[mythtv-users] Labels instead of Recording Groups

[Michael T. Dean]

On 04/21/2012 09:19 PM, Rick Lane wrote:
>
> This sounds like something to look forward to.
>
> I was wondering how wide a role you are planning for the labels?
>
> I've also been using Recording Groups as simple user accounts, but 
> something I've been trying to work out (and failing for the most part) 
> is how to bundle together recording rules so I only have to set the 
> Recording Group when creating a new recording schedule, and different  
> actions are performed based on the selected recording group. For example,
>
> Person A wants her cooking programmes indefinitely  stored, so 
> auto-expire should be false
> Person B only watches via a tablet after its been transcoded into xyz 
> format and copied to a network share
> Person C is two, and so their programmes can be transcoded immediately 
> after commflagging so they don't see all the toy adverts.
> Person D records dvb radio broadcasts, so if its a radio channel 
> extract the audio and move it to his podcast archive.
>
> Currently this is set up each time I set a new recording schedule, but 
> I've been thinking about implementing some script triggered at the end 
> of the recording which decides what to do based on Recording Group.
>
> The holy grail though, and i accept, probably a nightmare to engineer, 
> would be to define a user/tag/label and associated actions, and then 
> when creating a schedule, select the type of recording and who its 
> for, - with the normal scheduler options accessible behind an 
> 'advanced' button for when you occasionally need to tweak things 
> further - like when one action conflicts with another.
>
> Is this beyond what you're planning? If the answers 'yes', and i 
> expect it is, then thats fine. I can't code and don't expect anyone to 
> do it for me - i'll get on with the script and see if i end up with 
> something robust enough for the wiki...
>

At this point, yes, it's beyond my plans.  Once the labels are in place, 
it's quite possible that they will be extended and used for additional 
things.

That said, a script-based approach using user jobs sounds like a good 
idea.  I'll try to remember to update the user job code to add a 
%LABELS% expansion.  And, if you create a script to do this (before 
and/or after labels), it would be welcomed on the wiki scripts category 
( http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/Category:Scripts + specifically 
http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/Category:User_Job_Scripts ).

Oh, and FWIW, eventually (though this one has been on the TODO list for 
many versions/years, now), we hope to allow recording rule templates (to 
allow you to define your preferred settings) so creating recording rules 
with non-default values should become easier.

Mike