Sage Recordings Showing in Imported Videos

[jsonnabend]

I recently went through several re-installs of the Sage server. Somewhere in there a whole bunch of my sage recordings ended up showing in my imported videos screen. They still show in the Sage recordings screen, but show up in the imported videos as well.

Anyone have any idea how to remove the recordings from the imported video screen without deleting the files?

- Jeff

[tsitalon1]

I have the same issue, it's driving me crazy.

[gtallan]

Aha, so it's not just me! I've had this issue for a LONG time (I can't remember which version it started happening in, but probably a few years back). Tried working it out with support, but I think I somehow failed to explain the problem to them. It went nowhere, anyway...

Graham

[chiledog]

This is just a wild guess, but could you have imported the directory that has the SageTV recordings?

[jsonnabend]

I may have, but it's not listed as an import directory any more. How do I fix this?

- Jeff

[GKusnick]

Do the duplicates have the same file path on the Details screen, or different file paths? If different, does the path shown on the imported version actually exist? If the path doesn't exist, try showing Sage an empty directory with that path; it should notice that the files aren't there and clean up the database entries.

If that doesn't work, I'd probably try something like this:

Create a new directory on your recording drive and add it as a recording directory in Sage.

Move all your existing recordings to the new directory. (See the FAQ for details on how to do this safely.)

Remove the old, empty directory from the list of recording directories (and from the import list as well, if it's there).

Refresh Imported Media and wait a while for all the orphaned database entries to get cleaned up.

Delete the old directory.

[jsonnabend]

I accidentally (not sure how or when) imported sage recordings into my imported media. They reside in a sage recording directory that is NOT listed in my imported media directories. Sage continues to list the media in the imported media.

This is driving me bonkers.

Anyone know how to delete the media from the imported media listing without deleting the files?

- Jeff

[oops - forgot I had posted this earlier. I guess that's just my frustration getting to me.]

[robogeek]

First, on your SageTV server machine, make a backup of your wiz.bin and sage.properties files just to be safe. Or better yet, make a full backup of the entire SageTV directory. If this makes an even bigger mess, you'll need these files to revert back.

You may have to remove the recording directory from the Detailed Setup area that has the duplicate files. Shutdown SageTV. Then use Windows Explorer to rename the recording directory to some other name temporarily. Create a new directory with the name of original recording directory...essentially what you want to do is have the recording directory appear empty to SageTV. Restart SageTV and initiate a full library rescan from your Imported Videos area. SageTV should see the empty directory and assume the files have been deleted and remove them from the list. Then shutdown SageTV, delete the empty recording directory, and rename the renamed recording directory back to its original name. If you removed the recording directory from the Detailed Setup area, copy only the sage.properties file (NOT the backed up wiz.bin) that you backed up earlier back to the SageTV directory. This will restore the recording directory setting so SageTV has it when it restarts. Cross fingers and restart SageTV. Monitor the recordings and imported videos to see if everything is where it should be. It may take a few minutes for SageTV to sort everything out after it is restarted, so give it a little time. If the recordings from the temporarily renamed directory get moved to the Imported Videos area, then you may need to do this procedure again but look for the FAQ sticky post and use the advanced recording file recovery method before restarting SageTV the last time.

If things get totally messed up more than they were before, shutdown SageTV, make sure your recording directory is renamed to its orignal name, copy the wiz.bin and sage.properties files back to the SageTV directory, and then restart SageTV. That should restore you back to the way it was before.

[jsonnabend]

I tried the "move recordings to a new directory . . ." approach, but the videos still appeared in the imported video section, this time with the new file path. The new directory was not a subdirectory of the old path, but instead an entirely new network share.

This is infuriating. If the database were something of more recent vintage instead of some proprietary nonsense, we could easily clean up messes like this.

- Jeff

[robogeek]

Originally Posted by jsonnabend

I tried the "move recordings to a new directory . . ." approach, but the videos still appeared in the imported video section, this time with the new file path. The new directory was not a subdirectory of the old path, but instead an entirely new network share.

When you moved the recordings to a new directory, was that new directory configured in SageTV as a recording directory? If so, that's why they still show up as imported videos. You can't simply move the recordings to a new recording directory because SageTV will track where they moved to and update the pathnames for both the recordings and imported video entries in the database. I know it's complicated and frustrating, but the way SageTV handles it now is better than it was...

What you have to do is keep the recording directory but remove the recordings from SageTVs field of view so it thinks they are deleted. The only way to do that is to look at the the pathname in the Imported Videos view of your recordings and recreate that same directory pathname as an empty folder. The original non-empty folder needs to be renamed or moved somewhere where SageTV can't see it so you can recreate that folder as a new empty folder. Then the media rescan will see the files as deleted and remove them from the database. Then you can move the renamed recording directory back. The last part is where I'm not sure of. Since you have to completely remove the recordings from SageTVs field of view, you may need to use the advanced recording file recovery instructions in one of the FAQ sticky posts to get them to show up as recordings again. If you haven't checked the FAQ stick posts, check them out. Maybe Andy can chime in with a link to the specific section that applies to how to fix your particular screw up.

Originally Posted by jsonnabend

This is infuriating. If the database were something of more recent vintage instead of some proprietary nonsense, we could easily clean up messes like this.

- Jeff

I could be wrong, but I think the reason for the encypted proprietary database format probably has something to do with the Zap2It EPG data. Since SageTV provides the data for free, I'm sure they are under some contractual obligation to prevent the end user from freely accessing the raw copyrighted Zap2It EPG data.

[GKusnick]

Originally Posted by jsonnabend

This is infuriating. If the database were something of more recent vintage instead of some proprietary nonsense, we could easily clean up messes like this.

That cuts both ways. Direct DB access would also allow users to create messes that SageTV support would then have to help them clean up. My guess is that they'd rather stick to cleaning up their own messes.

Back on topic, if you're willing to write code to do the cleanup, the SageTV API (and the various third-party wrappers and extensions) should provide adequate access for that.

[gplasky]

What could have happened is those files have lost their metadata. (for whatever reason) If you have BMI installed get metadat for those files and in the configuration for BMI tell it those files are a SageTV recording. That might get them back in to the TV Recordings. (BMI is Batch Metadata Importer)

Gerry

[jsonnabend]

Originally Posted by gplasky

What could have happened is those files have lost their metadata. (for whatever reason) If you have BMI installed get metadat for those files and in the configuration for BMI tell it those files are a SageTV recording. That might get them back in to the TV Recordings. (BMI is Batch Metadata Importer)

Gerry

Well, I might as well try BMI before blowing out all my recording details. I looked for it in the downloads, but I'm not sure which one it is. Is it Stuckless' command line tool found here?

- Jeff

[razrsharpe]

Originally Posted by jsonnabend

Well, I might as well try BMI before blowing out all my recording details. I looked for it in the downloads, but I'm not sure which one it is. Is it Stuckless' command line tool found here?

- Jeff

yes thats it... and its much much much more then a simple command line tool ...

[jsonnabend]

The update:

No matter how many times I moved files in and out of sage directories, the recordings reappeared in the video list when the files were moved back.

I finally got BMT working (the load_at_startime_runnable_classes parameter was wrong in one of the install instructions -- it's right on the wiki). The web interface is working to remove the recordings from the imported video list, but it's tedious.

It's too bad Sage is still using some proprietary database instead of something more modern like SQLite or MySQL or something. A handful of SQL updates and I'd be done.

- Jeff

[robogeek]

Originally Posted by jsonnabend

The update:

No matter how many times I moved files in and out of sage directories, the recordings reappeared in the video list when the files were moved back.

If you don't have too many to fix, then BMT is probably the way to continue. If you have a long tedious job ahead of you with BMT and want to keep trying the built-in SageTV repair options here is one more...if this doesn't work, you may have lost some data in the wiz.bin file that is preventing the recordings from being recognized as recordings:

Again, make a backup of your wiz.bin and sage.properties files before trying this type of stuff with your setup. Did you try the advanced video file recovery instructions in the FAQ (The Advanced Method)? And did you try it with the repair mismatched media filenames option? If you did both, then ignore this and keep using BMT. You may need to move recording files out, do a library rescan to get SageTV to remove the files from the Imported Video list, shutdown SageTV, move the recording files back, change the advanced video file recovery property and the repair mismatched media filenames property in the sage.properties file to true (don't forget to set these back to false when you're done), and then restart SageTV. Assuming your wiz.bin hasn't been damaged and still contains the data for the shows, SageTV should be able to reassociate the recording files to the data that was saved for those shows in the wiz.bin.

With all of the complexity and variables involved in fixing this problem, I don't know why SageTV just doesn't have an option in the Options menu for imported videos to allow the video to be moved to the recording list. And, I don't know if SageTV does any sanity checking on import and recording directories...if not, maybe the STV should be checking the recording and import directories that are selected in the initial Configuration Wizard and in the Detailed Setup to be sure the user isn't trying to inadvertently do something dangerous like trying to add a recording directory as an import directory or using an import directory as a recording directory. Maybe these are something Andy can add in a future STV updated.