[mythtv] another scheduling idea (not softpad)

Robert Tsai mythtv at tsaiberspace.net
Sat Jun 30 04:20:58 UTC 2007


I had asked about implementing "end recording xx minutes after
beginning" logic at
http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/mythtv/users/265449

The use case was to allow me to get partial recordings of stuff that I
cared enough about recording partially, but not enough to take
recording priority over something else with partial overlap (I have
two tuners):

	Monday
	8-9:30 Dancing with the Stars (recpriority 10)
	9-10 Heroes (recpriority 20)
	9-10 24 (recpriority 20)

	Tuesday
	8-9 Dancing with the Stars (recpriority 10)

I had set up Dancing to "end 30 minutes early", but that needlessly
truncates the Tuesday recording (where there was no scheduling
conflict). Setting up manual recording rules is lame. And I'd have to
remember to cancel the rule at the end of the season. And "Dancing" is
one of those shows where you don't really need to see the whole thing
(each couple has a set of maybe 10 minutes which basically stand
independently as content from the other couples).

I was about to start coding up a "end recording xxx minutes after
beginning" option to allow me to just say "record up to the first 60
minutes of this show" (stop recording if it is scheduled for less than
60 minutes).

But then I thought a more generic way to do this would be to introduce
a notion of abbreviated schedules, where "it's OK to miss XXX minutes
of a recording without completely bailing on it". So I could just
configure my "Dancing" schedule with an abbreviation tolerance of
missing up to 30 minutes (from the end, or from the beginning,
depending on how many knobs you want).

Today, after the scheduler does its thing and decides to record
"Heroes" and "24" (on my two-tuner system), it knows that "Dancing"
has a conflict.

My idea is to introduce some number of subsequent passes to the
scheduler to play with the abbreviation settings (chop off the last
minute, chop off the first minute, chop off the last two minutes, chop
off the first two minutes, etc.) to see if any recordings that aren't
recording due to conflict would be able to be recorded with the new
abbreviated recording time. In this example, when it finally tries to
chop off the last 30 minutes of "Dancing", it will see that the
recording schedule from 8-9pm is free to accommodate another
recording.

The goal is to leave the current scheduling results alone, but
possibly augment them with more recordings if that would allow more
partial recordings to be captured.

Any thoughts from anyone while I start working on this feature?

--Rob


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