[S4Rs]

just started testing the beta of XBMC. I am running Myth .26. One of the features I was looking forward too, was adding certain recording groups from mythtv into my TV shows section. I basically want to collect all the Series shows I watch there. It presents nice, and I like TVTunes, yada yada. So I did it, had some problems and saw the forum posts on how theTVDB scrapper fails to work since the myth tv are silly. I also saw how people wrote scripts to create soft/hard links to get around this and just point there.

The question is why doesn't some one take their script that grabs the myth tv show, looks up its details, and creates a softlink, but instead of create a soft link, pass that data to theTVDB scrapper wrap it in a new metadata addon called theMythTVtotheTVDB scrapper or something that you can then select when adding the pvr://recordings link as a source?

Now I would love to help someone do this, but I figure there is probably a reason it hasn't been done. I dont really know how to do this, but that is probably a question for the metadata forum. I just want to make sure there isn't a silly answer like this isn't a problem with mythtv .27, or it cant work because of limitations when making a metadata addon.

I wanted to check in the MythTV forum before I post something in the metadata forum.

[nickr]

Does this do what you want?

http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=65644

[S4Rs]

It does. But this solution does a lot more than needs to be done. It seems like an overkill solution. The problem isn't in mythtv its that the default scraper just doesn't know how to get the data it needs.

[nickr]

Are you talking about in mythtv or in the xbmc pvr.cmyth addon?

[S4Rs]

Are you talking about in mythtv or in the xbmc pvr.cmyth addon?

I am using cymth but am talking about when you to to the videos section in xbmc, not live TV, and select add source. When you browse for a source there is a recorded shows option that when selected will show all the mythtv recording groups.

[teeedubb]

Why not use mythlink to give your recordings human/tvdb readable file names and point xbmc to that directory? You can configure how mythlink names the files so there shouldn't be a problem importing them into xbmc.

[nickr]

Yeah but the problem is that myth shares via it's own protocol that xbmc (except the pvr bit) knows nothing about.

[S4Rs]

Yeah but the problem is that myth shares via it's own protocol that xbmc (except the pvr bit) knows nothing about.

I can see how it could get messy too since in theory xbmc is designed to use multiple PVR addons and make them all work together all though I can't think of a scenario where anyone would do that.

[nickr]

The other thing is that there are two competing "philosophies" (for want of a better word).

Some things you want to watch once, and leave on the system for a while in case someone else in the family wants to watch it, then delete it. This might be likeable but throwaway programmes like chat shows or reality TV.

Some things you want to watch and have a few episodes of, then when the max number is on the system you delete the oldest and record the newest. I record the main News show every day like this, and keep a week's worth in case I missed something a couple of days ago.

Some things you want to record and watch and keep forever, maybe like Game of Thrones or Breaking Bad (OK I am showing my own likes and dislikes here, substitue your own.)

Mythtv manages all those scenarios quite easily.

Automatically popping them into XBMC, which doesn't handle all those scenarios, presents some management problems.

The symlinking idea might work, but you'd have to regularly delete the symlinks for deleted shows, and clean the xbmc database.

[teeedubb]

You can share the mythlink links via samba(from memory you need a option in smb.conf to share symlinks) and running mythlink purges all obsolete links, but I see your point about having news/etc.. in the xbmc library. Not sure if mythlink can only create links for certain shows, I've only ever used it on all my recordings to have easy access to them.

EDIT: its been years since I've read through the mythlink documentation but it may be possible to setup mythlink as a user job and only have it run on the recordings you want in the xbmc library.

[nickr]

Assuming that you don't have any slave backends with their own storage that should work. I might have a play tonight.

[S4Rs]

Some things you want to record and watch and keep forever, maybe li.e Game of Thrones or Breaking Bad (OK I am showing my own likes and dislikes here, substitue your own.)

Mythtv manages all those scenarios quite easily.

Automatically popping them into XBMC, which doesn't handle all those scenarios, presents some management problems.

The symlinking idea might work, but you'd have to regularly delete the symlinks for deleted shows, and clean the xbmc database.

Precisely. Which I manage using recording groups in mythtv. Now I can add just those groups to the videos section of xbmc adding a source and selecting TV recordings and then the folder I wan from there. Which would contain and just show shows like breaking bad even though it resides in the recordings folder of mythtv with everything I record. The problem is when xbmc sends the recording to tvdb for scraping it sends 1585_2014033010000.mpeg which is myths default horrible format that it uses for file names. And the tvdb scrapper barfs all over it because it just uses the file name to scrape. This is where the hang up is. It should know this show is from myth and use cmyth to get get the correct info since it is already using cymth to get the specific files I want to see in tvshows. But the source addition insists on using tvdb or .NFO lookup. If this worked shows that I record in myth like justified mad men and breaking bad would show up with the DVD seasons I rip of game of thrones, the wire, south park, etc all in one area. It seems like someone installed a toilet and pipe but it just flows to the basement and not out the house...

If you still don't understand what I am talking about I will make a video in detail. I looked into mythical librarian, mythvidexport, mythlink and some other things as well and they all have little to no support or don't even work for myth .26. All I really need at this point to get things to work is a job Or even a system event (done at recording start) that renames recordings fro channel_time like myth does by default to title.SxxExx.subtitle and update the path info in mythtv and everything would work. no messy links, no dups, no need for com skip files outside the TV.

[teeedubb]

I understand what youre saying but i dont think you understand what im saying. Mythlink will link your files to *whatever* naming format you want using the info from the mythtv database. And it *works* with 0.27 and previous versions too - I've been using it for years. So you end up with exactly what you're after: a file and folder structure that makes it easy to import the content into xbmc's library(eg tv-recordings/breaking-bad/season01/sxxexx.....). If you don't want news/etc in the library add each TV show you want in your library as a seperate source. Once you have mythlink setup how you want it its automatic.

[nickr]

Exactly teeedub!

[S4Rs]

I understand what youre saying but i dont think you understand what im saying. Mythlink will link your files to *whatever* naming format you want using the info from the mythtv database. And it *works* with 0.27 and previous versions too - I've been using it for years. So you end up with exactly what you're after: a file and folder structure that makes it easy to import the content into xbmc's library(eg tv-recordings/breaking-bad/season01/sxxexx.....). If you don't want news/etc in the library add each TV show you want in your library as a seperate source. Once you have mythlink setup how you want it its automatic.

I looked more into mythlink and it is just an unclean solution to me. It creates softlinks in a new area when you run a job. if you want to delete those softlinks, then you need to do a bulk update with the script, which means I have to run a bulk update every time I do a job or also run a cron. It also is not season/episode # aware, which means its not fool proof when xbmc actually gets the file name for scraping jobs. Last, XBMC does not auto update when the link is broken or a show is removed.

There is a script out there called mythvidexport, which actually renames the show via scrapping through tvdb and puts its in a folder structure while also updating the mythtv database of the new file location, but I cant get it to work for the life of me when I try to do a one off. I keep getting a python error 4 layers deep, and documentation on using it is as good as the --help option.

There are only 2 options IMO. Both require use of the TV Recordings source selection in XBMC. Either write or update the TV scrapper in xbmc to grab info using python or cmyth, or create a job in myth that renames the file and updates the mythtv database. Option 1 is preferred because this will allow playback of a show that is currently still undergoing recording, where as the second option wont show up until the show is finished recording, and could screw things up if your playing the show and all of the sudden the file name changes. I like to start watching the walking dead for instance 30 minutes after it starts so I can skip all the commercials.
Using the TV Recordings source selection means changes to the TVshows library are instant and things can be deleted from anywhere, Myth, XBMC TV Shows, XBMC Live TV. It also means that XBMC will commericial skip because its playing through cmyth.