[mythtv-users] Option to Record As Much as It Can

[Michael T. Dean]

On 05/28/2012 11:00 AM, Roger H wrote:
> I have often wanted an option in the case of a conflict, to have a
> recording rule record as much of the program as it can instead of not
> recording it at all.  One frequent example is I have a rule to record the
> news at 10:00pm every night, but occasionally an earlier program (on a
> different channel) will run until 10:01 and if my other tuner is otherwise
> occupied, the news won't get recorded.  In this case I would rather loose
> the first minute of the news than not record it at all.  Now I can manually
> intervene, but that means finding the conflict and then doing something
> about it.  It would be nice if this could be done automatically.
>
> Now I realize you wouldn't always want to do this, so it should be a
> recording option and not something it always does.  It should give you a
> warning that it will be doing this when looking at upcoming recordings
> (Conflict-Will partially record) and that a recording is incomplete in the
> list of recordings.
>
> In a perfect world it would also  cut out the middle of a long recording if
> necessary (for example, I would rather record the first and third period of
> a hockey game, than not record it at all).
>
> What are peoples thoughts?

There is no support for this type of option, because--although it seems 
very straightforward--implementing it is extremely complex.  There are 
all sorts of problems that occur when you try to make this an 
"out-of-the-box" selectable option.  For example, if you have 2 
overlapping recordings, both set up with "record as much as it can", and 
only one capture device, what do you do?  Record all of the first one 
and only part of the second; or record all of the higher-priority one 
and only part of the lower-priority one (and if so, what do you do when 
priority is equal), or split the difference on the 2 of them or ...

Now, to make things even more complex, what happens when you have 
multiple capture cards and one is set to record until 10:01 and another 
until 10:05, you might think "record as much as it can" would imply that 
we should use the card that's only recording until 10:01, but if we do 
that and that card is required for a show that starts at 10:15 that 
can't be recorded on the othercard (that's in use until 10:05), do we 
really just record from 10:01 until 10:15 or should we use the 10:05 
card and get 10:05 until 10:30 (or whatever).  Now, what if these 
different shows have different priorities?  How do we reconcile which is 
used for what and whether to miss a recording or ...

There's a very good (5-page) thread at 
http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/mythtv/dev/195124#195124 with far 
more information.  Note, also, that that's only one thread of a huge 
yarn (that thread was split into multiple by broken mailers, not to 
mention that there were additional related threads and tickets involved).

You might be able to do something with a custom/power recording rule, 
but it will likely be rule that needs to be specifically crafted for 
your situation/shows.  The best "no changes to your system" solution is 
to use mythfrontend/MythWeb to check your upcoming recordings once every 
couple of weeks and fix the conflicts manually--which allows you to 
specify exactly how much of each program to record.  Either that or just 
pre-emptively set a (negative) start early on the news show, if the 
start of the news is less valuable to you than the time required to fix 
conflicts.

The best overall solution, however, is to get enough capture devices to 
allow you to record everything you want to record...  (I do realize this 
isn't necessarily an answer that people may like, and it may mean 
greater expense for users of STBs and, say, HD-PVR or PVR-x50s or 
whatever, but it truly is the best solution.)

Mike