Feature Request - Recording and Content Tagging

[Greg2dot0]

As a way to help users (in a house where multiple viewing scenario is the norm)

I would like the ability to segregate (or tag) recording jobs and content so that an individual can see only the content that they are interested in. Setup the tag on the recording and the recorded media, and allow recorded content to be filtered based on the tag of interest.

For Example: If I want to record “House” and I’m the only one interested, I might tag it with my name, but “American Idol” is watched by everyone, so would be tagged “family”. Then when the whole family is together, I can see the shows that we have to watch that are tagged accordingly.

I also think the tagging thing could be very beneficial for things other than multi-user

[Brent]

I know where you're coming from Greg since we've talked about this several times before. My home has just always dealt with the shows as one giant lump of recorded shows and never had too much of a problem with which shows were the daughters or wifes or mine or all of the above. So I guess we're a tad messy so-to-speak in that respect.

But I do see where you're going with this and it does make sense. Your history was with BeyondTV where you could separate the shows by folder right? So one folder was your shows another for the wife, another for the kids and finally a family folder - something like that. Correct me where I'm wrong there.

I know there are many SageTV users who would love to see separate "user settings" so each SageTV user in a house could have certain shows they could view, but couldn't access or delete shows of other users depending on their access level. In the interim the tagging idea does make some sense. Anyone else have any ideas of easy ways to accomplish this? Is this the right way to tackle the problem?

[Tiki]

Ideally, I'd like to see this integrated into the core of Sage so the tags would be stored in the main Wiz.Bin database. However, I thought it would be possible to accomplish this with an import.

I can see two ways to do this. One would be to create a separate database. The other would be to create a text file for each recording to store the tagging info - similar to how Comskip files or .My files get created.

In fact, perhaps that would be the easiest way - just add an extra field or two to the .My files or .Properties files to keep track of who had created it and who had watched it.

When you create a favorite, or manual recording, you could add a field where the "owner" of that recording could be specified. By default, the owner would be "family" or "everyone". When you finish watching a show, a pop-up could prompt you to mark who had watched it. When you try to delete a show, it could ask you for your username and only allow the owner to delete it.

[Slugger]

I've thought about perhaps tackling the multi-user issue and my approach would be to have a separate database that keeps track of everything (but implementation details are irrelevant).

The reason I always stop myself is that, implementation details aside, it's a rather large undertaking - hardly impossible, but quite a bit of work and I always stop in fear that said work would be deprecated by Sage v7.

Assuming you create an API that can manage all the multi-user details such as user login, user permissions, object ownership (who "owns" favourites, recordings, etc.), etc., etc., etc. then you also have to modify the STV (or create a new one) that does all the operations through this third party API. Then if you manage that the first additional request that comes up is to modify the web server to support the multi-user setup.

Though an interesting project, I'd be more than disappointed if after I got something stable and usable SageTV announced/released v7 with its own multi-user support built into the core. On the other hand, if Sage were to say that there was no way multi-user support was coming to v7 then my interest to pursue this type of project might be piqued.

[Greg2dot0]

Yes Brent, I did come from BeyondTV, and quite honstly I'm getting a lot of family pressure to switch back because of the sheer volume in the recorded shows view. With 4.5TB of storage and many movies and a kid that thinks that if its on Disney or Nick that it MUST be recorded...Obviously the correct answer is to look more deeply at multi-user and solve many challenges not just this one, but was looking for something that could hopefully be easily integrated to start the process without painting the product into a corner.

[GKusnick]

Originally Posted by Slugger

Assuming you create an API that can manage all the multi-user details such as user login, user permissions, object ownership (who "owns" favourites, recordings, etc.), etc., etc., etc. then you also have to modify the STV (or create a new one) that does all the operations through this third party API. Then if you manage that the first additional request that comes up is to modify the web server to support the multi-user setup.

I think this is probably overkill. My own custom UI (which you won't find in the Downloads section) implements a very simple ownership scheme in which I can tag Favorites and Manual recordings with an owner (the default is Everyone) and then optionally filter the lists of existing and scheduled recordings by owner. There are no other per-user settings, no per-user Watched or Don't Like status, no permissions or access control. Just a set of owner tags and a way of filtering by tag.

Even this, it turns out, is too complicated. I am basically the only person in my house who uses this feature. I tag my personal Favorites (i.e. the ones only I watch) with my name, and set the filters on my home office PC to list only my shows. The living room client remains set to list everything but my shows.

My wife does have some Favorites that only she watches, but she's not interested in learning how to tag and filter them. Having to adjust filters depending on who's watching is pretty much a non-starter for her. So if I'm home alone and want to watch one of my shows on the big TV, I temporarily change the filters to show my stuff, and then set them back again when I'm done, so nobody else has to mess with it.

This, I think, is the Achilles heel of the multi-user concept: how is Sage supposed to know which users are in the room without some sort of roll call or login process every time you turn on the TV? My feeling is that it's going to be very tough to design a satisfactory solution to this that will work for non-tech-savvy family members who just want to sit down and watch their shows without having to jump through hoops to do it, and who are likely to panic if their must-see shows aren't instantly visible in the list.

(Implementation note for those who care: My quick-and-dirty solution for storing the owner tags is to use Get/SetServerProperty with keys based on FavoriteID and ShowID. This tends to clutter up Sage.properties, but it was an easy way to make the tags accessible from SageTVClient. There's some client-side caching involved to keep performance reasonable on long lists. At some point I'll probably look at migrating to some real network DB API, but this works for now.)

[Greg2dot0]

I personally don't have an option of logging in, but think that is beyond what I was thinking for the first cut. First cut is just to enable Tagging and filtering based on the tags. How about custom filters so I can define what tags I want to filter upon.

[sainswor99]

In my mind, I see custom tagging and filter as an extension of the customizeable views built into the stock UI; basically, if you could filter those views on show type OR custom Favorite tag, you could easily segregate shows into filtered groups that are easy* to switch to.

*easy from a PC, not so easy with a remote.


You'd have to be able to extend the number of filters past 4, however, and you'd probably have to have a tag that was just for Intelligent recordings, so you could dedicate a filtered view to that, but you could make it work.

[Slugger]

Originally Posted by GKusnick

I think this is probably overkill. My own custom UI (which you won't find in the Downloads section) implements a very simple ownership scheme in which I can tag Favorites and Manual recordings with an owner (the default is Everyone) and then optionally filter the lists of existing and scheduled recordings by owner. There are no other per-user settings, no per-user Watched or Don't Like status, no permissions or access control. Just a set of owner tags and a way of filtering by tag.

Of course this is where each person has their own idea of what "multi-user" functionality should be, which is part of the problem of implementing it from Sage's perspective. I don't just want filters, I want full ACL type permissions for everything. I don't want other people in the house to be able to delete my favourites nor my recordings of said favourites. But if two of us "subscribe" to a favourite and I've watched it and delete it then I don't want it to actually delete the physical file until all subscribed users have deleted it.

I completely agree that if Sage were to implement something it definitely wouldn't satisfy everyone, but if the out of the box setup was one single user who auto logs in, which basically makes Sage act like it does today and then the multi-user was flipped on by creating users then people would have a choice to use Sage's definition of multi-user support or to keep the status quo.

This, I think, is the Achilles heel of the multi-user concept: how is Sage supposed to know which users are in the room without some sort of roll call or login process every time you turn on the TV? My feeling is that it's going to be very tough to design a satisfactory solution to this that will work for non-tech-savvy family members who just want to sit down and watch their shows without having to jump through hoops to do it, and who are likely to panic if their must-see shows aren't instantly visible in the list.

Agreed, but I think Sage needs to define its version of "multi-user" and just implement it, with the default setup having it turned off (or 1 "everyone" user only, which basically makes Sage act like it does today). Some form of multi-user is much preferred over nothing. At least with some kind of multi-user support in the core then others can start to build around it to create more complex solutions if so desired.

[GKusnick]

Originally Posted by Slugger

I don't want other people in the house to be able to delete my favourites nor my recordings of said favourites.

But how do you propose to handle shared resources like favorite priorities or disk space? What's to stop someone from elevating their own favorites and pushing yours to the bottom of the heap? Or filling up the disk with recordings that nobody else is allowed to delete?

If it's just accidental deletions you're worried about, some sort of trashcan/undelete functionality seems like a better fit with the way most people use Sage.

[sainswor99]

Originally Posted by GKusnick

But how do you propose to handle shared resources like favorite priorities or disk space? What's to stop someone from elevating their own favorites and pushing yours to the bottom of the heap? Or filling up the disk with recordings that nobody else is allowed to delete?

If it's just accidental deletions you're worried about, some sort of trashcan/undelete functionality seems like a better fit with the way most people use Sage.

I would think you should isolate administrative functions from viewers. Administrators would worry about disk space management, setting up favorites (including priorities), and setting up user rights. Viewers could view their own (and other's shows), delete their own shows (but not others). They could also add a favorite, but not prioritize it.

For example, I (as an administrator) would juggle favorite priorities and determine what gets recorded. My kids could watch their shows (and delete the ones they watch, but not mine).

Obviously, there's a lot more plumbing to it, but that's a quick stab at it.

[Slugger]

Originally Posted by GKusnick

But how do you propose to handle shared resources like favorite priorities or disk space? What's to stop someone from elevating their own favorites and pushing yours to the bottom of the heap? Or filling up the disk with recordings that nobody else is allowed to delete?

If it's just accidental deletions you're worried about, some sort of trashcan/undelete functionality seems like a better fit with the way most people use Sage.

My priorities are always higher than anyone elses. The "root" user determines whose priorities are ranked higher - a user should only be able to prioritize those favs they own and then under the hood all the favs are ranked first by user priority then by the priority set by the user. And when disk space becomes an issue, use the same ordering for what gets wiped first.

Then the issue of can a user even create favs/schedule manual recordings comes up. I'd want a user profile, call it "guest", that can simply browse recordings and watch only without the ability to delete.

And so on... like I said, not a small undertaking, which is why I stay away from this one. It'd take too long and too much effort only to have it (possibly) deprecated by Sage v7. Alternatively, if Sage v7 provided a multi-user model in the core API then perhaps the effort becomes less to implement all the ideas I've listed.

[Slugger]

Originally Posted by GKusnick

If it's just accidental deletions you're worried about, some sort of trashcan/undelete functionality seems like a better fit with the way most people use Sage.

I've thought about this, but then someone (me) has to babysit the recycle bin. "Did everyone really watch The Simpsons?" Instead, I'd rather everyone tell Sage that they did by marking it for deletion - when Sage realizes that all subscribed users to The Simpsons have watched it then zap it from the hard drive.

[wayner]

Could you not just move recordings into folders under MyVideos that are organized by family member and/or Show title. I do something similar for the shows that I record for my daughter using SageJobQueue. I transcode the shows to MPEG4 and then move to a \Kids Shows\Dora or \Kids Shows\WonderPets folder. Then you just put a Kids Shows item on the main menu and you are off to the races. The only wrinkle is that you have to remove the Show title from the filename and just go with Episode Title and ProgramID. As long as you keep the ProgramID and have your destination folders as part of the Media Library then the shows still show up in RecordedTV as well even though they are no longer physically residing in the RecordedTV foler.

It's not a perfect solution but it gets you 75% of the way there. But I agree that a true multi-user environment would be better.

[pknowles]

Multi-user needs to be well thought out before it's implemented in Sage. I like the idea of setting up user accounts in a hierarchy and tagging favorites with certain users. When I bring Sage out of sleep mode it lists all the users and I toggle select all the users that are going to be watching, then the highest user has to enter their code (2-6 digits). The users tagged are the ones that get marked as watched for the show.

I have Sage set up to prompt me to delete a show after it has been watched. Another option could be added that allows you to modify the users tagged in case someone left early or came into the room a few minutes late to watch. Sage would delete a show when everyone who is listed has watched it or it will allow the highest user to delete it anyway.

I would also have all the recordings from lower users show up, but they will be in one viewing folder in the Sage interface; somethings that says "other users recordings". This would be for cleaning up purposes if needed. The whole idea is that higher users have control over lesser users. So I would have the user hierarchy be:
1)Me
2)Wife
3)Kid

So my wife can see and modify the kids recordings, but not the other way around. And if I want to watch a cartoon with the kid, their recordings will show up in my sub folder when I log in and we won't have to play pass the remote to have different people log in for the next show. That's the point of the user hierarchy to not have to play pass the remote as well as spying on the kids. ;~>