[mythtv-users] Merging recordings from 2 backends

[Stephen Worthington]

On Wed, 8 Nov 2023 11:12:41 +0000, you wrote:

>On 08/11/2023 10:17, Stephen Worthington wrote:
>> On Wed, 8 Nov 2023 08:59:12 +0000, you wrote:
>> 
>>> On 08/11/2023 03:17, Stephen Worthington wrote:
>>>> On Tue, 7 Nov 2023 13:28:37 -0500, you wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> The mythsgu option seems to be the best for me. I'll essentially be moving
>>>>> all the recordings from computer B and decommissioning it once I get back
>>>>> to backend A. I'll be doing it in a few months, so I'll bookmark this
>>>>> thread. Can't wait to really explore mythsgu.
>>>>
>>>> If you are fully decommissioning computer B, then you should consider
>>>> just moving its recording drives into computer A and adding them to a
>>>> storage group.  Use mythsgu exportdir first in computer B, and then in
>>>> computer A mythimport will find that the recordings are already in a
>>>> storage group and will just import the .sql files and leave the
>>>> recordings where they are.
>>>
>>> I haven't tried or looked at these scripts, but in the past I did use
>>> the mytharchive plugin  ( Optical Disks > Archive Files >
>>>   Create Archive ).
>>>
>>> But Importing this to another system transferred the original
>>> RecordedId, which is dangerous.   The RecordedId  value is created by
>>> autoncrementation when a recording is set up, and is system-specific.
>>> Just blindly creating a duplicate can corrupt the DB.
>>>
>>> One way of avoiding this is to overwrite the file of an unwanted
>>> recording, regenerate its seektable and edit its title, but that won't
>>> transfer other metadata.
>>>
>>> John P
>> 
>> Mythimport assigns a new recordedid when it imports the SQL for a
>> recording.
>>
>There is a potential conflict there, then. If, as described above, you have already moved the files 
>across they will be there with their original - and likely conflicting - programids. Is mythimport 
>smart enough to find the files with the old programids and change the ids to new ones? What happens 
>if there is a conflict and files with the same programid exist in two different storage directories?

Mythimport does not touch programid values.  They come from the EPG
data and can be duplicated anyway if you record the same episode of a
programme more than once.  Or if the EPG data is wrong.  Or if two
different channels choose to use the same data to identify different
programmes.

Long ago I accidentally used mythimport to import a programme that was
already recorded locally, and it worked fine - there were two
recordings in the listings, and they could both be played and deleted
without problems.  So now I do that deliberately occasionally, for
example when a recording was cut short by a problem on my MythTV box,
but my mother's MythTV box has a good copy of it.  I just import the
good copy and then can delete the bad one if the new one is better (it
usually is).