[mythtv-users] mythfilldatabase confusion

[Hika van den Hoven]

Hoi Paul,

Sunday, June 9, 2024, 4:32:28 PM, you wrote:

> On 09/06/2024 15:13, Hika van den Hoven wrote:
>> Hoi Paul,
>> 
>> Sunday, June 9, 2024, 1:20:53 PM, you wrote:
>> 
>>> For many years, I've been running mythfilldatabase from a cronjob,
>>> rather than configuring mythbackend to run it. Also I've been using a
>>> bespoke script to set xmltvid and icon fields in the channel table. It
>>> works okay, but it's a pain. It used to be necessary, I think, because I
>>> was piping the data from one lineup into two video sources and messing
>>> with the call sign to have channels duplicated across the two video
>>> sources appear as one.
>> 
>>> My system is simpler now: I have just one video source. I'm
>>> experimenting to see if mythtfilldatabase can set icon and xmltvid.
>> 
>>> First question - is this a lost cause? Should I stick with my bespoke
>>> script? (This Freeview in the UK. I have reliable logical channel
>>> numbers in both scan data and the listing, which made me think it would
>>> work).
>> 
>>> What I've done so far towards this change is:
>> 
>>> * Performed a new channel scan
>>> * Manually (mysql) set icon and xmltvid to "" for all channels.
>>> * From the new web app, set up the tv_grab_zz_json to be called
>>> automatically (same grabber I was using before from a cron job)
>>> * Newly configured the grabber according to the web app's instructions
>> 
>> 
>>> Now, I assume, sometime during the next 24 hours, mythbackend will run
>>> mythfilldatabase and I will find out if my experiment has worked, but
>>> I'd like to find out now.
>> 
>>> So second question: is there a way to trigger mythbackend to run it now?
>>> I can run mythfilldatabase directly from the command line, but I don't
>>> know what arguments mythbackend might supply. Also I can't find a way to
>>> set at what time a day the automatic run is performed.
>> 
>>> Cheers,
>>>          Paul.
>> 
>> xmltvid's are the proprietary ids for the channels in the import data.
>> If you do not before the first run add them to your mythtv lineup,
>> they can not match and new channels without link to your physical
>> mythtv lineup can get created.
>> So you have to set them once before the first run. Icons should be
>> added automatically.
>> It could be that schedules direct knows about the physical lineup and
>> that your idea works, but I do not know.

> Yep. It didn't work. In the end, I decided that an altered version of 
> the grabber/mythfilldatabase pipeline that I'd been running as a cron 
> job would be the thing to try - alterations being explicitly set the 
> config file for the grabber and remove --only-update-guide. That added a
> load of channels but with strange call signs. It certainly didn't merge
> the data in the way I hoped it might. So I'm back with my old solution
> which is a set of ruby scripts that performs heuristic matching, creates
> a .htm file so that I can view the results, and some sql to set icon and
> xmtvid in the database. It's the one messy area of my set up.

> Paul

If I understand correct, you change the xmltvid's in the grabber data
on every run to the one you have set in your mythtv setup. That's the
world upside-down.
Xmltvid's are specific to the grabber you use and if you have more
than one video source that partially contain the same channels you can
use those same xmltvid's on all the sources. You can run
mythfilldatabase multiple times with the same dataset. Ones for every
video source. If I remember correct the possibility to automatically
add channels to mythtv for those xmlyvid's in the data that are not
present in that video source, can be turned on or off by a commandline
switch. So if you reuse the grabber data for multiple sources, make
sure that switch is off!

Set the xmltvid's in mythtv to the ones your grabber produces. You
only have to do that once after every fresh rescan or if you change
grabber. The data produced by the grabber should contain icon data and
should update them.


Tot mails,
  Hika                            mailto:hikavdh at gmail.com

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Zonder leven is er geen hoop
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