OTR (On Time Recording) (1 Viewer)

[NRivera637]

This is going to date me but... joining the quest of a selected few I will duplicate the question (request).

Many moons back when a VCR was the only way to record anything while away they had a function that was unbeatable. If I turn on Jay Leno, or Jimmy Fallon or Jimmy Kimmel I really only want to watch their monologues. This requires all of 1/2 hour or less. Windows Media Center, MediaPortal and others record programs from start to finish. This is a waste of resources in many cases such as above.

So why not add a feature to MediaPortal (OTR) where you can tell it to record only part of a given show... (Start time + 15 or 20 or 30 minutes - or 11:30pm to 11:50pm). This would save on processing time as well as hard drive life. Plus it allows for watching only the desired portion of a given program instead of the whole thing.

I'd like to know what MP Scientists think of this... Thanks.

I must add...

MediaPortal in so many ways has so much better image quality than Windows Media Center that I love it. As I see more useable and needed features added I shift closer and closer to having MP as exclusive DVR application. MP still has some quirks I am figuring out and it has few missing features which I post in as time allows but - but overall, this thing will in time surpass WMC by miles...

 

[RonD]

you can sort of do this but its a little messy to setup. with the default-wide skin I just did the following

TV > Scheduled, select menu on left side of screen, New > Advanced Record
Select Your Channel, I used KNTV (NBC in my area) > Record Weekdays (start date) > Select Start Time (23:35 = 11:35PM), Set Duration 0.50 Hours

This sets up a Recording for Jay Leno from 11:35PM to 00:05AM, Used SetupTV.exe to export my scheduled recordings and get the following. Export shows StartTime = 23:35, EndTime =0:5:0. I'll let this run tonight and verify it works. You can also use Episode Managementt to select how many episodes you keep.

<schedule ChannelName="KNTV HD" ProgramName="Manual (KNTV HD)" StartTime="2014-1-22 23:35:0" EndTime="2014-1-23 0:5:0" KeepDate="2000-1-1 0:0:0" PreRecordInterval="1" PostRecordInterval="1" Priority="0" Quality="73" Directory="" KeepMethod="0" MaxAirings="2147483647" ScheduleType="6" Series="False" />

 

[NRivera637]

Good Lord..! I'll have to put on my Coding Hat (propeller on top) for this one.

Let me know if your test works, I'll take a shot at your glyphs as well and see if it works for me. - Thanks.[DOUBLEPOST=1390438018][/DOUBLEPOST]I just went the motion of your steps indicated and it all seemed to fit like a charm..! I am impressed fella..! Seems the needed featuer was there all along in MP 1.6 - God I hope no one else read this... embarrassing that it was there all along. May the MP Gods forgive me on this one. Hope it works...

Thanks again RonD - will advise on test result.

 

[RonD]

Its not that bad to setup, the only really tricky part is knowing that to start a "Manual" recording you need to start from "Scheduled > New" and that "Advanced" gives more options for starting time. Once you start the Manual recording, it will walk you through the options. I also tried the Titan Skin and it works the same way.

 

[NRivera637]

Jay Leno starts @ 10:36 and Jimmy Fallon starts @ 11:36 and the time increments are in 5's - this seems to confuse MP and creates a time overlap schedule making it show duplicate schedulings. This tells me it might still be looking at the PG times and thus gets cornfused... only a test will tell. Will let you know tomorrow if this works. Thanks again RonD.

 

[NRivera637]

The settings suggested did work although the start times did confuse MP as noted above. As a result, it used the same program name to ID both (separate recordings) - which is no big deal as I would expect it to work ok with programs that don't have odd starting times.

A bigger problem is that both recordings had very frequent (stuttering, skipping, hopping) which doesn't happen with normal recordings. I will see tonight and the next few nights if it happens again. Otherwise it can be an annoying bug - will advise after a few recordings. Thanks.

 

[RonD]

I did not see any problems last night, I setup the 3 main late night shows, Kimmel, Leno, Letterman to record as manual recordings 11:35 to 12:05, all 3 recorded as expected, all recorded with the expected 1 minute pre/post store, and all 3 play back fine.

When I look at my scheduled recordings in "Series Mode", I see 3 manual recordings, KGO, KNTV, KPIX (my local channels) Daily Mon-Fri, 11:35PM-12:05AM as expected. One limitation of this approach is it is time based, weekdays at fixed times. If a show get shifted in time due to a special program the recording times will not shift even if the EPG was updated with new times.

 

[NRivera637]

For all intents and purposes the 'OTR'' feature is working fine. It's only the fact that on my stations here the shows start at 10:36 & 11:36 respectively and not at 10:35 & 11.35 as would be normal. That one minute offset quirks out MP because its built in increments are 5 minutes so it doesn't know how to react to a 6 minute scheduling variance. Even though it borrows the program name from the previous show in the '5' domain it does record it without a problem. This is just a minor nuisance which is NOT the fault MP. So all is good. I will be opening a separate thread dealing with WebEPG Grabbing - that one is a pain. But this OTR issue is for all intents and purposes closed. Thank you for your guidance RonD.

 

[RonD]

You could try tweaking the prestore option for specific shows to get 1 minute level start/end times. For example start = 10:40pm with prestore = 4 would start at 10:36. You can also do this for poststore at the end of the shows.

 

[EvanWasHere]

Is there any way to set default values for ALL recordings? I like to have my shows start 5 min in advanced and end 5 min after. This way nothing ever gets clipped.