Channels DVR XMLTV File not mapping in Xteve

nmercuro · August 25, 2021, 2:15am

Really at my wit's end trying to figure this out. I'm feeding Channels DVR directly into Xteve using the M3u8 file autogenerated off the channels DVR link. All channels pull into xteve fine as available streams, but the channels will not map automatically when I try to tie it to the XMLTV File that Channels generates. I'm not sure why this is?

When I look at the XMLTV and M3u8 files, they appear to have a corresponding Channel ID and tvg-name but no channels will map. I can manually go through every single channel and map it, which is what I did initially, but I have over 400 streams now, and this process takes hours. Similarly, when I "scan" for channels in plex, all these new channels that have been mapped in xteve do show up, but most of them don't map correctly to the XMLTV file there either. Some of the channels that do map are incorrect (discovery channel maps as history channel, MTV as ITV, etc). Now that i'm trying to pull in Pluto content, I really would rather not go through 300+ streams and manually link map them. Does anyone have any suggestions? I'm posting this on the XTeve Github also because I honestly don't know if the issue is with Channels or XTeve.

See attached screenshot of xmltv/m3u8 files (this happens to be from Pluto, but this issue persists across TVE, Pluto, Locast, and custom streams.

Thanks!

Edwin_Perez · August 25, 2021, 2:50am

I thought XTEVE does not automatically map channels ... you have to do it yourself.

I had to do mine manually unless you know a way to map automatically ...

mike_here · August 25, 2021, 2:56am

At one point xteve automatically mapped channels based on call signs. Last few updates this seems to no longer work.

Edwin_Perez · August 25, 2021, 2:57am

Yeah I did mine manually and immediately backed XTEVE up and kept it.

nmercuro · August 25, 2021, 3:08am

I only have a frame of reference from the last week or so of setting all this up, but it definitely automapped a few test streams I pulled off the internet before setting it up with Channels DVR. I'm almost wondering if there's some sort of cache of mapped channels to channel names and it's not triggering the automapping function because of that?

There are a few posts on github about issues with automatically mapping channels and even some bugs that look like the channels were changing based on lack of certain fields in the M3u. I'm wondering if perhaps this is what's causing this? Tempted to try the beta branch to see if that solves the issue.

nmercuro · August 25, 2021, 3:11am

I'm also wondering if this is what's going on. It's possible the M3u files I was using already had tvg-id tags and Channels doesn't provide that with their M3u. The only solution I can think of is to either manually map hundreds of channels, and hope nothing ever changes that requires me to map them again, or pull the m3u/xmltv files, match them up manually using an editor, and feed them to xteve.

I would really rather use links than raw files though, because if TVE links ever change, that means I have to do the entire process all over again and remap using the new M3u8 file. I'm not really sure why xteve can't map based on channel ID matches? That seems relatively easy to do. That's basically what I'm doing when I manually map the two files.

Edwin_Perez · August 25, 2021, 3:11am

I am on 2.2.0 if you know of a higher beta let me know I am willing to try on my test machine.

nmercuro · August 25, 2021, 3:13am

That appears to be the latest beta.

Edwin_Perez · August 25, 2021, 3:20am

Just make sure you back it up after mapping I did this and was able to restore to another machine and everything came back ok. I did it by favorites filter and only favored channels I like on Pluto if I want to add another channels I just favor it on Pluto etc ...

nmercuro · August 25, 2021, 3:32am

Right now, I just pull all the pluto channels into xteve, but since none of them map to the xmltv file, I basically have to manually go through every single channel to the appropriate channel-id, which takes hours (I did it last night for all my TVE channels and it took me about an hour). Then I have to do it again when I pull the channels into Plex (though this is a bit faster since I can quickly match each channel to the channel-id).

This is honestly really frustrating, because the whole point of an XMLTV file is that every entry corresponds to a channel-id in the m3u/m3u8, so since the files match, there shouldn't be any need to map anything, it should all just work facepalm.

Edwin_Perez · August 25, 2021, 5:13pm

To make it easier what I wound up doing was run multiple instances of XTEVE on my Synology ... and Seperated OTA , Cable , TVE and Pluto. This made it easier to update Plex. Plus this addressed the XTEVE 480 channel limitation in Plex.

nmercuro · August 25, 2021, 5:30pm

Not a bad solution to keep the tuners separated in Plex. I'm not 100% sure this is possible on windows. I run it as a service, and it won't allow me to open a second instance. I could probably do this with docker, but I hate docker, haha.

mike_here · August 25, 2021, 5:57pm

Unless things have changed you can run xteve on any port you want. Just create a service for each port and use -port="9999" as part of the xteve command. Replace 9999 with the port number you prefer but keep the port numbers > 8000 to avoid conflicts.

Edwin_Perez · August 25, 2021, 6:18pm

When I was running XTEVE on Windows i Did it via batch job ... multiple instances ..

START /B /HIGH /W C:\XTEVE\xteve.exe -config=C:\XTEVE\Config -port="32768"
START /B /HIGH /W C:\XTEVE\xteve.exe -config=C:\XTEVE\Config2 -port="32769"

nmercuro · August 26, 2021, 3:55am

Ahh I see, you have to create a separate install as well. That makes sense and explains why it didn't work.