question about archived recordings and imported video

[tooslow]

I have a directory tree like so;

d:\TV
d:\Movies

e:\TV
f:\TV
g:\TV

The various TV folders contain miscellaneous shows that I'm recording, one might look like;

e:\TV\CSI
e:\TV\XFiles

etc,..

I have a temporary folder on my D: for sage recordings. Every so often, I manually move the files that sage records into their appropriate directories by simply cutting/pasting them to their new folders.

The issue that I'm seeing is that Sage will re-import some files into "Archived Recordings" and some into "Imported Video". Even files that reside in the same folder. For example, some of my CSI files will be in archived recordings, and some in imported video, although they all physically reside in the same folder.

Is their any way to contol how sage imports files?

[dvd_maniac]

this is actually a new feature of SageTV. To be able to keep the detailed info for shows moved out of the recording folder. I had hundreds of Imported videos do this to me when I jumped to Version 4. My solution was to unarchive them and delete the ID # on the end of the file...
Ex:
Lost-Collision-9602771-0.mpg
Lost-Collision.mpg

Then refresh Libraries and wait a few minutes...

[Opus4]

It depends on how you want those recordings 'imported'... if you want them in the Video Library screen, then do what was said above & remove the ID from the filename. You will lose all associated show data when doing this, so you will no longer be able to look at a recording to find out the show details.

If you want to keep the show data, then you need to keep the ID in the filename & either move the recordings while SageTV (or the service) is not running, or move them very carefully... as mentioned in this post.

- Andy

[dvd_maniac]

Or you can use greggerm's STV that creates .my files that you can move with the video to an Import directory. The .my file holds the show info and can be accessed just as if it were a recording.

[Opus4]

But, then you lose SageTV's ability to track the fact that the show is already recorded, whether you've watched it or not (along with how much of it you have watched), and where you want the file listed. If you record the show, remove the ID & move it to the video library w/o marking it as Watched, SageTV will feel free to record it again. But, it depends on what you want to do with the file & what you count as most important.

- Andy

[dvd_maniac]

along with how much of it you have watched

Good point.
I wish this would work with Imports aswell.
I didn't really mind my shows showing up in the archive section, but I had a problem WAYYY back where I lost my wiz.bin file, so only like 25% of my imports went into the archive section. Couldn't go back and forth to find a particular episode...

[sleonard]

Opus, I just tried this with a number of recorded and already archived shows. I exited all Sage clients and stopped the Sage Service on the Server. I then moved the recorded and archived shows from D:\SageTV, my recording location to F:\Video, my video import directory. (Set up in Sage using UNC paths, see below)

I then restarted the Sage Service and waited a bit before checking where the shows were listed. Luckily most were listed in the Archived Recordings with all info intact (as advertised) but 4 of them weren't.

Of the 4, 1 was a recorded show that Sage had split into two files (showname-123456-0.mpg and showname-123456-1.mpg. The -0 file has disappeared altogether. It is not in either Archived nor Imported nor still in Recorded TV. The -1 shows up in Imported sans any info.

The other 3 shows were out of 9 moved episodes of The Daily Show. 6 of them were correctly listed in Archived Recordings but these 3 are listed in Imported Videos sans info.

I did not change any filenames. Just cut and pasted while Sage was shut down. I have also tried refreshing libraries several times. I use UNC paths for the directories in conjunction with the Sage Service and the form I use is \\ipaddress\sharename.

Bonus help: Does anyone know if/how I can change the form of UNC paths to \\Servername\sharename w/o losing show info?

[Opus4]

I'm not sure why some moved recordings would not be recognized... unless perhaps it was time for an EPG update when you restarted? It is a fairly new part of SageTV, so you could see what tech support has to say about why they might be missed. The files were moved, though, correct? (not copied?)

You should be able to change the UNC naming style of your recording dirs. If the recordings can still be seen at the previous UNC path style, then they may still get listed as being at that location in SageTV, but new recordings should use the new UNC path name. There is a FAQ about changing recording dir path names, but it hasn't been updated in a while, so it may have some stuff that is obsolete for v4.

- Andy

[sleonard]

The files were moved not copied and Sage was completely shut down at the time.

I guess I wasn't satisfied with losing the info for only 4 of the shows. I had also been wanting to add genre folders to the video import directory as it was getting crowded and hard to navigate. So, for example, I created a Comedy subfolder in F:\Video and moved all those Daily Show recordings to F:\Video\Comedy and did similar genre subfolders for the other imported videos and moved shows. After restarting Sage the shows that had retained their info and listed in Archived Recordings correctly were still there but with the old pathnames. They were also all listed in imported video w/o any info but correct pathnames. I deleted the entries from Archived Recordings and refreshed the Media Libraries but now I have nothing listed in Archived and everything is in Imported w/o any show info.

[tooslow]

While I appreciate the workaround, in my opinion, this is a bug that should be addressed.

To re-iteratate, if I have sage record 4 episodes of some show into my recordings folder, then shutdown sage, move all 4 files into a new folder (all four get moved into the same folder), then re-load sage.

sage places some of the files in "Archived Recordings" , and some in "Imported videos".

This makes no sense. I've not watched any of them, or touched them within sage in any means - simply moved the files to a new location.

[Opus4]

When you say that you shut down SageTV, are you certain that you have closed SageTV completely? If using service mode, you will need to stop the service using the SageTVServiceControl application. If not using service mode, SageTV needs to be exited, not put to sleep. Check the Windows Task Manager's Processes tab -- any SageTV processes running?

If SageTV is not running at all when this problem occurs, then try closing SageTV, move a few recordings (all to the same import directory), add debug_logging=TRUE (including CAPS) to the sage.properties file, restart SageTV & see what happened to the recordings. If only some were moved, close SageTV & send the resulting log file (sagetv_0.txt) to tech support with a description of what you did.

- Andy

[tooslow]

I am running in service mode, and no, I did not shutdown the SageTVServiceControl application. I'll give what you suggested a try, and let you know what happens.