[mythtv-users] Error: MythTV is using all inputs but there are no active recordings?

[Michael T. Dean]

On 03/29/2012 12:49 AM, f-myth-users wrote:
> Date: Tue, 27 Mar 2012 21:39:22 -0400
> From: "Michael T. Dean"
>
>      >  Right.  But, again, there's little reason with current MythTV not to put
>      >  recordings (TV and/or movies) into Video Library.  MythVideo used to be
>      >  good primarily for movies and non-TV video, but now it (or, technically
>      >  the Video Library, since it was moved into MythTV core) excels at
>      >  handling TV.  I think more than anything, we just need to get more
>      >  people to give it a try, again, and see that it's not your father's
>      >  MythVideo.
>
>      >  A friend of mine who uses MythTV wanted to add some videos to Watch
>      >  Recordings so his kids' shows were all together (whether they were the
>      >  ones he recorded or ones he'd bought on DVD).  I explained the idea and
>      >  reasoning behind going the other way--moving his recordings of kids'
>      >  shows to Video Library along with the DVD rips--and he tried it out and
>      >  has several times mentioned how much better this works than Watch
>      >  Recordings did.  And it allows him to organize the videos in hierarchies
>      >  (by disabling flat view) however he likes and switch between "groups"
>      >  without MENU|Change Group Filter by just using the arrows to navigate.
>      >  He's now convinced that Video Library is the place for long-term
>      >  archival of videos, and especially for large libraries of video.  (And
>      >  he's still moving new recordings over to Video Library--basically
>      >  anything he plans to keep rather than watch and delete.)  I would be
>      >  doing the same, but I don't archive anything--just watch and delete.
>
> Can you provide (or point us to) an explanation of where you think
> Video Library is going?  Right now, I don't have a good sense of
> why Watch Recordings would even be its own separate interface---
> if Video Library provides superior organization, why does (or will)
> WR exist at all?  It seems like it would just be a different UI
> presentation of the very same data.  Am I misunderstanding it?
>
> Is any data or metadata lost when moving something from WR to VL?
> Does Myth forget in any way that it's recorded the showing, or does it
> forget metadata like who's in it or its original airdate or whatever?
> Do recordings in VL consuem fewer DB resources (for those with big
> DB's), or is there less per-recording schema updating work when
> upgrading MythTV?  Is stuff in VL still commflag-skippable if
> it hasn't actually been cut?  Etc.
>
> Put another way, is there any reason not to automatically move
> -everything- from WR to VL if VL is (or will be) so good?  Right now,
> it seems like there's an artificial separation; this made sense back
> when MythVideo was "the place to put things that didn't come in
> through a capture card" or "the place to rescue your orphaned
> meta-data-less recording", but given what you say above, are WR and VL
> not the same thing just because they haven't been fully merged yet?
>
> One reason I ask is because I will at some point have a very large
> migration from old Myth to 0.25, and one question might be whether
> everything archived should then immediately go into VL, leaving WR
> empty except for recordings-currently-in-progress...
>
> Thanks.

Generally, the way I see it is that the Watch Recordings screen is great 
for "short-term" content that's constantly appearing and 
disappearing--record/watch/delete content.  WR becomes very much less 
useful as the amount of content grows.  (Though I don't archive shows, I 
record far more than I can possibly watch, so I have about 1900 
recordings, now, and even though many are series with a lot of episodes, 
it makes navigating the WR screen challenging--and, especially, makes it 
hard to find something to watch.)  It also makes it hard to organize 
videos--allowing just one recording group per recording and requiring 
you to use MENU|Change group filter to switch groups.

Video Library (or, MythVideo) was originally designed for holding a 
large archive of shows.  Therefore, it works nicely, even with very 
large libraries.  Also, it is designed to allow user-defined 
organization of the library, and to work with files, regardless of name 
(not requiring/expecting a specific naming format).  Navigating your 
videos is easy--using the arrow keys to navigate through folders and 
content--without having to bring up menus to change the view (but 
allowing filtering, when desired).

So, my recommendation is for people who archive lots of shows to 
consider moving the recordings they plan to keep from WR to VL.  It will 
help whittle down the number of recordings in WR and will result in a 
much-easier-to-navigate large collection of videos.

Now that VL has great metadata support, you'll get title, subtitle, 
description type information (and much more)--just like you had in WR.  
Though the description will differ (from TMS's copyrighted description), 
it should still provide useful information (and it's editable--even on 
thetvdb.com website, if you want to help improve the description for 
everyone).  VL also allows you to rename video files (or, more likely, 
you'll have the mythvidexport.py script rename files for you) with 
human- (or UPnP-device-)friendly names instead of the 
<chanid>_<starttime>.<ext> names used for recordings, which is also a 
good thing if you ever lose some or all of your database.

And, there's a pretty-well-finished plan to change the database schema 
to use a generic media file description for recordings and VL videos, 
with only a small amount of information specific to WR or VL.  At that 
point, moving a recording to VL (or, the other way, if you really 
wanted) would be simple--likely as simple as checking a box in the UI.  
I'm hoping to start implementing those changes some time after 0.25 
release (but, depending on how quickly we release 0.26, it may not be 
done before 0.26 release).

Mike