[mythtv-users] better scheduling options through MythWeb?

[Stephen Worthington]

On Thu, 7 May 2015 09:46:18 -0500 (CDT), you wrote:

>Now that my new MythTV (0.27.20140303-1, Gentoo) is operational in all 
>required respects, I'm re-implementing recording rules. I note to begin 
>with that the scheduling options through the frontend are far more limited 
>than they have been on past MythTV installations I've used. For example, I 
>see no such choice as "record one showing of this title every day." A fair 
>amount of trawling through the frontend has not revealed anything close to 
>the range of options I used to see when I would schedule recordings that 
>way.
>
>As I continue to investigate, I'm finding that the widest range of options 
>for scheduling recordings seems to be available through MythWeb. I do not 
>see there the sorts of options I used to use through the frontend, but 
>there are a number of alternate options that can allow me to approximate 
>the sorts of rules I used to use most frequently. So, I've begun 
>scheduling most recordings using MythWeb.
>
>I'd like to ask in closing whether others on this list find scheduling 
>recordings through MythWeb to be more versatile and usable than scheduling 
>them through the frontend? Of course I may have overlooked some frontend 
>setting or perhaps even have misconfigured something on this system. But 
>my tentative conclusion to date is that I'll be needing to schedule most 
>recordings on this system via MythWeb rather than through the frontend. 
>Thanks.

The options you want are still there, just in different places. First,
check on the schedule filters.  When editing a recording rule, they
are in Schedule Options > Schedule filters.  The one I use there all
the time is "This channel".

For the more complex and powerful options, you now need to use a
different type of recording rule, a "Power search" rule.  On
converting the database from earlier versions of MythTV, rules now
needing a Power Search rule should have been converted automatically
to this form.  If you go to Manage Recordings > Recording Rules, the
Power Search rules are marked with the text "(Power Search)" on the
end of the rule name.  There are various ways of creating a Power
Search rule.  One is to take an existing standard rule and do M >
Custom Edit and manually add the SQL to do exactly what you want.  The
more usual path is to go to Manage Recordings > Schedule Recordings >
Custom Record to create a Power Search rule manually from scratch.

However, for some things, there is a not well known way of creating
rules similar to Power Search rules that does not involve knowing SQL.
That is to go to Manage Recordings > Schedule Recordings > Search
Words > Title.  Then do a search and adjust the title match you are
using until the search matches the program(s) you want, and instead of
using the "OK" button, use the "Record" button.  That gives you a
variant on a Power Search rule called a "Title Search" rule.

Power Search rules and Title Search rules (and there may be some other
rule types that I have not encountered) have the extra options like
"Record one showing every day" and "Record one showing every week"
that used to be handled in ordinary recording rules, and if you want
those options, you have to use the more complicate rule type now in
order to get them.

For Title Search rules and Power Search rules (both record.type == 5),
the record.description field is not used for the description, but
rather is used as where the rest of the rule is stored.  For a Title
Search rule, the title text to be matched is stored there.  For a
Power Search rule, the SQL text is stored there.