IceTV Timers still sometimes without titles

[vader1111]

None of that answers the question.

If you still have the timers.xml entry for a recording with no episode name or synopsis, and you still have its recording files (even in Trash, you can do some reconstruction.

Is there a timer description in the timer's entry in the timer.xml file?

Is there an episode name in the recording's .meta file? (Third line)

Is there an episode name and synopsis in the recording's .eit file? (Use the command "strings recordingname.meta", the .eit file is binary)

The questions all need to be answered using the PVR's command-line interface.

Both the 3rd line in the .meta file, and the description in the timer.xml file, are empty/blank.

Not sure about the EIT file, and I can't attach for you to examine.

[prl]

...
Not sure about the EIT file, and I can't attach for you to examine.

Try adding a .txt extension to it (i.e. change its name to whatever.eit.txt)

[vader1111]

OK.. I've fudged the filenames a bit, but you shouldn't have any trouble figuring out which is which.

[peteru]

Are you sure you are not blowing away your EPG cache by having the EPG Load option enabled? That would explain most of the complaints you have.

[MrQuade]

PeterU is of course talking about the infamous setting :
MENU->Setup->TV->EPG settings->EPG cache reload

Which must remain off.

[vader1111]

PeterU is of course talking about the infamous setting :
MENU->Setup->TV->EPG settings->EPG cache reload

Which must remain off.

Never touched that setting. Wasn't even aware of it's existence.

[prl]

OK.. I've fudged the filenames a bit, but you shouldn't have any trouble figuring out which is which.

The EIT file has:
Title: Blindspot
Episode: Mom
Synopsis: When the team identifies a member of Sandstorm, it leads to a cascading series of events which result in the revelation of Phase 2.

Is that what you'd expect it to have?

The timer file and the .meta file confirm it started at Wed May 17 23:15:00 2017.

[Grumpy_Geoff]

The main daily update of changes to the IceTV EPG happens at around 14:00 EST, but updates can happen any time. I'm not sure when the next day's data update is made available.

I just had the 'daily' update at 22:13:55 (matches last night) --
[IceTV] {"header":{"page":"1","rows_per_page":"607","total_rows":"607"},"last_update_time":"1495203235","channels":[{"id":"23","name":"7 Digital",{blah blah blah...}

Those bits sure do take a while to cross the Nullarbor!

[vader1111]

OK.. I've fudged the filenames a bit, but you shouldn't have any trouble figuring out which is which.

The EIT file has:
Title: Blindspot
Episode: Mom
Synopsis: When the team identifies a member of Sandstorm, it leads to a cascading series of events which result in the revelation of Phase 2.

Is that what you'd expect it to have?

The timer file and the .meta file confirm it started at Wed May 17 23:15:00 2017.

That is exactly what I would expect to see.

The timer recorded perfectly, but that wasn't the issue.

[Grumpy_Geoff]

OK.. I've fudged the filenames a bit, but you shouldn't have any trouble figuring out which is which.

The EIT file has:
Title: Blindspot
Episode: Mom
Synopsis: When the team identifies a member of Sandstorm, it leads to a cascading series of events which result in the revelation of Phase 2.

Is that what you'd expect it to have?

The timer file and the .meta file confirm it started at Wed May 17 23:15:00 2017.

That is exactly what I would expect to see.

The timer recorded perfectly, but that wasn't the issue.

Thia is what I see in OpenWebif for my recording of that episode -

Blindspot
7HD Perth Wed 17 May, 23:10
93:57 min.
Mom
When the team identifies a member of Sandstorm, it leads to a cascading series of events which result in the revelation of Phase 2.


vader1111's .ts.meta file doesn't have the short description ("Mom"), whereas mine does -
1:0:1:946:99E:3281:EEEE0000:0:0:0::PRIME7 Canberra
Blindspot

1495026900

480564008
3432595744
f:0,c:000ab4,c:010ab5,c:020ab9,c:030ab4
188
0

1:0:19:564:506:1013:EEEE0000:0:0:0::7HD Perth
Blindspot
Mom
1495033800

507403206
3504706716
f:0,c:000641,c:020644,c:030641,c:040643,c:050001
188
0

[prl]

Rebooting works fine... but it's not much help when I'm going away for 3 weeks and won't be around to re-start the GUI.

What is the problem if you are away though? Even though the timer won't have a description, the resulting recording will have all the information just fine once it is done.

No.. the recording does NOT have the information - that's the problem here.

I've looked at the posted timers.xml, BlindspotMeta.txt and BlindspotEit.txt files and they don't demonstrate an instance of the problem of the recording not having an episode name or synopsis. They do show the description field in the timer and in the .meta file being missing, but I tink that's an issue that I have a good handle on.

I was wanting to see the timer data, .meta file and .eit file of exactly what was being described in the quoted post, where there was no episode name synopsis shown for the recording.

[prl]

Just a clarification of where the name, episode name and synopsis information is taken from:

name: The program name is taken from the .meta file in the media selection list in the media selection screen and in the media playback infobar. The name is taken from the .eit file in the media selection details panel (to the right of the selection list in the selection screen). The name is taken from the .eit file in the playback second infobar (OK, OK while playing a recording). In the timer screen, the program name is taken from the timer's "name" attribute.

episode name & synopsis: The event episode name & synopsis are taken from the .eit file in the media selection details panel and in the second infobar. The in the timer screen, the timer description is taken from the timer's "description" attribute. The timer "description" attribute is taken from the event's episode name if it has one, or if not, from the program synopsis if there's no episode name. It's empty if the EPG has neither when the timer is set.

One oddity in this is that if the program name in the .meta file doesn't match the program name in the .eit file, the program name shown in the media selection details panel and the playback second infobar can be different from the program name shown in the media selection list and in the playback first infobar. This can happen, for example, if you rename the recording in the media player.

[MrQuade]

Is any recording info populated from the now/next data rather than the EPG cache (when the appropriate options are selected)? There is one instance where mismatches may occur?

[prl]

Is any recording info populated from the now/next data rather than the EPG cache (when the appropriate options are selected)? There is one instance where mismatches may occur?

When a timer is created, its "description" attribute is extracted from the EPG event on its service that covers the midpoint of the recording timer (including padding if the timer is padded). This is the reason that if the post-padding is longer than the actual program being recorded, this information can be from the wrong program (in RecordTimer.RecordTimerEntry.getEventFromEPG()). The short description is used if it isn't empty, and the extended description is used if the short description is empty and the extended description isn't empty.

In IceTV, the short description is the episode name, if it's a series, and the long description is the synopsis. Movies and the like don't have short descriptions.

In the broadcast TV EPG, sometimes the short description is used, sometimes the extended description is used. Sometimes the short description is an episode name; sometimes the short and extended descriptions contain the same thing (which is why in some code handling the descriptions there are tests for whether the first 20 characters of the two are the same).

The name and description in the .meta file is created from the timer "name" and "description" attributes, after removing any newlines in them.

When a recording is in the prepare state, it will look up the event by the EIT id in the timer (timer "eit" attribute) and use that event for the short and extended descriptions (episode name and synopsis for IceTV). If that fails, it will look up the event by the recording timer's midpoint time. eEPGCache::saveEventToFile() (lib/dvb/epgcache.cpp) called from eDVBServiceRecord::prepare() (lib/service/servicedvbrecord.cpp).

The EIT id assigned to the timer can be wrong if you manually change the timer's start and end points.

I don't think Now/Next is used (or I haven't been able to see where it is used).

[prl]

Getting back to updates to timer descriptions from EPG updates, does anyone think it wouldn't be a bad idea to also update the timer name if the EPG program name changes? I'm not sure whether that's ever been seen, but it would appear to be a good idea and could be implemented at minimum cost above the cost of updating the descriptions.

[Grumpy_Geoff]

Getting back to updates to timer descriptions from EPG updates, does anyone think it wouldn't be a bad idea to also update the timer name if the EPG program name changes? I'm not sure whether that's ever been seen, but it would appear to be a good idea and could be implemented at minimum cost above the cost of updating the descriptions.

No, "it wouldn't be a bad idea".

[vader1111]

I now have a stopgap solution in place, thanks to guidance from the posters on this thread.

I've set my T2s to do a GUI re-start at 3am every Saturday and Tuesday, followed by a "Go to Standby" timer 10 minutes later. This should ensure that the T2s are reset every 3-4 days, so no timer should ever reach the point of recording without having downloaded a full description.

It's only a stopgap solution, until prl's firmware update is available. The odds of me recording a program at 3am on a Saturday or Tuesday are minimal, but any such timers will definitely need close personal attention.

[Grumpy_Geoff]

Just a clarification of where the name, episode name and synopsis information is taken from:

name: The program name is taken from the .meta file in the media selection list in the media selection screen and in the media playback infobar. The name is taken from the .eit file in the media selection details panel (to the right of the selection list in the selection screen). The name is taken from the .eit file in the playback second infobar (OK, OK while playing a recording). In the timer screen, the program name is taken from the timer's "name" attribute.

episode name & synopsis: The event episode name & synopsis are taken from the .eit file in the media selection details panel and in the second infobar. The in the timer screen, the timer description is taken from the timer's "description" attribute. The timer "description" attribute is taken from the event's episode name if it has one, or if not, from the program synopsis if there's no episode name. It's empty if the EPG has neither when the timer is set.

One oddity in this is that if the program name in the .meta file doesn't match the program name in the .eit file, the program name shown in the media selection details panel and the playback second infobar can be different from the program name shown in the media selection list and in the playback first infobar. This can happen, for example, if you rename the recording in the media player.

I hacked the Blindspot.ts.meta file to change the name on the 2nd line and empty the episode/short description on the 3rd line. The resultant listing in the media selection list has the hacked name in the left panel but still with both the correct program name and short description ("Mom") in the right details panel (i.e. from the matching .eit file).

I think this is how prl has specified the behaviour to be.

Given vader1111's Blindspot .eit and .ts.meta files, I can't then see why the recording details aren't showing with the "Mom" short description.

[prl]

I dropped the Blindspot .eti and .meta files into a different recording, and my earlier post (and my examination of the code) is the basis for my post.

If the Blindspot .eit file is substituted into another recording, that recording shows the synopsis for Blindspot (and its title, in the cases I mentioned).

[prl]

Getting back to updates to timer descriptions from EPG updates, does anyone think it wouldn't be a bad idea to also update the timer name if the EPG program name changes? I'm not sure whether that's ever been seen, but it would appear to be a good idea and could be implemented at minimum cost above the cost of updating the descriptions.

No, "it wouldn't be a bad idea".

Actually, it turns out that it isn't a great idea. If you have IceTV set up to add repeat tagging to titles in the EPG, the timer names (and hence the recording names) don't have the repeat tagging in them. That means that if the show is a repeat, the update from the EPG will add the repeat flagging to the timer (and hence the recording) name. It will only do that, though, if there's an EPG update that affects the timer (or if there's a restart, which will resend the whole EPG as an update). The repeat flagging is a user-settable string, so it's not possible to strip it automatically.

[Grumpy_Geoff]

Getting back to updates to timer descriptions from EPG updates, does anyone think it wouldn't be a bad idea to also update the timer name if the EPG program name changes? I'm not sure whether that's ever been seen, but it would appear to be a good idea and could be implemented at minimum cost above the cost of updating the descriptions.

No, "it wouldn't be a bad idea".

Actually, it turns out that it isn't a great idea. If you have IceTV set up to add repeat tagging to titles in the EPG, the timer names (and hence the recording names) don't have the repeat tagging in them. That means that if the show is a repeat, the update from the EPG will add the repeat flagging to the timer (and hence the recording) name. It will only do that, though, if there's an EPG update that affects the timer (or if there's a restart, which will resend the whole EPG as an update). The repeat flagging is a user-settable string, so it's not possible to strip it automatically.

It wouldn't affect my T4 , as I have the short description tagged for repeats -
Diff'rent Strokes
[Rpt] Fire
When disaster strikes the building, Mr. Drummond and his sister try to keep the news from the kids.

My T2 still has title tagging, this timer was generated by the AutoTimer plugin:
[R] Power Rangers Dino Charge
26.05.2017 04:30 - 26.05.2017 05:35
9Go!
Rise Of A Ranger
waiting

I personally wouldn't care if timer names updated due to repeat tagging on the occasional EPG event update. But as you point out, I can see the bootup/restart being an issue though!

[prl]

I've done a bit more performance tweaks on the code that updates timer descriptions from EPG updates, and added code to it so that it saves to timers.xml if any description updates are made.

I'll run it on our in-use T4 tonight and tomorrow night, and try to post a patch on Wednesday that will let people try it out.

Grumpy_Geoff, the IceTV patch is compatible with the one for fixing recording start/end marks being overwritten. Just apply both installers (or just the IceTV one if you're still running the start/end fix). Run both uninstallers to completely uninstall. The installer/uninstaller files for both have the same names, so you might want to put them in separate subdirectories on the PVR if you want them both handy for installing/uninstaller.

[Grumpy_Geoff]

Roger that. and I am still running the start/end fix so I'll separate the patches.

[prl]

I can no longer do without having start marks when I chase-play. First world problems

[prl]

Bug #590: IceTV timer description issues

[prl]

I've posted an alpha patch to fix this problem in the Developers Community area.

To test it, you'll need to stop any workarounds for the problems that you're using (like reboot timers).