Creating "Duplicates" to Avoid

[Bobomo]

I am trying to pick up some reruns to complete a series that I am archiving. The show airs twice/day. I have most of the episodes in my media library, but they were mostly not recorded by NPVR and, regardless, have been processed and moved. Not to mention the several times I've "rebooted" my NPVR installation...

What I'd like to do is get NPVR to record only the episodes that I'm missing (I had been doing this manually). Is there a way to import or add records to the NPVR database of the episodes I have so that selecting "Avoid Duplicate Recordings" will only schedule those I am missing?

TIA - Bob

[mvallevand]

If you haven't deleted those old files eariler the NextPVR default with the Schedules Direct EPG is to do what you want, record shows you don't have. If you have deleted them you would have to remove them the history with the command

nextpvr -removehistory

If you have changed EPG source you are out of luck.

Martin

[Bobomo]

If you haven't deleted those old files eariler the NextPVR default with the Schedules Direct EPG is to do what you want, record shows you don't have. If you have deleted them you would have to remove them the history with the command

nextpvr -removehistory

If you have changed EPG source you are out of luck.

Martin

I don't think there is any connection between the current installation of NPVR and the files, nor do I use Schedules Direct. Hence my desire to replicate the data in the database so that NPVR thinks that it did record them. Where are the unique identifiers of previous recordings stored?

[mvallevand]

There is a unique file information in the scheduled recording, recently deleted and epg_event. However it is pointless modifying them if you don't match the rule is used in the daily epg update process and it sounds like your source doesn't have it for these files. Likely you are missing the sub-title record.

Frankly saving you $25 a year makes it hard for me to justify time on the thread.

Martin

[Bobomo]

My issue has nothing to do with a lack of Schedules Direct subscription. So sorry to have wasted your time.

[mvallevand]

No it seems your data source is bad, improve the source and NextPVR will avoid duplicates. Title and description are typically not enough.

Martin

[sub]

Unfortunately the avoid duplicates stuff is based on the unique ids from the EPG source. For most people in North America, this means Schedules Direct, where they're just a big unique number which would be pretty much impossible to know in advance.

If you look at C:\Users\Public\NPVR\recording-backup.xml, you can check the unique IDs for the recordings you have made. It's hard to guess what it might be if you're in North America and not using Schedules Direct. If you've got an EPG source with season/episode numbers, then it's probably a string constructed from the name and season/episode numbers. If you EPG source doesn't have any unique IDs, then it isn't able to avoid duplicates with the limited data in your EPG.

To get video files into the database as recordings, you could make a file in the format of recording-backup.xml and import it. It's not clear you'd be able to construct the right formats for those airings to be avoided for future recordings.

[p37307]

No it seems your data source is bad, improve the source and NextPVR will avoid duplicates. Title and description are typically not enough.

Martin

I wish NPVR could look at the title and season number in it's series folder for duplicates. I am not a programmer so I don't know the mechanics around how much sub and the rest of the software contributors would have to do to make that a feature.

I have amassed many TV shows from DVD's from where movie rental stores close and auction their stock that I am adding to my "video jukebox".
This would be great. I currently have a manual list of those conversions and have them in the right series folders with a H (for hold) as the first letter in their names and let a duplicate start recording then manually cancel it just so it is in the database then delete it and remove the "H".

[Graham]

I am trying to pick up some reruns to complete a series that I am archiving.

Unfortunately the avoid duplicates stuff is based on the unique ids from the EPG source. For most people in North America, this means Schedules Direct, where they're just a big unique number which would be pretty much impossible to know in advance.

Does your EPG source provide series and episode numbers? NextPVR uses the series and episode number data to populate the "unique_id" column in the "epg_event" table in the database. NextPVR uses the values in the "unique_id" column to differentiate between one show and another and to avoid duplicates when recording. Does the "unique_id" column in your NextPVR database have values for the show that you wish to record?

You might be able to set an "Advanced Rule" as something like ... unique_id NOT IN ('Family Guy-S004E013' , 'Family Guy-S004E014' ... ) ... http://nextpvr.com/nwiki/pmwiki.php?n=Co...ancedRules

[BrettB]

I wish NPVR could look at the title and season number in it's series folder for duplicates. I am not a programmer so I don't know the mechanics around how much sub and the rest of the software contributors would have to do to make that a feature.

I have amassed many TV shows from DVD's from where movie rental stores close and auction their stock that I am adding to my "video jukebox".
This would be great. I currently have a manual list of those conversions and have them in the right series folders with a H (for hold) as the first letter in their names and let a duplicate start recording then manually cancel it just so it is in the database then delete it and remove the "H".

One comment for you. The deletion history feature wasn't really designed to support the function that you are trying to do. (i.e. fill in all episodes of old series shows). It's really intended to prevent recording multiple airings of the same episode in around the same time frame (when it airs on say a Tuesday night and then again on Friday night or something similar). It is also used to prevent NextPVR from rescheduling a match to a recurring recording rule after you have explicitly deleted one of those instances before it actually gets recorded.

You are going through a lot of effort to try to populate this history table with additional data. Be sure that you are aware that NextPVR cleans out old data from that table (by default anything recorded more than 90 days ago, I believe). So I would also recommend that you make sure to increase the setting in config.xml:

Code:

<DeletionHistoryDays>90</DeletionHistoryDays>

FWIW: I'm not sure what the maximum value is. Or the performance impact (if any) of having this much higher.