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[ErikN]

Disabling 'delete' from theater view options appears to only affect non-TV recordings. This makes sense in many cases where you record-watch-delete. However, I very frequently want to keep a recording and prevent accidental deletion (frequently by my kids). 

After much experimentation, it appears that any video with a "Recording Rule ID" tag will show 'delete' even if theater view deletion is disabled. However, for some reason this tag is protected and cannot be removed from within MC. The only way I've found to remove the tag is by removing the video from MC's library, editing the sidecar XML, and re-importing -- which is a major pain.

I'm open to any one these
 1) If a means already exists, how I can remove 'delete' in theater view for a TV recording?
 2) Can "Recording Rule ID" tag be made editable (I don't understand why it is under lock-and-key anyway)
 3) Or, can there be some way of tagging a TV Recording as protected / not-deletable ?

Thanks!

[Yaobing]

None of the three things you ask are currently available.

[ErikN]

Not what I wanted to hear but thank you

For some future release, be it MC24 update or MC25, could the "Recording Rule ID" be made clearable? 

More broadly, it should be possible to clear/remove any tag that doesn't represent an intrinsic property of the media.

[Yaobing]

I was thinking either making the field editable, or making a separate option in TV Options.  I think the latter is better because messing with TV Recording Rule ID field could potentially mess up some functionality.

[ErikN]

I have been giving this more thought and, since the feature hasn't shown up in release notes yet, assume it is still on the drawing board.  I'd like to lobby for making the field removable or editable.

From what I can deduce, the purpose of the field is to bind a video to a recording rule. This has at least two key consequences
   (1) Delete is presented as an option in theater view
   (2) The rule's retention (aka delete) policy will be applied

When I first requested this I had not considered (2) which, to me, is even more lethal. A transcoded and then re-imported video could be deleted if I ever accidentally changed the associated rule to "delete after <some amount of time>". 

Allowing removal of "Recording ID" would allow users to disconnect assets from associated recording rules. I'd even be happy with the "Recording ID" going away when the referenced rule no longer exists.  Does any feature rely on an orphaned ID for a rule deleted three years ago?

[RoderickGI]

Disabling 'delete' from theater view options appears to only affect non-TV recordings. This makes sense in many cases where you record-watch-delete. However, I very frequently want to keep a recording and prevent accidental deletion (frequently by my kids).

We are talking about the setting at "Options > Theatre View > Behaviour > Allow file deletion", correct? That controls the availability of the "Delete" function in the top menu in Theatre View.

Maybe rather than making the [Recording Rule ID] tag editable, which is still a bit of an indirect way of preventing deletion, that setting should apply to TV Recordings as well. That would make the most sense to me, and it wouldn't affect any TV functionality, which relies on the [Recording Rule ID] to identify which files are TV Recordings. It is core functionality.


At first I thought that you meant the setting at "Options > Television > Advanced > Offer to delete a recorded show after it is watched". That setting provides a popup at the end of playback of a TV recording offering to delete the program. I could see kids accidentally deleting shows they had watched via the popup. But that popup defaults to cancel, so they would have to deliberately select Delete to actually delete the show.

If you have that popup turned off, then the kids would have to deliberately select the Delete option in the top menu, because, well, they had finished with them! Or maybe if recording space is limited, they delete your shows to make space for theirs? Or shows they don't like? Or maybe they just want to clear a show from the list they see, and don't understand that the program is gone and can't be retrieved? (You could do that with a View modification, that hid shows which have been watched in the kids views, but not your views. Some work, but doable.) Regardless, accidental deletion is difficult to do, and even very young kids learn how to drive software quickly these days! Maybe some more training in the use of MC would help.

After much experimentation, it appears that any video with a "Recording Rule ID" tag will show 'delete' even if theater view deletion is disabled. However, for some reason this tag is protected and cannot be removed from within MC. The only way I've found to remove the tag is by removing the video from MC's library, editing the sidecar XML, and re-importing -- which is a major pain.

I'm open to any one these
 1) If a means already exists, how I can remove 'delete' in theater view for a TV recording?

As above, I think all areas of Theatre View, including the TV sections, should honour the "Allow file deletion" setting.

2) Can "Recording Rule ID" tag be made editable (I don't understand why it is under lock-and-key anyway)

I don't think that is a good, non-technical solution that all users would know about and hence use. It's not editable because it is part of core MC TV functionality. However...

A transcoded and then re-imported video could be deleted if I ever accidentally changed the associated rule to "delete after <some amount of time>".

A file transcoded in MC should not retain the [Recording Rule ID] tag, because it is no longer a TV Recording but just a video file. Some people may disagree with that, because they have automatic transcoding going on, but I think in those cases programs should be manually deleted, which is best done in Standard View, because those users are manually managing the files anyway.

I wondered if this issue was really happening though. Because a transcoding of a file normally means that the file name changes, so a new Sidecar file would have to be created. The [Recording Rule ID] tag is only stored in the Library and Sidecar file, so in order to retain it MC is deliberately copying the value across... So I tested. Okay, I just converted a JTV recording to a MPG video, and the [Recording Rule ID] tag was indeed carried across to the Sidecar for the new file. I think this should be changed.

However, a solution is available right now via the following functionality.

   (2) The rule's retention (aka delete) policy will be applied

This can be avoided easily. In Standard View, go to Television > Recordings > Right-click on the recording you wish to keep > select "Exempt from automatic cleanup". The cleanup rule won't be applied to that recording, even though the recording is still linked to the Recording Rule, theoretically. I haven't actually tested that recently. Note that a trancoded video file which still has a value in the [Recording Rule ID] tag will still appear in the Televison section, even though it isn't a TV Recording anymore.

Reference: https://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php/topic,117026.msg809462.html#msg809462

3) Or, can there be some way of tagging a TV Recording as protected / not-deletable ?

Not really. Write protecting the file would do it, but it would have other consequences, such as tags wouldn't write to the file, and you would have to remove the protection before you could delete it in future.

It wouldn't be bad to be able to tag any file in MC as "Do not delete", so that deletion via MC wasn't possible. Of course, a user could still delete a file via Windows Explorer or another external method. Adding "Do not delete" functionality to MC would be a larger modification, I think, unless MC always calls a subset of code to delete any file. But I think this would be a good change.



This is a good topic. Some improvements to MC could be made.

[ErikN]

I do not transcode within MC. The process is roughly :
   - Transcode  .ts to .mp4 using an external program
   - Copy  whatever_ts_sidecar to whatever_mp4_sidecar
   - Import mp4

The problem is that the sidecar carries over the RecordingID, MC happily imports the field, and now (over three years of doing this) I have 100s of files marked with "Recording IDs" that are not actually TV Recordings. In most cases the rule no longer exists either.

The very short version of my question: How do I fix these?  They are not TV Recordings.

Going forward I ~could~ purge the new sidecars of this field. However, MC is generally so open about users modifying tags I am surprised at the hesitation. I would be thrilled at any of the following :  Editing the field, Editing the field only if the rule no longer exists, being able to change the field to editable in the tag config options, a menu command "Remove item from TV recordings" which removes the ID, or really anything that ultimately allows me to remove the erroneous tags. 

My comment about the "rule retention policy" is that ~IF~ I accidentally changed a rule from "Exempt" to "cleanup after X" my not-actually-tv-recordings could get deleted.

As an aside, I do not ever use MC's transcoding because, at least in MC21, it had a critical bug making it unusable. If there is corruption in the source (common in over-the-air recordings) the audio/video can lose sync. I'm almost certain I know why but it's a separate topic and I a have more control over encode settings using an external utility.

I really appreciate the discussion. Thank you!

[RoderickGI]

I do not transcode within MC. The process is roughly :
   - Transcode  .ts to .mp4 using an external program to a location outside Auto Import settings
   - Copy  whatever_ts_sidecar to whatever_mp4_sidecar to the new location next to the mp4
   - Edit the sidecar file to remove the [Recording Rule ID] tag
   - Move the resulting files back into a location that Auto Import scans, and so Import mp4

In that case, as the mp4 is a new file to be imported into MC, all you would need to do to avoid this issue would be to edit the whatever_mp4_sidecar to remove the [Recording Rule ID] tag before the file is imported into MC. My only caution in doing that would be to make sure that when you transcode externally, you initially save the mp4 to a location that MC's Auto Import function doesn't look at, so that it doesn't get imported before you get a chance to edit the sidecar file. either that or turn of Auto Import before you do a transcode. Or copy and edit the sidecar file before transcoding.

So basically just add the steps I added in red above.

The very short version of my question: How do I fix these?  They are not TV Recordings.

The simple answer is to select all the files affected in the Television Recordings view, right-click on them, and select "Exempt from automatic cleanup". Once that is done the Recording Rule Data Retention rules will not be applied to that file, and it is not possible to "un-exempt" a file that has been exempted.

My comment about the "rule retention policy" is that ~IF~ I accidentally changed a rule from "Exempt" to "cleanup after X" my not-actually-tv-recordings could get deleted.

As above, if you mark a file as exempt, it can't be deleted by any rule still associated with the file. Okay, I still haven't tested this properly, as there is still a few hours before the recording I set up yesterday with a one day retention kicks in. But that is the way the functionality is supposed to work, and if it doesn't work I'm sure Yaobing would fix it. I don't know how this exemption works in the background, but I do know it leaves the [Recording Rule ID] tag intact.

However, MC is generally so open about users modifying tags I am surprised at the hesitation.

Well, what gets done is entirely up to Yaobing and JRiver, so you may get what you want. From my point of view though, not many people understand the functionality built around the [Recording Rule ID] tag, in that it identifies a file as a TV Recording, and hence a lot of TV functionality uses it, particularly cleanup functionality, but also the recording of repeats or not, and so forth. So if a user could edit the [Recording Rule ID] tag, they could break TV functionality that they want to use, even without knowing. Editing the tag could result in unexpected results, such as recordings being deleted by retention rules associated with a different Recording Rule.

So the [Recording Rule ID] tag isn't like most other tags in MC. It has dependencies.

Editing the field only if the rule no longer exists, being able to change the field to editable in the tag config options, a menu command "Remove item from TV recordings" which removes the ID, or really anything that ultimately allows me to remove the erroneous tags. 

Maybe editing or deleting of the tag could be allowed if the file type isn't JTV or TS, in which case it isn't an original TV Recording. That would be a bit more work though.

As an aside, I do not ever use MC's transcoding because, at least in MC21, it had a critical bug making it unusable. If there is corruption in the source (common in over-the-air recordings) the audio/video can lose sync. I'm almost certain I know why but it's a separate topic and I a have more control over encode settings using an external utility.

Yeah, the Conversion functionality in MC is still waiting for a major upgrade. As far as I know it also still only outputs stereo audio, downconverting multi-channel audio, which is annoying. It doesn't even do a great job in the downconversion. It would probably still suffer from sync issues when there are glitches. Not sure, but I know it hasn't had any love yet.

I also convert externally if I want to retain a TV recording, but wish to trim off padding times and remove ads. So I completely understand.