[mythtv-users] Recording baseball with MythTV

[John Kuhn]

might be some good info to drop in the wiki www.mythtv.info

--John

> Preseason baseball starts tomorrow so I thought I'd pass along
> a few hints for recording with myth's current features while
> they are fresh in mind. This assumes North America with Data
> Direct but much of it would be applicable for other sports and
> other parts of the world.
>
> Sports normally have league and/or sport name in the title and
> the names of the teams that are playing in the subtitle.
>
>    title: MLB Preseason Baseball
> subtitle: New York Mets at Washington Nationals
> programid: SP1647930000
>
> This is a preseason game but when the season starts the titles
> will be "MLB Baseball". Each game has a different programid
> and if a game is replayed, it normally has the same programid
> but often is edited for time.
>
> So, if you want to follow one team, the most efficient thing to
> do is to set a rule from Schedule Recordings->Search Words->
> Advanced. Choose "<New Search>", Enter "MLB%Baseball" as the
> title phrase and "Giants", for example, as the subtitle phrase.
> The "%" wildcard is there to match both preseason and regular
> season games. You could even use just "MLB" but this might match
> things other than current games especially if you get channels
> like ESPN Classics.
>
> Press "OK" to see if this finds any matches. In this case, there
> is a Giants game on ESPN for March 8th. If you hit Enter and set
> an All record rule on this game, you would actually be setting a
> rule for all "MLB Preseason Baseball". This probably isn't what
> you want to do. In order to set a Search rule instead, you need
> to press "M"enu to bring up the popup again, "M" or Tab to shift
> the focus to the buttons then click "Record". The options page
> will have "(Power Search)" at the end of the title to let you
> know that this is a search rule and not a regular rule for the
> show title.
>
> For options, choose "Record at any time on any channel" of course.
> Under Scheduling Options, I like to set "End recording 59 minutes
> late" to cover some extra innings. The reason I choose 59 or 89
> minutes is that either the game will end way before an extra hour
> or may go a couple hours longer, it isn't going to end in the 60th
> minute. By cutting it a minute short of the next hour, the file
> and db entries can be saved and out of the way for preroll seconds
> before the start of any show on the next hour. The :29 or :59
> on the end time stands as a reminder that I added extra time and
> that I may want to change it depending on the shows that follow.
>
> I normally leave the default duplicate rules but you may want to
> "Record new episodes only" epically if this helps with unwanted
> matches such as ESPN Classics.
>
> For Storage Options, I use a profile that I've set up with a lower
> resolution but much higher bitrate. This is a good bang for the
> buck tradeoff for sports with a lot of motion. The high bitrate
> reduces compression artifacts and the lower res keeps the file
> size reasonable. However, I may still want to set an override
> to choose a higher res profile for a specific game.
>
> This works great for one team but I used to find that I would
> set a bunch of rules for several NBA teams or College Basketball
> teams all with the same set of options. "Custom Record" now lets
> you set one rule that will match several team names within the
> same rule. To use this, go to Schedule Recordings->Custom Record.
> Enter a rule name like "Baseball" or the names of your teams or
> whatever. Press the down arrow then left arrow twice until it says
> "Multiple sports teams" then click the Add button. This shows an
> example for recording any of three NBA teams. You can then edit
> the title and list of teams to become something like this:
>
> AND program.title LIKE "MLB%Baseball"
> AND program.subtitle REGEXP "(Giants|Marlins)"
>
> You can add any number of names all separated by vertical bars. I
> could have used San Francisco and Florida instead as they would
> match the right teams also but Chicago may not be a good choice
> unless you really do want both Cubs and White Sox games.
>
> Again, the "%" will match both preseason and regular season games.
> If you just want regular season games you could change it to:
>
> AND program.title = "MLB Baseball"
> AND program.subtitle REGEXP "(Yankees|Red Sox)"
>
> In this example it would record any regular season games for either
> the Yankees or Red Sox but I really don't care about either team
> unless they are playing each other. Here's a rule to record games
> when they meet:
>
> AND program.title LIKE "MLB%"
> AND program.subtitle LIKE "%Yankees%"
> AND program.subtitle LIKE "%Red Sox%"
>
> I can't use a simple wildcard string because the order is reversed
> depending on which team is home. This rule will be true when both
> team names are included somewhere in the subtitle.
>
> These rules will let the scheduler find and make scheduling decisions
> about matching games. However, I often find that I want to make
> exceptions and that's okay. If the scheduler decided it would be
> better to record a replay to make room for other shows, I may look
> at it and decide that I'd rather click "Record anyway" for the live
> game and possibly miss another show.
>
> I may see that things would fit if it started late and may be okay
> with missing the first inning. I may record a replay but then I know
> that I don't need the extra time. I might see that I could record
> even later without a conflict in case the game runs long or I may
> want to use a different recording profile for a game. All of these
> can be handled with overrides which allow you to set options for
> a single showing without affecting the normal options for the
> main rule. Press enter for the showing on the Scheduled Recordings
> page, click the "Add Override" button and choose "Record this
> showing with override options". From here you can set any options
> that you'd like which will only apply to this one specific game.
>
> Okay, so maybe this was more about taking advantage of mythtv features 
> than about watching baseball but I hope at least some
> of you found something new that may be useful for you =).
>
> --  bjm
>
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