Rebuilding or adding to Recordings db

[marcomessina]

1. I searched the forum far and wide and looked for plugins to rebuild my recordings db (gbpvr.mdb damaged by reinstall into PC). Someone once mentioned editing the access db directly but gave no details. I looked at the db but with no docs I do not want to compound my problem.
Has anyone edited it to just add titles that are on disk? What records are needed and what fields are required at a minimum?

2. More on the access db. In mine I found many old records. Is this a defect of my setup or do records stay there indefinitely? Is any maintenance required or recommended? Is there any doc on this?

Thanks for any advice


And now a word of caution to anyone migrating their system: Here is my misadventure to learn from.
I was installed on a 600 gig p4 1mb XP Pro system but had to downsize to a 200 gig, p4 512mb XP home.
I installed gbpvr (to create registry entries) then copied the files from original system gbpvr forlder to the new one. I was betting I could update recordings db, config details etc.
When I restarted gbpvr config would run, had al my specs, etc. and looked good, the "tray" ran and the scheduler recorded on schedule.

BUT BUT BUT whenever I tried to run gbpvr.exe or the gbpvr server, the program started, GAVE NO ERRORS, showed as active process and could be terminated, BUT nothing showed on screen and the MVP could not access the gbpvr server (of course). I removed GBPVR and reinstalled, removed even .NET and reinstalled.
The mess got fixed when I explicitly removed the config XML file and ran config again. I presume that something in it referenced the video card or memory of the old system. In any event, just uninstalling did not fix it.
Of course in th eprocess I lost all my Recordings and therefore the questions above BEWARE OF MIGRATIONS...

LAST COMMENT - gbpvr is one of the best pieces of software (free or otherwise) that I have found in many years. It is an impressive product in a league with very few others, and beats hands down many (most?) of its commercial competitors. On my knees I gratefully bow to the author(s?) for such a gift.

[sub]

1. I searched the forum far and wide and looked for plugins to rebuild my recordings db (gbpvr.mdb damaged by reinstall into PC). Someone once mentioned editing the access db directly but gave no details. I looked at the db but with no docs I do not want to compound my problem.
Has anyone edited it to just add titles that are on disk? What records are needed and what fields are required at a minimum?

Probably the easiest way to get them back in is using the XML import feature. If you click the 'export recordings' button in the config app, it'll create a XML text file that shows you what format recordings need to be listed in. Create a record for each recording you need to import, then click the 'import recordings' button.

BTW, if you're using the NTFS filesystem, metadata about the recording is now saved into the recording as an 'Alternate Data Stream' on the video file. To view the metadata, you can type "notepad c:\path\recording.mpg:metadata.xml".

[Pioneer4x4]

BTW, if you're using the NTFS filesystem, metadata about the recording is now saved into the recording as an 'Alternate Data Stream' on the video file. To view the metadata, you can type "notepad c:\path\recording.mpg:metadata.xml".

I've been wondering about that. I definately have to try that.

Does that mean that you might be able have GBPVR do an auto import of a directory? Could it be made to retreive the info from the metadata automatically? That would be great if you could?

[sub]

Yeah, thats something I've been intending to add, but I havnt got around to it yet.

[marcomessina]

In post #1 of this thread I said:

And now a word of caution to anyone migrating their system: Here is my misadventure to learn from.
I was installed on a 600 gig p4 1mb XP Pro system but had to downsize to a 200 gig, p4 512mb XP home.
I installed gbpvr (to create registry entries) then copied the files from original system gbpvr forlder to the new one. I was betting I could update recordings db, config details etc.
When I restarted gbpvr config would run, had al my specs, etc. and looked good, the "tray" ran and the scheduler recorded on schedule.

BUT BUT BUT whenever I tried to run gbpvr.exe or the gbpvr server, the program started, GAVE NO ERRORS, showed as active process and could be terminated, BUT nothing showed on screen and the MVP could not access the gbpvr server (of course). I removed GBPVR and reinstalled, removed even .NET and reinstalled.
The mess got fixed when I explicitly removed the config XML file and ran config again. I presume that something in it referenced the video card or memory of the old system. In any event, just uninstalling did not fix it.
Of course in the process I lost all my Recordings and therefore the questions above BEWARE OF MIGRATIONS...

Upon further inestigation I determined that the problem may have come from reducing RAM between the two machines. Things started working when in my reconfiguration efforts some plugins were dropped. When I added them back in, the same behaviour occurred again (prog. starts, creates process, displays no window, gives no error). I can recreate this circumstance just by adding and subtracting any one plugin from the list of active plugins. I will soon get more RAM and be able have a definite conclusion. Whether the lack of warnings to this troubling behavior is a system issue or one of my own I have not been able to determine. A gbpvr expert might be in better position to determine this.
mm

[Pioneer4x4]

Yeah, thats something I've been intending to add, but I havnt got around to it yet.

I definitely think it would be a nice feature.

[marcomessina]

Thank you sub, i'll try that
mm

[Pioneer4x4]

Here is an xml file for a movie. It will not import, it says it is either a dupe or deleted...

Is there something wrong with this file that I am missing? The filename had the date/time in it, and I removed it from both the filename, and the xml file, neither way worked. The path is valid, I pasted it into the <Run> box to test it.

<recording>
<filename>E:\Recordings\The Day the Earth Stood Still\The Day the Earth Stood Still.mpg</filename>
<channel>47 AMC</channel>
<status>READY</status>
<startTime>2005-11-06 08:00:00</startTime>
<endTime>2005-11-06 10:00:00</endTime>
<title>The Day the Earth Stood Still</title>
<subtitle></subtitle>
<description>Klaatu (Michael Rennie) and his guardian robot, Gort, come from afar to warn Earth about nuclear war.</description>
<uid>MV0098180000</uid>
</recording>

[sub]

All I can guess is, there is either already a recording in your database that points to this file, or the filename is slightly wrong.

[Pioneer4x4]

I really checked both, and didfind anything. This is a recording I made, and was running out of disk space so I moved the whole folder to a networked drive. (Also NTFS so it kept the metadata) Than I moved it back to its original location. I though about the dupe filename thing, so I edited the filename by removing the date string.

Hmm, I'll try again.