[mythtv-users] Adding Videos to 'Watch Recordings'

[Stephen Worthington]

On Sat, 21 Feb 2015 06:23:52 -0800, you wrote:

>Hi,
>
>So I was running out of space on my mythtv HDD.  I backed up some TV shows I had recorded.  Now I have upgraded my system and would like them to be back in 'Watch Recordings'.  I have edited the MySQL mythconverg database to add a couple of them, but they don't seem to be working correctly.  For example, I can't get -mythcommflag to work appropriately, and I can't get mythtv to pull any metadata.
>
>I have considered adding them to 'Watch Videos' (and I know that this is the only "official" way to add videos to mythtv), however I have them preserved in .mpg format and they are in the weird format that mythtv uses (i.e. 1527_20141219073000.mpg), so I can't tell what they are... of course -mythlink doesn't work because that only pulls the information from the MySQL database, and I would have to reinsert all of the old videos back, which is a pain to do and doesn't seem to work properly.  And even if I use mythlink, it doesn't seem like my system is skipping commercials when I watch a linked file out of 'Watch Videos'.
>
>So my questions are:
>1. Can I use/modify the mythlink script to get human readable file names for videos not in the MySQL mythconverg database?
>2. Can I use mythcommflag on any video I want, or will it only work on recorded videos or videos in the MySQL mythconverg database?
>3. Will flagged commercials be skipped when watching videos under 'Watch Videos' or only under 'Watch Recordings'?
>4. Will flagged commercials be skipped when watching files created from the mythlink script under 'Watch Videos'?
>5. Is there any easy way to insert a file into the MySQL database (I've been using Webmin to edit the database)?
>
>Just so you know my system information is:
>BE only on ubuntu-server 14.04 with mythtv 0.27
>3 FEs on mythbuntu 14.04 with mythtv 0.27
>1 FE on ubuntu-desktop 14.04 with mythtv 0.27
>
>Thanks for any guidance,
>Andy M.

For future occasions, if you want to backup recordings temporarily,
you can just move the recording file and leave the data in the
database as an orphaned recording.  Or you can take a look at the
mythexport, which has the ability to export all the SQL required along
with a recording.  Note that restoring something using mythimport will
only work if the database version is the same, but it is always
possible to install a matching MythTV version in a virtual machine,
restore using mythimport, then upgrade the virtual MythTV to the
current database version and export again using mythexport.

If the backup drive you are using for recordings is on another machine
on your network, you also have the option to create a storagegroup
with a directory that is accessible on that machine across your
network.  If you make a new storagegroup rather than adding things to
the Default storagegroup, mythbackend will not record to it unless you
explicitly set a recording rule to use the new storagegroup.  But it
will find the files and be able to play them for you, presuming that
your network has enough bandwidth to play them (and a 100 Mbit
connection is normally sufficient).