[mythtv-users] re-introducing old recordings to a new setup

[John Pilkington]

On 24/01/16 01:37, R. G. Newbury wrote:
> On 01/23/2016 07:42 PM, HP-mini wrote:
>> On Sat, 2016-01-23 at 14:42 -0700, Jerome Yuzyk wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>> Before I migrated from 0.21 to 0.27 I saved a few recordings off to
>>> the side by copying and renaming them, still keeping the .mpg
>>> extension - I did no transcoding. They were movies that I had edited
>>> to down to scenes with a car or cars I'm interested in.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> How can I re-introduced those recordings to my setup now? Ideally I'd
>>> like to have a show name like "My Shows" and keep them with my other
>>> recordings as episodes. I don't use MythVideo so I'd prefer to avoid
>>> using that and keep everything visible in Watch Recordings.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Could that be possible?
>>>
>> Too late now but mytharchive (to a file) is an excellent & overlooked
>> feature that allows you to export/import recordings into anyone's mythtv
>> recording dB.
>>
>> There are old scripts that attempt to create the necessary dB table
>> entries (to import as recording). I can't locate one right now.
>
> I have been using myth.rebuilddatabase.pl for many years. It finds files
> in the directory which are NOT included in the db, and leads you through
> entering the necessary info: giving a channel number, title, sub-title,
> and file name. The file name is the channel number+date+time and the
> file on disk will be re-named to that name..
>
> One problem: the script as written does not enter the file size in the
> mythconverg db so mythfrontend cannot see it. And it borks if there is
> an existing file with the exact same channel number+date+time (just add
> a second to the time!).
>
> The following little script (myth-filesizer) will put the correct file
> size in the db.
>
> #!/bin/bash
> #Default variables: amend as necessary
> DBF="/var/lib/mysql"    #where the mysql db lives
> VIDEO="/video/movies"
> USER="mythtv"
> PASSWORD="mythtv"
> DB="mythconverg"
> TMPFILE="/var/lib/mysql/tmpfile"
>
> rm -f $TMPFILE
> cd $DBF
>
> mysql -u $USER -p$PASSWORD $DB << EOF
>    select basename into outfile "$TMPFILE" from recorded where filesize
> = "0";
> EOF
> COUNT=`cat /var/lib/mysql/tmpfile | wc -l`
> echo "Files to be fixed total "$COUNT
>
> # the work gets done here
>
> for file in `cat $TMPFILE`; do
>      SIZE=`ls -l $file | awk '{print $5}'`
>      echo "   File  $file  is  $SIZE bytes"
>      mysql -u $USER -p$PASSWORD $DB << EOF
>        update recorded set filesize = '$SIZE' where basename = '$file';
> EOF
> done
> rm -f $TMPFILE
>
>
> Geoff
>

I have sometimes made a short new recording and overwritten its file 
with the wanted one;  then mythcommflag -- rebuild will create a 
seektable and set the file size.  Some of the metadata can be entered 
manually.  I've also used mytharchive to transfer recordings, as 
suggested above. It doesn't have to go through the DVD stage.  But I'll 
look at the other suggestions too.

Exploits like this probably won't update the 'Previously recorded' list.

John P