[mythtv-users] preview generation now starts on marking on watch

[Michael T. Dean]

On 02/14/2012 05:53 PM, Richard Morton wrote:
> Just as the subject says...
> Recently; sorry I dont update the system often enough to pin it down...
>
> when I mark a a programme as watched, even though I havent set a 
> bookmark, preview generation starts. I am in fact marking it as 
> watched before deleting it, so when I try to delete the programme the 
> preview generation has locked the file for deletion (I have slow 
> deletes turned on btw). This never used to be a problem; I seem to 
> recall discussion about the change in the way preview generation was 
> handled so I guess this was the cause of the problem.
>
> Having looked in the archives I can't see this though. Am I imagining 
> things or has there been a change with 0.24

Marking a recording as watched updates the last modified time associated 
with that recording.  That triggers a new preview generation, so that 
any changes can be reflected in the preview.

In old MythTV, you were able to delete recordings when they were in use 
by other programs.  This lead to various problems, where in some cases 
the programs using the recording failed, or in others causing problems 
such as orphaned files or metadata.  Therefore, newer MythTV versions 
(don't remember exactly when it was changed, but I think it was around 
the 0.23 or 0.22 timeframe) prevent deletion of a recording when a 
program is in use.

Eventually, we'll likely allow the user to delete the program, but defer 
the actual deletion until the program is no longer in use (or something 
to that effect), but until then, you should just use MythTV in such a 
manner as to not be affected by the constraints of the current 
implementation.

And by that I mean that there is absolutely no benefit to marking a 
recording as watched before deletion.  Chances are you're marking as 
watched because you've enabled:

Auto-Expire instead of delete recording
If enabled, move deleted recordings to the 'Deleted' recgroup and turn 
on autoexpire instead of deleting immediately.

and you know that any show that is auto-expired is marked to allow 
re-record, with the exception of shows marked as watched, for those 
users who disable:

Re-record watched
If enabled, programs that have been marked as watched and are 
Auto-Expired will be re-recorded if they are shown again.

So, you're marking the shows as watched to prevent them from being 
marked to allow re-record.

However, what's not clear in our incomprehensible maze of "you can 
configure it any way you like--even in such a way as to completely break 
your recording history, if that's what you want" settings, any show 
that's "expired" from the Deleted recording group is not actually 
"auto-expired" under the rules that say "auto-expired recordings are 
always marked to allow re-record in accordance with the value of 
'Re-record watched'".  Instead, the /only/ thing that determines whether 
a recording in the Deleted recording group is allowed to re-record is 
the choice you made when you deleted the recording.  I.e., if you 
deleted the recording (to the Deleted recording group) using an "allow 
re-record" option, it will be allowed to re-record; or if you deleted 
the recording (to the Deleted recording group) using an option that did 
not specify to allow re-record, it will not be allowed to 
re-record--regardless of when the actual file is expired from disk and 
removed from the Deleted recording group.

And, since the metadata that includes the watched status is removed when 
the file is actually removed from disk, marking the show as watched 
doesn't even make for a more-complete recording history, or anything.

So, don't mark it as watched before deleting it.  :)

Oh, and as an aside...

We need more settings!  People just might figure out how combinations of 
our current ones actually work, and no one wants users to have working 
systems.

(which is my way of apologizing for the mess of settings that confuse 
you, the users of MythTV)

Mike