# Folders using PyTivo push function



## rmerikle

OK, sorry if this has been covered, but I have searched and have found bits and pieces, but I am just not clear and I can't seem to achieve what I am trying to do. I really think there are probably others out there that are just as confused as myself on Folders and PyTivo so thought this thread would others as well as me. 

Here is my situation: 
I just upgraded my Tivo with a larger hard drive. I have the PyTivo push working correctly. What I would like is to push a bunch of movies to my Tivo and have them all sit in a folder called "Movies." Is this possible and if so how do I do it? I have tried a multitude of things and can't seem to get it to work so very explicit directions such as step 1, step 2, step 3 would be most appreciated.

Thanks in advance


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## jbernardis

My understanding is that you need to have a metadata file for each of your videos, and the seriesID in each of the metadata files needs to be the same. Further, the seriesID you choose has to be from a series that is currently in the tivo guide data.

Search through this forum for metadata, and you'll find a lot of information and tools.

I am just starting to experiment with this myself, so I am interested to hear what the experts have to say.


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## spocko

jbernardis said:


> Further, the seriesID you choose has to be from a series that is currently in the tivo guide data.


I think that's true only for Pull transfers, not Push.

Some relevant info in this recent thread:
http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=434361

I agree with the OP that this is the subject of a lot of confusion, so it would be good if someone in the know could explain the ins and outs of pyTivo folder grouping in one place.


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## rmerikle

Yes I saw the above post but I have trouble getting an answer to my questions. My understanding is using the pull function of PyTivo you must have the meta info and it must be a recent show, but I have read numerous posts where this does not seem to hold true for pushing. I am am hoping someone out there can give some clear guidance on what we are able to do with the push function. Ideally telling me how to house a bunch of stuff under one folder.


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## NormB

I do this with movies all the time. I have several folders on my Tivo. DVDs, Horror, Downloads, etc.

You need PyTivo running as well as a program called MetaGenerator.

First get 2 small avi or other video files that pytivo can transfer. The smaller the better, because you will delete 

them off the tivo anyway, so you want them to transfer fast. (as an example I will call them video1.avi and 

video2.avi)

create 2 meta files (text files) with the following lines (Replace "Folder Name" with whatever name you want your folders called):


title : Folder Name
SeriesTitle: Folder Name
episodeNumber : 1
isEpisode :true
seriesId : SH999901

Name one of these meta files video1.avi.txt, name the other one video2.avi.txt Put these files in the same 

directory as video1.avi and video2.avi

now, fire up PyTivo, and push them to your Tivo. (they must be pushed and not pulled) They should transfer and be placed in a folder with whatever name you entered in place of "Folder Name" The files will ALSO be named "Folder Name"

Now, run MetaGenerator. Create meta files for the real video that you want to transfer over. I save the meta files 

in a subdirectory of where my video files are located. If you do this the subdirectory MUST be named ".meta". 

Otherwise you can put them in the same directory as your video files. Now you will need to go into each meta file 

and do the following

Change the line isEpisode from false to true

Add the lines:

episodeNumber : 1
SeriesId : SH999901

Save the meta file and fire up Pytivo. Push over at least 2 files. They should now be in the same folder as the 2 previous files, named correctly. You can now delete the original 2 files from the folder. 

If you want to create a second unique folder, you can edit the original meta files with a new folder name and a new unique SeriesId (such as SH999902) and repeat the process.

The seriesId number is what the Tivo uses to determine what folder the video should go into, so change the SeriesId line in the meta file and you can select which folder where it is saved.

Also, be aware that if the folder comes up with an actual program name, that means the tivo has the same seriesId in its guide as what you selected, so you can delete the files, make up a new one. SH999901 to SH999915 have all been clear for me.

Hope this makes sense.


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## robin50

This concise information looks invaluable. Thanks for taking the time to present this Norm!


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## rmerikle

Yes Norm Thank you a million :up::up::up::up:


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## Spenner

Awesome! Thanks for the step-by-step. I've been wanting to do this to group all my Kids Movies.

One note - when you're "testing" with your first files, be sure to use the real Folder Name that you want, because the Tivo will associate that folder name with the seriesId even after you delete any test files.

I tested with a dummy folder name to make sure that I could push and the folder was created. Then I deleted the videos from my Tivo, and pushed some real files with my desired folder name, but they showed on the Tivo under the old/test folder name. I then changed the seriesId to SH999902, re-pushed, and the programs were under the new folder name.


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## dane_walther

Greets everyone..

Just wanted to also post a link to a pyTivo forum thread that might also be useful in this discussion:

pyTivo Discussion Forum: 
- metadata questions: .meta folders/default.txt/push grouping

Now for my latest question that I hope some of you can help answer! 

When I push to the forced folder that I have created for kid movies, the Tivo keeps some of the metadata (description, title, etc) but not others (rating, movieYear, etc) ... additionally, unlike the root folder of the NPL that is sorted alphabetically, the items in the subfolder are sorted by the date recorded-- which in this case is the date that I pushed the file(s) to the Tivo.

Are there any tricks, tips, or something simple I'm overlooking to have the kid movies I push to a subfolder sort alphabetically?

I have considered trying to find out how to force a recorded-on-date and forcing my own "sort" by that timestamp, but if there was some easy way to get it to sort alphabetically, that'd be GREAT.....

thanks in advance,
..dane


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## wmcbrine

dane_walther said:


> When I push to the forced folder that I have created for kid movies, the Tivo keeps some of the metadata (description, title, etc) but not others (rating, movieYear, etc)


Right. Push uses a completely different system for metadata, and we don't know all the relevant keywords yet. (Some items might not even be available.) It's much harder to discover the push tags -- for pull, you can just look at the XML from the TiVo; for push, you have to intercept network traffic, and TiVo Desktop uses very few of the tags, so for (e.g.) star ratings, you'd have to capture messages from Amazon VOD or something. (Do they even show up with star ratings? It's been a while since I DLed one.)



> _additionally, unlike the root folder of the NPL that is sorted alphabetically, the items in the subfolder are sorted by the date recorded_


This is true for any folder on the TiVo (not just those created by pyTivo). It won't change the sort order. The only way to sort the contents alphabetically is to turn off grouping.


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## dane_walther

wmcbrine said:


> Right. Push uses a completely different system for metadata, and we don't know all the relevant keywords yet. (Some items might not even be available.) It's much harder to discover the push tags -- for pull, you can just look at the XML from the TiVo; for push, you have to intercept network traffic, and TiVo Desktop uses very few of the tags, so for (e.g.) star ratings, you'd have to capture messages from Amazon VOD or something. (Do they even show up with star ratings? It's been a while since I DLed one.)
> 
> This is true for any folder on the TiVo (not just those created by pyTivo). It won't change the sort order. The only way to sort the contents alphabetically is to turn off grouping.


Thanks for the reply, wm...

I take it from your post that there is currently also no way of setting the 'recorded-on' date using push?

As an aside, it's interesting to me that even after pushing a forced grouping mechanism, you can't then go use pull to get content over to the Tivo using the episodeId that was previously pushed.... that would solve a bunch of problems. 

From the promptness (and conciseness) of your reply, I assume a lot of work has already been done on attempting at subfolder sorting .... 

thanks,
..dane


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## wmcbrine

dane_walther said:


> I take it from your post that there is currently also no way of setting the 'recorded-on' date using push?


There used to be, for pull... that's something I need to fix.  There wasn't, for push; but as I look at it now, it could be done quite easily. So, I'll do that.



> _From the promptness (and conciseness) of your reply, I assume a lot of work has already been done on attempting at subfolder sorting_


No, no work. There's nothing to do there; not for the TiVo-side folders. Take a look at a folder created by a Season Pass, or a Wishlist -- it's the same way. Notice that the line at the bottom of the screen that describes sort order disappears when you go into a folder.

Now, if you were talking about folders within pyTivo shares, you can force _those_ to alpha sort, via the "force_alpha = True" setting. In fact that was pyTivo's original behavior. But what the TiVo requests is the same as what it does internally -- it always uses date sort for folders, and doesn't offer the option to change it.


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## Spenner

Does pytivo use the metadata file [filename].tivo.txt for .Tivo files? I'm using Push to recategorize movies recorded on my Tivo into a folder. The metadata for the seriesID folder works for non-Tivo files pushed, but when pushing a .Tivo file pytivo seems to use the original embedded metadata, not the metadata from the .txt file, even for the Description. Is that your understanding of the internals?

To get around that and have the .tivo files be foldered on push, I now use tivodecode to first convert the .tivo files to .mpeg, then have pytivo push the mpeg (with the metadata file) and then it correctly oes into the series folder.


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## wmcbrine

For .TiVo files, the internal metadata takes precedence over the .txt files. I did this for pushes because it's what happens anyway on pulls (where tivodecode is not used), so this way it's consistent for a given file. On a pull, the .TiVo header overrides everything; it's the TiVo box itself that does that. (The only way around it would be to pass the file through tivodecode during pulls as well as pushes.)

Otherwise the .txt file takes precedence (over MP4 internal tags, EyeTV tags, and .properties files).


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## dane_walther

dane_walther said:


> I take it from your post that there is currently also no way of setting the 'recorded-on' date using push?





wmcbrine said:


> There used to be, for pull... that's something I need to fix.  There wasn't, for push; but as I look at it now, it could be done quite easily. So, I'll do that.
> 
> No, no work. There's nothing to do there; not for the TiVo-side folders. Take a look at a folder created by a Season Pass, or a Wishlist -- it's the same way. Notice that the line at the bottom of the screen that describes sort order disappears when you go into a folder.
> 
> Now, if you were talking about folders within pyTivo shares, you can force _those_ to alpha sort, via the "force_alpha = True" setting. In fact that was pyTivo's original behavior. But what the TiVo requests is the same as what it does internally -- it always uses date sort for folders, and doesn't offer the option to change it.


If forcing the recorded-on date worked, then manual sorting could be done. Even within a single year, there are plenty of timestamps available!  I assume it sorts down to the yyyy:mm:dd:hh:mm:ss recorded, but even if only yyyy:mm:dd, there are still lots of timestamps available for forcing a sort order. 

pyTivo shares sort alphabetically, I've noticed that yes. But I am pushing to TIvo so that I don't have to maintain the files on a central server (the computer doesn't stay on all the time, etc). I have a MUCH larger HDD on my Tivo than my computer anyway.  And I only have an 802.11b wireless router, so I can't "watch while streaming" anyway. Takes a good few hours to push a file, even without transcoding. 

I still have the original 3-19 distribution of pyTivo. I have read something breifly about something called a GIT snapshot-- I assume if you patch the recorded-on date with Pushing, then I'll need to learn how to do that. I also assume it's a whole lot more work to create a new distribution than a GIT snapshot... No worries though-- I seem to recall seeing a thread over on the pyTivo forum where someone detailed the steps on how to do a GIT snapshot update. Keep us posted on the recorded-on date via Push and I'll test it out when it's patched and report back here (or pyTivo forum, or both)..

THanks SOOOO much!
..dane


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## dane_walther

I ran a few tests.. used an existing seriesId (Futurama!) since I knew using Pull (3.19 RC1 distribution) worked with passing the "time" metadata parameter, and I needed a folder to work with..

I created about a dozen copies of a 2-second video file and created unique metadata .txt files for each of them, and set their dates among 1977, 1980, 2010, 2020, and 2112 (yes, Rush fan also). In my Tivo I browsed to the folder these items were stored, and began queuing them up for "pull"ing in a random order, and went back to the NPL/Futurama folder to watch the progress.

Sure enough, everything came through sorted properly by the dates I set.

wmcbrine-- I don't know python, but I've dabbled in various languages over the past 20 years.. I'd like to maybe develop a simple string-processing equation that develops a "date" value for the string. I'd like to then request a new paramter be added to the pyTivo configuration settings to "assign alphabetizing recorded-on date when recorded-on date not specified and when a seriesId is specified" or something of the sort that will automatically generate the proper recorded-on datecode based on the title string, but only for those items that are grouped (e.g. a seriesId value is assigned). I'm not sure if this would be better suited as a plugin or a new feature, but taking the time to add the feature in the long run would benefit a whole lot of people and save me a bunch of time having to put individual calculated datecodes in the dozens of movies I want to push to customized forced folders.. I can email you to take the discussion off-line if you'd like.

your thoughts?
..dane


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## audiodane

(yes, I changed my username)

Thought I would chime in here with an email I just sent to wmcbrine:



> Hi there again..
> 
> Assuming that the time metadata format can support year 0001 through 9999, I've got a crude mechanism in place. Not yet in "equation" format, but just a test-proof to see how feasible it is. It's not a perfect solution, but for many who are using Push to force specific folders for things like Disney Movies, etc, it goes a long way to "alphabetizing" the items in the pushed folder.
> 
> If you don't want to incorporate this into your pytivo fork, I understand. I can still use this spreadsheet myself (and most likely convert it to javascript and put it online) for my own purposes. If you are interested and would rather wait until after a javascript port (for easier porting to python), that's fine too--just let me know.
> 
> limitations: since we don't know what strings are going to be thrown at us, and we only have the number of seconds between 1/1/0000 _*(EDIT: should be 1/1/0001)*_ and 12/31/9999, we can only process a finite number of characters. With leaving a FEW unassigned values for future use, we can create a "timestamp" based on the first 7 characters of a string (e.g. metadata tag "title"). This isn't great if someone is transferring something called "Futurama Episode 26" of course, but they could always rename it "#26 - Futurama" or use other mechanisms (like the original air date) instead.
> 
> I've attached an excel spreadsheet as well as a .GIF snapshot of the spreadsheet in case you can't open the .xls file. I'll post it online as well.
> 
> Looking forward to hearing your thoughts.
> 
> thanks,
> ..dane


I am attaching those .GIF and .XLS files here as well. Anyone is welcome to use them... Note these will do NO good until the push feature's "time" tag is working. It would work just fine for "pull" transfers if you're using one of the pytivo versions with working "time" tag for pull. (3.19-RC1 passes "time" with pull, but wmcbrine indicated that it is broken in the current GIT snapshot.) And of course it's quite manual at the moment.. but you can replace one of the "test strings" in the spreadsheet and the calculated time value will spit out on the right column..

Note also that A-names have a "more future" date than Z-names, since Tivo sorts folder items in decreasing time (newest episode at top).

Let's keep this ball rolling! 

cheers,
..dane

ps.- I will also mention that I've not actually tested this; I don't know if Tivo supports year 0001 and year 9999 for instance. I'm at work and threw this together real quick-like, and don't have my Tivo here to test with.. I'm just HOPEFUL it will work.


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## audiodane

Update..

1970 (unix epoch) is the "earliest" date Tivo supports. Otherwise it just seems to set the datetime as the current datetime.

Currently trying to find the top end. It correctly places a 2250 date at the top of the list, but doesn't for the year 2375. trying to narrow it down.. Looks like we'll have a LOT less alphabetizing options.. 

..dane


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## audiodane

2300 isn't supported either. All the kids just got home, so I'm done for a while (until after they're in bed)..

..dane


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## audiodane

Looks like it will support up until 1-May-2216 but not 1-June-2216.

That gives us a range of 1-Jan-1970 to 1-May-2216, or 246 years, 4 months, or roughly 7,768,368,000 unique seconds (datetime-values), to work with. Using the spreadsheet I attached earlier (which needs to be updated for reduced date support), that allows generic sorting out through the first four characters. Not as nice as 7 character sorting, but certainly better than none!

I am curious is anyone is interested in this tool being made into an online javascropt tool, or wmcbrine, if you're interested in incorporating this into pytivo. I would at least like for the 'time' feature to be implemented for pushing though so I can use this at least myself for generic sorting of pushed material.

thanks,
..dane

EDIT: whoops-- misread the number of commas.. we can go out to SIX characters with 7.5 billion seconds.. yay! better than four!


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## wmcbrine

I am working on the time thing, just a little short on time myself lately. Soon.

I am not interested in implementing the fake alphabetical sort hack in pyTivo, sorry. It's very clever though.


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## audiodane

wmcbrine said:


> I am working on the time thing, just a little short on time myself lately. Soon.
> 
> I am not interested in implementing the fake alphabetical sort hack in pyTivo, sorry. It's very clever though.


THanks for the reply..

No worries about not including the fake sorting mechanism-- I don't know how pytivo plugins are made, but could this be made as a plugin? If so I'd be interested in that approach also, if someone could point me to learn how to make a plugin...

thanks,
..dane


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## audiodane

Just noticed you commit'd a GIT update over the weekend with the time tag update. If all goes well I'll be updating tonight to try it out. Certainly will be in the next day or three, but hopefully tonight. Thanks so much for working on this!

..dane


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## AbMagFab

Is there any chance we can get all this just built-in to PyTivo, like it is in Tivo Desktop?

That is, can I just pick a folder on the PyTivo Web UI, and say transfer, and then have it end up in that same folder name on the Tivo?

The issues are:
1) The metadata thing is a lot of work for a lot of shows, and seems like this could (and should) just be automated
2) Currently I have to pick a show at a time to transfer from pyTivo and wait for it to finish before picking the next show. It's painful to have to attend to it this much, especially if you have a series of like 10-20 shows that you want in a single folder.

Thanks!


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## orangeboy

AbMagFab said:


> Is there any chance we can get all this just built-in to PyTivo, like it is in Tivo Desktop?
> 
> That is, can I just pick a folder on the PyTivo Web UI, and say transfer, and then have it end up in that same folder name on the Tivo?
> 
> The issues are:
> 1) The metadata thing is a lot of work for a lot of shows, and seems like this could (and should) just be automated
> 2) Currently I have to pick a show at a time to transfer from pyTivo and wait for it to finish before picking the next show. It's painful to have to attend to it this much, especially if you have a series of like 10-20 shows that you want in a single folder.
> 
> Thanks!


I'm pretty sure pyTivo queues up push requests - at least the most recent versions do.


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## Spenner

Yes pyTivo definitely queues the pushes. You can either check multiple boxes to push, or submit the push page several times, and they'll go in order to the Tivo. You don't have to "attend to it" yourself.


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## AbMagFab

Spenner said:


> Yes pyTivo definitely queues the pushes. You can either check multiple boxes to push, or submit the push page several times, and they'll go in order to the Tivo. You don't have to "attend to it" yourself.


Right, I just upgraded from the 3/09 version to the current GIT build.

So the only remaining issues are:
1) The multi-push doesn't maintain the folder
2) All pushes don't maintain recorded date, even on a .Tivo file, which is really annoying for TV series

Any thoughts on these?
Thanks!


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## Spenner

AbMagFab said:


> Right, I just upgraded from the 3/09 version to the current GIT build.
> 
> So the only remaining issues are:
> 1) The multi-push doesn't maintain the folder
> 2) All pushes don't maintain recorded date, even on a .Tivo file, which is really annoying for TV series
> 
> Any thoughts on these?
> Thanks!


1) Yes, it doesn't maintain the PC folder (it's a Tivo thing). To create folders of your own name on the Tivo, re-read post #5 of this thread, it explains how you have to use the metadata SeriesID which Tivo uses to categorize the folders. Once you establish your SeriesID and name, you can put a file "default.txt" with that metadata in your PC folder and it'll be used for each push from that folder.
2) Yes, for pushes, they show as the date that they were pushed, not the recorded date, or the modified date of the file. Again apparently due to Tivo, not controllable by pyTivo.


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## AbMagFab

Spenner said:


> 1) Yes, it doesn't maintain the PC folder (it's a Tivo thing). To create folders of your own name on the Tivo, re-read post #5 of this thread, it explains how you have to use the metadata SeriesID which Tivo uses to categorize the folders. Once you establish your SeriesID and name, you can put a file "default.txt" with that metadata in your PC folder and it'll be used for each push from that folder.
> 2) Yes, for pushes, they show as the date that they were pushed, not the recorded date, or the modified date of the file. Again apparently due to Tivo, not controllable by pyTivo.


Except Tivo Desktop does both of these things, and presumably they're all using the same protocol, right?

Can you explain post #5 a little more? You say one file, but post #5 says a file for each program. Also, I have no idea where to get "metagenerator", as the only one I found is mac-only.

Also, why do the transfer first - what's being added to the meta file as part of the transfer? Can't someone just post a default one for editing?


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## orangeboy

AbMagFab said:


> ...Also, I have no idea where to get "metagenerator", as the only one I found is mac-only...


Slick metadata generator based on specific filename layout (eg. Some.Showname.S01E01.avi): pyTivoMetaThis
Or here's a GUI metadata generator: MetaGenerator Version 2

I use the first one in batch. The second one is easier because of filename freedom.


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## wmcbrine

AbMagFab said:


> Except Tivo Desktop does both of these things, and presumably they're all using the same protocol, right?


The same undocumented, reverse-engineered protocol, right. If TD is preserving the date in a push, we'll have to monitor its traffic to see how it does that. (Oh, yeah, my comment above, that it could be done quite easily -- I was wrong. It was easy to do it the way I thought it should work, but, it didn't.)

Using the PC folder names as TiVo folder names is less of a problem. I'm vaguely planning on implementing that one of these days.



> _Also, why do the transfer first - what's being added to the meta file as part of the transfer? Can't someone just post a default one for editing?_


I don't understand your first question, but see here for a description of the metadata file. (The concept of "a default one for editing" doesn't really make sense; unused keywords should be omitted rather than left blank.)


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## Zaphod

I managed to follow all of this and have a folder created for an RSS feed I'm using an RSS reader to automatically download the video's from the RSS feed, then using moyekj's pyTivo-auto-push utility (http://code.google.com/p/pytivo-auto-push/ and http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=435477) to then auto-push them to my Tivo.

So I've got the folder all created, BUT, I'd like to have one more feature I'd like to suggest for the metadata.

Similar to how you can specify "File" for the "time" tag to tell it to use the file's date and time stamp in the default.txt file, I'd like to see a "Filename" value that we could specify for the episodeTitle tag that tells pyTivo to use the filename (not including the extension) as the episodeTitle.

If you need more detail let me know and I can tell you my whole setup.


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## Spenner

Zaphod said:


> Similar to how you can specify "File" for the "time" tag to tell it to use the file's date and time stamp in the default.txt file...


Did you successfully push a file with a time other than the time it was pushed? I thought it would only appear with the actual push time. If so please let me know what settings you used.


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## Zaphod

Spenner said:


> Did you successfully push a file with a time other than the time it was pushed? I thought it would only appear with the actual push time. If so please let me know what settings you used.


Ha! You're right. I hadn't paid close enough attention before but I just did a test and even though I have "time: File" in my default.txt file, the date and time on the Tivo turn out to be the date and time it was actually transferred to the Tivo.

I'd still like to have the "episodeTitle: Filename" option though in the default.txt. Come to think of it, depending on a person's preference, that "Filename" option could be used for any of the title options. Though I know using the file name as the main title is the default anyway, so maybe it does only make sense to use Filename for episodeTitle when specifying something else for seriesTitle and just plain Title.


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## Hcour

If I do as described in this thread, will I be able to make folders in Tivo for podcasts and movie trailers?


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## orangeboy

Hcour said:


> If I do as described in this thread, will I be able to make folders in Tivo for podcasts and movie trailers?


If I'm reading your question correctly, you want a separate folder on the TiVo for both poscasts and trailers? I think that would be easy if the podcasts and trailers were stored in different folders on the PC, each folder having a unique "default.txt" file specifying a different seriesID.


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## Hcour

Ok, great. I'm just learning about how to do folders and I wanted to be sure I could do what I want before I go thru the trouble. Thanks!


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## LoREvanescence

Ok, quick question, I keep getting stuck


when I create the meta files as text files, pytivo tries to auto push them with out me pushing them. However, it sits with the blue light on for what seems like what ever, then when I check the recording history, it states that the transfer failed because the file transfer was too slow.

What am I doing wrong?


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## superflysocal

by the way, in case anyone is interested, orangeboy made a script for me that does a lot of what is asked here in post #9 of this thread:

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=464756


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## CoxInPHX

I think I have mastered creating folders and metadata. I am creating a separate folder for each Artist to contain Music Videos.

My question is, the folder has a generic "Web" thumbnail for each folder. Is there a metadata tag, or some where I can enter a URL to grab a thumbnail, or any other way to customize the folder thumbnail?


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## jenlatham

I'm a pyTiVo user and I've been struggling to group some custom content (extracted workout DVDs) into folders.

This article looks like exactly what I need.

I'm missing one fundamental piece...how do I push files? I have pyTiVo running but I always go to my TiVo and browse and pull them. I'm not having any luck figuring out how I would initiate the push from pyTiVo/my computer.

Thanks!


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## CoxInPHX

With pyTiVo running:

Open in a web-browser http://localhost:9032/


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## lrhorer

Alternately, you can employ vidmgr. Vidmgr allows the user to push files from the TiVo interface. It's also a really terrific app.

Note also, the above assumes you are attempting to push the content from the same PC that is running pyTivo. In general, the url is

http://<IP or hostname of pyTivo server>:9032


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## jenlatham

I apologize, but when I visit my pyTiVo home page, I get a link to the Web Configuration area and nothing else. There I understand how to add new shares of media to pyTiVo and adjust variables, but I don't see any areas to access content and initiate distribution to my TiVo.


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## CoxInPHX

In the Web Configuration area have you set a path for MyMovies. That is the directory that sets up the Push Folders.


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## wmcbrine

For push, you first have to set your tivo_username and tivo_password. These are the same as on tivo.com (you have to have an account there).

BTW, if you have a Premiere, I've read (still haven't tested this) that it will now do arbitrary grouping even on pulls. You just have to set the seriesId the same for each program in the metadata.


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## jenlatham

A-ha! I had not input my Tivo.com username and password into pyTivo. Doing so gave me the options to see my video shares to initiate pushes.

Of course, now I'm getting bogged down by my initial pushes failing:
The program was not downloaded onto this DVR because the download rate was too slow. Time to investigate this issue.

With regards to the Premiere aside, I am on a TiVo HD, so no luck there. I had tried that initially (making metadata files with common seriesID fields) before coming online here for more help.


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## lrhorer

What type of videos are you trying to push? Are they being transcoded? Set Debug to ON and look at the console output to tell.


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## jenlatham

lrhorer said:


> What type of videos are you trying to push? Are they being transcoded? Set Debug to ON and look at the console output to tell.


My files for the push are MP4s, so I would assume yes on transcoding.

I set debug to On but I'm not sure where to go to see its output.


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## lpwcomp

orangeboy said:


> Slick metadata generator based on specific filename layout (eg. Some.Showname.S01E01.avi): pyTivoMetaThis
> Or here's a GUI metadata generator: MetaGenerator Version 2
> 
> I use the first one in batch. The second one is easier because of filename freedom.


Your link to pyTiVoMetaThis is out of date. It should be http://sourceforge.net/projects/pytivometathis/. Also, MetaGenerator Version 3 has been out for a while and is available at http://www.mediafire.com/?a4fim6k8r9v2l6f.

The latest releases of both of these address the TVDB seriesId issue and an HDUI metadata problem.

Direct download revision 10 of pyTivoMetaThis here


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## wmcbrine

jenlatham said:


> My files for the push are MP4s, so I would assume yes on transcoding.


MP4s are usually _not_ transcoded on a push to an HD (unlike with a pull), but that may be the problem in this case -- you may have a file that passes pyTivo's compatibility checks, but makes the actual TiVo barf.

Being able to transfer MP4s without transcoding is one of the main advantages of push mode, but occasionally it can backfire.


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## jenlatham

wmcbrine said:


> MP4s are usually _not_ transcoded on a push to an HD (unlike with a pull), but that may be the problem in this case -- you may have a file that passes pyTivo's compatibility checks, but makes the actual TiVo barf.
> 
> Being able to transfer MP4s without transcoding is one of the main advantages of push mode, but occasionally it can backfire.


OK, what would be the best file type to push with to avoid barfing?


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## lrhorer

jenlatham said:


> OK, what would be the best file type to push with to avoid barfing?


Mp4 files in general may have problems, but if the video is encoded as h.264 in a .mp4 container with AC3 or AAC audio, and is standard 1080i or 720p resolution, then it should transfer without transcoding and do so very quickly. MPEG2 video will transfer more slowly, but as long as it is a supported resolution, it should not transcode.


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## jenlatham

OK I got all this working. Thanks for the great info and for the help getting me started.

I almost think my issues with pushing were bad syntax in my .txt files (is that possible?). I started with some files originally off the TiVo, but now I'm pushing all files successfully, and getting the desired folder grouping.


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