[linux-dvb] Is there a daemon style program for scheduled DVB recording?

[linux-dvb] Is there a daemon style program for scheduled DVB recording?

[Adam Nielsen]

Hi everyone,

I'm currently setting up a new server that will (among other things)
record TV shows for me.  In the past I've used cron to schedule
recording jobs, and I've used dvbrecord to do the actual recording.

This set up has served me well for many years, but unfortunately
dvbrecord doesn't seem to exist any more, and it never supported
programs with AC3 audio anyway (which is pretty much all the HDTV
channels here in Australia.)

If you were setting up a headless machine to record TV shows, what
programs would you use to do this?  Ideally I'd like the shows dumped
into a local directory, so that I can watch them over NFS with mplayer,
but I'm open to alternatives.

I really want to avoid running a whole "media centre" program like
MythTV, VDR, etc. as I'd like this to be lean and clean and I don't mind
using the command line for playback.

Any suggestions?  I'd be happy to document the final system,
installation, configuration, etc. on the LinuxTV wiki, as I couldn't
find any info about this sort of thing on there at the moment.

Many thanks,
Adam.

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Re: [linux-dvb] Is there a daemon style program for scheduled DVB recording?

[Nico Sabbi]

Il Saturday 23 February 2008 09:14:44 Adam Nielsen ha scritto:
> Hi everyone,
> 
> I'm currently setting up a new server that will (among other things)
> record TV shows for me.  In the past I've used cron to schedule
> recording jobs, and I've used dvbrecord to do the actual recording.
> 
> This set up has served me well for many years, but unfortunately
> dvbrecord doesn't seem to exist any more, and it never supported
> programs with AC3 audio anyway (which is pretty much all the HDTV
> channels here in Australia.)
> 
> If you were setting up a headless machine to record TV shows, what
> programs would you use to do this?  Ideally I'd like the shows dumped
> into a local directory, so that I can watch them over NFS with mplayer,
> but I'm open to alternatives.
> 
> I really want to avoid running a whole "media centre" program like
> MythTV, VDR, etc. as I'd like this to be lean and clean and I don't mind
> using the command line for playback.
> 
> Any suggestions?  I'd be happy to document the final system,
> installation, configuration, etc. on the LinuxTV wiki, as I couldn't
> find any info about this sort of thing on there at the moment.
> 
> Many thanks,
> Adam.
> 

there used to be dvbd somewhere sometimes, although I can't say how
it works because I never used it

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Re: [linux-dvb] Is there a daemon style program for scheduled DVB recording?

[Torgeir Veimo]

On 23 Feb 2008, at 18:14, Adam Nielsen wrote:

> If you were setting up a headless machine to record TV shows, what
> programs would you use to do this?  Ideally I'd like the shows dumped
> into a local directory, so that I can watch them over NFS with  
> mplayer,
> but I'm open to alternatives.
>
> I really want to avoid running a whole "media centre" program like
> MythTV, VDR, etc. as I'd like this to be lean and clean and I don't  
> mind
> using the command line for playback.


Obviously, you seem to have never actually tried VDR. It's extremely  
lean and clean and it don't need to run with any output. You can  
telnet into it and schedule recordings and it's easy to view  
recordings over NFS, or use a streaming media client directly towards  
VDR with a suitable streaming plugin.


-- 
Torgeir Veimo
torgeir@pobox.com




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Re: [linux-dvb] Is there a daemon style program for scheduled DVB recording?

[Adam Nielsen]

> there used to be dvbd somewhere sometimes, although I can't say how
> it works because I never used it

I did investigate dvbd a few years ago, it seems great and does exactly
what I want but unfortunately I could never get it to work with my card.
 I looked into it again this afternoon but unfortunately I think the
project is dead, it hasn't been updated since 2004 and only a few files
in CVS were updated around 2006.

Cheers,
Adam.


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Re: [linux-dvb] Is there a daemon style program for scheduled DVB recording?

[Adam Nielsen]

> Obviously, you seem to have never actually tried VDR. It's extremely
> lean and clean and it don't need to run with any output. You can telnet
> into it and schedule recordings and it's easy to view recordings over
> NFS, or use a streaming media client directly towards VDR with a
> suitable streaming plugin.

Oh ok, I did try VDR a few years back but with a different focus (TV
output) and it seemed quite buggy at the time.  I didn't realise it
could operate solely as a daemon - I'll have to have another look now -
thanks!

Cheers,
Adam.


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[linux-dvb] Is there a daemon style program for scheduled DVB recording?

[Tim Hewett]

[-- Attachment #1.1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1988 bytes --]

I just use dvbstream, scheduled using cron. To work with that I wrote  
a utility to work out which is the next schedule in the crontab and  
set the hardware alarm clock time to have the computer boot a few  
minutes in advance of the recording time, run it just before shutting  
down (it shuts it down for you) and the PC then wakes at the right  
time. I also modified dvbstream to allow the DVB device name to be  
used instead of its adaptor number, to cater for the devices changing  
numbers between bootups. Some initial changes were made to dvbstream  
to specify a programme name to be monitored in the now/next programme  
info, to try to cater for early programme starts or overruns, but I  
can't say that it is reliable as it hasn't been used much.

These are all private changes but I'm happy to share the source code  
if of interest.

Tim.

> Hi everyone,
>
> I'm currently setting up a new server that will (among other things)
> record TV shows for me.  In the past I've used cron to schedule
> recording jobs, and I've used dvbrecord to do the actual recording.
>
> This set up has served me well for many years, but unfortunately
> dvbrecord doesn't seem to exist any more, and it never supported
> programs with AC3 audio anyway (which is pretty much all the HDTV
> channels here in Australia.)
>
> If you were setting up a headless machine to record TV shows, what
> programs would you use to do this?  Ideally I'd like the shows dumped
> into a local directory, so that I can watch them over NFS with  
> mplayer,
> but I'm open to alternatives.
>
> I really want to avoid running a whole "media centre" program like
> MythTV, VDR, etc. as I'd like this to be lean and clean and I don't  
> mind
> using the command line for playback.
>
> Any suggestions?  I'd be happy to document the final system,
> installation, configuration, etc. on the LinuxTV wiki, as I couldn't
> find any info about this sort of thing on there at the moment.
>
> Many thanks,
> Adam.
>

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[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/plain, Size: 150 bytes --]

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Re: [linux-dvb] Is there a daemon style program for scheduled DVB recording?

[Adam Nielsen]

Hi again,

Thanks for all the replies!  I've checked out a few programs and decided
to use dvbstream as Tim Hewett suggested.

>> Obviously, you seem to have never actually tried VDR. It's
>> extremely lean and clean and it don't need to run with any output.
>> You can telnet into it and schedule recordings and it's easy to
>> view recordings over NFS, or use a streaming media client directly
>> towards VDR with a suitable streaming plugin.

I installed VDR after reading your message but that's about as far as I
got.  I couldn't work out how to do a scan to pick up all the channels,
and I may have been willing to create a channel config file manually
except that there were a number of other issues.  For a start, the
telnet syntax was rather cumbersome - crontabs may be just as bad but at
least you can copy and paste :-)

Also I couldn't see where you control the name of the files that VDR
outputs - I want a single file for each show (>4GB if need be) with the
name of the show and the time it was recorded, but I don't think VDR can
do that.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining about VDR, I just think that
it's not suitable for the very specific purpose I'm after.

I do appreciate the suggestion though!

> Tim Hewett wrote:
> I just use dvbstream, scheduled using cron. To work with that I wrote
>  a utility to work out which is the next schedule in the crontab and 
> set the hardware alarm clock time to have the computer boot a few 
> minutes in advance of the recording time, run it just before shutting
>  down (it shuts it down for you) and the PC then wakes at the right
> time. I also modified dvbstream to allow the DVB device name to be
> used instead of its adaptor number, to cater for the devices changing
> numbers between bootups. Some initial changes were made to dvbstream
> to specify a programme name to be monitored in the now/next programme
> info, to try to cater for early programme starts or overruns, but I
> can't say that it is reliable as it hasn't been used much.

Wow, that seems quite elaborate!  Luckily my set up is a server that
runs 24/7 anyway, so I don't need to worry about any power scheduling.
Plus here in Australia most of our TV stations don't run to the times
listed in the now/next info anyway (to influence ratings or some such)
so I have to resort to the low-tech method of starting early and
finishing late.

I've experimented with dvbstream and now that it can work with Program
IDs instead of bare PIDs I think it will do the job nicely.

Again, thanks for the suggestions!

Cheers,
Adam.



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