Topic: TV Recording Directories (Read 9489 times)

pbrigido · « **on:** October 04, 2016, 09:40:00 am »

Good morning,

I've recently started using JRiver. I've found it to be a great piece of software so far.

One thing I've been trying to figure out how to do, is setup OTA TV recordings to their own directories. For example, if Blindside recorded, I would like it to have its own directory created, and the recording goes in there. I have Plex setup to scan the recording destination, and I'm trying to stick with the directory naming convention based on the show name, then by season, then by episode number.

I'm also looking for a way to automatically name the recordings with the S01E01 naming convention. THe show title and episode name are present

Thanks!

-Phil

RoderickGI · « **Reply #1 on:** October 04, 2016, 04:33:41 pm »

The creation and naming of directories that recordings go into is not configurable. If you use the JTV recording format all recordings are put into their own directory, but then PLEX wouldn't be able to read them. I assume you use the TS recording format so PLEX can read them. I don't use that format, but I assume all recordings just go into the directory defined in Options as the recording directory.

If you want TS recordings in their own directory you will need to use the MC "Rename, Move, & Copy Files..." to move them to where you want. You may be able to automate that process. You could also just run it manually using the "Recently Imported" playlist, or a custom Smartlist as a list of programs to move. Search the forums and see what others have done.

If your EPG data has Season and Episode numbers in it, all recordings are named in the format "Series - SxxEyy - Episode Name". If your files aren't getting that, you don't have Season and Episode numbers in your EPG. Again, there has been a lot of discussion about this topic. A search will find multiple solutions, depending on where you are located.

pbrigido · « **Reply #2 on:** October 05, 2016, 08:16:56 am »

Quote from: RoderickGI on October 04, 2016, 04:33:41 pm

The creation and naming of directories that recordings go into is not configurable. If you use the JTV recording format all recordings are put into their own directory, but then PLEX wouldn't be able to read them. I assume you use the TS recording format so PLEX can read them. I don't use that format, but I assume all recordings just go into the directory defined in Options as the recording directory.

If you want TS recordings in their own directory you will need to use the MC "Rename, Move, & Copy Files..." to move them to where you want. You may be able to automate that process. You could also just run it manually using the "Recently Imported" playlist, or a custom Smartlist as a list of programs to move. Search the forums and see what others have done.

If your EPG data has Season and Episode numbers in it, all recordings are named in the format "Series - SxxEyy - Episode Name". If your files aren't getting that, you don't have Season and Episode numbers in your EPG. Again, there has been a lot of discussion about this topic. A search will find multiple solutions, depending on where you are located.

Hi RoderickGI,

Thanks for the excellent info! I used NextPVR for a few weeks, but had EPG errors that couldn't be corrected. WMC is limited with its TV saving storage location (has to be on a local drive). Plex DVR is still in beta, and currently has a ton of bugs to be worked out. JRiver is extremely impressive with its features. This one limitation is very small...and far from a deal breaker. I'll be popping over to purchase my full version soon.

Thanks again!

-Phil

muzicman0 · « **Reply #3 on:** October 05, 2016, 05:16:10 pm »

I haven't tried it, but could you add a tag in the recording rule that specifies the directory you want (Filename (Path)). It would still record in the configured directory, but I think it would move the file after the recording is finished.

I will test and see.

muzicman0 · « **Reply #4 on:** October 05, 2016, 05:36:32 pm »

Yep, it worked.

It recorded in the normal recording directory, but as soon as I cancelled the recording, it moved it to the custom path that I specified in the rule.

As far as season and episode info, as RoderickGI mentioned, if your EPG source has that info, it will be included in the filename. Mine does, so for me it just works. If you use the free EPG that JRiver defaults to, then you won't. I pay $25 per year.

There is also a program called XMLTVDB that will take a XMLTV file and add season and episode info that I found and used a while ago. Then you import the enhanced file. it worked pretty well, and was stable for me. Others had some issues using it, but if I remember correctly, CountryBumpkin wrote up a step by step guide on how to use it.

RoderickGI · « **Reply #5 on:** October 05, 2016, 11:02:52 pm »

That was a good idea Muzicman0. That used to be how files were moved before the R,M,&CF function was created, I believe.

I'll have to try that, to see if I can get it to move TV recordings to a sub-directory named after the Series. It is a little bit of a blunt and very powerful tool, and I know there are consequences of doing it that why, if something is done wrong. If the tag is ever left blank the files are deleted, or something like that. Or maybe it was just the [filename] or [filename (name)] tags and not the [filename (path)] tag. A search would probably find discussion on the issues in the last couple of years.

muzicman0 · « **Reply #6 on:** October 05, 2016, 11:42:33 pm »

In my test, I did specify a non existent path, and it did create it, but I didn't use any fields, although I have in the past in other rules, and it works just fine.

I would think if you specified something like D:\[Series]\ as the path, but for whatever reason [Series] doesn't exist, it would just record to D:\.

Can't be certain though.

imeric · « **Reply #7 on:** October 08, 2016, 02:16:34 pm »

Quote from: muzicman0 on October 05, 2016, 11:42:33 pm

In my test, I did specify a non existent path, and it did create it, but I didn't use any fields, although I have in the past in other rules, and it works just fine.

I would think if you specified something like D:\[Series]\ as the path, but for whatever reason [Series] doesn't exist, it would just record to D:\.

Can't be certain though.

muzicman0 this didn't work for me. I'm recording using TS files and here is what I used. I unchecked this box and will see what happens tonight. (See snapshot)

Can you confirm it works for a subscription recording that you record completely?

thx

muzicman0 · « **Reply #8 on:** October 08, 2016, 10:35:11 pm »

I'll try it tonight.

muzicman0 · « **Reply #9 on:** October 09, 2016, 12:14:16 am »

It sort of worked...I accidentally closed the Series tag with a } instead of ], so I ended up with D:\Recorded TV\[Series}\Season2\NCIS_ New Orleans - S02E07 - Broken Hearted

Yaobing · « **Reply #10 on:** October 09, 2016, 01:52:10 pm »

It worked for me too. I tried one recording this morning, using a tagging instruction similar to yours. The recording was moved into the correct folder (that did not pre-exist).

Did you double-check that the EPG entry that you tried to record actually did have [Season] and [Series] filled? If [Series] was empty, I can imagine MC having trouble creating a path with an empty string in it.

muzicman0 · « **Reply #11 on:** October 09, 2016, 01:55:00 pm »

And if it istill empty, just hard code it, since it is a rule in that subscription.

Yaobing · « **Reply #12 on:** October 09, 2016, 02:21:18 pm »

Quote from: muzicman0 on October 09, 2016, 01:55:00 pm

And if it istill empty, just hard code it, since it is a rule in that subscription.

Exactly.

For my test, however, I made up series number (100) and episode number (100) for an episode of Curious George this morning. I faked those numbers in the respective fields, so I could test how it worked. If you are scheduling a single recording, you could just hard-code "Season 100", instead of "Season [Season]", or, maybe more importantly, "\Curious George\", instead of "\[Series]\", if the show does not actually have the fields filled.

imeric · « **Reply #13 on:** October 09, 2016, 04:58:32 pm »

It worked last night! Not sure why this box needs to be unchecked though?

And the Season number didn't have but a zero but RMC adds one.
I'll just add a 0 to my tagging rule.

Just noticed sidecar files don't seem to get created anymore for TS files? But it did get created for this recording... Did this change ? I recall having seen a note on .ts changes does it support metadata now?..

muzicman0 · « **Reply #14 on:** October 09, 2016, 05:23:56 pm »

Oh, I missed that you had that box checked. It would for sure need to be unchecked. If you think about it, that field will have a value, since it already has an existing path. So, by checking that box, you are effectively telling MC to ignore the change. With it unchecked, it will force it to move.

imeric · « **Reply #15 on:** October 09, 2016, 05:25:08 pm »

True..True...Thought about it later on but techinically the whole Tag is actually unique..Anyhow it works now thanks!

RoderickGI · « **Reply #16 on:** October 21, 2016, 08:29:12 pm »

Okay, this isn't working the way I would like. Maybe because I'm using the JTV recording format.

I don't want to override or duplicate the file and directory naming that MC uses when it creates a JTV file set. That would be just time consuming and complex.

I tested this on three programs;

1. "ABC News" which is recorded nightly at 7:00pm. Usually MC creates a directory such as "E:\Recorded TV\ABC News 2016-10-20" and uses the file names like "ABC News 2016-10-20.jtv" inside that directory, which is all good.

The first time the recording ran on October 20th with a rule in place setting [Filename (path)] to "E:\Recorded TV\ABC News\", where that directory didn't already exist, the process failed and the recording was stored under the usual directory structure. However, at the same time, the directory "E:\Recorded TV\ABC News\" was created successfully. Tagging errors were reported.

The second time the recording ran on October 21st and was saved in the new directory, with the full path to the JTV file of "E:\Recorded TV\ABC News\ABC News 2016-10-21.jtv", but that isn't what I wanted, as I still want each recording in its own directory, for easy management, particularly when I get multiple programs recorded together in the same directory, which is common for that time slot. I wanted to see MC enforce its "one directory for each JTV recording file set" rule, which it does when trying to move a JTV recording using the RM&CF function. So I wanted to see the full path to the file name become "E:\Recorded TV\ABC News\ABC News 2016-10-21\ABC News 2016-10-21.jtv".

I shall see if MC writes a second episode of the program into the new directory tonight.

Now I could write a rule that created such a directory structure, but I prefer not to, leaving the standard MC functionality to handle that part of the process. It will be faster and less prone to errors when data doesn't exist in the EPG, for example when I want to include Series/Season/Episode number for example into the directory structure.

2. The second program I tested was "QI". In this case the Series directory "E:\Recorded TV\QI" already existed, and contained subdirectories such as "QI - S13E16 - Misconception" which were created by MC under the "E:\Recorded TV\" directory and then moved by me to the Series subdirectory.

MC refused to save a new recoding on October 21st into the "E:\Recorded TV\QI" Series directory, reporting tagging errors. It seems that with subdirectories already in the target directory MC doesn't want to add the files. For this reason it will be interesting to see if the second "ABC News" episode is written to a subdirectory that already contain a JTV file set.

The episode of QI on October 21st was saved to the usual directory structure, in this case under "E:\Recorded TV\QI - S11E08 - Keys".

3. The third program I tested was "Spicks and Specks". ~~This was exactly the same as the QI example above, with a pre-existing Series directory containing Episode subdirectories~~. Once again MC refused to save the files into the Series directory and saved them instead into the usual directory structure, "E:\Recorded TV\Spicks and Specks - Niki Vasilakis, Dave O'Neil, Brian Mannix & Denise Scott 2016-10-21".
Correction: The "Spicks and Specks" directory didn't exist before the first recording tried and did successfully create it. Also, there were and still are no recording subdirectories in that directory. My bad. Rushing too much. MC did refuse to save into the "Spicks and Specks" directory on subsequent recordings.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Yaobing it sounds like this works for TS recordings, based on comments above, and therefore it can solve the "We need more than one TV recording location in MC" issue. But it doesn't work how I would like for JTV files. MC does enforce the "JTV files must be in their own subdirectory" rule in all other areas. If it also enforced that rule when writing the [filename(path)] tag, then this would work fine for me.

Could MC be changed to enforce that rule in this situation? Maybe if the tagging rule was set to something like [Filename (path)] equal to "E:\Recorded TV\ABC News\*" (adding the * at the end of the path), MC could interpret that to mean add the usual subdirectory beneath that base path?

Anyway. I have left these rules in place, as I am not losing recordings. I shall report what happens after I get a couple more recordings for both types of examples above.

imeric · « **Reply #17 on:** October 22, 2016, 06:14:13 am »

I'm not going to read this just yet a little too long for the time I have but for me this is working perfectly.

Yaobing · « **Reply #18 on:** October 22, 2016, 09:01:42 am »

Somewhere the JTV file moving is not done correctly. When you move them using "Rename, move, & copy files" tool, a folder is created for them automatically.

I need to do two things, one is to make sure a folder is created automatically when moving jtv recordings. The other is to apply the tag at the start of recording so we will write directly into the designated folder so we do not need to move them afterward.

Hmm, now I realize that the second thing is not always possible to do. If you start recording on a channel that is running live already, then the recording folder is already created. Or if a user specifies different locations for consecutive recordings, they will be recorded into the same folder and only will be moved after recordings are done.

RoderickGI · « **Reply #19 on:** October 22, 2016, 07:04:17 pm »

It isn't as straight forward for JTV recordings, is it!

As I do watch stuff live, then decide to record it (meaning the whole program from the Time Shift buffer), any solution would need to be able to handle that situation.

The RM&CF function does give me some grief at times, where I have two or more programs in one subdirectory. Usually it works but tries to add an extra directory not required into the structure. It used to refuse to Move sometimes, but I think you have fixed that some time ago, although I may have seen it a couple of times since.

Anyway, if you can come up with a solution that works for JTV, that would be great.

RoderickGI · « **Reply #20 on:** October 23, 2016, 08:50:31 pm »

Well this just got complicated.

First, the programs last night that should have recorded, with padding on each shown at the end.
6:00pm, ABC 2, QI - Genius, 30 minute program, padding start +10, end +30
7:00pm, ABC 2, ABC News, 30 minute program, padding start +10, end +10
7:00pm, ABC 22, Spicks an Specks, 30 minute program, padding start +10, end +30

Note some of those start and finish times were out by 1 minute. I've simplified for clarity.

So "QI - Genius" started recording at 5:50pm and continued until 7:00pm, which is correct.
TV logs show this correctly. The program was saved in the "E:\Recorded TV\QI - S07E06 - Genius" directory, so the recording rule didn't work. It should have saved in "E:\Recorded TV\QI\QI - S07E06 - Genius". This may be explained because there were some TEMP files in the recording directory, probably indicating the channel was watched in Time Shift mode for a while, although I don't remember that. Also there is no file labelled "Time Shift", just jta, jtr, jts, jta.cnk, jts.cnk, all prefixed with "TEMP", so maybe something else went on. There weren't enough TEMP files for the whole program, just a few. It looks like they are from the padding period at the beginning of the program. The program is playable.
However, while there is only one listing for this program in MC, there are also some QI files (named the same as the correct recording files, without the JTV file, and duplicates of the correct files) in the ABC News directory "E:\Recorded TV\ABC News". Most strange. They look like files for the padding period of the ABC news, from 6:50pm to 7:00pm, which makes some sense given the overlap between the programs.

So "ABC News" started recording at 6:50pm and never stopped. It is still displayed as Currently Recording.
TV logs show the start and no finish for the recording. There was only one "ABC News" file made for this recording, the JTV file with a time stamp of 7:00pm. It was in the "E:\Recorded TV\ABC News" directory, so the recording rule worked. There are also the files named for QI, as mentioned above. Trying to play this file results in the message "No television tuner is available to fulfill your request" despite the "Show Status" dialogue showing all tuners idle, and live TV plays fine. There is a record of the recording in MC.
So either this rule broke the MC recording, or this program fell fowl of the conditions that create the never ending recording. Note that no files are being save anywhere even though MC think the recording is still going. When I selected the recording under "Television" in Standard View and clicked "Cancel Recording", MC came back with the message "This program has already finished", and did not clear the "Currently Recording" status. Closing MC and restarting it didn't fix that problem. In fact I got the message that MC was already running, even after waiting a while. Killing the MC process fixed the problem without needing to Cancel the recording. The program then became playable in MC, but was only 9 min 25 seconds long, and contained only the padding before the program.

So "Spicks and Specks" started recording at 6:50pm also and continued until 8:00pm, which is correct.
TV logs shows this correctly. The program was saved in the "E:\Recorded TV\Spicks and Specks - Ian Turpie, Cal Wilson, Dave Graney & Dave O'Neil 2016-10-23" directory, so the recording rule didn't work. There were also some TEMP files in that directory the same as for QI - Genius, being the padding at the beginning of the program. These TEMP files don't normally hang around when I'm not using this tagging in the recording rule. The program is playable.

A possible reason for the recording rule working for "ABC News" and not the other two programs is that the "ABC News" rule has several tags being added or updated, while the other two only have the [Filename (path)] tag updated.

So basically, using this recording rule based tagging to change the target directory, or have the recording moved, doesn't work now, and may break a recording, as with my ABC News, although that may have been coincidence. I don't usually see those ongoing recordings, but I have seen a few when I have been fiddling with MC a lot, changing settings and so on, as I was in this case.

I didn't log the above. I'm assuming that a log of the above process isn't required Yaobing, since you have a handle on the issues.

Sorry for the long post, but I would like this to work at some time in the future, if possible, so I wanted to test and document what happened.

imeric · « **Reply #21 on:** October 24, 2016, 07:43:14 am »

Out of curiosity, why the padding? How often will a show start early or end late? Kinda makes sense this is hard to manage for mc when recording overlapping shows especially if it's trying to move the file based on tags after

RoderickGI · « **Reply #22 on:** October 24, 2016, 04:01:00 pm »

Quote from: imeric on October 24, 2016, 07:43:14 am

Out of curiosity, why the padding?

TV Shows in Australia are notorious for starting late, sometimes a little early, and running way over time. Particularly sports and live programs, competitions, etc. Any delay just accumulates, so any late night shows can start quite late. My sport, MotoGP, has been know to start very late, 30 minutes or more for the actual race (rain etc.), and up to an hour late finishes, although that happens less often now.

I got extremely tired of missing either the start or finish of shows, so I have my default padding set to 10 and 30 minutes, and forget to change it back when I don't need that much, say with early shows, and on the ABC. Although you can see I have trimmed back the ABC News.

Whether it is 1 minutes of padding, or 60, MC still needs to be able to handle it. Yaobing will either work it out, or not.

Gotta love Australian FTA TV.

RoderickGI · « **Reply #23 on:** October 28, 2016, 09:47:03 pm »

Okay, I'm out of this experiment.

Sometimes it worked. Sometimes it didn't. Sometimes I got duplicate Time Shifting recordings.

Overall not worth the hassle of the errors created. Particularly the "Tagging error" popup message I was getting during prime time viewing, even while watching a Blu-ray! Very bad for the WAF.

INTERACT FORUM

Author Topic: TV Recording Directories (Read 9489 times)