[mythtv-users] Re: Managing multiple video archives & Watch Recordings vs. MythVideo

[Jeff]

At 10:10 AM 1/24/2004 -0500, J. Donavan Stanley wrote:
>Eric Litman wrote:
>
>>Eric A. Litman wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>>This point goes a bit further afield, but it seems to fit somewhere in 
>>>this context. While it's easy to draw the logistic/physical distinction 
>>>between content recorded by the TV encoder and "other"
>>>video content (Watch Recordngs vs. MythVideo), is it really
>>>necessary to separate the two sets as part of the end-user
>>>experience? To an end-user, shouldn't the location where content is
>>>stored and the mechanism used to display that content be irrelevant?
>>
>>
>>OK, so I just read the thread "Re:Internal Video player (was: MythVideo
>>Folder Support)" from 01/06-01/13 of this month, and it looks like J.
>>Donovan's recent efforts could be a big step in this direction. What
>>are others' thoughts on unifying the video interfaces so that a user
>>only need be presented with a single video archive? Issues/challenges?
>>Are there any significant interface paradigms that would need to be
>>
>
>I've done some proof of concept stuff placing arbitrary video files on the 
>backend and creating the necessary entries in the recording tables so that 
>the backend thought they were shows.  I was able to get the backend to 
>stream any video file to the internal player just like it does other 
>recordings.  I ran an idea I had for a generic "library" system that 
>eliminates the distinction between a video and a recording past Isaac.  He 
>indicated that I should talk to Thor about his mfd but I've not had a 
>chance to do so yet, maybe I'll do that today...

I've only had my box set up for a couple of weeks and I'm still getting
used to it but I've been thinking about where I want to go with it.

I think there is some benefit to keeping some separation between
newly recorded shows and the "library". The current recording list
serves as a work list of things to be edited before they are moved to
the library. Perhaps a "keyboard" option to include the library in the
"Watch Recording" list (or the other way around, include the "Watch Recording"
list in the library) would address both requirements. The library could track
video which is stored on the system, stored on other systems in the
network (an archive server) and on removable media. OTOH I suppose a new
attribute could be added which says whether a show has been "archived". Then
you could toggle whether you want to see all shows, just the archived shows or
just the not-yet-archived shows.

While there are various tools to create smaller files out of the recorded
shows, they're not very well integrated into mythfrontend. I've been trying
to figure out a good way to do this. I think there are a few pieces that 
this would require:
a) in the record show menu there should be a field for whether the show should
     be archived and if so, where the show is archived to. There should be 
a default
     structure so there is probably a selection box here to select the 
archive location
     "by show name" or "by category (eg. movie)" or "custom", etc.
b) in the recording setup there should be an auto-archive section. This
     would have several options such as:
          script to use
          root for archive
          default for "delete original after archiving"
          default for "wait for show to be marked as ready before archiving"

My preference is to enter a cut-list before archiving so I'd want a new 
attribute
in the database where you can mark a show as ready for archiving. I don't think
keying off whether a cut-list has been stored is good enough because you may
start one but not finish it.

Additionally it might be nice to have something that lets you write shows out
to removable media. I'm not sure how much of a mess this is (DVD writing)
so maybe this is just a facility to update the database to let you enter 
information
about where you've written things to (volume names, etc).

Going forward with all this stuff I think another module which might be
interesting, for those of us with young children, is to add the concept of
a user. This doesn't have to be high security stuff but you could define a
user and a "profile". The profile might include:
         which inputs (if any) you're allowed to watch "live"
               (perhaps not an antenna/cable but yes for a game system)
         allow scheduling of shows
         allow watching recorded shows
         what time of day is watching allowed (eg. not before 7am on Sat)
         hours allowed per week :-)
         program level allowed
The database for each user could also track how many hours were actually
watched in a given week.

This relates to the library because each user profile would have a "level"
similar to the parental control level (perhaps that's all it is). The parental
control level is not available on the Recorded Show menus though.  The library
would only list content that is viewable by the current user.  I was 
thinking that
the library would be organized as a tree by content where the level would 
be put
on the tree structure (directory level) rather than each individual file.

The tree might look like
TV ----
        Spongebob: Level 0
              Plankton's Revenge
        24: Level 1
             6:00AM-7:00AM
Movies ---
        Kids: Level 0
              Beauty & the Beast
        Adult: Level 1
              Smokey and the Bandit
        Real Adult: Level 2
              The Godfather

You could take this further for media not stored in the system where
DVD's could be entered into the library with an assigned level and the
system would refuse to show a DVD to someone who shouldn't see it.

Sorry for the rambling thoughts.