Archive feature - how's it supposed to work?

[BrettB]

You should have to delete from anywhere if you're just want to archive (move) the file from one location to another. When you delete a recording, the application look up where the database says the file is, and will delete the file, and then delete the recording entry out of the database.

I believe that sub meant to say "You should not have to delete from anywhere...".

Make sure that you understand that the NextPVR "Archive" function is really a "Move" function. What it does is move the physical recording file from one drive to another drive and updates the recording record to point to the file on the new drive. If you then delete the recording from the recordings list, it will delete the actual recorded file (which was moved to the new drive), so you won't have anything left.

[sub]

I believe that sub meant to say "You should not have to delete from anywhere...".

lol correct. I've fixed my message.

[ACTCMS]

lol correct. I've fixed my message.

Spell checkers and predictive text - your worst enema...

Alex

[mattyb]

Got it now. Many thanks everybody!

[johnsonx42]

I recall discussion way back when that "Archive" wasn't really the right name for the function, as archive kind of implies that the recording will be removed from the recordings list, or maybe that it will be copied and the copy will be separate from the recording in the list, but we couldn't think of any single word more accurate. What it really does is "Move Recording File and Set Recurrence_OID to Zero" but that's too long for the menu and most users wouldn't understand what a recurrence_oid is nor the significance of setting it to zero.

For those who want to understand the above, the Recurrence_OID links the recording to the Recurring Recording request that created it. When a Recurring Recording request has a setting to "Keep XX Episodes", NRecord tallies the number of completed recordings with the same Recurrence_OID as the Recurring Recording request, and then deletes the oldest recording(s) that exceed(s) the limit when a new recording is started. The Archive function zeroes the Recurrence_OID both to exclude the archived recording from the count and to prevent it from being auto-deleted which would rather defeat the purpose of archiving it; with a Recurrence_OID of zero the recording is regarded as a single recording rather than part of a group. However it will still be grouped in the Recordings list, as that grouping is not done by Recurrence_OID.

There are still a few UI shortcomings related to this: 1) you can't tell from the UI which recording path a given recording is stored in; 2) you can't tell from the UI whether a recording has a non-zero Recurrence_OID. Therefore you can't confirm from the UI if a recording has in fact been archived.

(suggested solution for 2 and partly 1 - the Archive function could set "red text" on an archived recording saying "Archived to [PATH]" where [PATH] is the recording path name from Settings not the literal windows path.)

Pro-tip: If you DO know where a given recording is stored, you can "Keep" the recording from being auto-deleted by "Archiving" it to the same location; the file won't be moved, but the Recurrence_OID will still be zeroed thus protecting it from the "Keep XX Episodes" logic.