[mythtv] Storage Groups functionality

[Steven Adeff]

On 2/6/06, Jay R. Ashworth <jra at baylink.com> wrote:
> On Mon, Feb 06, 2006 at 04:39:40PM -0500, Steven Adeff wrote:
> > On 2/6/06, Jay R. Ashworth <jra at baylink.com> wrote:
> > > We keep *seasons* of shows around on-line, because it's convenient to
> > > refer back to them.  My personal goal would be to be able to buy a used
> > > jukebox off someone on eBay, and have it filled with shows which were
> > > archived off the MythBox (preferably as-transcoded to MPEG-4), and have
> > > all the metadata live in the system, so that if we wanted to look at
> > > something, we could just hit play, and the box would tell the juke to
> > > either mount said disc, or copy the file in to staging for playing from
> > > HDD.  Or, at the very least, to prompt us to manually drop a DVD-R in
> > > the drive for said purposes, as a first cut.
> > >
> > > You understand what I mean, though?  My personal wish is for Myth to
> > > *natively* support archiving of programs which it still considers under
> > > it's control.
> > >
> > > This would generalize not only to DVD-R's as above, but to multiple
> > > disconnected hard-drives, identifiable by VOLID or mount point.
> >
> > so basically you want to merge the Watch Recordings screen and MythVideo?
>
> Explicitly, no.
>
> MythVideo a) is out-of-band to the normal use of the box, and b) ...
> well, I dunno; let me think on that further; perhaps my knee was
> jerking.  I don't *think* so, though; MythVideo is sort of a second
> class citizen.
>
> For example, programs moved from Myth to MV would no longer be skipped
> in recording schedules, I don't think.
>
> > Right now I add my archived shows manually to the db to list them in
> > my Watch Recordings screen, they're symlinked from nfs mounted drives.
> > I wrote a perl program to scrape tv.com for the show information and
> > add the show to the recorded table in the db. I archive in xvid avi's
> > so no mythcommflag --rebuild is required, but I've included in my perl
> > program a check so that if the file being added is an mpeg it will run
> > mythcommflag after db insertion.
>
> But you already *recorded them* though myth in the first place, no?  So
> why *dump* all the metadata in the first place?

yes and no. Some are shows from BBC/Sky One shows that I don't get
here. Some are shows I downloaded before I had a MythTV machine, some
are shows I ripped from my TiVo, etc. Most of which are xvid
transcodes done outside of Myth. So now I'll take my Myth recordings,
transcode them on my other machine, save the output to one of my
archive drives and use my script to import them into the Watch
Recordings list.

I do this because I don't like the built in transcoding to mpeg-4, I
prefer more control over the encode. I could just relink them in the
db but this method lets me more easily import more than what I've
recorded in Myth without having to have two seperate processes as
well.

Eventually I'll buy them on HD-DVD, and hopefully hdd costs will come
down enough that I won't have to transcode I can just commercial cut
and have a huge RAID5/RAID6 array for my recordings so I can keep them
like this until I can purchase them on HD-DVD (or regular DVD
depending on the show).


> > I also like the idea of being able to "hot-mount" drives under the
> > recordings drive and have Myth import the shows automatically. Perhaps
> > an xml file with the same base name as the recorded file that contains
> > the information Myth needs (the shows guide information, etc). This
> > way Myth just has to keep watch for newly mounted subdirectories and
> > then scan the xml files.
>
> I was merely looking for Myth to a) permit them to be recorded on/moved
> to that removable drive, and b) not have apoplexy if they're
> temporarily off-line -- while still otherwise treating them as
> first-class citizens.

something I'd live to see as well, just trying to think out some ideas
for how to implement.

--
Steve