[mythtv-users] Why are some seriesid's SHnnnnnnn and some EPnnnnnnn?

f-myth-users at media.mit.edu f-myth-users at media.mit.edu
Mon Sep 17 06:13:18 UTC 2007


    > Date: Mon, 17 Sep 2007 00:42:37 -0400
    > From: "Michael T. Dean" <mtdean at thirdcontact.com>

    > On 09/16/2007 10:45 PM, f-myth-users at media.mit.edu wrote:
    > > [I'm not sure if this is going to turn into a -dev issue, so I'll
    > > start on -users for now.]
    > >
    > > Shortly after the DD->SD cutover, I got screwed because one of the
    > > series I record had its seriesid change from SHnnnnnn format to
    > > EPnnnnnn format and I didn't catch it in time---because -almost-
    > > everything else stayed the same.

    > How do you mean you "got screwed?"  Myth doesn't use the seriesid to
    > identify shows to record.  It matches on titles.

Some further exploration (which I only discovered after reading your
"matches on titles" above and looking specifically at titles in the
database) yielded -half- of an explanation---as near as I can tell,
for the seriesid that changed in mid-Aug, the program title acquired
a "The " at the beginning that it didn't have before.  (I say "as near
as I can tell" because I can't actually see mid-Aug, but I can
certainly see that current episodes have a different title than they
did before mid-Aug.)  That presumably caused matching to fail.  That
it also changed seriesid is a clue that perhaps somebody created a
brand new database record over in TMS-land and changed two things at
once, halfway through a season.  [Or, perhaps, it's a symptom of the
DD->SD cutover and the seriesid stayed constant until the end of Aug
when I started pulling from SD; since I don't have recordings from
that interval, I can't check anything in my DB.  And see below.]

Some more exploration (comparing the two records in "record" for the
second series that failed) finally revealed that I'd inadvertently
told it to "record in this timeslot every week" instead of what I'd
-meant- to say, namely "record one showing of this title each week".
(The series had started with generic descriptions and was on several
times a week; eventually it acquired real descriptions, and sometime
after -that-, it changed timeslots...)  I think I'd also gotten in the
habit of using timeslot recordings because of the peculiar rules about
how a "week" starts based on the -day- you created the "once per weeK"
rules having screwed me at one point; however, I've just checked my DB
and I don't have any other timeslot/week recordings, so I think I'm
safe there.  (Another reason why direct DB access is good; I can't
imagine an easy way of getting this through the Myth UI, but it's a
trivial select.)

    >                                                   That's why if you do
    > an "any time on any channel" rule for "King of the Hill", you'll record
    > the animated series or any of the (about 4) movies with that title.  Or,
    > you can get the series House or the (5) movies House...  Or, you can
    > actually get the X-Files series /and/ the movie spin-off (and many other
    > similar series/movie spinoff combos).  (Of course, you /could/ make a
    > custom rule that matches on seriesid (and break this nice feature), but
    > that doesn't mean you should--see below.)

That's not what I've been doing.  I've simply been clicking on shows
using MythWeb and setting either "record at any time on channel FOO"
or "record at any time on any channel", depending on whether the show
was likely to ever move channels (most won't).  And neither of these
series has the defaults of "check for duplicates in: all recordings" &
"duplicate check method: subtitle and description" changed, either, so
that's not it (and if it -was- it, they'd have still at least shown a
variety of dashes around appearances in MythWeb's scheduling grid,
etc, instead of acting as if I'd never told Myth about them at all).

    > It is used--in a sense--to detect duplicates.  Therefore, if you mean,
    > "I got screwed because it recorded a show I had already watched," you
    > need to rethink your definition of screwed.

That wasn't my definition of "screwed", so you need to rethink your
default assumption.  (I think that assuming that anyone would say
"screwed" when they meant "too much got recorded" is needlessly
condescending.  I'd like to assume that almost everyone reading this
would have assumed that "screwed" meant "recording did not happen",
since that's the outcome that's hard to correct; I'd also like to
assume that you're not deliberately looking to condescend.)

    > See:
    > http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/mythtv/users/169129#169129
    > and
    > http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/mythtv/users/169259#169259

    > (Heh.  And in the second message, Bruce even mentioned that I'll one day
    > link to his seriesid messages.)

Those are useful, and since they date from 2005, they probably
describe the behavior of thet 0.18.1 that I'm running, too.

But then I'm still left wondering why seriesid's are changing at all
from TMS-land.  It seems all the -recent- stuff (e.g., anything I've
fetched through SD and not DD) is certainly coming back with SP-format
seriesid's and not EP-format; if this is an inadvertent change caused
by some sort of massaging in SD-land, somebody should take a look at
it, and if it's a deliberate change, somebody should document it---
especially for those of us who might be using the database in
nontraditional ways (e.g., for tools outside of Myth).  It's clear
that -something- has changed there, and I wonder if it's a sentinel
of other changes that might cause things to break.  And it's for
-damned- sure I'd have been faster to figure out the -real- cause
for the failed recordings if there hadn't been a simultaneous change
in one or both of the seriesid/programid fields; that was quite a
red herring and wasted a good bit of my time.


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