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MANUAL
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MANUAL
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Video Disk Recorder User's Manual
---------------------------------
Version 2.6
-----------
* Remote Control Keys
The following remote control keys are used to control the VDR
operation. To keep the number of different keys as small as
possible, several keys have different meanings in the various
modes:
Key Normal VDR Channels Timers Edit/New Recordings Replay Audio
Up Ch up Crsr up Crsr up Crsr up Crsr up Crsr up Play Sel. track
Down Ch down Crsr down Crsr down Crsr down Crsr down Crsr down Pause Sel. track
Left Prev group - Page up Page up Decrement Page up Search back Sel. channel
Right Next group - Page down Page down Increment Page down Search forward Sel. channel
Ok Ch display Select Switch Edit Accept Play Progress disp. Switch & Close
Menu Menu on Menu off Menu off Menu off Menu off Menu off Menu off Menu off
Back - Menu off VDR menu VDR menu Discard VDR menu Recordings menu Close
Red - Record Edit On/Off ABC/abc Play/Commands(1) Jump -
Green - Audio New New Ins/Ovr Rewind Skip -60s -
Yellow - Pause live Delete Delete Delete Delete Skip +60s -
Blue - Stop/Resume Mark Info - Info Stop -
0..9 Ch select - Sort(2) Day(3) Numeric inp. Sort/Exec cmd(1) Editing -
In a numerical input field (like the response to a CAM enquiry) the keys 0..9
are used to enter the data, and the Left key can be used to delete the last
entered digit.
In a text input field (like, e.g., the file name of a recording) the characters
can be entered by pressing the numeric keys, the same way as on a telephone
keypad.
If your remote control provides additional keys, they can be used for the
following functions:
Info display information on the currently viewed programme or recording,
or on the current item in a menu
Play/Pause combined key to resume or pause replay, or pause live video
Play resume normal replay
Pause pause replay or live video
Stop stop replay
Record instant recording
FastFwd fast forward
FastRew fast rewind
Next Next/previous channel group (in live tv mode)
Prev or next/previous editing mark (in replay mode)
Channel+ channel up
Channel- channel down
PrevChannel previous channel
Power shutdown
Volume+ volume up
Volume- volume down
Mute mute
Audio select audio track
Subtitles select subtitles
Schedule \
Channels |
Timers | directly access the VDR
Recordings | main menu functions
Setup |
Commands /
User1...9 additional user defined keys for macro functions
(defined in 'keymacros.conf')
Note that in normal viewing mode (no OSD active) the color keys can have user
defined functionality, as configured in 'keymacros.conf'.
The default assignment is
Red Recordings menu
Green Schedule menu
Yellow Info
Blue Timers menu
(1) See "Sort Recordings" and "Processing Recordings" below.
(2) In the "Channels" menu the '0' key switches the sort mode through "by number",
"by name" and "by provider". Other numeric input positions the cursor to
the channel with the number entered so far. If there is no channel with that
number, nothing happens. While entering a channel number, the '0' key will
be treated as part of that number, not as a sort mode toggle. If no numeric
key has been pressed for more than one second, the number is reset and '0'
functions as sort mode toggle again.
(3) In the "Edit timer" menu, when on the "Day" item, the '0' key toggles between
a single shot and a repeating timer. If "Day" indicates a repeating timer,
the keys '1'...'7' can be used to toggle the individual days ('1' is Monday).
* Navigating through the On Screen Menus
The "VDR" menu can be called up with the "Menu" key of your remote
control unit. The "Up" and "Down" keys are used to select a specific
item. The "Left" and "Right" keys can be used to change options, and
the numeric keys allow direct input of numeric data. The "Ok" key
confirms any changes (or switches to a channel in the "Channels" menu).
The "Back" key goes back one level in the menu structure, discarding
any changes that might have been made in the current menu.
In the "Timers" menu, the current timer can be enabled or disabled with
the "Red" key. Enabled timers are marked with '>', timers
that are currently recording are marked with '#'. If a timer has the
"First day" set so that it will start recording only on the given date,
it is marked with '!'. The "Red" key toggles through the "enabled" and
"disabled" states, and for repeating timers that are currently recording
also a state that ends this recording prematurely and sets the "First day"
date so that it will record again the next time the timer hits.
"Ok" here opens the "Edit timer" menu.
Textual options, like channel names or recording file names, can be edited
by pressing the "Right" key (which puts brackets around the current
character as in "[R]TL"), selecting the desired character position with
"Left" and "Right", and changing the character with the "Up" and "Down"
keys. "Ok" then confirms the changes. The "Red" key toggles between
upper- and lowercase characters, while the "Green" key switches between
insert and overwrite mode. The "Yellow" key deletes the current character
(or the one to the right of the cursor in insert mode).
The "Red", "Green", "Yellow" and "Blue" keys have special meanings
in various menus and are listed at the bottom of the on-screen-display.
At any point in the menu system, pressing the "Menu" key again will
immediately leave the menu system (discarding any pending changes).
* The "Schedule" Menu
The "Schedule" menu implements VDR's "Electronic Program Guide" (EPG).
Select "Schedule" from the "VDR" menu and you get a list of all upcoming
broadcasts on the current channel.
"Up" and "Down" can be used to scroll through this list, and pressing "Ok"
displays detailed information about the selected programme. Pressing "Ok"
again (or pressing "Back") gets you back into the "Schedule" menu.
From the "Schedule" menu, the "Green" key opens the "What's on now?"
menu, which displays all programmes that are currently running on all
channels that broadcast their programme information on the current
transponder, or from channels that have been current lately (VDR stores
all information it gathers in an internal list). The more channels you
have been switching through lately, the longer this list will be.
The "Yellow" key opens the "What's on next?" menu, which lists all
programmes that will start next on all channels.
Inside the "What's on now/next?" menus the "Green" key toggles between
the "Now" and "Next" display, and the "Yellow" key takes you to the
"Schedule" menu of the current channel in the list.
The "Red" key allows you to instantly program a timer to record the
selected programme. After pressing this key, the current event will
be marked with 'T', and the function of the "Red" key will change from
"Record" to "Timer". Pressing "Red" on an event marked with 'T' will open
the "Edit timer" menu for this timer, where you can make any modifications
you may want to apply. Note that the Start and Stop time are offset by the
MarginStart and MarginStop parameters (see Setup) in order to make sure the
entire programme is recorded in case it doesn't exactly adhere to its
published start/stop times. Of course, no guarantee can be given that the
default margin values will be sufficient, so in case this recording is
really important you may want to add an extra margin ;-). VPS recordings
will use the exact Start (or VPS) and Stop times as given in the event.
If a timer is newly created from within the "Schedule" menu, and its event is
already running or has its start time within the next two minutes, it goes
directly into the "Edit timer" menu in order to allow the user to make further
changes to timer parameters before the actual recording starts.
The "Blue" key can be pressed to switch to the channel with the selected
programme.
The following markers in these menus give additional information about the
status of the events:
t there is a timer defined for this event which covers only part of the event
T there is a timer defined for this event which covers the entire event
V this event has a VPS time that's different than its start time
* this event is currently running (the validity of this marker depends on
whether there is currently a DVB card receiving the transponder this channel
is on).
Pressing '0' in the "Schedule" menu rotates through displaying "This event on
this channel", "This event on all channels" and "All events on all channels".
This can be used to find reruns of a given show, or the episodes of a series.
Note that if there are many channels in your channels.conf, displaying the
"All events on all channels" page may take a while.
* Selecting a Channel
There are four ways to select a channel:
1. With no On Screen Menu displayed press the "Up" or "Down" key to switch
to the next higher or lower channel.
2. Press the "Menu" key to bring up the On Screen Menu, select "Channels"
and browse through the list with the "Up" and "Down" key; to switch to the
selected channel press "Ok".
3. Directly type in the channel number with the numeric keys ('0'..'9');
if no key is pressed for about one second, the digits collected so
far will define the channel number.
4. From the "Now", "Next" and "Event" menus (accessible through the "Schedule"
menu) by pressing the "Blue" key.
Pressing the '0' key in normal viewing mode toggles between the current and
the previous channel. A channel is considered "previous" if it has been
selected for at least 3 seconds.
After switching to a different channel the channel number and name, as well
as the current time are displayed in the OSD. If available, the
'current/next' information will be displayed below this line. This display
automatically goes away after about five seconds, or if any key is pressed.
To bring up the channel display without switching channels you can press
the "Ok" key.
* Selecting audio tracks
If the current channel or recording provides different audio tracks (for
different languages or Dolby Digital), the "Green" key in the "VDR" menu can
be pressed to bring up the "Audio" menu. Within this menu, the "Up" and "Down"
keys can be used to switch between the audio tracks. If your remote control has
a dedicated "Audio" key, the first press of that key brings up the "Audio"
menu, and every further press switches to the next available audio track.
The "Left" and "Right" keys can be used to switch between "mono left", "stereo"
and "mono right" for channels that broadcast different audio tracks in the
left and right stereo channels.
The "Ok" key explicitly switches to the selected track (in case the device
for some reason doesn't play it) and closes the "Audio" menu.
The "Audio" menu will automatically disappear after 5 seconds of user inactivity,
or if any key other than the ones described above is pressed.
Once a Dolby Digital track has been selected on any channel, further channel
switches will first search for a Dolby Digital track of one of the preferred
audio languages. If no such track can be found, a normal audio track will
be selected. Note that this only works if the broadcasters use actual language
codes in their PID data, not things like "dd" or "2ch".
* Switching through channel groups
If the 'channels.conf' file contains "group separators" you can switch
through these groups by pressing the "Left" and "Right" key while no
menu is being displayed. The channel display will show the name of the
group, and if you press the "Ok" key while the group name is being
displayed, you will switch to the first channel of that group.
Channel groups can be whatever you decide them to be. You can either
group your channels by "Bouquet", by language, genre or whatever your
preferences may be.
* Instant Recording
You can start recording the current channel by pressing the "Red" key
in the "VDR" menu. This will create a timer event named "@channelname" that
starts at the current time and by default records for 3 hours.
If you want to modify the recording time you need to edit the timer.
Stop instant recording by pressing the "Menu" key and selecting
"Stop Recording", or by disabling the timer. The default priority, lifetime
and recording time can be defined in the "Setup/Recording" menu.
* Pausing live video
If you want to pause the live programme you are just watching, simply press
"Menu/Yellow" or "Pause" on your remote control. VDR will start an instant
recording of the current channel (just as if you had pressed "Menu/Red" or
"Record") and immediately begin replaying that recording. Replay will be
put into "pause" mode, so you can attend to whatever it was that disturbed
your live viewing session. Once you're back, simply press the "Up" or "Play"
key and you'll be watching the current channel in time shift mode, right
from the point where you left off. The instant recording VDR has started
will use the parameters for "Pause priority" and "Pause lifetime" as defined
in the "Setup/Recording" menu. Recording time will be the same as for
any other instant recording, so by default it will record 3 hours (which
should be enough for any normal broadcast).
Note that the timer that is created for recording the paused live video will
always record on the local VDR, even if an "SVDRP default host" has been
set for normal timer recordings.
* Replaying a Recording
All recordings are listed in the "Recordings" menu. Browse through the
list with the "Up" and "Down" key and press "Ok" (or the "Red" key)
to start playback. New recordings are marked with an '*'.
If the Setup parameter RecordingDirs has been set and there are recordings
from repeating timers organized in a subdirectory structure, only the
directory is displayed and it can be opened by pressing "Ok" (or the "Red"
key). A directory entry displays the total number of recordings within
that directory (and any possible subdirectory thereof) as well as the total
number of new recordings (as opposed to a recording's entry, which displays
the date and time of the recording).
If the setup parameter "Use episode name" was turned on when a recording took place,
VDR adds the "Episode name" (which is usually the name of the episode in case of
a series) to the recording's name. The "Recordings" menu then displays all
recordings of a repeating timer in chronological order, since these are
usually the individual episodes of a series, which you may want to view in
the order in which they were broadcast.
Playback can be stopped via the "VDR" menu by selecting "Stop replaying",
or by pressing the "Blue" key outside the menu.
A previously stopped playback session can be resumed by pressing the "Blue"
key in the "VDR" menu.
* Sort Recordings
Within the "Recordings" menu, pressing the '0' key toggles sorting between
"by time" and "by name". The selected sort mode is stored separately for each
folder (provided you have write access to that folder).
If a folder is newly created by a repeating timer, the sort mode for that
folder is initially set to "by time".
* Processing Recordings
The configuration file 'reccmds.conf' can be used to define system commands
that can be applied to the recording that is currently highlighted in the
"Recordings" menu. The "Red" key in the "Recordings" menu opens the "Recording
commands" menu if there are commands defined in the file 'reccmds.conf'. Pressing
one of the keys '1'..'9' in the "Recordings" menu executes the corresponding
command from 'reccmds.conf' (see also "Executing system commands" below).
* Replay Control
The following keys have the listed meaning in Replay mode:
- Up Resumes normal replay from any "pause", "forward" or "backward"
mode.
- Down Halts playback at the current position. Press again to continue
playback.
- Blue Stops playback and stores the current position, so that
playback can be resumed later at that point.
- Left
Right Runs playback forward or backward at a higher speed; press
again to resume normal speed. If in Pause mode, runs forward or
backward at a slower speed; press again to return to pause mode.
Pressing and holding down the key performs the function until
the key is released again.
If "Multi Speed Mode" has been enabled in the "Setup" menu, the
function of these keys changes in a way that gives you three
fast and slow speeds, through which you can switch by pressing
the respective key several times.
- Red Jump to a specific location. Enter the time you want to jump to
and then press "Left" or "Right" to jump relative to the current
position, "Up" to jump to an absolute position, and "Down" to
jump and pause at an absolute position.
- Green
Yellow Skips about 60 seconds back or forward.
Pressing and holding down the key performs the function until
the key is released again.
- Ok Brings up the replay progress display, which shows the date,
time and title of the recording, a progress bar and the
current and total time of the recording.
Press "Ok" again to turn off the progress display.
- Back Stops replaying and brings up the "Recordings" menu. This can be
used to easily delete a recording after watching it, or to switch
to a different recording.
* Editing a Recording
While in Replay mode, the following keys can be used to manipulate editing
marks:
- 0 Toggles an editing mark. If the mark indicator shows a red triangle,
the current mark is deleted. Otherwise a new mark is set at the
current position.
- 1, 3 Move an editing mark back and forward in "adaptive" mode. Pressing
either of these keys for the first time moves the mark 120 seconds
in the given direction (configurable via "Setup/Replay/Initial
duration for adaptive skipping"). Further presses of the same key
keep moving the mark by the same value. Once the other key is
pressed, the value is divided by 2 (hence the name "adaptive") with
every further press of either key. Pressing '1' and '3'
alternatingly divides the distance all the way down to a single
I-frame. That way a particular place in a recording (for instance
the beginning or end of a commercial break) can be found very
quickly. If none of these two keys is pressed for a while
(configurable via "Setup/Replay/Reset timeout for adaptive
skipping") the distance falls back to the initial value.
If replay is not in Pause mode, or if there is no mark at the
current position, the skip is performed without moving any mark.
- 4, 6 Move an editing mark back and forward by one I-frame. You need to
first jump to an editing mark for this to work.
- 7, 9 Jump back and forward between editing marks. Replay goes into still
mode after jumping to a mark. If the current position is at the
first or last mark, or if there are no marks at all, these keys
jump to the very beginning or end, respectively, of the recording.
- 8 Positions replay at a point 3 seconds before the current or next
"begin" mark and starts replay.
- 2 Starts the actual cutting process.
Editing marks are represented by black, vertical lines in the progress display.
A small black triangle at the top of the mark means that this is a "begin"
mark, and a triangle at the bottom means that this is an "end" mark.
The cutting process will save all video data between "begin" and "end" marks
into a new file (the original recording remains untouched). The new file will
have the same name as the original recording, preceded with a '%' character
(imagine the '%' somehow looking like a pair of scissors ;-). Red bars in the
progress display indicate which video sequences will be saved by the cutting
process.
The video sequences to be saved by the cutting process are determined by an
"even/odd" algorithm. This means that every odd numbered editing mark (i.e.
1, 3, 5,...) represents a "begin" mark, while every even numbered mark (2, 4,
6,...) is an "end" mark. Inserting or toggling a mark on or off automatically
adjusts the sequence to the right side of that mark.
Use the keys described under "Replay Control" to position to, e.g., the
beginning and end of commercial breaks and press the '0' key to set the
necessary editing marks. After that you may want to use the '7' and '9'
keys to jump to each mark and maybe use the '4' and '6' keys to fine tune
them. Once all marks are in place, press '2' to start the actual cutting
process, which will run as a background process. When replaying the edited
version of the recording you can use the '8' key to jump to a point just
before the next cut and have a look at the resulting sequence.
Currently editing marks can only be set at I-frames, which typically appear
every half of a second to a second. A "begin" mark marks the first frame of
a resulting video sequence, and an "end" mark marks the last frame of that
sequence. Note that the actual frame indicated by the an "end" mark will
not be included in the edited version of the recording. That's because every
recording (and every sequence of an edited recording) begins with an I-frame
and ends right before the next I-frame.
An edited recording (indicated by the '%' character) will never be deleted
automatically in case the disk runs full (no matter what "lifetime" it has).
* Programming the Timer
Use the "Timer" menu to maintain your list of timer controlled recordings.
The parameters in the "Edit timer" menu have the following meanings:
Active: Defines whether the timer will be processed (set it to 'no' to
temporarily disable a timer).
Channel: The channel to be recorded (as defined in the "Channels" list).
Any changes made in the "Channels" list (like renaming or
reordering channels) will be automatically reflected in the
timers settings.
Day: The day on which this timer shall start. This can be a
date (like 2005-03-19), which allows programming a "single shot"
timer that hits once and is deleted after it ends.
Another option here are "repeating timers" which are defined
by listing the days of the week on which they shall record.
For example, a timer that shall record every Monday and Wednesday
would have a Day setting of "M-W----".
The '0' key toggles between a single shot and a repeating timer.
If "Day" indicates a repeating timer, the keys '1'...'7' can be
used to toggle the individual days ('1' is Monday).
You can also switch to a set of predefined repeating timer settings
by pressing the "Left" key when the day is the present day. To return
to the single shot mode just press "Right" until a date is displayed.
Start: The start time of the timer in hh:mm as 24 hour ("military") time.
Stop: The stop time of the timer.
VPS: Defines whether the timer shall use VPS (if available). If this
option is set to 'yes', the start time must exactly match the
programme's VPS time, otherwise nothing will be recorded. If VPS
is used, the stop time has no real meaning. However, it must be
different than the start time, and should correspond to the actual
stop time of the programme, just in case there is no real VPS data
available at the time of recording, so VDR has to fall back to
normal timer recording.
Priority: The Priority (0..99) is used to decide which timer shall be
started in case there are two or more timers with the exact same
start time. The first timer in the list with the highest Priority
will be used. This value is also stored with the recording and is
later used to decide which recording to remove from disk in order
to free space for a new recording. If the disk is full and a new
recording needs more space, an existing recording with the lowest
Priority (and which has exceeded its guaranteed Lifetime) will be
removed. If all available DVB cards are currently occupied, a
timer with a higher priority will interrupt the timer with the
lowest priority in order to start recording.
Lifetime: The number of days (0..99) a recording made through this timer is
guaranteed to remain on disk before it is automatically removed
to free up space for a new recording. Note that setting this
parameter to very high values for all recordings may soon fill up
the entire disk and cause new recordings to fail due to low disk
space. The special value 99 means that this recording will live
"forever", and a value of 0 means that this recording can be
deleted any time if a recording with a higher priority needs disk
space.
Pattern: The pattern to use for recordings matching events (only available
for pattern timers). See section "Pattern timers" below.
File: The name under which a recording created through this timer will
be stored on disk (the actual name will also contain the date and
time, so it is possible to have a "repeating timer" store all its
recordings under the same name; they will be distinguishable by
their date and time).
If the file name contains the special character '~', the recording
will be stored in a hierarchical directory structure. For instance,
a file name of "Sci-Fi~Star Trek~Voyager" will result in a directory
structure "/video/Sci-Fi/Star_Trek/Voyager". The '~' character has
been chosen for this since the file system's directory delimiter '/'
may be part of a regular programme name.
Repeating timers create recordings that contain the 'Episode name'
information from the EPG data in their file name. Typically (on tv
stations that care about their viewers) this contains the episode
title of a series. The episode name is appended to the timer's file name,
separated by a '~' character, so that it results in all recordings
of this timer being collected in a common subdirectory.
If this field is left blank, the channel name will be used to form
the name of the recording.
First day: The date of the first day when this timer shall start recording
(only available for repeating timers).
Record on: The name of the remote VDR this timer shall record on (only available
if there are any remote VDRs connected to this VDR). If this field
is empty, the timer will record on the local VDR.
A timer can also be programmed by pressing the "Red" key on the "Schedule",
"Now", "Next" or "Event" menus.
The "Red" key in the "Edit timer" menu opens a list of folders, which can be
used to define the file name in which the recording will be stored.
The "Yellow" key in the "Edit timer" menu toggles the timer between "Pattern"
and "Regular".
When editing the "File" field, the "Blue" key in can be used to insert useful
macros.
* Pattern timers
There are cases where it would make sense to have a more flexible kind of
recording timer. For instance, some channels that provide VPS don't always
use the exact same VPS time for a series, which is extremely annoying.
Or you might want to record all films that have a certain pattern in their
title, no matter when they are broadcast. In such cases, "pattern timers"
can help.
In the "Edit timer" menu press the Yellow button to turn a regular timer into
a pattern timer. Pressing this button again switches back to regular.
The following rules apply to pattern timers:
- Pattern timers can only work for channels that provide EPG data.
- When using pattern timers, there should always be at least one free device that
can be used to regularly receive the EPG of the pattern timer's channel.
- A pattern timer records every matching event on the given channel that overlaps
with the given start/stop time. Overlapping events are recorded in full,
even if they extend outside the given start/stop interval.
- In order to actually record an event, a pattern timer "spawns" a separate timer
that does the recording. If there are matching events that would start while
the first spawned timer is still recording (due to the start/stop margins), timers
for those events are also spawned.
- Spawned timers are marked with the flag tfSpawned.
- Spawned timers take the Priority, Lifetime and VPS settings from the pattern timer.
- The special pattern "*" matches every event. So a timer with
a start/stop time of 00:00/23:59 will record every event of that day
into separate recordings. Note that when using this pattern there should
be no other timers for the same channel, because these might interfere.
- Once a timer has been spawned, it is treated like any other regular
timer. Any changes made to the corresponding pattern timer thereafter will have
no effect on spawned timers. Note that after deleting a spawned timer,
the corresponding pattern timer may respawn it.
- Recording is done according to the event's begin/end times, either
by adding the start/stop margins (for non-VPS timers) or by using the
event's running status (for VPS timers).
- If the start/stop margins of a spawned timer are reduced because the event
before and/or after that timer's event is shorter than the respective margin,
the actual recording still uses the full margins.
- If the times of the event change, a non-VPS pattern timer automatically adjusts
itself to the new times. This also happens if the start/stop margins are changed
in the setup.
- The recording of a pattern timer is stored under the given file name, just like
regular timers do. In addition to the "TITLE" and "EPISODE" macros the file
name of a pattern timer can also use "{<}" and "{>}" to reference the part of the
event's title before and after the pattern, respectively. For instance,
if the event's title is "Abc def ghi" and the pattern is "def ", "{<}"
would contain "Abc " and "{>}" would contain "ghi" (note the matching of the
blanks). For completeness, "{=}" can be used to reference the matching
pattern itself.
- In the "Timers" menu pressing the Red button on a pattern timer only toggles the
timer between "on" and "off", even if this is a repeating timer.
- In the "Timers" menu pattern timers are sorted alphabetically to the end of the
list of timers.
- A regular timer that is currently recording can't be changed into a pattern timer.
- In the "Edit timer" menu the file name and pattern are displayed as
separate items. The Yellow button can be used to toggle between a regular
timer and a pattern timer. When going from regular to pattern, the Pattern item will
be initialized with the base part of the file name.
- The characters '^' and '$' can be used at the very beginning and end of
the pattern to anchor the pattern to the begin or end of the title.
Using both of these will match only titles that consist of exactly the given pattern,
with nothing before and nothing after it.
- The Pattern field in the "Edit timer" menu allows blanks at the end of the string,
which may help to separate the text after the matching pattern.
- If the first character of the pattern is '@', an event that matches the
rest of the pattern is only recorded if the resulting recording's file
name (without any folders) is not contained in the donerecs.data file.
This avoids duplicate recordings of the same programme. Timers spawned from
such a pattern timer are marked with the flag tfAvoid.
- When editing the "File" field of a timer, the Blue button can be pressed to
insert one of the macros "TITLE", "EPISODE", "{<}", "{=}" or "{>}",
respectively. Pressing the Blue button repeatedly loops through the available
macros. The "{...}" macros are only available for pattern timers.
- In the "Schedule" and "What's on...?" menus the events that will be recorded
by a pattern timer are marked in the same way as regular timers.
- The TIMERS column in the LCARS skin doesn't show the basic definitions of
pattern timers, it only shows timers actually spawned from pattern timers.
If the pattern is prepended with '@', the name of the resulting recording (everything
after the rightmost '~', or the entire file name, if there is no '~') will be stored
in the file donerecs.data, so that multiple recordings of the same programme can be
avoided. When using this feature, special care must be taken regarding the recording's
file name. For instance, with a combination of
pattern file name
@Columbo Movies~TITLE
if the event's title is just "Columbo", this pattern timer would only record once,
and ignore any future events with that title, even if the episode would be different.
So you may want to use the episode name, as in
pattern file name
@Columbo Movies~TITLE - EPISODE
to make the file name unique. If you have several pattern timers for the same show on
different channels, chances are that the broadcasters handle title and episode
differently, as for example in
TITLE EPISODE pattern file name
Columbo Blueprint for Murder @^Columbo$ TITLE - EPISODE
Columbo - Blueprint for Murder @^Columbo TITLE
Columbo: Blueprint for Murder @^Columbo:_ Columbo - {>}
(note the '_' in the pattern of the third example; this is just used to visualize
the blank at the end of the pattern)
In order to have the same episode result in the same recording file name on all
channels, the file name needs to be generated differently for each channel. First
you need to decide on a proper combination of title and episode name, preferably
one that is already used by one of your channels (let's say the second one).
In the first case, title and episode name are correctly put in their respective
places, and "TITLE - EPISODE" as file name will do. The second case is our common
version, where everything is in the title, so TITLE is just fine. The third case
poses a problem, because everything is in the title, but with a different separator.
Here the special macro "{>}" can be used in the file name, which contains everything
following the matching pattern. There are three macros that can be used here:
{<} everything before the matching pattern
{>} everything after the matching pattern
{=} the matching pattern itself (just for completeness)
As of VDR version 2.5.2, the characters ' ' (blank), ':' and '-' are ignored
when checking whether a particular recording has already been made by a pattern
timer, making "TITLE - EPISODE" and "TITLE: EPISODE" the same.
* Managing folders
The "Select folder" menu, which can be accessed by pressing the "Red" key in
the "Edit timer" menu, offers a list of folders that can be used for storing
a recording. In this menu, the "Green" key allows you to define a new folder
within the current one; if the "Sub folder" option is set to "yes", this will
be a folder that contains other folders (indicated by "..." following the
folder name in the list). The "Yellow" key deletes the current folder (note
that this will merely delete the folder definition stored in 'folders.conf'
and has no effect on existing timers or recordings). The "Blue" key can be
used to edit an existing folder definition. The "Red" key opens a folder that
contains sub folders, while pressing Ok selects the current folder. Once a
folder has been selected, the entire path of the timer's file name will be
replaced with the selected folder.
In the "Recordings" menu the folders of existing recordings can be renamed or
moved by pressing the "Blue" key ("Edit") while the cursor is positioned on
a folder. This will open a menu in which the folder's name and location (the
"parent" folder) can be edited. If such an operation will result in moving
more than one recording, you will be asked for confirmation.
The name, folder, priority and lifetime of an individual recording can be
changed by pressing the "Blue" key ("Info") while the cursor is positioned
on a recording, and in the resulting Info menu pressing the "Blue" key again
to bring up the "Edit recording" menu.
In the "Edit recording" menu the Red button ("Folder") allows you to select one
of your predefined folders. The Green button has multiple functions, depending
on what is currently going on with the recording. It can either stop or cancel
a cut, move or copy operation. If the button reads "Stop..." it means that the
respective operation is already happening, while "Cancel..." means that the
operation is still pending execution. If no operation is currently happening
and the recording has editing marks, the Button will read "Cut" and triggers
cutting the recording (same as pressing '2' while replaying the recording).
The Yellow button ("Delete marks") allows you to delete all editing marks from
the selected recording (if there are any and the recording is not currently
being cut). To directly edit the folder or name of the recording, position the
cursor to the respective line and press the Right key to start editing (press
Ok to confirm the edit, or Back to return to the previous value). If you want
to remove the name of the recording and make the folder name the actual
recording's name, you can position the cursor to the "Name:" field and press
the '0' key. This will take the last element of the recording's folder path
and make it the actual name of the recording. You can do this in turn until
the recording is moved all the way up to the root of the video directory.
Note that, in case you inadvertently pressed the '0' key, you can leave the
"Edit recording" menu with the "Back" key and any changes you have made so far
will not be applied. Once you are finished with editing the recording
properties, press Ok to confirm the changes.
* Parameters in the "Setup" menu
Select "Setup" from the "VDR" menu to enter the setup menu. From there you can
modify the following system parameters (note that "boolean" values will be
displayed as "no" and "yes" in the "Setup" menu, while in the setup file they
are stored as '0' and '1', respectively):
OSD:
Language = English Defines the language used to display the OSD texts.
Skin = ST:TNG Panels Defines the "skin" used to display the OSD menus.
Theme = Default Defines the "theme" to use with the current skin.
Left = 8 The left and top offset of the OSD, in percent of the
Top = 8 total video display width and height, respectively.
The valid range is 0...50%.
Width = 87 The width and height of the OSD, in percent of the
Height = 84 total video display width and height, respectively.
The valid range is 50...100%.
Message time = 1 The time (in seconds) how long an informational
message shall be displayed on the OSD. The valid range
is 1...60.
Use small font = 1 Defines whether the small font shall be used. 0 means never
use the small font, 1 means use the small font wherever the
current skin wants to, and 2 means always use the small
font.
Anti-alias = 1 Controls whether the OSD uses "anti-aliasing" to improve
font rendering. To make this work, the OSD must support
at least 256 colors, and the skin in use has to
utilize these. If either of these conditions is not met,
rendering will be done without anti-aliasing.
Default font = Sans Serif:Bold
Small font = Sans Serif
Fixed font = Courier:Bold
The names of the various fonts to use.
Default font size = 3.8
Small font size = 3.5
Fixed font size = 3.1
The sizes (in percent of the total video display height)
of the various fonts. The valid range is 1...10%, at
a resolution of 0.1%.
Channel info position = bottom
The position of the channel info window in the OSD
(either 'bottom' or 'top').
Channel info time = 5 The time (in seconds) after which the channel info display
is removed if no key has been pressed.
Info on channel switch = yes
Turns the display of the current/next information on
or off when switching the channel. The information is
always displayed when pressing the "Ok" key in
normal viewing mode.
Timeout requested channel info = yes
Turns the automatic timeout of the channel display (when
invoked by a press of the "Ok" key) on or off.
Scroll pages = yes no = when pressing the "Down" ("Up") key while the cursor
is on the last (first) line of a list page, the
list is scrolled down (up) a single line and the cursor will
remain at the bottom (top) of that page
yes = the list is scrolled down (up) a full page and the cursor
will be at the top (bottom) of that page (this mode allows
for faster scrolling through long lists).
Scroll wraps = no no = when the end (beginning) of a list is reached while
moving the cursor through it, the cursor stays at the
last (first) line of the list
yes = the cursor "wraps around" and moves from the last
(first) line of the list directly to the first (last)
one.
Menu key closes = no
If set to "yes", pressing the "Menu" key while there is
anything displayed on the OSD will close the OSD. If set
to "no", the "Menu" key will open the main menu after
closing a temporary display, like, for instance, the channel
display.
Recording directories = yes
Turns displaying the Recordings menu as a hierarchical
directory structure on or off.
Folders in timer menu = yes
Controls whether the full folder path is shown in the
"Timers" menu, or just the basic recording name.
Always sort folders first = yes
In the "Recordings" menu folders are always listed before
plain recordings. Set this option to "no" if you want folders
to be interspersed with recordings when sorted alphabetically.
Default sort mode for recordings = by time
Controls whether recordings are sorted by time or by name.
If a particular sort mode has been selected for a folder by
pressing '0', the default no longer applies to that folder.
Sorting direction for recordings = ascending
When recordings are sorted "by time", they appear in ascending
order (i.e. "oldest" to "newest"). If this parameter is set to
"descending", they will be presented "newest" to "oldest.
Note that in the latter case, if "Always sort folders first"
is "yes", folders will appear in reverse alphabetical order.
Number keys for characters = yes
Controls whether the number keys can be used to enter
characters in a text input field. You may want to set this
to "no" if you are using an actual keyboard to control VDR.
Color key 0 = 0 By default, VDR assumes that the sequence of the color
Color key 1 = 1 keys on the remote control is red-green-yellow-blue. If
Color key 2 = 2 your remote control has these keys in a different sequence,
Color key 3 = 3 you can adjust these parameters to reorder the corresponding
color buttons in the menus accordingly. Note that this does
not change the functionality of the individual keys; it only
changes the sequence in which the color buttons are displayed.
EPG:
EPG scan timeout = 5 The time (in hours) of user inactivity after which the
DVB card in a single card system starts scanning channels
to keep the EPG up-to-date.
A value of '0' completely turns off scanning on both single
and multiple card systems.
EPG bugfix level = 3 Some tv stations transmit weirdly formatted EPG data.
VDR attempts to fix these bugs up to the given level:
0 = no EPG fixing
1 = basic fixing of text location (Title, Episode and
Extended Description)
2 = removal of excess whitespace and hyphens, mapping of
wrongly used characters
3 = fix stream component descriptions
Default is '3'.
Note that after changing the setting of this parameter
any EPG data that has already been received will remain
in its existing format - only newly received data will
be fixed accordingly. Restart VDR if you want to make sure
all data is fixed.
EPG linger time = 0 The time (in minutes) within which old EPG information
shall still be displayed in the "Schedule" menu.
Set system time = no Defines whether the system time will be set according to
the time received from the DVB data stream.
Note that this works only if VDR is running under a user
id that has permission to set the system time. You also
need to set the option "Use time from transponder" to a
channel that you trust to transmit a reliable time base
(not all channels seem to have access to a correct time
base...).
Use time from transponder = 0
The frequency of the transponder that shall be used to
set the system time. The Setup menu will offer the full
list of channels, even if several of them are on the
same transponder. Also, when selecting a channel, saving
the Setup and opening the Setup menu again, there may be
a different channel listed here, since the first one
in 'channels.conf' that is on the given transponder will
be taken. Note that in order to set the system time from
the transponder data the option "Set system time" must also
be enabled.
Preferred languages = 0
Some tv stations broadcast their EPG data in various
different languages. This option allows you to define
which language(s) you prefer in such cases. By default,
or if none of the preferred languages is broadcast, any
language will be accepted and the EPG data will be
displayed in the first language received from the data
stream. If this option is set to a non-zero value, the
menu page will contain that many "Preferred language"
options which allow you to select the individual preferred
languages. If an actual EPG data record is received in
different languages, the preferred languages are checked
in the given order to decide which one to take.
Scan The "Red" key in the "Setup/EPG" menu can be used to
force an EPG scan on a single DVB card system. If pressed,
and the primary DVB device is currently not recording or
replaying, it will loop through the transponders once and
then switch back to the original channel. Any user activity
during the EPG scan will also stop the scan and bring back
the original channel.
DVB:
Primary DVB interface = 1
Defines the primary DVB interface (i.e. the one that
will display the menus and will react on input through
the remote control). Valid values range from '1' to the
number of installed DVB cards. If more than one DVB card
is installed and a recording is to be started, the
program will try to use a free DVB card that is different
from the primary DVB interface, so that the viewer will
be disturbed as little as possible.
Standard Compliance = 0
Defines the standard compliance mode:
0 = DVB
1 = ANSI/SCTE
2 = NORDIG
Video format = 4:3 The video format (or aspect ratio) of the tv set in use
(4:3 or 16:9). Applies only to SD output devices.
Video display format = letterbox
The display format to use for playing wide screen video on
a 4:3 tv set ("pan & scan", "letterbox" or "center cut out").
This option is only available if "Video format" is set to
4:3. Applies only to SD output devices.
Use Dolby Digital = yes
Controls whether Dolby Digital tracks appear in the "Audio"
menu. This is useful if you don't have the equipment to
replay Dolby Digital audio.
Update channels = 5 Controls the automatic channel update function. '0' means
no update, '1' will only update channel names, '2' will
only update PIDs, '3' will update channel names and PIDs,
'4' will perform all updates and also add newly found channels,
and '5' will also add newly found transponders.
Note that adding new transponders only works if the "EPG scan"
is active.
Audio languages = 0 Some tv stations broadcast various audio tracks in different
languages. This option allows you to define which language(s)
you prefer in such cases. By default, or if none of the
preferred languages is broadcast, the first audio track will
be selected when switching to such a channel. If this option
is set to a non-zero value, the menu page will contain that
many "Audio language" options which allow you to select the
individual preferred languages.
Display subtitles = no If set to 'yes', the first available subtitles in the list
of preferred subtitle languages will be turned on when
switching to a channel that provides subtitles.
Subtitle languages = 0 Some tv stations broadcast various subtitle tracks in different
languages. This option allows you to define which language(s)
you prefer in such cases. By default, or if none of the
preferred languages is broadcast, no subtitles will
be selected when switching to such a channel. If this option
is set to a non-zero value, the menu page will contain that
many "Subtitle language" options which allow you to select the
individual preferred languages.
Subtitle offset = 0 Allows you to shift the location of the subtitles in the
vertical direction. The valid range is -100...100. This option
is only available if "Display subtitles" is set to 'yes'.
Subtitle foreground transparency = 0
Subtitle background transparency = 0
These define an additional level of transparency for the
foreground and background color of subtitles. Valid ranges
are 0...9 for foreground transparency, and 0...10 for
background transparency. By default the values as broadcast
are used.
LNB:
Use DiSEqC = no Generally turns DiSEqC support on or off.
SLOF = 11700 The switching frequency (in MHz) between low and
high LOF
Low LNB frequency = 9750 The LNB's low and high local oscillator frequencies
High LNB frequency = 10600 (in MHz, these have no meaning for DVB-C receivers)
Device n connected to sat cable = own
Defines whether DVB-S device n has its own satellite cable,
or is "bonded" with another device. All DVB-S devices that
are connected to the same sat cable must be set to the same
number here.
Use dish positioner = no
By default, the 'P' command code in DiSEqC command sequences
is ignored. Set this parameter to 'yes' if you are using a
satellite dish positioner.
Site latitude (degrees) = 0
Site longitude (degrees) = 0
Set these to the latitude and longitude of your dish's
location if you use a satellite dish positioner. Use the
"Green" key to switch between north/south and east/west,
respectively.
Max. positioner swing (degrees) = 65
Defines the maximum angle by which the positioner can move
the dish away from due south (or north) in either direction.
The valid range is 0...90.
Positioner speed (degrees/s) = 1.5
Defines the speed at which the positioner moves the dish.
The valid range is 0.1...180. This value is used to calculate