AutoRec a specific Season

Ben Crundwell

I've searched through and can't appear to find any information, but apologise if the question has already been asked:

I am transferring over from a Windows based Argus setup to a new Ubuntu TvHeadend server. I have a working setup with a Schedules Direct XML EPG and am starting to transfer over my Series Recordings.

On the old Argus setup, it was possible to filter by Season/Episode number by adding the SxxExx data to the front of an episode's subtitle and then add "NOT S01 AND NOT S02" etc into the recording schedule. This is really useful if you only want to record the latest Season of say Family Guy, without filling up your DVR with 14 seasons of random episodes.

However with TvHeadend I cant find an easy way of adding the same functionality. What would be fantastic would be a RegEx filter in the AutoRec settings for Episode. Or failing that, one on the SubTitle so I can pre-process the XMLTV file to add SxxExx to that.

I read that over time the database figures out what its already recorded and ignores it in future. Is it possible to add episodes to this list manually?

Can anyone offer some assistance in how to setup an AutoRec to only record a specific Season of something?

mpmc

Ben Crundwell wrote:
> I've searched through and can't appear to find any information, but apologise if the question has already been asked:
>
> I am transferring over from a Windows based Argus setup to a new Ubuntu TvHeadend server. I have a working setup with a Schedules Direct XML EPG and am starting to transfer over my Series Recordings.
>
> On the old Argus setup, it was possible to filter by Season/Episode number by adding the SxxExx data to the front of an episode's subtitle and then add "NOT S01 AND NOT S02" etc into the recording schedule. This is really useful if you only want to record the latest Season of say Family Guy, without filling up your DVR with 14 seasons of random episodes.
>

> However with TvHeadend I cant find an easy way of adding the same functionality. What would be fantastic would be a RegEx filter in the AutoRec settings for Episode. Or failing that, one on the SubTitle so I can pre-process the XMLTV file to add SxxExx to that.

In 4.1 you can use regex in the title and optionally enable "Full text" which basically applies the regex to the subtitle, description and summary. I'm not sure it applies to season variables though.

> I read that over time the database figures out what its already recorded and ignores it in future. Is it possible to add episodes to this list manually?

If your data has a repeat info you could set the "Broadcast type" option, e.g.

http://i.imgur.com/c5IOuiw.png?1

> Can anyone offer some assistance in how to setup an AutoRec to only record a specific Season of something?

Jonathan Thomson

I've gotta say, REGEX in TVHeadend is absolutely the best feature for power users. I'm only just getting to grips with REGEX but I've replaced all my autorec entries with REGEX equivalents and am finding them extremely useful.

My recent use of this was to set a recording of the Premiership football highlights on Sky Sports but only where my team was playing either the home or away fixture (so where the title of the programme was MyTeam vs. SomeOtheTeam or SomeOtherTeam vs. MyTeam) - works beautifully.

Here's the REGEX I used for that little gem ;)


PL( )?-( )?Burnley v(s.)?( )?(.*)|PL( )?-( )?(.*) v(s.)?( )?Burnley

Ben Crundwell

Is is possible to preview the results of a RegEx? Would be nice to check what shows match to confirm its working right without having to trawl through the upcoming recordings and check.

This works nicely in the EPG view with a search filter, but i'm not sure you can do a RegEx in that view

Ben Crundwell

Mark Clarkstone wrote:

> If your data has a repeat info you could set the "Broadcast type" option, e.g.

How come my AutoRec dialog is missing a bunch of options compared with yours?

!AutoRec.PNG!

Ben Crundwell

Sorry, my 4k monitor makes screen clipping ridiculous :(

Robert Cameron

Probably because you're not running a current 4.1 development build ...

Ben Crundwell

Robert Cameron wrote:

> Probably because you're not running a current 4.1 development build ...

Apologies for the stupid question, but is the dev build relatively 'stable' and if so how do I change build? I'm on 4.0.9-9~gd5af55c~trusty

mpmc

Ben Crundwell wrote:
> Robert Cameron wrote:
> > Probably because you're not running a current 4.1 development build ...
>

> Apologies for the stupid question, but is the dev build relatively 'stable' and if so how do I change build? I'm on 4.0.9-9~gd5af55c~trusty

Yeah sorry about that I should have said, you can change your package sources to unstable if you want to give it a go but be warned anything could happen.

So backup your configuration for 4.0.x (something like sudo cp -ar /home/.hts/.hts ~/ should do it), that way if you're not happy or have issues you can uninstall 4.1x (use --purge), change your apt sources back to stable, reinstall 4.0 & copy your old config folder back.

Jonathan Thomson

I'm using the 4.1/development branch in my home environment which has to stand up to the scrutiny of my wife so it's fair to say it's fairly (very) reliable but of course it's a development build so can go from superb to shocking in one update, but I've been building and running from git-master for six months with no adverse effects. It's well worth updating for all the advances in 4.1 over 4.0.

Jonathan Thomson

I've actually just worked out the REGEX to grab a specific series of a programme;

TITLE.*SEASON.*

example:

NCIS.*S10.*

...returns only episodes from season 10 of NCIS. You need to enable the 'Fulltext' option for this to work.

Jonathan Thomson

Ben Crundwell wrote:
> Is is possible to preview the results of a RegEx? Would be nice to check what shows match to confirm its working right without having to trawl through the upcoming recordings and check.
>

> This works nicely in the EPG view with a search filter, but i'm not sure you can do a RegEx in that view

Just switch to the EPG tab, enable fulltext and paste your regex into the search field - it'll search through however much data you have cached in your EPG database (usually around 7-8 days worth).

Ben Crundwell

Nice! I'll try that when I get home. I upgraded to the unstable branch successfully the other night too. Realised that the stable one is many many months old now! :S

Ben Crundwell

Jonathan Thomson wrote:

> ...returns only episodes from season 10 of NCIS. You need to enable the 'Fulltext' option for this to work.

This doesn't work for me. Have you already appended the S10E01 to the Subtitle? As my RegEx appears only to search Title and SubTitle, not Episode.

Robert Cameron

I could not get this to work. I use the "New/Premiere" broadcast flag setting to only record new episodes, as TVH's interface and rules is not very good for interacting/limiting/searching based upon the EPG metadata.

Jonathan Thomson

Sorry folks, it turns out it was matching against the episode number that's contained within the body of the description - can't believe I didn't spot that :(

Ben Crundwell

I finally got around to trying to fix this in my own weird way and thought I should update the forum, in case anyone else has the same problem.

I've modified the XMLTV JSON grabber script to append the episode and series number onto the front of the description and have uploaded my update here: https://github.com/bencrundwell/tv_grab_sd_json

However I'm still struggling to get the RegEx working :( I have Fulltext enabled, but can't appear to get it to match from both the title and the description fields simultaneously.

As an example.
Title:Big Bang Theory

Description: S09E06 - Leonard and Sheldon go to great lengths to secure the helium they need during a nation-wide shortage; Bernadette and Penny try to to find Amy a new man on a dating app.

I can find this episode with either:
Big Bang
or

S09E06

but can't find any RegEx that will combine the two to give a specific episode of a specific program.

Does anyone have any recommendations, or at least an idea of what the source text the RegEx is being applied to is, so I can figure it out?

Robert Cameron

Maybe

^Big Bang Theory*S09E06

Ben Crundwell

Nope, returns nothing when i test it on the EPG

Ben Crundwell

I'm starting to think the search function parses the title and description as separate entries as any attempt to get it to match X AND Y fails.

Perhaps the only option is to also add the title into the description so it can search in a single field.