[mythtv-users] Using program.category_type column to find movies

Michael T. Dean mtdean at thirdcontact.com
Mon Nov 24 11:53:21 UTC 2014


On 11/24/2014 05:20 AM, Phill Edwards wrote:
> I've been looking at how I can easily identify which of my recordings 
> are movies when using MythFrontend. In Australia, the program data 
> seems to end up with programs with a program.category column of eg 
> Comedy, Drama, Western etc, and a program.category_type column of Movie.
>
> I believe the program.category_type column is populated  by 
> mythfilldatabase looking at the <category> field in the xml file and 
> setting the 'category_type' column if the first, second or more xml 
> file <category> values match the special keywords 'movie', 'sports', 
> 'series', 'tvshow'.
>
> This is all well and good, but as far as I know, the 
> program.category_type column isn't presented in MythFrontend as a 
> filter option. So what's the point of this column if you can't search 
> on it?
>
> I'm thinking of running a script after mythfilldatabase which sets 
> program.category='movie' where program.category_type='movie'. Is this 
> a sensible idea, or flawed?

If you mean for the purposes of recording or finding movies to record, 
there's no need.  You can use category_type.

The easiest way to find a list of all the upcoming movies is to go to 
Manage Recordings|Schedule Recordings|Search Lists and then choose 
Movies.  You can then set a filter on star ratings (or choose All).

If you want a generic rule that records a bunch of movies, you can 
create a Power/Custom recording rule based off category_type.  One of 
the Sample Clauses shown in the editor (Manage Recordings|Schedule 
Recordings|Custom Record is "Category type ('movie', 'series', 'sports' 
or 'tvshow')" and another is "Limit movies by the year of release".  You 
can use either of those clauses along with any other (such as "Minimum 
star rating (0.0 to 1.0 for movies only)") to specify which movies to 
record.  Both clauses are based on category_type.

If you mean filtering on category_type in Watch Recordings, you can't do 
that--you should use recording groups as Mike P mentioned.

Mike


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