External Recordings Manager

[jrockintuitive]

If there is a conflict, instead of canceling the show with the lower priority, can you give that show the status of conflict and record the show with the higher priority.

In the case above, we can still see conflicts. We can use the conflicts to better help use prioritize.

JRock

[KingArgyle]

Yeah, I'll do that instead.

I will also have a conflict resolver, that will try to automaticly reschedule any show that is already in a conflict status. Thos that it can't resolve automaticly will remain in a conflict status, and will have to be handled resolved manually.

[jrockintuitive]

I did a little digging to help out for the record type "Only record episodes I have not recorded yet."

I am in the US therefore a zap2it subscriber. In the XML that I retrieve from zap2it, each program (e.g. Angel) receives a unique series identifier and each episode (e.g. JRock save Angel and Cordy from demons) receives a unique episode identifier. Sub is capturing the unique episode identifier in the PROGRAME table in the column unique_identifier. I do not know if xmltv has such a unique episode identifier, but if they do, you can you this ID instead of sub title to determine if it is the same show.

This unique episode identifier can be used to check for repeat episode instead of the sub title throughout your program.

If I'm not being helpful, let me know and I will stop.

JRock

[KingArgyle]

Actually, I appreciate the help Jrock. Sounds like it should work. I'm actually using both Zap2It and XMLTV as sources for episode listings, so I should be able to check and see if XMLTV has this uniqueIdentifier as well. If it does, it'll work perfectly. If not, I'll probably have to resort to using an external file or database table to check for repeats.

One interesting thing I have noticed, is that because of the way recordings are handled. If a station changes their lineup information, the guide may not reflect this correctly. Bravo tends to change their lineups quite often. This causes incorrect programs to get recorded. BTV 3.5 from Snapstream has this same problem. I have a few ideas on how to handle this and keep the scheduled recordings and the episode guide changes in place, but it requires completely deleting the program guide, and refreshing it, and then verifying the schedule recordings against the updated guide. It doesn't happen that often, but just enough to be annoying.

[jrockintuitive]

If you ever want to have an option of don't record something that I have recorded in the past - if present or not - you will need to persist the recording information. I'm always partial to put information in a DB, especially if you have one.

If at all possible I would avoid deleting the guide. The OID in the guide is needed for recording schedule. Playing around with that information can get hairy.

Maybe if you process the lineups (from xmltv and zap2it) in to the DB and perform a SQL statement to check if any shows with unique_identifier, manul_start_time, and manul_end_time in the RECORDING_SCHEDULE table does not exist in the table that you processed then you can delete them… they cannot be valid.
Since, I have never experienced this problem, I do not know if the problem in the guide, the scheduling, or both. However, you can apply the same logic to either table.
Although it seems like it would be more work to process both xmltv and zap2it xml, my guess it would be less work then to try to re-do all of your scheduling and conflicts and such.

I know sub is taking a break, but I would imagine this updating should occur in the base code not in a separate application.

But, if sub is willing to make this update, I have an idea of how he should break up the RECORDING_SCHEDULE table that would make you life much easier.

JRock

[KingArgyle]

Right now, I believe GBPVR downloads new episode guide information it deletes old expired guide recordings, that aren't being used by the Scheduled Recording table.

I'm probably going to store the program information along with the unique_identifier in a seperate table within the GBPVR database or maybe a different database. It'll be a utility that runs after a program records (I believe there is a Post.bat file that can be run after a recording). Basically it'll search the guide, find the recording, and put the information in a seperate table. I like DB files for these types of applications, stuff that I want to be portable or need to change quickly, I like storing in XML files.

Right now, I'm concentrating on getting the priority scheduling working. I have it so that it correctly detects and corrects the scheduled recordings based on the priority specified in the xml file. Right now it doesn't take into affect any of the type scenarios.

If you are intersted, Jrock, I can send you a pre-beta copy of the application for some testing purposes, once I get it stable enough.

[jrockintuitive]

I'm abosultely intersting in helping you test this.

Note: You can not perform queries between two tables that require seperate connections. In other words, you cannot perform a query between two access DB (unless of course, you link a table in one).

JRock

[KingArgyle]

Cool.

Yeah, I knew about the limitation on querying against two Access databases, which is why if I went the seperate table route, I'd add it to the existing access database. Much easier with MSDE/SQL Server to query between two databases.

Anyway, I should have something to start testing fairly soon.

[KingArgyle]

Here is the first Alpha release of the External Recording Manager. This has the basic functionality, and will allow scheduling and conflict resolution of recordings based upon their priority. Note, if you are squeamish about possibly losing recordings, then you might not want to test this as it probably still has some bugs in regards to conflict resolution. If you do, test it, please back up your GBPVR database before running this program.

A readme.txt file is included, that explains in more detail some of the features and limitations. This is a Console based application, no GUI interface is currently planned for this. A Web Admin interface is planned. The main functionallity is included in the RecordingUtils.dll file, so if anybody wants to develop a plugin interface for managing the Priority Recordings, and scheduling the recordings, please feel free to do so, but be warned that the RecordingUtils.dll is still under development.

I have tested this with Access and MSDE/Sql Server as databases. The code should work regardless which database you are using.

[jrockintuitive]

In PriorityRecordings.xml - a time element would be nice. The time element would work as follows: try to record based on the time element, if a higher priority exists and you cannot record said program, look for that exact episode (based on unique_identifier or something else) and attempt to record. Some shows are on different timeslots with different story lines.

I am receiving an error when I run the exe.

My PriorityRecordings.xml looks like the following (I first tried it with several recording and recieved the same error below - I changed the port number to xxxx because I am paranoid about security):
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<GBPVR xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:noNamespaceSchemaLocation="http://localhost:xxxx/gbpvr/PriorityReco...">
<Recording type="Season" priority="8">
<Channel>135</Channel>
<ProgramName>X-Men</ProgramName>
<RecordingType>All Episodes</RecordingType>
<Quality>Medium</Quality>
<CaptureSource>1</CaptureSource>
</Recording>
</GBPVR>


The error is the following:
C:\Program Files\devnz\gbpvr>PriorityRecording.exe
Loading Known Recordings.
Number of Known Recordings: 107

Unhandled Exception: System.Xml.Schema.XmlSchemaException: The 'Channel' element
has an invalid value according to its data type. An error occurred at file:///C
:/Program Files/devnz/gbpvr/PriorityRecordings.xml, (4, 17).
at System.Xml.XmlValidatingReader.InternalValidationCallback(Object sender, V
alidationEventArgs e)
at System.Xml.Schema.Validator.SendValidationEvent(XmlSchemaException e, XmlS
everityType severity)
at System.Xml.Schema.Validator.SendValidationEvent(String code, String arg)
at System.Xml.Schema.Validator.CheckValue(String value, SchemaAttDef attdef)
at System.Xml.Schema.Validator.EndChildren()
at System.Xml.Schema.Validator.Validate()
at System.Xml.XmlValidatingReader.ReadWithCollectTextToken()
at System.Xml.XmlValidatingReader.Read()
at System.Xml.XmlLoader.LoadChildren(XmlNode parent)
at System.Xml.XmlLoader.LoadElementNode()
at System.Xml.XmlLoader.LoadCurrentNode()
at System.Xml.XmlLoader.LoadCurrentNode()
at System.Xml.XmlLoader.LoadChildren(XmlNode parent)
at System.Xml.XmlLoader.LoadElementNode()
at System.Xml.XmlLoader.LoadCurrentNode()
at System.Xml.XmlLoader.LoadCurrentNode()
at System.Xml.XmlLoader.LoadChildren(XmlNode parent)
at System.Xml.XmlLoader.LoadElementNode()
at System.Xml.XmlLoader.LoadCurrentNode()
at System.Xml.XmlLoader.LoadCurrentNode()
at System.Xml.XmlLoader.LoadDocSequence(XmlDocument parentDoc)
at System.Xml.XmlLoader.Load(XmlDocument doc, XmlReader reader, Boolean prese
rveWhitespace)
at System.Xml.XmlDocument.Load(XmlReader reader)
at RecordingUtils.RecordingUtils.getPriorityDOM()
at PriorityRecording.RecordingManager.Main(String[] args)

C:\Program Files\devnz\gbpvr>