Human-readable recording filenames

[g444]

Hi,

i think it would be nice if mythtv would save it's recordings in human-readable files(eg "title - date-time - subtitle").
This would take away the need to use mythlink.pl and it would be easier to recover your recordings in case your database gets corrupt/lost(hdd fails etc).
Why were numeric filenames chosen anyway? Afaik, tvheadend and vdr don't save to numerical filenames but human-readable filenames, so i don't see why mythtv shouldn't do the same.

[dekarl]

Avoiding text in the filename avoids problems with non-ASCI characters. Getting that right is a lot of work for little gain, so it would take someone to come up with a good concept and someone to actually do the work. Don't hold your breath

If you care about your recordings (some say "its just tv") then you should backup your database to a remote system regularly.
Also if you want to keep some recordings it is suggested to export them to mythvideo, which will give it a nice filename, too.

[g444]

I don't see why that would take much work to get right? Simply replace everything non-ASCI with "_" and you're done, wouldn't that work? Wouldn't always look that pretty, but i think it would be still way better than numerical-only filenames.

Also you wouldn't have to re-run mythlink.pl every time you want the updated(new/removed recordings) links.

[dekarl]

I don't see why that would take much work to get right? Simply replace everything non-ASCI with "_" and you're done, wouldn't that work? Wouldn't always look that pretty, but i think it would be still way better than numerical-only filenames.

Well, getting it right is not so easy. Your solution is good for your (and my) locale, but makes ugly file names for other users' locales... (first google hit on MythTV japanese)

Also you wouldn't have to re-run mythlink.pl every time you want the updated(new/removed recordings) links.

Sounds like you want to run mythlink.pl as an event script that does it whenever a recording starts.
With Mythlink you can get a custom pretty file name to your liking as soon as the recording begins.

Building something better then Mythlink into the backend gives little benefit to the people who do the work. Also there appears to be consensus that recording files should only ever be accessed via the backend. E.g. via the UPNP service. You get nice names, dates, episode sort order, artwork, etc there.

[g444]

I don't see why that would take much work to get right? Simply replace everything non-ASCI with "_" and you're done, wouldn't that work? Wouldn't always look that pretty, but i think it would be still way better than numerical-only filenames.

Well, getting it right is not so easy. Your solution is good for your (and my) locale, but makes ugly file names for other users' locales... (first google hit on MythTV japanese)

Yep, for japanese e.g. you would be left with "_________ - date-time - _____" if you name it like i described, but for users with mainly asci-named shows/episodes it would be readable, so at least they would benefit. And wouldn't it be possible to save as utf8 and preserve any characters, i think most filesystems are utf8 nowadays?

Sounds like you want to run mythlink.pl as an event script that does it whenever a recording starts.
With Mythlink you can get a custom pretty file name to your liking as soon as the recording begins.

Yep but you would still have to re-run mythlink.pl to remove deleted recordings from the links.