Autotimers and Description Uniqueness

[Old Codger]

Hi everybody.

Many thanks for all your replies, I never expected so many in such a short time!

I'll write a more detailed reply to the various points later (it will take quite a while), but I'll respond to just the following for now

Isn't that what you'd expect to happen?

I've used freeview autotimers for years and never had a problem with multiple recordings of the same programme.

Maybe give a precise example of what you're trying to do?

Apologies, my original wording wasn't clear - should have said 'quite a few refuse to find more than a single episode'.
So for a series with, say, 10 episodes currently listed in the EPG (6 unique episodes and 4 repeats, say), the autotimer only finds the first of the 10, not 6 as one would expect.

Please, no more replies for the moment - I'll be back later with responses to some of the other points, and an example of a programme which shows the problem I'm encountering.

Regards.

[BrianTheTechieSnail]

... or a re-record option (easy in autotimer, not so sure about timers), which would ignore the xml file.

No, you only want to re-record if you've deleted the previous recording of the same episode.

[adm]

Apologies, my original wording wasn't clear - should have said 'quite a few refuse to find more than a single episode'.
So for a series with, say, 10 episodes currently listed in the EPG (6 unique episodes and 4 repeats, say), the autotimer only finds the first of the 10, not 6 as one would expect.

Which suggests that the autotimer is incorrectly configured or maybe the broadcaster has used the same generic description for all episodes.
When you post an example of a problem series please also post screenshots of your autotimer settings for the program(s).

[ccs]

No, you only want to re-record if you've deleted the previous recording of the same episode.

That's getting a bit complicated - I sometimes re-record to get the episode details which were missing in the (unwatched) original.

The advantage of re-record=yes is that nothing changes and recordings work as they always have.

But we're all different.

[birdman]

Which suggests that the autotimer is incorrectly configured or maybe the broadcaster has used the same generic description for all episodes.

The usual problem is that you have, say, 6 different episodes where the only difference between them is the episode number. This is insufficient for the similarity test to distinguish them. But if you switch that off you get all of the repeat broadcasts as well.
You can usually get rid of the repeats by specifying time periods for recording.

But then you can't get a repeat auto-recorded if you end up with a recording clash at the time of the original.

[birdman]

Which suggests that the autotimer is incorrectly configured or maybe the broadcaster has used the same generic description for all episodes.
When you post an example of a problem series please also post screenshots of your autotimer settings for the program(s).

It's an old example, but see:

https://www.world-of-satellite.com/s...l=1#post384956

[BrianTheTechieSnail]

That's getting a bit complicated - I sometimes re-record to get the episode details which were missing in the (unwatched) original.

The advantage of re-record=yes is that nothing changes and recordings work as they always have.

But we're all different.

But "as they always have" is mostly being able to eliminate duplicate recordings using:

Require description to be unique: Any service/recording
Check for uniqueness in: Tile and all descriptions

and you said that that checking would be replaced by checking the recordings.xml file.
So the recordings.xml file would have to NOT contain deleted recordings.

[ccs]

But "as they always have" is mostly being able to eliminate duplicate recordings using:

and you said that that checking would be replaced by checking the recordings.xml file.

All I'm suggesting is a more efficient way of checking if a recording has already been made (ViX already checks timers and movielist), with the (big) bonus of including recordings that have even been deleted or moved out of movielist.

The criteria for "duplicate" would not change, unless it could be improved.

Not a clue what your last edit means.

[BrianTheTechieSnail]

It's simple. As it is at the moment I can re-record an episode that I've deleted and still use my settings I quoted to avoid making duplicate recordings.
You scheme would change that and mean that my settings as quoted above would never ever re-record an episode even if I had deleted it.

[ccs]

It's simple. As it is at the moment I can re-record an episode that I've deleted and still use my settings I quoted to avoid making duplicate recordings.
You scheme would change that and mean that my settings as quoted above would never ever re-record an episode even if I had deleted it.

Deleting a recording expecting to record it again in the future is something I'd never consider doing, particularly if others in the series still remain.

If that's what you want, then delete recording would also need to remove the entry in recordings.xml, probably a lot easier done by editing unless a "completely forget" option was implemented.

Anyway, recordings.xml is never going to happen.

[Old Codger]

More responses and information

Well, I haven't been able to work out how to insert more than one 'quote', so I'll have to mention just the post numbers instead of quoting. Sorry.

Post #2

Unfortunately, I've never got 'Check for uniqueness in: Title and all descriptions' to work at all on any programme - it simply records every instance of a series, including repeats: ie. just like specifying 'Require description to be unique: No'.

Post #5

There quite a few programmes on some of the 'endless repeats' Freeview channels that have that type of description, so that setting would result in a large number of unwanted recordings.

Post #7

But this won't work if the programmes don't follow a regular time sequence, fairly common on some channels (see post #8 for example).

Post #12

If in doubt as to the results of an autotimer, I do a search first, and it's quite easy to go down the list to see what the descriptions are like.

Interesting, thanks for that (I guess that the bit about 'Automatic junk heuristic' is irrelevant here, as I read somewhere that the Short Description has a max length of 180 chars).

Post #20

Yes, exactly! However, as mentioned above, specifying time periods won't work if the episodes you want are all over the place.

A couple of examples of the problem I'm having.

Forces TV (LCN 96): Programme 'Two in Clover': First episode in EPG tonight at 00:00. Search find 26 episodes in total - 12 unique, 14 repeats.

Check for uniqueness in: Title and Short description: first episode only
Check for uniqueness in: Title and all descriptions: all 26 episodes

Forces TV (LCN 96): Programme 'Robin's Nest': First episode in EPG tonight at 01:00. Search find 16 episodes in total - 8 unique, 8 repeats.

Slightly different results - the 'Short' option finds 2 episodes, not 1. This is due to the first episode actually having a 'proper' description (and its repeat is correctly ignored by the autotimer), while the 2nd has the same type of description as 'Two in Clover' (ie. just a small variable part in the description).

Hope the above makes sense!

Some screenshots as requested.

The first 2 are the Autotimer default settings, the other 2 the setup for the timer itself. Hope these are of use.

Forces TV-792020-143.jpg Forces TV-792020-1455.jpg

Forces TV-792020-1443.jpg Forces TV-792020-149.jpg

Regards

[ccs]

Forces TV (LCN 96): Programme 'Two in Clover': First episode in EPG tonight at 00:00. Search find 26 episodes in total - 12 unique, 14 repeats.

Check for uniqueness in: Title and Short description: first episode only
Check for uniqueness in: Title and all descriptions: all 26 episodes

Autotimer defaults with search set to everyday finds 12 unique timers. No uniqueness settings used. Used 00:00 entry to setup.

Post #20 explains why as every description is the same apart from episode details.

I'm currently recording series 15 of NCIS, another programme with load of repeats.
Works fine because the series is called "New: NCIS".
Until today, when it reverted to NCIS for some reason. Partial match on title didn't picked it up, so I had to mess about a bit to just get the 21:00 recordings.

[ccs]

The usual problem is that you have, say, 6 different episodes where the only difference between them is the episode number.
This is insufficient for the similarity test to distinguish them. But if you switch that off you get all of the repeat broadcasts as well.
You can usually get rid of the repeats by specifying time periods for recording.

But then you can't get a repeat auto-recorded if you end up with a recording clash at the time of the original.

Surely there's a difference between unique and similar, or am I just getting old?

[adm]

The usual problem is that you have, say, 6 different episodes where the only difference between them is the episode number. This is insufficient for the similarity test to distinguish them.

But the wording in the menu is not to check for similar but check for unique. Shouldn't both have checks for identical strings rather than just similar strings?

[BrianTheTechieSnail]

Surely there's a difference between unique and similar, or am I just getting old?

Yes there is.
IMHO the only confusion over this should be whether changes in just capitalization, punctuation and/or spacing should count as still the same.
(I think they probably should).