GB-PVR => NPVR migration; video library missing episode ID information

[Braklet]

I'm a long time GB-PVR user and finally decided to take the NextPVR plunge. Some things went very smoothly, but one issue has me stumped and I wonder if anybody has found a solution.

Following these suggestions, I imported my GB-PVR library into NPVR. The recordings appear as expected, however after importing season recordings I notice that NPVR re-schedules existing recordings.

GB-PVR's recording-dump.xml contains <uid> fields with unique ID values set by Tribune and forwarded by Schedules Direct. I took a look in npvr.db3 and see that EPG_EVENT table contains the uid information in column unique_id. However, I've found no way to map this unique_id to any field in the SCHEDULED_RECORDING table.

My video library contains some ~2000 recordings so I hope there is some way to recover or rebuild unique episode mapping in NPVR.

I can't believe I'm the first person to run across this issue but I couldn't figure out the right forum search terms. Can anyone help shed light?

Many thanks!

[sub]

Can you zip and attach the recording-dump.xml so I can see the exact format? I no longer have any examples of these files.

[sub]

I can't believe I'm the first person to run across this issue but I couldn't figure out the right forum search terms. Can anyone help shed light?

I don't think we there is many people still in the progress of moving over from GBPVR to NextPVR. Most did moved a very long time ago, and they probably had bigger issues than worrying about their historic recording. Also, most are probably record->watch->delete types like me, where needing to import historic stuff isn't that important.

[Braklet]

Can you zip and attach the recording-dump.xml so I can see the exact format? I no longer have any examples of these files.

See attachment; thanks!

[Braklet]

Most did moved a very long time ago, and they probably had bigger issues than worrying about their historic recording. Also, most are probably record->watch->delete types like me, where needing to import historic stuff isn't that important.

I was of the opinion "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" and only got interested in NPVR after I set up a Raspbmc box with an embedded NPVR client. That works very well with MythTV, FWIW.

Now that I've committed most of a day to NPVR migration I'd love to stick with it, there are some nice changes. But the archival database is kind of a big deal to me...

[sub]

Hopefully this one will import your uids as well.

[Braklet]

Should I start over with a new database after I copy over this new DLL? Or can I simply re-import the recording-dump.xml over my existing DB?

[sub]

Probably easiest to do it on an empty database.

[Braklet]

Well, I copied the new NShared.dll over my old, stashed off a copy of npvr.db3 and then copied empty.db3 to npvr.db3. Started up NPVR and proceeded to rebuild my devices and channel lists, then updated EPG. Everything worked as expected.

I then ported over my GB-PVR recurring recordings using the tool mentioned in post 1, and reupdated EPG. This created a bunch of new recordings as expected. Afterward, I used NPVR settings to import my GB-PVR recording-dump.xml, which slurped my archive library and showed up in Ready Recordings.

At this point I opened up npvr.db3 to take a look at the SCHEDULED_RECORDING table which now contained my archive library. I see no evidence of unique ID in this table. The event_details column reads:

<Event>
<OID>0</OID>
<Title>[first 4 characters of storage directory name]

for all of these archival recordings. I'm guessing this didn't work to preserve UID.

I guess I can learn to live with NPVR if I just manually delete or merge known duplicates, although that's something of a PITA.

How is unique_id supposed to be managed in npvr.db3? Embedded in event_details somehow? gbpvr.db3 stored it in column PROGRAMME.unique_identifier which made it really easy to manipulate.

[sub]

At this point I opened up npvr.db3 to take a look at the SCHEDULED_RECORDING table which now contained my archive library. I see no evidence of unique ID in this table. The event_details column reads:

<Event>
<OID>0</OID>
<Title>[first 4 characters of storage directory name]

What are you using to look in the npvr.db3? It sounds like it's not showing you all the data in that column. I'm guessing it's all there. The unique id is later in that data.