MythTV recording directory

[radmofo]

I have several hundred GB free on other Hard drives, but MythTV doesn't seem to use any of the free space automatically. Is it suppossed to?

Also on the HD it likes to use I have a bunch of folders like this TV_SHOWS_1, TV_SHOWS_2, TV_SHOWS_3...etc 

Some of them are empty, does anyone know what the purpose of these are?

Is the only way to have MythTV record to a free Hard drive is to change the path manually in MythTV setup?

Is there a way to setup a recording group? I read up on MythTV.org and I can't pinpoint which version of mythtv LMCE uses. When I schedule a recording it has a dropdown box to select the recording group but the only one listed is default. How can I add another one that records to a diffrent directory?

[seth]

Recording groups are a feature of mythtv .21 or higher. We use mythtv 20.2 fixes if I am not mistaken. So the use of storage groups is not implemented. If this is a feature you want , perhaps checkout the new version of MythBuntu www.mythbuntu.org. However, as LMCE is a linux based system, you could mount another drive to the /home/public/data/videos/tv_shows_1 directory in you /etc/fstab file. This is what I do with a 500GB drive.

As to seeing multiple tv_shows directories, this is for the use of multiple tuners. In my installation I have 4 tuners, they show up as /home/public/data/videos/tv_shows_<moon number> for example at my place it is

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/home/public/data/videos/tv_shows_1  is linked to the tuner in my core

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/home/public/data/videos/tv_shows_42 is linked to the pvr150 in my MD moon42

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/home/public/data/videos/tv_shows_86 is linked to the pvr150 in my MD moon86

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/home/public/data/videos/tv_shows_96 is linked to the Aver Media card in my MD moon96
These are identified by the mythtv-setup per MD. I have them mounted as follows:

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/dev/sdb1 /home/public/data/videos/mythtv/ ext3 defaults 0 1  for my 500G drive on dcerouter

And the directory structure on this drive contains the folders:

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tv_shows_1 tv_shows_42 tv_shows_86 tv_shows_96

And of course I made the changes to mythtv-setup on each MD to reflect the directory structure:

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/home/public/data/videos/mythtv/tv_shows_1

And so on......


So you can use different drives, for mythtv storage. However you can not share groups like you can with the newer versions of mythtv. But I am sure in the future, with the level of developers we have, it will be a possibility.

Regards,

Seth

[radmofo]

Thanks Seth, I figured out that MythTV in LMCE is .2 and not .21. But the thing that throws me is that there is a choice for recording groups when you schedule a recording.

I have set up a stb in the A/V equipment section of dcerouter admin which ads a menu item to Media called LiveTV. That is now a choice for my recording group drop down chioces when I schedule a recording. So I was wondering how to point that group to a directory. Something is not fluid here though I am guessing.

Another thing is, I have (at present) 4 tuners in my core and only my core. With no tuner in any media director. From what you have stated the TV_SHOWS_$var is consistent with tuners in a media director (moon$var). So if all my tuners are in the core then do all my recordings made from other md's go into TV_SHOWS_1? If I remember correctly all of them are empty except TV_SHOWS_1.

Furthurmore, can I force all of them into the same folder somehow so all recording are accessible from every media director?

AND, will this work? I will just manually create /home/public/data/videos/mythtv/tv_shows_1 on the largest Hard drive and point each md recording directory to that particular folder.

Am I on the right track, or will this cause problems that you know of?

[seth]

Well in your case, as all your tuners are on the core, then you should see them in tv_shows_1. Your recordings should be available already to every media director. You should not need to force anything. Mine vary by moon, because all my MD's have tuners. If they were all to reside in the same machine, the all recordings should go to tv_shows_1. And that folder you can mount to any other drive/directory structure, just make sure you have the path set to the new location in mythtv-setup.

I have 4 stb's and they all have a LiveTV<stbname> entry, and they are all visible to every MD. It would be worth looking into the mythtv recording settings, to see if you can assign a recording to a particular MD, and that would turn point the recording to a different directory. I have not tested this though, so it would merely be a guess.

As to the need to force recordings to a specific directory, if you have all your tuners in one box, that should not be necessary. All MD's capable of playing video/mythtv will be able to see them, either through the provided "Video" button in the LMCE menu, or by choosing recordings from the LMCE menu while viewing TV (mythtv). This is how I prefer to do it, as I commflag all my recordings, and watching them back through the mythtv interface, in my case, allows for automgic commercial skipping (you have to enable this on each mythtv frontend, via the setup options inside mythtv) and it is not as cpu intensive as using the xine_player to view the recordings.


And pointing the mythtv-setups to that mounted large drive, is basically exactly what I do, so it should work fine.

Regards,

Seth

[radmofo]

Ok, then I will plug away at it tonight and report status. Thanks for the detailed answers!

[radmofo]

OK, so I can change the recording directory in MythTV setup and all is well. But whenever I do a reboot it defaults backto the original path? Any idea where to shut this off?

[jeangot]

Hello,

in case it helps, when I was trying to do this and chantging the path in MythTV Setup, it was also reverting back on each startup.
The only way I found was to go to the core, delete the directory /home/public/data/videos/tv_shows_1 and then replace it with a symbolic link also called tv_shows_1 to wherever I wanted my data to be stored.
The storage drives configured in LinuxMCE happen to be mounted on the core as /mnt/device/XX/
(if you're moving the data to a drive that's not mounted in linuxmce, then you can mount it there, and don't forget to add an entry to fstab)
This is what Seth my have been referring to when saying "link"...

If you already have data in your tv_shows_1 directory, you can first move that data to your new directory by using the web admin, which will also make the appropriate changes to the database...

I hope that works for you.

Jean

[Zaerc]

Do NOT mount drives manually (or add them to the fstab), especially under /mnt/device/XX as this is likely to conflict with the system managing them.