External Recordings Manager

[jrockintuitive]

The following are scheduled:
People court is scheduled
Oprah is in conflict

Judy Judy, Peoples Court, and Oprah are all on at the same time.


Oprah has lower priority than Judge Judy in the priority recording xml
Peoples Court is not on the priority recording xml

End results:
People Court is scheduled
Oprah is in conflict
Judge Judy is not recorded

I would expect:
People's Court deleted (to be in conflict in later releases)
Judge Judy scheduled
Oprah in Conflict

The test I do want to run is:
If Oprah is in conflict and has highest priority, does Oprah get scheduled and is conflict status in the DB. I obviously can not test the results due to the above error.

Right now I'm only looking for new defect, I have not done full regression testing to ensure other parts of the program are still working.

[KingArgyle]

Actually, it is working as I intended, as items that aren't in the priority recording file, get higher priority because I have no idea on whether that item was manually added or not. Maybe I need to make this a configuration option whether the Priority Recordings file takes precendence not matter what. If a recording isn't found in the file but is in the scheduler it gets a priority of 9999 or something like that, so that it gets the lowest priority.

The ideal situation is that every recording you do is in the priority recording file this way every recording has some sort of priority so that the scheduler knows what has precendent. This will be easier to do once a true front end is developed for the program either through GBPVR, XRecord, the Web Admin, or some other program. I currently make sure that every series I want to record is in the Priority XML file. if it isn't then I know that I manually scheduled that recording on purpose and want to keep it.

Here is an example situation that could happen. GBPVR has scheduled it's recordings. All of these recordings are also in the Priority Recordings file. The External Recordings manage makes adjustments as necessary....now I'm watching a show....something is going to air that I don't have in the scheduler but I want to make sure I get it.... It comes on at the same time as one of my other programs, so I cancel that one recording, and manually schedule the new program. Next time the recording manager runs, it leaves that program alone as it didn't find it in the Priority Recording file, and treats it as a the highest priority, making sure I get that recording. Ideally I should also put that program in the External Recording file, but this way if I forget, it still gets recorded.

The short of it is, that I probably need to make this configurable through the Priority XML file, on how this behaves, so that it can handle both situations. I'll try to get this into the next release.

As for your situation that you want to test. If you put them in the priority recordings file, the following would happen. Oprah would be scheduled, and you would also get Oprah as a Conflict, because currently I don't remove it from the conflict list. That is planned for a future release.

[KingArgyle]

Here is a proposed addition to the Priority Recordings.xml file:

<Configuration>
<MissingRecordingPriority>9999</MissingRecordingPriority>
<Conflicts>Keep</Conflicts>
</Configuration>

MissingRecordingPriority - Values are 0 or 9999, 0 - highest priority, always keep. 9999 - Lowest Priority. This allows you to control how recording items are handled that aren't in the PriorityRecordings xml file.

Conflicts - values are Delete, and Keep - Delete deletes all conflicts from the database thus never having those appear in the Conflict manager screens. Keep - keeps all conflicts, and allows manual resolution of conflicts.

Additional configuration options can be added as we determine what they should be.

[jrockintuitive]

Sorry for the miscue.

Besides the aformentioned changes I think if we have the following people will start using the program... at least I will.

1. Quality setting - I record everything in high
2. Padding - I pad 2 min on both sides
3. Don't record dups - I think you are doing this now, I can't remember

As always, when the new version is realesed, I will test.

[KingArgyle]

No problem. The schema already has spots for Quality, and I'll make sure I add spots for the following under the Recording element.

<Padding>
<PrePadding>1</PrePadding>
<PostPadding>2</PostPadding>
</Padding>

I should be able to implement both options in the next release. Just need to read in the information from the file, and make sure I pass it to my AddRecording method.

[KingArgyle]

Update v0.0.5 Log 01/02/2005:

* The XSD has been updated. You will need to replace the existing XSD with the one from the ZIP file
as it adds new elements for Configuration and Recording Padding.
* Add Configuration section to PriorityRecordings.xml file. This is a mandatory element and must
contain MissingPriorityRecording, and Conflict elements.
* MissingPriorityRecording = either 0 for highest priority, or 9999 for lowest priority. Tell the
scheduler how to treat recordings it doesn't know about (i.e. aren't in the PriorityRecordings.xml
file.) This option is currently not checked by the program.
* Conflict - Values are Keep or Delete. Tells the recording manager what to do with Conflicts that
it encounters while scheduling. Specify Keep if you want all conflicts to be readded to the scheduler
for manual resolution or Delete if you want the program to get rid of all conflicts (i.e. delete them).
* Added optional Padding element to the Recordings section. If specified it must have PrePadding and
PostPadding elements. These are numeric values in number of minutes to add Padding for recording.
If not specified, the defaults are 0. If you specify the padding element, you MUST specify the
pre and post padding options.
* The external recording manager now reads and uses the CaptureSource, and Quality elements. Quality is
based of the GBPVR quality Settings of High, Medium, Low, Custom1, and Custom2.

[jrockintuitive]

1.
Conflicts are not added if show has ' character is within the program

Priority Program: Oprah Winfrey Date: 1/4/2005 4:00 PM
Re-Adding Conflict Programs
Syntax error (missing operator) in query expression ''The People's Court', 0, 0,
CDate('1/3/2005 4:00:00 PM', CDate('1/3/2005 5:00:00 PM', 123, 1, 0, 0)'.
at System.Data.OleDb.OleDbCommand.ExecuteCommandTextErrorHandling(Int32 hr)
at System.Data.OleDb.OleDbCommand.ExecuteCommandTextForSingleResult(tagDBPARA
MS dbParams, Object& executeResult)
at System.Data.OleDb.OleDbCommand.ExecuteCommandText(Object& executeResult)
at System.Data.OleDb.OleDbCommand.ExecuteCommand(CommandBehavior behavior, Ob
ject& executeResult)
at System.Data.OleDb.OleDbCommand.ExecuteReaderInternal(CommandBehavior behav
ior, String method)
at System.Data.OleDb.OleDbCommand.ExecuteNonQuery()
at RecordingUtils.RecordingUtils.addConflicts(IList conflictRecordings)
Conflicts Re-Added.
Done.


----
2.
Have nothing recorded and no recurring items
Put two items in the priorityrecording.xml the first show is an hour with higher priority and a the second show is a half hour starting 1/2 after the first show and ends at the same time- both items get recorded.
Both items get recorded.

----
3.
If an item is scheduled, and after your program it remains scheduled, the padding and quality remain at the schedule level not as specified in the priority recordings xml

---
4.
<Conflicts>Keep</Conflicts> is set
No other recording are in the DB
If you have three items that could be scheduled at the same time (highest is an hour, middle is 2 1/2 programs, lowest is an hour)
--the top priority will be scheduled
--the lowest priority items will be deleted - should be in conflict
--the first middle priority will be in conflict, the second half hour will be recorded (therefore two shows are scheduled to be recorded at the same time)

[KingArgyle]

Jrock, can you send me a zip file that has the following in it:

1. PriorityRecordings.xml
2. GBPVR Database with the above situations.

This way I can run them through the Debugger at home and step through to see what is happening. I have an idea of what is going on but actual examples help immensley.

Thanks.

[KingArgyle]

Quote[/b] ]1.
Conflicts are not added if show has ' character is within the program

Noted. It'll be fixed in the next release.

Quote[/b] ]
2.
Have nothing recorded and no recurring items
Put two items in the priorityrecording.xml the first show is an hour with higher priority and a the second show is a half hour starting 1/2 after the first show and ends at the same time- both items get recorded.
Both items get recorded.

I have an idea on this, it's in the conflict detection code I have. I suspect I need to do some some additional start and endtime checking. Most of the shows I tend to record that overlap tend to run the same time or start at the same time.

Quote[/b] ]
3.
If an item is scheduled, and after your program it remains scheduled, the padding and quality remain at the schedule level not as specified in the priority recordings xml

Currently, there is no code in place to update scheduled recording quality. So it is working as it is currently coded to do. I do have a fixschedule code, that I'll modify so that it checks the current recording quality against what is in the PriorityRecordings file. If they differ, I'll update it. Might make this configurable, so that it's users controlled. You should still be able to make adjustments manually through either GBPVR or Xrecord.

[KingArgyle]

Maintenance update should be released in the next day or so. Basically, trying to get the conflict detection code working as close to 100% before going any further. With the maintenance release it should be useable for every day use.

Future releases:

1. Add time and/date range restrictions (only record during a certain time period i.e 11:00 - 23:00.)

2. Channel restriction - If a channel is given, it'll restrict that show to that particular channel, allowing you to put the same show in the manager, but given different priorities based on the channel it appears.

3. Priorities for shows that it doesn't know about. Are they given a low or high priority.

4. Specifications on recording types. All Episodes, New Episodes, All Episodes Not Recorded, etc.

5. Number of Recordings to Keep. How many shows should be kept at a time. If it goes over this number shows are automagicly deleted.