Lost recordings database

[dongna]

by the way, these are the recordings it's saying are already imported:

My guess is those recordings were made before my backup was done. I had to restore from a backup made back in January of this year, and I see that almost all of the recordings are dated 2009 or very early 2010. (There's also at least one-- "Bears Pregame" and "McLaughlin Group" to name two-- that were made since I did the restore.)

[johnsonx42]

so you're saying you don't have a current recording-dump.xml? you need to import recordings for which you have no source to import from, only the recording files themselves?

[dongna]

The recordings listed in the recordingsdump.xml appear to be the same as what your logs show as having already been imported. What am I missing?

Are you saying the recordings I listed above from your logs do not actually appear in your Ready recordings list?

I guess I'm saying there are recordings on my hard drive that are not appearing in my Ready Recordings list. For example, I have about 10 episodes of "60 Minutes" on my hard drive. They do not appear in my Recordings list.

I see in recordingsdump.xml there is an entry for 60 Minutes. But I don't know how to read the xml file. The "60 Minutes" entry appears to be a record that this show should be recorded. Should there be an entry for each recorded episode of each show?

[johnsonx42]

Should there be an entry for each recorded episode of each show?

Yes, those are after the entries for the future recordings. When you import the recording-dump.xml, it's only going to import what is in that file; it doesn't go out and look at the hard drive and read in the data for the recording files it finds.

What you need is a utility that will search the hard drive for your recordings and then build a new recording-dump.xml file for you. Such a utility does exist, I used it about 2 years ago with pretty well perfect success. However I can't find it now. I've rebuilt all my machines since then and dumped all my gb-pvr stuff.

I know VidImport can do it, but I think it doesn't read the metadata so you'll get no show details, just the raw file name.

I'll spend a few more minutes trying to find that utility...

[johnsonx42]

ok, I'm 99% certain this is the utility I used: http://gbpvr.com/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Utili...Recordings

All it does is read the metadata out of every file it finds on your drive, and builds a new recording-dump.xml. then you just import that into GB-PVR.

Here is another utility, a bit more complicated, that appears to accomplish the same thing: http://gbpvr.com/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Utility/MpegImport. This is definitely not the one I used before.

[dongna]

Yes, those are after the entries for the future recordings. When you import the recording-dump.xml, it's only going to import what is in that file; it doesn't go out and look at the hard drive and read in the data for the recording files it finds.

I guess I don't understand why this worked previously (when I first started this thread). I thought I had the same exact situation-- the list of Recordings in GBPVR did not match what was on my hard drive because of a computer hardware glitch. Importing the xml file then seemed to do the trick. Apparently there must be something different in this situation.

I will give those utilities you pointed out a try... it sounds like they'll do the trick.

Thank you for all your help.

[dongna]

ok, I'm 99% certain this is the utility I used: http://gbpvr.com/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Utili...Recordings

All it does is read the metadata out of every file it finds on your drive, and builds a new recording-dump.xml. then you just import that into GB-PVR.

I ran this utility, and it appears to have re-built my recording-dump.xml file. The data in the file now appears to match what is on my hard drive.

However, when I try to import the file, I get the same error message as I reported earlier: "No recordings were imported. The recordings either already existed, or the video files are no longer in their original locations."

As best I can tell, the path and filename in the xml file appears correct for each recording.

[johnsonx42]

I guess I don't understand why this worked previously (when I first started this thread). I thought I had the same exact situation-- the list of Recordings in GBPVR did not match what was on my hard drive because of a computer hardware glitch. Importing the xml file then seemed to do the trick. Apparently there must be something different in this situation.

your situation is different now - before you had just lost your recordings database, but your recording-dump.xml was still current so it contained all the data you needed to rebuild your database. now you lost your whole drive, including the recording-dump.xml, and then restored from an old copy. now your recording-dump.xml doesn't contain anything different than your database does, so restoring it does nothing. one might suggest that it would be better to keep the recording-dump.xml with the recordings instead of the database, which is a suggestion I'll make for NPVR.

[johnsonx42]

However, when I try to import the file, I get the same error message as I reported earlier: "No recordings were imported. The recordings either already existed, or the video files are no longer in their original locations."

It sounds like you didn't point GB-PVR to the correct recording-dump.xml file; you just imported the same old file rather than the new file. In any case, if it doesn't work you've got to post your logs and relevant files (in this case the config logs and recording-dump.xml), otherwise I really can't tell anything.

[johnsonx42]

You've inspired an enhancement request for NPVR: http://forums.gbpvr.com//showthread.php?...ding-drive