. I've had a similar issue where regex would not be enforced if the rule was created from the EPG. There is some stuff you dont see from the Webui such as program ID (Depending on the guide).

You could compare both autorecs. They reside in the drv logs. Maybe that will lead you somewhere.

Alternatively you could try the preprocesssing script.

Not sure if you are open to 4.3, but it does have a 'new' filter, along with a minimum season filter. Need to have better EPG source for that, not something that stuffs additional information in the description.

Em Smith

Since your EPG has '(S1 Ep 6)' then 4.3 should be able to extract that to populate season/episode details (in the epg grabber tab). In 4.3 we added a variety of automatic "EPG regexes" to scrape those details (and "new" flag) from the description/title as long as the tickbox in that tab is ticked.

I don't think you can see episode link info in 4.3, which I agree is a little annoying, but ISTR it's not guaranteed to be readable, though I'd have to re-check the spec.

If you're technically minded, then you could possibly dump your epgdb and see the details. I don't know if the installed package has the tool, or if you need to "git clone", but then you could possibly do:

support/epgdump $HOME/.hts/tvheadend/epgdb.v2 | less

And then find your programmes and look for the "crid" and see if it's the same for "New" and non-New episodes.

DaveH

> You could compare both autorecs. They reside in the drv logs.

Sorry, I don't know what the drv logs are or how to access them.

DaveH

> If you're technically minded, then you could possibly dump your epgdb and see the details.

I'm fairly technical but ...

> I don't know if the installed package has the tool, or if you need to "git clone", but then you could possibly do:
>

> support/epgdump $HOME/.hts/tvheadend/epgdb.v2 | less

My installed package doesn't have it. I don't know git, though I could probably figure it out. I don't have a .hts directory. What/where else might whatever it is be?

> And then find your programmes and look for the "crid" and see if it's the same for "New" and non-New episodes.

There are no new episodes at present so there won't be any such episodes in EPG data (unless it keeps historical records?)

Em Smith

https://tvheadend.org/projects/tvheadend/wiki/Building

You can probably get away with just doing:


git clone https://github.com/tvheadend/tvheadend.git
cd tvheadend
git checkout origin/release/4.2
support/epgdump $HOME/.hts/tvheadend/epgdb.v2 | less

(So you probably don't need to install extra packages, configure, certainly don't need to build/install).

The .hts directory will be under the user that runs tvheadend. Perhaps it is /home/hts/.hts or /home/tvheadend/.hts?

You might not have read permissions on the file but you can sudo/chmod the file.

There will be a lot in your EPG dump, but you'd eventually expect to see entries like this:

{ u'channel': u'b3cc43fc2aadacdd3273cbaa2fa0e4dd', u'dvb_eid': 17910, u'episode': u'crid://www.sky.com/G_S36195226', u'grabber': u'eit', u'id': 722089, u'is_subtitled': 1, u'serieslink': u'crid://www.sky.com/G_SKYB1574286', u'start': 1511996400, u'stop': 1511998200, u'summary': { u'eng': u"Jim Bowen hosts the dartboard quiz game that tests contestants' darts skills and their general knowledge to win prizes. [S]"}, u'type': 4, u'updated': 1511359708}

I'd expect you'd be able to find a matching entry for "New" and non-New by searching for their description. Then you can see the serieslink details and also see if the details are duplicated in the file but some with "new" and some without "new".

I don't know if it would show anything useful (since you don't have merged DVB-T/DVB-S so unlikely to have conflicting entries), but it might show something unusual when you next have the problem.

Em Smith

Sorry, I forgot to answer your other bits.

The epgdb.v2 is the EPG database that is saved by Tvheadend (assuming you have the tickbox to save EPG ticked in the grabber). It doesn't keep historical data, though it might only be saved occasionally so it could have a few hours of old data.

The epgdump program reads the database and outputs a more readable version to screen. However the database contains many sections so the serieslink section is usually at the end of the file.