[ViX_Misc] Autotimers and Description Uniqueness

[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/...mer-Uniqueness&p=384956&viewfull=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.





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).

 

[ccs]

"New:" needs dealing with as well, maybe ignore it from checks, but include it in movelist (or maybe not, Tags get confused. )

Episode details are now being added to some repeats, handy, but not always.

 

[Old Codger]

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

Hi css. Many thanks for the reply, and taking the time to run the test.

Well, I can't duplicate your results - setting the autotimer to 'no uniqueness' results, as expected, in all 26 programmes being recorded (ie. just the same as 'Check for uniqueness in: Title and all descriptions'.

Either I'm using a different version of OpenViX and/or the Autotimer plugin, or I'm doing something really silly (more than likely). Is it possible for different boxes to work differently, I wonder?

Anyway, could you post screenshots of your setup please, the same as the ones I posted earlier, and also state your versions of Vix and the plugin?

Regards.

 

[ccs]

I'm running ViX 5.3.039, same version of autotimer.

Which skin are you using, it's new to me?

All I did was highlight the episode in the epg search starting at 00:00, blue for autotimer, and then unchecked "only on weekday", green to save, green to save.
Only one autotimer default has been changed - at end go to deep standby.

The fact that unique episodes run at the same time each day obviously helps in this case.

 

[adm]

I'm running ViX 5.3.039, same version of autotimer.

Which skin are you using, it's new to me?

All I did was highlight the episode in the epg search starting at 00:00, blue for autotimer, and then unchecked "only on weekday", green to save, green to save.
Only one autotimer default has been changed - at end go to deep standby.

The fact that unique episodes run at the same time each day obviously helps in this case.

How many days are you looking forward.
Menu -> Timers -> Autotimer -> Menu -> 8:Setup -> Only add timers for next x days
If it's only one day you may find that the repeats/duplicate arrive tomorrow.

 

[ccs]

How many days are you looking forward.
Menu -> Timers -> Autotimer -> Menu -> 8:Setup -> Only add timers for next x days
If it's only one day you may find that the repeats/duplicate arrive tomorrow.

I'm looking forward 7 days, otherwise I wouldn't have got 6 days worth of unique timers, 2 per day !

 

[birdman]

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.

Do the repeats say they are repeats (in some way)?
If so, you can add a filter to exclude then all, or set one to only include things that contain "New: "....

 

[ccs]

..... no indication of repeats unless you trawl thru' each episode in the search and start memorising and counting. No New: either.

The descriptions are a bit different, apart from the 1st one, they all have the same description (classic 1980's comedy...), followed by the Series/Episode, followed by a unique title.

 

[adm]

I'm looking forward 7 days, otherwise I wouldn't have got 6 days worth of unique timers, 2 per day !

Doesn't your method only work for Autotimers if the unique programs are at the same time of day, and limited to a short period of the day. I use Autotimers to do the searching of the EPG for me without me having to use my cyrstal ball to establish at what time the broadcaster is going to transmit the program in the future.

In this case of Two in Clover the full description is different for different episodes! But, what assumptions is the software making?

Checking for uniqueness in Title and short description results in all but one episode being rejected. The identical parts of the description is approx 150 characters which is then followed by "s1, Ep4/7" etc.
For most episodes to be rejected
i) The short description limited to n characters?
ii) The Series and Episode information is not part of the definition of the short description

Checking for uniqueness in Title and all descriptions results in no episodes being rejected, even repeats.

Doesn’t this suggest that “all descriptions” are NOT being checked or else the software would detect that s1, ep4/7 exactly the same as s1, ep4/7 – the second occurance is not unique.

 

[ccs]

Doesn't your method only work for Autotimers if the unique programs are at the same time of day, and limited to a short period of the day. I use Autotimers to do the searching of the EPG for me without me having to use my cyrstal ball to establish at what time the broadcaster is going to transmit the program in the future.

I did confirm that in post #33.

The OP couldn't get that to work so I was giving him the details he asked for.

I've never used the uniqueness filtering, one reason being that I can't really be sure it's doing what I want, particularly after a week or two.
I'm not keen on the "any time, any day" approach to finding programmes.
But the main reason is that I never actually need to.

 

[ccs]

Just thought I'd highlight the programme description I mentioned earlier, it's in a format I've not noticed before.