Manual Recordings, use cases and how to Implement

[chDVRuser]

I know there are many threads/requests created about this topic

Just wanted to get some feedback on use cases and how to implement (if possible) to give the devs one topic to look at.

In my case, there have been maybe 5 cases where I wanted this functionality.
In all but one case, it would have proved useless.

Thinking the EPG Guide data was inaccurate, I wanted to override it and schedule manual recordings.
The guide data was corrected before the recordings happened and I wouldn't have got what I wanted.

There is a work-around for channels that have guide data where you pick whatever is shown closest to the start time and choose to manually record it from the guide with an end-padding of your choice.

The one case where it would have helped is for a channel that has no guide data (this would help with some TVE channels) and I could have recorded based on day/time/duration.

I would like to see Manual recordings implemented in the DVR web UI to start with.

What should be the name of the Movie/Show that's recorded, manually named, or picked from what the guide start time says is playing (if there is one)?

How will it be initiated, Advanced Pass Date/Time/Channel#?

I'm not ready to dive into this work-around yet, if anyone has, please comment.

Set a manual recording of a channel for specific date, time and duration

Technically the DVR engine is capable of manual recordings. But we don't have a UI for it, because recordings and schedules without guide data and images are not well presented in the app. If you really want to setup manual recordings, you can check the request made when you click a guide entry on the web UI and hit record and use that as a template with your own channel/time/duration and fake guide data. For the airing data, you can change Raw to null, and set Source to "manual" with whatever …

[jei]

Being able to add manual recordings would be so great. I really wonder why no app seems to be able to implement this. Sure, the user would have to input name and time manually and there would be no additional data, but so many TV channels in the world don't have proper EPG. Like, who cares about shows on big channels anyway? You can download them all over the web, everyone is recording these. For me the biggest use case of capturing my own TV broadcasts is so I can get these niche programmes on niche channels that are local to my area etc. but these you don't find EPG for anywhere.

[Macnbaish]

I think because it’s such a niche thing. A very small percentage of users would use the feature for the amount of effort to implement.

[racameron]

If you're interested, some users have already put together a method for manual recording. The thread is here:

Creating a Manual Time/Channel based recording job

Stumbled around a bit until I got it working. [Screenshot_2020-09-27 Channels DVR(1)] Using curl from Windows command line. Curious just how minimal the post has to be. I'm specifying; Name Time Duration Channels Serial:0 Airing.Source:"manual" Airing.Channel Airing.Time Airing.Duration Airing.Title Airing.EpisodeTitle Airing.Summary Passing these as null Channel DeviceID Error FileID RuleID Airing.Raw and setting these to false Failed Skipped

At a minimum, you need to provide a channel, start time and duration. There is no UI for it, it does indeed work.

[jei]

Thanks that was very helpful. So basically the feature already exists, but it's not exposed to the user. I guess I can live with that. But I don't buy it being a huge effort to implement when it already works.

[racameron]

@jei

But I don't buy it being a huge effort to implement when it already works.

True, it's probably not a "huge" effort, but there are several things that need to be considered before it can be implemented:

• UI for setting/creating recording – Where does the button/option for a manual recording go in the UI? Is it present on the clients, or just the web UI?
• Info to collect/set upon creation – How much data regarding naming the recording do you have the user fill in? Just the bare minimum (as far as Channels is concerned), or allow the user to fill in all possible fields? Where's there cut-off? What would that dialog look like?
• Storage – In Channels database and filesystem hierarchy, how do you name and where do you store the recordings?
• Library – Where in the UI do manual recordings show up? Viewing/organizing things in your Library rely upon data that probably won't be there for manual recordings. So a new paradigm must be considered, and integrated into the current system in a cohesive manner.

While all of this might not seem like a big deal, each part must be considered. Also, how it will work and fit into the existing app/framework to present something consistent is something that sounds easy to do, but is actually much more difficult than first perceived.