Difference between revisions of "Channel Editor"

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             MythTV Channel Editor
 
             MythTV Channel Editor

Revision as of 12:04, 5 January 2016

           MythTV Channel Editor

Introduction

Do you run MythTV 0.27 or 0.28-pre ?

Do you have too many channels to fully appreciate their settings?

Do you want to locate which channels are hidden or duplicated?

Do you want to 'hide' or delete channels in bulk (eg all those with 'adult' in the name)?

Have you done thousands of button presses to get your database the way you want it?

Are you apprehensive about a channel re-scan because you will lose those settings?

Are you (rightly) wary of new software and want to try it out in a demonstration mode?

If so, then this channel editor - the perl script chedit.pl may help you.

What does it do?

It will:

- Extract channel data from a backend.

- Display channel data - ChannelId, Channel number, source, multiplex, state (hidden or duplicated) and callsign or channel name.

- Allow display scrolling.

- Allow channels to be sorted in various ways.

- Allow channels to be marked for hiding, unhiding or deletion

- Export the state of channels to a file for re-import so the same settings can be re-applied after your next rescan.

- Allow running in demo mode (no changes to database).

- Allow 'spoofing' with alien data rather than reading the backend. This was developed as a support tool but also supports the tutorial below.

- Update MythTV database with your changes.


The script uses the MythTV API interface and has been tested with both 0.27 and 0.28-pre with UK DVB-T and DVB-S data and with US cable and 'over the air' ATSC data. All tests have been in a Linux environment.


Before trying it with your own precious database you will probably wish to try it out with artificial data and a safe step by step tutorial. This shows the features of the editor with a subset of data 'pruned' and modified from a UK system. It will not interact with your database!

Setup

A suggested setup for channel editor is:

Create a fresh directory to hold the files:

 mkdir chedit
 cd chedit

you will need three files;

  • chedit.pl the perl script.
  • scan_database.pm the API interfacing module
  • tutorial.diags if you wish to run the tutorial below.

Note that the suffixes are .pl and .pm respectively.

The module scan_database.pm is fully described in Perl_API_examples.

It can actually be placed anywhere in the perl 'path' which you can list with:

perl -e 'print join ("\n", @INC), "\n"'

The three files can be found on github: https://github.com/PBrady43/Channel-Editor

You can either extract these using git (if familiar) or copy and paste then into your favoured editor (hint: Use 'raw' before copy).

Ensure that the very first line of chedit.pl and of scan_database.pm is:

   #!/usr/bin/perl -w

Then make them executable:

chmod 755 chedit.pl
chmod 755 scan_database.pm

Command line options

chedit.pl has three command-line options.

--backend specify backend address:port number (but it may well find that itself!)

--nodemo or --demo Demonstration mode. Database will NOT be updated. --demo is defaulr.

--spoof <filename> reads data from <filename> rather than your backend. A support option and enables the tutorial.

Tutorial

Start the channel editor in 'spoofing' mode with

./chedit.pl -sp tutorial.diags

This will start the editor in demonstration mode and read the file tutorial.diags to show the tutorial data rather than looking for data on your backend.

You may be told that the libwww-perl module needs loading - if using ubuntu try

sudo apt-get install libwww-perl

Any other modules??

Assuming that all required modules are available, it should show a full size screen with columns of channel data and a reminder that you are in demo mode. There is also a demo reminder top right of the screen.

Click on 'OK' in the reminder box.

Viewing data

You should see a list of channels. Note the scroll bar at the right.

The channel columns are described under help>help. Use the scroll bar at the right to get down to the 'View' section.

Note the 'state' particularly of QVC with the 'H' for hidden, the two ITV4 and the two Pick channels with 'd' as they are duplicated.

Also the 'final' column which is the proposed setting after editing.

Now try the sort options for the channels.

View by channel number

view > ChannelNo

View by Source:multiplex

view > source:multiplex

View by name

view > Name.

Viewing duplicates

View > duplicates will place duplicated entries such as ITV4 at the top of the screen. ITV4 has two entries, one at channel 24 and another at 792. The 792 was introduced during a transmitter re-alignment and is a 'please retune' reminder channel. Pick also has two channels (duplicated manually though for demo purposes!).

Channels are only marked as duplicates if there is another channel with the same number, same callsign or same channel name AND two or more will be visible.

As channels are edited to hide or delete them, the duplicate flag will be cleared.

Toggle name

The 'view > toggle name' allows you to switch between callsign (which is used in frontend) and channel name. With UK DVB-T data these are all the same, but US data shows differences. The channel 'Pick' has been doctored to demonstrate this.

Reverse sort

Reverse sort .. um.. .. reverses the sort! It will revert when you choose a fresh sort option.


Custom Sorting

If there are insufficient sort options for you (eg you want hidden then name) then define your own custom rule with:

    View > Create Custom sort    then
    View > hidden                then
    View > name                  then
    View > Custom sort

You can include up to six items. Subsequent calls to View > Custom sort will bring up this rule.

Viewing multiplex data

Now try 'view > multiplexes'

This gives a list of your sources, your multiplexes, frequencies and number of channels in each. With some sources such as cable you may find some of these fields are blank.

The log

View > log gives diagnostic information which I hope will not be needed.

Edit Menu

Edit by key

If you wish to eliminate the confusing duplicated ITV4 (and prevent recording failures) then first note the 'key' value for the channel 792 entry on the left. Then:

Edit > Key range
Insert a key range of 2
click 'Hide'

Oops! Did you spot the deliberate error? Let us correct that.

Undo

Try edit > undo then try again with the correct value of 1. Channel 792 will now be shown as hidden (with ->H in the 'final' column) and the 'd' flags will be cleared.

Do likewise with one of the duplicated Pick channels - hide only one at this stage or the tutorial won't work later on!

You can pick out a whole range of key values (eg 7:11 for 7 to 11 inclusive).

At this stage, only the tables in memory are being changed - the database remains intact.

Hide a Multiplex

Let's hide the whole of multiplex 5 in source 1;

   Edit > source:multiplex; type 1:5; click 'Hide'

You could unhide a whole source (but not now!);

   Edit > source:multiplex; type 1; click 'unhide'.


Hide by name

Another filter is the name filter which will enable you to hide (say) all channels with 'adult' in the name.

Edit > name, type 'adult' and choose 'hide'. The name matching is case insensitive.

Don't do it just now, but the 'Revert' button puts the selected channels back to their original state.

Edit > undo all

This reinstates all channels back to the original state to match the database.


Exporting and Importing

Having marked all the channels the way you want them and eliminated all duplicates you can update the database (or you could if this wasn't a demonstration!) but before doing so let us 'export' the settings you have made to a file for later use. The file is called channels.export.

The file can then be 'imported' after a channel re-scan to re-impose your settings on the new channel configuration. You may find a few which do not match due to new channels, or a complex setup.

Do this: File > export. This will write the file channels.export.

Now simulate a channel re-scan. You can either quit the editor with File > exit and restart it or simply choose edit > undo all. Your channels will now be just as they were at the start of the tutorial. Let us now recover all the changes you made before you exported.

Try File > Import

The editor will read the channels.export file and use a set of four rules to match the channels - the rules are described in the help.

If any channel cannot be matched then it will leave it unchanged but put a Q (for query) state. You can sort by 'query' to identify these - also an entry will also be placed in the log. The channel 'Pick' will not have been matched. Since it has two channels with the same channel number, same source, same multiplex and same callsign it defeats the algorithm and will need to be fixed manually. If earlier on you had marked both Pick channels for hiding then there would have been no queries.

When you do mark one of them for hiding or deleting the 'Q' flag will clear.

Yes, that example was rather artificial - but duplicated channels like this have been seen in the wild!

As with all edits, you can 'undo' an import.

Help

There are three options with help:

Help > version shows script version.

Help > diagnostics generates a file channels.diags holding disgnostic information and a copy of API data from your backend

Help > help has a scrollable screen describing the script.


Updating the Database

Finally, the file > update database option will write the changes to the database. As you are in demo mode, this will 'pretend' but do nothing.


Real World Use

In order to run the editor against your own database in safe demo mode:

./chedit.pl


To run it in 'live' mode

./chedit.pl --nodemo

Note that this WILL update the database if you choose the 'updata database' option.

If the script cannot find the backend address (it searches for a config.xml file in all the likely places), then it will ask you to specify the address or hostname with the --backend parameter eg:

./chedit.pl --backend 192.168.1.65

If you have a port number other than 6544 then add it as

./chedit.pl --backend 192.168.1.65:1234


Please DO ensure that you have a robust backup strategy or are prepared to re-scan channels before using the --nodemo option.


Problems

Developing and testing this application with two sets of UK data and two sets of USA data (thank you all!!) has shown that TV cultures are both very rich and very diverse. If the code does not behave sanely the help>diagnostics facility has been included to assist investigation.

This should generate a file 'channels.diags' which hopefully contains all the information necessary for the author to 'spoof' your system and reproduce the fault.

The file should also be produced if the code throws an error. Please submit the file with any reports of problems.