[ivtv-users] [ANN]: tvpvrd-1.2.5 Recording and transcoding daemon for ivtv

[Michael Cree]

On 16/02/2010, at 12:31 AM, Johan Persson wrote:
> ANNOUNCEMENT - tvpvrd 1.2.5
> =========================
> This is to announce the release of the GPL 3.0 published multi- 
> threaded
> recording/transcoding GNU-Linux daemon 'tvpvrd' - TV  Personal Video  
> recorder
> for ivtv.

Nice.  I had been using cron jobs and shell scripts to operate the pvr  
card on my computer, but have thought a deamon would be a nice way to  
go, particularly after bad experiences trying to install that awful  
mythtv ediface.  So I installed tvpvrd last night to try it out.  I  
noted the following problems:

After compiling, then entering "make distclean", rerunning configure  
and recompiling, one gets compilation errors.  The "make distclean"  
must be leaving something behind.  It certainly is not returning the  
directory to being "distribution clean".

The profiles directory is hardcoded to be /etc/tvpvrd/profiles so even  
if all other files in /etc/tvpvrd are configured to be elsewhere (the  
default configuration gives /usr/local/etc/tvpvrd) the profiles  
directory is still /etc/tvpvrd/profiles.

It does not just read *.profile files from the profiles directory but  
editor backup files as well.

If you modify the configuration files (eg etc/tvpvrd/tvpvrd.conf) and  
then find you have to reinstall, the installation overwrites the  
modified configuration files!!!  If a configuration file is present it  
absolutely should *NOT* overwrite it on install.

The exit command to quit the telnet session is not documented.

Entering recurring recordings with the 'ar' command does not work.  It  
always replies with "Error:1:Syntax Error".  I even cut and pasted an  
example from the documentation and that also generated the same error!!!

If one sets up the server with no transcoding it leaves the recorded  
files in the vtmp directory and doesn't shift them to the mp2  
directory.  Actually shifting files is not a good idea. It means  
looking in different places for the recording dependent on when one  
starts playback.  Why not just record directly to the mp2 directory  
and if it is ordered that the original should be deleted after  
transcoding then delete it from the mp2 directory when transcoding is  
done?

I also have some feature requests:

Putting recordings in separate directories for each profile is  
_really_ annoying if one only records with a single profile.  It would  
be nice to optionally get rid of the silly profile subdirectories in  
the mp2 and mp4 directories.

When entering a recording that clashes with another recording it would  
be nice if it printed out what the clash is instead of just printing  
"Error:5:No free video resource at specified time."

It would be nice when listing scheduled recordings to list the day of  
the week as well as the date. (I hazard a guess, though, that you want  
to keep the format fairly rigid and controlled so that it is easy for  
a higher level program to drive the daemon via the telnet port?)

It would be nice to be able to input times and see times displayed in  
English format with AM and PM rather than the militaristic 24 hour  
clock.

The lc command for listing the video controls looks like it just calls  
the v4l2-ctl command and displays its output.  Unfortunately the v4l2- 
ctl presents the information in a verbose and ugly format.  Surely you  
could do better!  Please.  I grimace every time I have to use v4l2-ctl.

It would be _really_ _really_ _fantastic_ if this daemon could also  
record from DVB devices!  I have both an analogue PVR card and a  
digital DVB-T card; using the same daemon to manage both of them would  
be just wonderful!

Cheers
Michael.