Internal Filenames

Naming convention

MythTV uses long numeric filenames to name the captured recordings that it saves. The format, as of 0.19, is

 1022_20051120194900.mpg
  |     |        |
  |     +--------+------------------- Start time of recording
  |
  +---------------------------------- Channel ID

The channel id is 4 digits long or longer (see ChannelUtil::CreateChanID()) and includes the Video Source identifier as well as the channel number. The channel ID can be used to lookup detailed information in the channel table. The time stamps are formatted as follows:

yyyymmddhhmmnn

The last two digits, nn, are generated to make unique filenames and does not reflect the start time of the program in seconds.

mythrename.pl is a convenient script which will rename the recording files to be more human readable and update the database.