# PyTivo & Directory Structure



## damojo2003 (Dec 2, 2008)

As my collection grows, I keep on thinking about my directory structure for all of my movies. Currently, I have all of my movies located into a single folder and this works well for Tivo. I have been seeing directory structures where the movie name is the folder name and then the movies and pics are located in that folder. How are you guys organizing your movies? If I arrange all of my movies into folders with the same name as the movie, will Tivo show each folder or the movie in the main directory?

Mike


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## windracer (Jan 3, 2003)

Paging lhorer to the white courtesy phone ... 

I use a pretty minimalist approach:


```
- Movies
  - Kids & Family
    - Disney
    - Pixar
  - Home Movies
  - Star Wars trilogy
  - Back to the Future trilogy
- TV Shows
  - Show Name #1
  - Show Name #2
```
Under every folder I have a .meta folder that contains the .txt and .jpg metadata information for each file (for pyTivo and Vidmgr). As you can see I'm pretty loose with my structure so my main Movies folder is pretty full of random movies, but some I have categorized into sub-folders (like trilogies or series, etc.).

Each folder will appear on your TiVo. Since Vidmgr can auto-categorize based on things like genre using the metadata, sometimes the physical folder structure is less important. It's a personal preference thing.


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## ThAbtO (Apr 6, 2000)

damojo2003 said:


> As my collection grows, I keep on thinking about my directory structure for all of my movies. Currently, I have all of my movies located into a single folder and this works well for Tivo. I have been seeing directory structures where the movie name is the folder name and then the movies and pics are located in that folder. How are you guys organizing your movies? If I arrange all of my movies into folders with the same name as the movie, will Tivo show each folder or the movie in the main directory?
> 
> Mike


Yes, I believe it should.

I have 5 folders listed on my Now Playing List through PyTivo, where as with Tivo Desktop, there is only 1 and it does not support folders.


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## lpwcomp (May 6, 2002)

damojo2003 said:


> As my collection grows, I keep on thinking about my directory structure for all of my movies. Currently, I have all of my movies located into a single folder and this works well for Tivo. I have been seeing directory structures where the movie name is the folder name and then the movies and pics are located in that folder. How are you guys organizing your movies? If I arrange all of my movies into folders with the same name as the movie, will Tivo show each folder or the movie in the main directory?
> 
> Mike


What shows up in the TiVo "Now Playing" or "My shows" are the pyTivo "Shares" you have defined. However, unlike TiVo Desktop, pyTivo allows you to navigate a directory structure.


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## windracer (Jan 3, 2003)

lpwcomp said:


> However, unlike TiVo Desktop, pyTivo allows you to navigate a directory structure.


Actually, TD _will_ show you subfolders, but I believe it will only go two 2 levels deep.


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## lpwcomp (May 6, 2002)

windracer said:


> Actually, TD _will_ show you subfolders, but I believe it will only go two 2 levels deep.


Maybe TD+ or TD 2.4 or later does so, but the version I have to run (2.3) does not.


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## ggieseke (May 30, 2008)

TD 2.5 was limited to 2 subfolders. 2.8.x allows unlimited subfolders or shortcuts.


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## lrhorer (Aug 31, 2003)

windracer said:


> Paging lhorer to the white courtesy phone ...


'Sorry, I've been out sick.

What I do is dump all the videos (except DVDs) into a single share. In that share, for any series or movie franchise, I create a unique folder. Thus, all the Harry Potter films are in one directory, and all the Star Trek: The Next Generation episodes are in another. You can see the result directly right here. What I *used* to do was run a script I created against each video that created a link in each of several different directories under a different share. The share was named "Videos Sorted by Genre", and the directories were named "Action", "Adventure", "Comedy", etc. Those directories contained nothing but links to files in the main share. No actual videos or metafiles existed in them.

Now, however, I use vidmgr. It does all that and much, much more:


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## damojo2003 (Dec 2, 2008)

Thank you for the ideas. I like the approach of grouping all of the trilogies and series together. I will do something like that.

Mike


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## lrhorer (Aug 31, 2003)

Yes, it's very simple to do, and cuts way down on the length of the main share list. You also might consider splitting up the list even further, say movies vs. TV shows, or comedy vs. drama. I don't know if there is a limit to the number of shares one may have, but one may certainly create a number of main shares, or just the one main video share with subdirectories in it. 'All up to you.

Oh, one little tip: some franchises have highly variable names, making the sorting a bit of a challenge. With pyTivo / vidmgr, however, the name of the video is controlled by the metafile, not the file name. Thus, the file name can be anything one likes. So, for example, to get the Batman franchise to sort properly no matter how it is searched, I name them thus:


```
RAID-Server:/RAID/Recordings/Batman# ls -1 *.mp[4g]
Batman 01 (Recorded Sat Jun 23, 2007, HBOHD).mp4
Batman 03 Forever (Recorded Thu Sep 11, 2008, STRZ1H).mp4
Batman 04 & Robin (Recorded Sun Apr 05, 2009, STZHD).mp4
Batman 05 Begins (Recorded Sun Jul 22, 2012, BluRay).mp4
Batman 06 Dark Knight, The (Recorded Sat Jun 13, 2009, HBOHD).mp4
```
For TV series, of course, I name them by:

<Series Name> - S<Season Number> E<Episode Number> - <Episode Name> (Recorded...

So for example:


```
RAID-Server:/RAID/Recordings/Frasier# ls -1 *.mp[4g]
Frasier - S01 E01 - The Good Son (Recorded Mon Sep 08, 2008, KABBDT).mp4
Frasier - S01 E12 - Miracle on Third or Fourth Street (Recorded Fri Dec 25, 2009, KABBDT).mp4
Frasier - S01 E16 - The Show Where Lilith Comes Back (Recorded Mon Jul 06, 2009, KABBDT).mp4
Frasier - S02 E21 - An Affair to Forget (Recorded Fri Nov 07, 2008, KABBDT).mp4
Frasier - S02 E24 - Dark Victory (Recorded Wed Aug 05, 2009, KABBDT).mp4
Frasier - S03 E01 - She's the Boss (Recorded Fri Apr 03, 2009, KABBDT).mp4
Frasier - S03 E02 - Shrink Rap (Recorded Thu Aug 06, 2009, KABBDT).mp4
Frasier - S03 E06 - Sleeping With the Enemy (Recorded Fri Apr 10, 2009, KABBDT).mp4
Frasier - S03 E07 - The Adventures of Bad Boy and Dirty Girl (Recorded Sat Apr 11, 2009, KABBDT).mp4
Frasier - S03 E12 - Come Lie With Me (Recorded Sat Mar 05, 2011, KABBDT).mp4
Frasier - S03 E13 - Moon Dance (Recorded Fri Jun 27, 2008, KABBDT).mp4
Frasier - S03 E15 - A Word to the Wiseguy (Recorded Tue Jul 01, 2008, KABBDT).mp4
Frasier - S04 E01 - The Two Mrs. Cranes (Recorded Tue Jul 15, 2008, KABBDT).mp4
Frasier - S04 E07 - A Lilith Thanksgiving (Recorded Wed Jul 23, 2008, KABBDT).mp4
Frasier - S04 E14 - To Kill a Talking Bird (Recorded Fri Aug 01, 2008, KABBDT).mp4
...
```


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## lpwcomp (May 6, 2002)

I have several shares but my main one has several sub-directories, the chief ones being "Movies" and "TV". "Movies" has sub-directories for movie franchises such as "Harry Potter Movies" and "Lord of the Rings". "TV" has a sub-directory for each series and a series in turn has a sub-directory for each season.

You should be aware that vidmgr does pushes (via pyTivo) and is therefore dependent on the availability of the TiVo mind server and transfers very little of the metadata.


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## lrhorer (Aug 31, 2003)

lpwcomp said:


> I have several shares but my main one has several sub-directories, the chief ones being "Movies" and "TV". "Movies" has sub-directories for movie franchises such as "Harry Potter Movies" and "Lord of the Rings". "TV" has a sub-directory for each series and a series in turn has a sub-directory for each season.


All valid methods of managing the content on one's server. As was mentioned earlier, the exact methods one chooses to implement are a matter of personal preference.



lpwcomp said:


> You should be aware that vidmgr does pushes (via pyTivo) and is therefore dependent on the availability of the TiVo mind server


True, but then so are YouTube, Amazon VOD, Netflix, etc. The mind servers have to be sure suffered intermittent issues in the past. Note if a push request fasils, one may always follow up with a pull request.



lpwcomp said:


> and transfers very little of the metadata.


No protocol transfers all of the metadata, and on the Premiere, there is very little difference between the metadata transferred via push vs. pull, that I have been able to ascertain. 'Not that I ever bother to look up metadata on a program I have just transferred, mind you. On the S3 platform, it is indeed true a pull transfers considerably more metadata info.


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## lpwcomp (May 6, 2002)

lrhorer said:


> No protocol transfers all of the metadata, and on the Premiere, there is very little difference between the metadata transferred via push vs. pull, that I have been able to ascertain.


You are totally and completely wrong. A push of say, an episode of a series, gets the series title, episode title, and description (even to a premiere). A pull, on the other hand, particularly to a premiere, gets most of it.

I made no value judgements or recommendations regarding which method to use. I just think that the decision should be an informed one.


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## lrhorer (Aug 31, 2003)

lpwcomp said:


> You are totally and completely wrong. A push of say, an episode of a series, gets the series title, episode title, and description (even to a premiere). A pull, on the other hand, particularly to a premiere, gets most of it.


I don't make statements blindly. Before I posted that, as always, I tested it. Here is a pull from just prior to making my previous statement:


















That's it. Here is the Info display from vidmgr:










Here is the metafile:


```
mpaaRating : R
description : In this complex story that aspires to mythology, a computer hacker (Keanu Reeves) searches for the truth behind the mysterious force known as the Matrix. He finds his answer with a group of strangers led by the charismatic Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne). What they encounter in confronting that truth makes for a lightning-paced, eye-popping thrill ride of a movie that cleverly combines sociopolitical commentary with cutting-edge special effects.
title : The Matrix
starRating : 3.5
vProgramGenre : Action
vProgramGenre : Adventure
vProgramGenre : Drama
vProgramGenre : Fantasy
vProgramGenre : Romance
vProgramGenre : SciFi
vProgramGenre : Thriller
vActor : Keanu Reeves
vActor : Laurence Fishburne
vActor : Carrie-Anne Moss
vActor : Hugo Weaving
vActor : Joe Pantoliano
vActor : Gloria Foster
vActor : Marcus Chong
vActor : Julian Arahanga
vActor : Matt Doran
vActor : Belinda McClory
vActor : Anthony Ray Parker
vActor : Paul Goddard
pushDate : 2013-01-08T17:49:52Z
isEpisode : false
callsign : HBOHD
firstAlpha : M
recordDate : 11921339
movieYear : 1999
vDirector : Andy Wachowski
vDirector : Larry Wachowski
```
Here is a pull of a series I just did:


















The info display from vidmgr:










and finally it's metafile:


```
title : ER
seriesTitle : ER
episodeTitle : The Gift
originalAirDate : 1994-12-15T00:00:00Z
description : Benton makes a critical error when he publicizes the availability of a dying man's organs before obtaining the wife's permission. Lewis discovers that Cvetic has quit his job at the hospital, moved out of his apartment, and dropped out of sight. Carter makes a move on Susan. Chloe announces her pregnancy.
callsign : TNTHD
seriesId : SH115131
vSeriesGenre : Drama
vDirector : Felix Enriquez Alcala
vWriter : Neal Baer
recordDate : 11911938
vActor : Maura Tierney
vActor : Shane West
vActor : Parminder Nagra
vActor : Goran Visnjic
vActor : George Clooney
vActor : Jorja Fox
vActor : Kellie Martin
vActor : Scott Grimes
vActor : John Stamos
vActor : Linda Cardellini
vActor : Alex Kingston
vActor : Laura Innes
vActor : Anthony Edwards
vActor : Noah Wyle
vActor : Julianna Margulies
vActor : Michael Michele
vActor : Erik Palladino
vActor : Mekhi Phifer
vActor : Sharif Atkins
vActor : Ming-Na
vActor : Sherry Stringfield
vActor : Eriq La Salle
vActor : Gloria Reuben
vActor : Maria Bello
isEpisode : true
isEpisodic : true
vProgramGenre : Drama
vProgramGenre : Holiday
vProgramGenre : Series
```



lpwcomp said:


> I made no value judgements or recommendations regarding which method to use.


Acknowledged, and neither did I explicitly, but implicit in both our positions is the fact we find our respective methods more suited to our approach for using pyTivo. One or the other may be more suitable to the OP. I (we, actually) browse the list of shows - perhaps filtered by genre, or movie year, or whatever - occasionally selecting the show information to see who was in it, who directed, etc. Once we have decided on one or more shows to watch, we transfer to the TiVo and watch. Afterwards they are deleted. We virtually never pull up the info on the show after we have transferred it, and if we did, I would probably pull the info up in vidmgr.



lpwcomp said:


> I just think that the decision should be an informed one.


Yes, of course, but the more information one has, the more informed one is. An explanation of why you choose the methods you do would likely be of value to the OP. Otherwise the decision may become in part nothing but a popularity contest; who he likes better, not what would suit his needs better.


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## wmcbrine (Aug 2, 2003)

lpwcomp said:


> You are totally and completely wrong.


Agreed.



lrhorer said:


> I don't make statements blindly.


I can only assume that you're using an outdated version of pyTivo. My results (using the metadata you posted) look quite different. With The Matrix, I get the movie year, the MPAA rating, the star rating, the actors, the directors, the callsign, and the channel number. ER gives similar results.

There have been a number of bugs in how the TiVo handles metadata, but I've worked around most of them. (Currently genres remain broken on the Premiere, among other things.)


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## lrhorer (Aug 31, 2003)

wmcbrine said:


> I can only assume that you're using an outdated version of pyTivo.


"Outdated" is a loaded term. I'm using a relatively recent version, from October, I think. I'm not using the most recent, since I really have no way of utilizing your most recent developments, as I understand them. I'm given to understand 20.2.1 can't make use of them. Correct me if I am in error. If so, I may have to look into it. Whether I choose to start recoding the videos to TS really depends on how fast and how well ffmpeg can transcode from TS to PS for the S3s. Either way, I'm still going to almost exclusively push videos, so it is not a huge issue.



wmcbrine said:


> My results (using the metadata you posted) look quite different. With The Matrix, I get the movie year, the MPAA rating, the star rating, the actors, the directors, the callsign, and the channel number. ER gives similar results.


OK. That may be an important data point for the OP and other lurkers.



wmcbrine said:


> There have been a number of bugs in how the TiVo handles metadata, but I've worked around most of them. (Currently genres remain broken on the Premiere, among other things.)


Actually I would be more interested in the display in the server section of the NPL, and in particular the debug info. Does your most recent build cause the debug info to show up in the share titles the way it does on the S3?


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## lpwcomp (May 6, 2002)

lrhorer said:


> I don't make statements blindly. Before I posted that, as always, I tested it. Here is a pull from just prior to making my previous statement:


Neither do I and I can assure you that I and,I would be willing to bet, most everybody else gets far more of the metadata on a pull, and that is to Tivo 2, a THD, or a Premiere. The problem is that since you really don't care about the metadata on the TiVo itself, you never bothered to try and find out why your results are as they are.

Pre-post edit (I'm a very slow writer) I see that Mr. McBrine has already addressed this. I have to admit, I didn't actually try your metadata.



lrhorer said:


> Acknowledged, and neither did I explicitly, but implicit in both our positions is the fact we find our respective methods more suited to our approach for using pyTivo.


The operative phrase is "our approach". I have no idea what the OP's preferences are and I have absolutely no desire to proselytize my position. I simply want him or her to be able to make a _*fully*_ informed decision.



lrhorer said:


> We virtually never pull up the info on the show after we have transferred it, and if we did, I would probably pull the info up in vidmgr


Once again, I am far from the only one who cares about what metadata gets to the TiVo. I ask you to consider two things: 1. The existence of the pyTivo usable metadata files precedes the existence of vidmgr. 2. Mr. McBrine (for one) has gone to great lengths to get the maximum amount data sent to the TiVo, to be stored on the TiV, and accessed directly by the TiVo.



lrhorer said:


> Yes, of course, but the more information one has, the more informed one is. An explanation of why you choose the methods you do would likely be of value to the OP. Otherwise the decision may become in part nothing but a popularity contest; who he likes better, not what would suit his needs better.


That would only be true if I were trying to convince someone of the superiority of my approach. I would never deign to do so. After all, I am not privy to knowledge "which reaches from the inner mind to " - well, you know the rest. . Since it is based on personal preference, why I choose to do things the way I do is irrelevant.

My initial post was simply designed to give the OP another example of a hierarchical organization and to inform him/her of the consequences of using vidmgr.


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## wmcbrine (Aug 2, 2003)

lrhorer said:


> I'm not using the most recent, since I really have no way of utilizing your most recent developments, as I understand them. I'm given to understand 20.2.1 can't make use of them. Correct me if I am in error.


<sigh> Why are you on 20.2.1, when everyone else is on 20.2.2 by now? Anyway, no, the transport stream stuff has nothing to do with any change in the TiVo software version. It was changes in FFmpeg (i.e., it can now generate a TiVo-compatible h.264 TS file) that prompted the changes in pyTivo. For all I know, it would work back to 14.something. But of course I've only tried it on 20.2.2.1.

That isn't the only recent change in pyTivo, either, although I don't see anything relevant to your metadata bugs since October. But your outdated TiVo software could be a problem there.



> _Whether I choose to start recoding the videos to TS really depends on how fast and how well ffmpeg can transcode from TS to PS for the S3s._


There's no need to do it manually, since pyTivo can do it either way (TS to PS or PS to TS), with no impact on transfer time.



> _Does your most recent build cause the debug info to show up in the share titles the way it does on the S3?_


I'm not sure what you're talking about. The vHost stuff?


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## lrhorer (Aug 31, 2003)

wmcbrine said:


> <sigh> Why are you on 20.2.1, when everyone else is on 20.2.2 by now?


It is common knowledge, not to mention TiVo has made announcements to the effect, they have not rolled out 20.2.2 to any MSO owned leased units. That's why. "Everyone else" is not on 20.2.2, yet.



wmcbrine said:


> There's no need to do it manually, since pyTivo can do it either way (TS to PS or PS to TS), with no impact on transfer time.


What are you talking about? I can choose to save my videos on the server as TS or PS files. Whether that is "manual" or not, I don't know, but the decision will rest upon the impact to the system as a whole. There is also the question whether the version of ffmpeg in my distro will support it. I'll have to check that out, but I suspect not.



wmcbrine said:


> I'm not sure what you're talking about. The vHost stuff?


When "debug=on" is set in pyTivo.conf, the server passes a significant amount of information from ffmpeg and elsewhere to the TiVo. I don't have an S3 system feeding a capture card at the moment, so I don't have a screenshot, but nonetheless with the version of pyTivo I am using, that info does not make it to the Premiere. In fact, it would be quite helpful at this very time. I am running down an issue where the Premiere is having trouble with programs that work fine on the S3 platforms. It's not a huge deal, of course, because I can go to the S3 to see the details.


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## wmcbrine (Aug 2, 2003)

lrhorer said:


> they have not rolled out 20.2.2 to any MSO owned leased units.


I haven't paid much attention to what's going on in MSO land. Sorry to hear that they're screwing you over like that.



> _What are you talking about? I can choose to save my videos on the server as TS or PS files. Whether that is "manual" or not, I don't know, but the decision will rest upon the impact to the system as a whole._


There's no measurable impact. It takes barely more CPU to transfer with remuxing than without, with no effect on the speed (which is limited by the TiVo). There's no point redoing any existing files. That's what I'm talking about.

PS transfers to Premiere -- whether sourced from program streams or transport streams: about 40 Mbps
TS transfers -- same deal: about 80 Mbps.

Of course it depends on the server, but you'd need a really slow one for it to matter.



> _There is also the question whether the version of ffmpeg in my distro will support it. I'll have to check that out, but I suspect not._


You should probably build your own. Distro versions tend to be outdated. (Or worse -- Ubuntu was even shipping FFmpeg with MPEG-2 intentionally disabled, for a while, due to patent issues.)



> _When "debug=on" is set in pyTivo.conf, the server passes a significant amount of information from ffmpeg and elsewhere to the TiVo._


So, you must be talking about the "vHosts" stuff. Yeah, pyTivo sends it to the Premiere. It's just the broken 20.2.1 that isn't displaying it.

The same info is available in the pyTivo log.


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## lrhorer (Aug 31, 2003)

lpwcomp said:


> Neither do I and I can assure you that I and,I would be willing to bet, most everybody else gets far more of the metadata on a pull, and that is to Tivo 2, a THD, or a Premiere.


If William is correct (and I would be willing to bet he is), then I suspect this is not true. I suspect a significant fraction of pyTivo users, and perhaps a majority of them, are not running the latest version. I would be willing to bet $1.



lpwcomp said:


> The problem is that since you really don't care about the metadata on the TiVo itself, you never bothered to try and find out why your results are as they are.


By definition, since I do not care, it isn't a problem. You are only partially correct, however. I don't care much about the data being transferred with a push or pull. I do care - albeit not passionately - about the data displayed in the NPL for objects not transferred, particularly the debug data. It aids in troubleshooting.



lpwcomp said:


> The operative phrase is "our approach". I have no idea what the OP's preferences are


Neither do I, or at least not much, given his post above. It is entirely possible neither approach is tasteful to him.



lpwcomp said:


> and I have absolutely no desire to proselytize my position. I simply want him or her to be able to make a _*fully*_ informed decision.


If the OP does not understand why a certain method is employed, then the decision is not fully informed.

There are few things I hate worse than so-called user's manuals that do not bother to cover the details and implications of features they putatively cover. It does the user absolutely no good at all to know switch A turns garbeldyfarb inception on and off if the user has no idea what garbeldyfarb inception does or what it implies for the operation of the device.

I'll give you a real-world example. Most radio controlled helicopters (and some fixed-wing models) are stabilized by a small piezoelectric or electromechanical gyroscopes. Almost all of these controllers have two modes: rate-lock and heading-lock. None, and I mean none, of the manuals for these devices, even the very most expensive ones, say anything at all about when or why one should employ one mode or the other. Only a very few even mention what the fundamental difference is, although that is fairly easy to discover by testing. I searched and searched, and no one, not even experts could tell me when one mode is better and why. Finally I found someone who was able to tell me. It turns out when attempting certain maneuvers, especially a coordinated turn, having the gyro in head-lock mode makes the maneuver extremely difficult, and almost guarantees a crash. In rate-lock mode, a coordinated turn is essentially automatic.



lpwcomp said:


> Once again, I am far from the only one who cares about what metadata gets to the TiVo.


I never said you were. I fail to understand why you would care, but then that is hardly surprising since for whatever reason you refuse to tell us why you are using pyTivo in the first place. Note I am not castigating you for that refusal. It is entirely your right to refrain from disclosing anything at all, but it remains a fact the OP and anyone else will be hard pressed to know whether their desired use of the program would be well served by your methods when they don't know what your desired use is. Again, you are under no obligation to me, the OP, or anyone else to disclose anything. I would indeed be shocked if you were the only one who cares about transferred metadata. Whether the OP might be or why, I have no idea. At a guess, I would suspect it is not extremely high on many people's lists of important features, but I could easily be wrong. According to Arcady there are 7 people who care, although he (she?) failed to understand the situation. Are most people concerned about how much metadata transfers with the video? I really don't know. Is the OP? Other people watching?



lpwcomp said:


> I ask you to consider two things: 1. The existence of the pyTivo usable metadata files precedes the existence of vidmgr.


That is completely irrelevant. Inflatable tires predated the invention of portable electric compressors. That doesn't mean a large minority of people would rather use a bicycle pump to inflate their tires. For at least some of us, vidmgr is a far superior solution. It is faster, requires vastly fewer button presses, is far more compact, and does not require the video to reside on the TiVo. That is was developed later in time than the original utility is utterly non sequitur to its use.



lpwcomp said:


> 2. Mr. McBrine (for one) has gone to great lengths to get the maximum amount data sent to the TiVo, to be stored on the TiV, and accessed directly by the TiVo.


So it would seem, and not only do I applaud and appreciate the effort, I'm sure essentially all of us who use pyTivo appreciate it. If a piece of software is given greater capabilities, then it makes the software better, the fact some number - large or small - of users will not take advantage of the feature notwithstanding. William's efforts to that end deserve recognition and respect.



lpwcomp said:


> That would only be true if I were trying to convince someone of the superiority of my approach.


Not at all. Clearly you must have considered the details of your approach to have some validity, or you would never have mentioned them. It is the notion of "superiority" in a broad context that is irrelevant, not the suitability of your approach for you and perhaps for the OP if his priorities are similar to yours.



lpwcomp said:


> Since it is based on personal preference, why I choose to do things the way I do is irrelevant.


Absolutely untrue. Few things are more relevant, facts and figures aside. You have a personal set of preferences. The OP has a personal set of preferences. If his intent and his likes and dislikes are more or less on a par with yours, then his choices may be well served by emulating yours. If not, then he would be best served by other means.

It is entirely your personal preference if you happen to dislike fish, but when you report you did not like the fish dinner at a particular restaurant, it is important the reader know you do not like fish in the first place.



lpwcomp said:


> My initial post was simply designed to give the OP another example of a hierarchical organization and to inform him/her of the consequences of using vidmgr.


Without explaining what the impact of that choice would be or why someone might seek a different solution. In short, it does not inform them of the consequences to the user. That is my point. Again, that you choose not to do so is entirely your decision and not my right to question, but it definitely does not fully inform the OP of the consequences.

The consequences of using vidmgr and pushes to anyone who does not ordinarily attempt to retrieve the metadata from a transferred video, or in particular one who normally selects the video, possibly inspecting the metadata while doing so, transfers the video to a TiVo, watches the video, and then deletes it from the TiVo are minimal.


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## lrhorer (Aug 31, 2003)

wmcbrine said:


> I haven't paid much attention to what's going on in MSO land. Sorry to hear that they're screwing you over like that.


I'm not losing any sleep over it. TiVo says they will roll out updates sooner or later, and I am sure they will. Not that I don't often enjoy new features, but I am a lot more concerned about stability and fixing bugs than I am about new features.



wmcbrine said:


> There's no measurable impact. It takes barely more CPU to transfer with remuxing than without, with no effect on the speed (which is limited by the TiVo).


That's very good to know.



wmcbrine said:


> There's no point redoing any existing files. That's what I'm talking about.


<Light bulb!> Oh, so you are saying the new version of pyTivo will remux to TS if it is sending to a Premiere (and the switch is set in the .conf file, of course)? That had not occurred to me. 'Nice to know if the mind server goes off the deep end again, although my main server can now easily recode from h.264 to .mpg considerably faster than real-time.



wmcbrine said:


> PS transfers to Premiere -- whether sourced from program streams or transport streams: about 40 Mbps


Of course, I have not yet tried any TS source streams, but yeah, that's about right for a 1080i MPEG-II file. A bit less for a 720p, about 32 - 35 Mbps.



wmcbrine said:


> TS transfers -- same deal: about 80 Mbps.


I presume that's MPEG-II, or is that h.264?



wmcbrine said:


> Of course it depends on the server, but you'd need a really slow one for it to matter.


No, not an issue here. I just upgraded to 8 cores, 4.2 Ghz, 16G of memory.



wmcbrine said:


> You should probably build your own. Distro versions tend to be outdated. (Or worse -- Ubuntu was even shipping FFmpeg with MPEG-2 intentionally disabled, for a while, due to patent issues.)


I tried that once. I very quickly got bogged down in dependencies and compiler issues. Had it been of significant concern, I could have worked them all out, of course, but I wasn't all that motivated. I fear at this point I am still not, but I will of course take it into consideration. More importantly, however, the absolute top concern of mine on any of my servers is stability. That is one big reason I prefer Debian. I am perfectly willing to give up new bells and whistles if it assures stability. That said, ffmpeg isn't likely to affect much more than just pyTivo transfers on that machine, so as I said, I'll take it into consideration.



wmcbrine said:


> So, you must be talking about the "vHosts" stuff. Yeah, pyTivo sends it to the Premiere. It's just the broken 20.2.1 that isn't displaying it.


OK, so for leased Premieres, perhaps my first remark was more broadly correct.



wmcbrine said:


> The same info is available in the pyTivo log.


Yes, of course, and on the S3s. It's just not very convenient to have to shuffle from room to room when troubleshooting.


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## lpwcomp (May 6, 2002)

lrhorer said:


> ...for whatever reason you refuse to tell us why you are using pyTivo in the first place.


What the frell are you talking about?


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## wmcbrine (Aug 2, 2003)

lrhorer said:


> I presume that's MPEG-II, or is that h.264?


Either.


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## damojo2003 (Dec 2, 2008)

lrhorer said:


> 'Sorry, I've been out sick.
> 
> What I do is dump all the videos (except DVDs) into a single share. In that share, for any series or movie franchise, I create a unique folder. Thus, all the Harry Potter films are in one directory, and all the Star Trek: The Next Generation episodes are in another. You can see the result directly right. What I *used* to do was run a script I created against each video that created a link in each of several different directories under a different share. The share was named "Videos Sorted by Genre", and the directories were named "Action", "Adventure", "Comedy", etc. Those directories contained nothing but links to files in the main share. No actual videos or metafiles existed in them.
> 
> Now, however, I use vidmgr. It does all that and much, much more:


Could you send me info on how to create this link? I would like to look into this a bit more


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## lrhorer (Aug 31, 2003)

Under what OS? I'm running Linux. Under Windows, it would require an external application. I know there are a couple out there. After getting the app, it would require writing a batch file, and I'm very, very rusty at creating batch files for cmd.exe. I haven't done it since it was command.com.


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## damojo2003 (Dec 2, 2008)

I am running windows home server 2011 for now. I am ok at writing batch files and I have an uncle that is available for questions that google can not answer. What kind of program?


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## lrhorer (Aug 31, 2003)

One that creates shortcuts or symlinks.


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## damojo2003 (Dec 2, 2008)

ok, easy enough. I can create a bat file that uses mklink. Maybe even find a program that helps. Thank you


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