[mythtv-users] [mythtv-commits] Ticket #6441: Recording without guide data fails to add split recordings to the recording table

[Michael T. Dean]

<taking discussion out of the bug database to the list where it belongs>

On 04/09/2009 08:11 PM, MythTV wrote:
> #6441: Recording without guide data fails to add split recordings to the recording
> table
>
>
> Comment(by anonymous):
>
>  Replying to [comment:7 kormoc]:
>
>  "The only reason the first part of the recording is not LiveTV is because
>  you explicitly moved it from the LiveTV recording group by pushing R while
>  watching LiveTV."
>
>  Exactly, and all the other pieces should have been moved out too.  The bug
>  is that
>  the "R" does not apply to the later pieces.  How could that not be a bug?
>   

Because a program transition occured at the top of or at the half hour.  
So, imagine you're watching some Friends on LiveTV and after a while you 
realize, "Hey, this is the episde where Joey sticks his head in a 
turkey--I've gotta record this."  So, you hit R and enjoy the episode.  
Then, the program ends and the Nightly News at 6:00 starts up.  Since 
you're interested in what's happening in the world, you watch that, too.

With your approach--when a user hits R, every TV show that airs until 
the user exits LiveTV is recorded--the News will be recorded.  And, if 
you finish the News and stick around to see what's on next and realize 
it's Judge Judy, so you exit just after Judge Judy starts, Judge Judy is 
not LiveTV, so it gets recorded--*even* after you exit "LiveTV".

The problem here is a) you have no guide data for that channel and b) 
you didn't tell Myth how long the "program" really is (with a Manual 
Recording rule).

>  Invert the logic, why would an end user ever want to move just the first
>  part of such a recording out of LiveTV?

It's not part of a recording.  It's a complete show, as defined by your 
guide data (or, more precisely, your lack of it).

>   Or is the end user supposed to
>  come back every half hour and hit R for each subsequent piece?
>   

No.  The user should *never* use LiveTV with the R button to record from 
a channel with no listings data.

>  Sometimes one does not have the option of setting manual record because
>  the end time is not known ahead of time.  In this case I was converting
>  some video my daughter had made, and not having watched it before, I had
>  no idea when it would end.
>   

You do realize that if the content you were recording was a 10-minute 
piece and you entered LiveTV to begin recording it at exactly 32 minutes 
after the hour and hit R, you would be recording a 28-minute 
episode--even if you exit LiveTV.  That means you get the 10 minutes of 
content and then another 18 minutes of "whatever happens to be coming 
into the input" (possibly "Darkness and Silence").

So, just do the same with your Manual Recording rule...  Think, OK, I've 
got a VCR tape that holds 2 hours of content, so I'll just set up a 
2-hour recording (or 6-hours or whatever).  If I find that the content 
is only 1 hour, I can simply go to Watch Recordings, select the 
recording in progress and use the Action popup (INFO button/hit I) to 
Stop Recording (I think it's under "Recording Options" in that menu).

Or, if you're not watching the recording in progress (so you don't know 
when it ends), use the editor to find the end, set a cut point ("Delete 
after this point")--and take the opportunity to clean up the beginning 
of the recording, too.  Then, start transcoding it.  Assuming an MPEG-2 
(i.e. you used a hardware encoder like the PVR-x50/500), you can even do 
a lossless transcode to just cut out the garbage.

Or, use one of the other many video editing applications.

>  I agree that Myth does not work well for this application.  Presently
>  there is a keyboard on my Myth machine, and since first stumbling over
>  this issue I bave been using mencoder instead.  (That had the added bonus
>  that the result was an AVI and not a NUV.)  But once the keyboard comes
>  off (it's a DVR for the living room, not a general purpose computer),
>  running anything other than MythTV is going to be very difficult, and we
>  are still going to need to convert analog to digital from time to time.

If you're using Myth, use Manual Recording rules.

Please, this time, read the posts I linked:
http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/mythtv/users/284890#284890
and
http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/mythtv/users/232857#232857

They're only hard to use until you use them and realize how easy they 
are to use.

Mike