Monitor Folder to Add Files to Recordings?

[samgreco]

I am looking to move away from Channels DVR as we really don't use TVE much any longer.  And that's the only justification for spending $80/year.  But the one thing it does that I have yet to find elsewhere is, I can add a folder to it to monitor and whenever a new file appears in that folder, it gets added to the list of recordings.  Just as though it were recorded from OTA or TVE sources.

All of this is because I also use Playon Home to pull various shows down locally.  Then Channels sees them in the folder and shows them.  With Playons subscription feature, it's just like scheduling a recording.

Can NPVR do this?  Or have another way to get to the same place?

[mvallevand]

No but the NextTool can do it on demand and there are several utilities out there monitor folder and could execute a command line tool such as NextTool. If you are really using Channels DVR much not sure it is worth the cycles monitoring for changes.

If you give me the filename of what you are importing I can see how much meta data it will give you.

Martin

[samgreco]

A recent example is Poker Face from Peacock. The file coms in as "Poker Face - s01e01 - Dead Man's Hand.mp4"

I have it setup so all Playon files are formatted that way. Show Title - SxxExx - Episode Title. I get a few where the Show Title gets an underscore because it originally has a colon. Like "Star Trek_ Picard - s02e01 - The Star Gazer.mp4"

But if NextTool can import into records, that could work for me. I'll dig into that. Thanks.

[mvallevand]

My regex should support those. https://github.com/sub3/NextPVR/wiki/NextTool A basic import is all you need --import foldername

If you have an nfo file it can get override the Windows filenaming limitations.

You could also use the Channels DVR m3u as an IPTV source for NextPVR

Martin

[samgreco]

Thanks for this. I was able to import all of my Playon files. I have 2 followup questions:

Will rerunning the same command update with whatever is new? Or do I need different command to update (add new files)?

And how do I get metadata for these files where none existed previously? I had just the MP4 files.

[mvallevand]

Re-importing a folder does not create duplicates, but it will add new files.

What metadata are you talking about?  You should get the Title/Subtitle and S/E from the title, based on your example.  There can be metadata in the mp4 but in another thread I found that it might not be worth adding.  The wiki explains about using NFO files to get more.

Note that the art comes from NextPVR not NextTool

Martin

[samgreco]

I am getting the art work. Also season and episode #s. But no episode info. So if I can maybe run it through Kodi and get NFO files, I can run the --update and bring that in?

[mvallevand]

You should get the episode name like I showed in the example from your filename.

On the wiki I link to some utilities that will do create NFO since I am not sure if Kodi creates them for you. That is why I asked what is missing from your source, perhaps I could read the source.

Martin

[samgreco]

All that's missing is the Series info/description and the individual episode descriptions. I'll check the utilities.

Thanks for all of the help.

[mvallevand]

NextPVR doesn't support series info except so you probably just need the description then.

It would have been better to create the NFO files before doing the scan, there is a function to update them one at a time, but not in bulk. I do see on the update (--file option) I don't update the title, only on new imports.

Martin