Questions about CONFIG.XML

[Joram]

Happy New Year.

Is there a comprehensive guide to the lines in the config.xml file, particularly to the settings that aren't displayed in the settings UI? The wiki includes this page but there's not a whole lot of information there.

Many of the settings are self-explanatory or easily figured out, but others are mysterious to me as a NextPVR novice. In particular:

1. LastChannel: Currently set (by default?) at 0. What other settings are available, and what does the setting do or change?
   
2. OldStyleTimeLine: What does changing this do?
   
3. HDPVRBufferLonger: Does this control the length of the video buffer for owners of the HDPVR?
   
4. PreferredMenuStyle2: What does this setting mean?
   
5. ComSkipStartOffset and ComSkipEndOffset: Currently set to 0. What can I change them to, and what do they do?
   
6. ManualRecordingDays: Currently set to 10. What does this setting control?
   
7. ClientMode: Currently set to "false". What does changing it to "true" do?
   
8. CacheInLiveTVBuffer: Currently at "false". What does setting it to "true" do?
   

There are many other settings where the name is clear enough to my mind that no further explanation is needed, or clear enough that I can safely tinker with the setting, but the ones above stump me.

Lastly, in the web UI, what is "immediate skip" and how does it compare to any other kind of skip? What MCE button controls it, if any?

Thanks for any information that knowledgeable NPVR users might provide. As a side benefit, the info gleaned might be suitable for adding to the Advanced Configuration wiki page.

[mvallevand]

That's not really "the wiki" just something I capture form the old v4 wiki which suffers from more than a decade of neglect. Best to search the forum to see if you can find the information on specific item and then if you are really keen write it up in the the real wiki which most users won't read anyway.

Martin

[sub]

Answers to some of those:

<LastChannel> is no longer used.

<HDPVRBufferLonger> pauses playback when switching channel (in NextPVR.exe) when using an HDPVR, because this type of device can be slow to deliver data

<PreferredMenuStyle2> this is the 'Menu Style' setting in the NextPVR.exe settings screen.

<ManualRecordingDays> is how far it'll look ahead when scheduling recurring manual recordings. ie, with 10, if you have a daily recording, you'll have 10 of them. If it's weekly, you'll have 1 recording.

<ClientMode> is no longer used

<CacheInLiveTVBuffer> when watching live tv in the web browser, it creates temp hls files in web/temp/ by default. With this set to true, it instead uses the LiveTVBufferDirectory

[BrettB]

1. ComSkipStartOffset and ComSkipEndOffset: Currently set to 0. What can I change them to, and what do they do?
   

When you use an EDL (i.e. Comskip) file, it has beginning and ending times for sections (i.e. commercials) to skip when playing back. These parameters let you automatically adjust those offsets. (Generally in case the detected sections aren't quite right.) So, for example, if you always wanted the automatic commercial skip to begin 10 seconds into the commercial, you would set a ComSkipStartOffset of 5. And if you wanted the play to resume 10 seconds before the end of the commercial, you would set ComSkipEndOffset to -10.

I haven't tested in a while, but I would guess that these still work. I'm also not sure about the units, but I'm guessing seconds. And I'm not sure about which is positive and which is negative. You can test and figure out.

[Joram]

I haven't tested in a while, but I would guess that these still work. I'm also not sure about the units, but I'm guessing seconds. And I'm not sure about which is positive and which is negative. You can test and figure out. 

Thanks for the info. So you can set NPVR to automatically go past the commercials, that's pretty neat.

I will definitely experiment with this setting once I wrap my head around the rest of them. 

[Joram]

Answers to some of those:

<LastChannel> is no longer used.

<HDPVRBufferLonger> pauses playback when switching channel (in NextPVR.exe) when using an HDPVR, because this type of device can be slow to deliver data

<PreferredMenuStyle2> this is the 'Menu Style' setting in the NextPVR.exe settings screen.

<ManualRecordingDays> is how far it'll look ahead when scheduling recurring manual recordings. ie, with 10, if you have a daily recording, you'll have 10 of them. If it's weekly, you'll have 1 recording.

<ClientMode> is no longer used

<CacheInLiveTVBuffer> when watching live tv in the web browser, it creates temp hls files in web/temp/ by default. With this set to true, it instead uses the LiveTVBufferDirectory

Great, this is very helpful. And I could even use it to put together drafts for descriptions of some of the settings on that Advanced Configuration page, at least the ones mentioned in this thread. What would be involved in doing this?

[mvallevand]

I posted something about OldStyleTimeLine here https://forums.nextpvr.com/showthread.ph...leTimeLine as I strongly prefer it

For the wiki you really would need to create an new section to document these settings, perhaps integrating some of the other info in my test wiki and cleaning it up and reformatting, what I did was quick and dirty, it might be easier to view the wayback machine copy of the wiki https://web.archive.org/web/202206301948...n.Advanced

To proceed you will need to learn a bit about the Markdown language so I suggest downloading and installing Visual Studio code or NotePad++ with Markdown (md) addongs the let you preview changes locally. It is pretty simple once you get the hang of it and you will find lots of Markdown references if you search.

To download the wiki and play a bit got to https://github.com/sub3/NextPVR and click Code and then download zip. I would be happy to upload any .md files you like. It doesn't have to look perfect

The expert level would be to learn git and download and upload changes yourself.

It might be worth noting whether settings are for the backend, NextPVR.exe and UI clients and we might even be able to remove some obsolete settings.

Martin

[Joram]

Thank you, Martin. Because of the formatting aspect, it looks like rather more effort than I'd envisioned, which was to insert new text in the existing "quick and dirty" page that looks nice enough, leaving everything else as is. But here's an idea:

In order (hopefully) to minimize the effort and learning curve, would it be possible to use something like this to create the text in Word and then have it converted to the proper format? Or maybe this (there's a 14-day free trial)?

[Joram]

Getting back to the config.xml file, is it recommended to close NPVR web and/or client before saving changes to the file, or does it not matter and NPVR can be left running?

[mvallevand]

I think creating it in Word would be more difficult.

If you just edit Configuration.Advanced from that zip file I think all you really need to do is remove all the <div></div> blocks to clean it up and follow the same format with a text editor (like VS Code or Notepad++ which has as portable edition.

I would suggest stopping everything since they are cached internally even if I don't always follow that rule myself. These are really meant for on-the-fly editing.

Martin