importing mythtv recording history

[drewg]

Hi,

I'm a MythTV user who has just ordered an HD Media extender, and am planning to switch to SageTV upon its arrival. Is there any way I can import my MythTV recording history so that SageTV can avoid recording the several years worth of episodes I've already recorded, watched and deleted using Myth?

I can get Mythtv to dump the Data Direct program IDs (For example, last night's House was EP006883590046). From the SageTV manual, it appears that IDs like these are one of the means Sage uses to keep track of what has previously been recorded. I see there is a BTV import script, but my searching has turned up nothing for MythTV.

Heck, I'd ideally like to import the full 500GB of shows I have sitting on the box currently with complete information. Is that possible?

Thanks,

Drew

[GKusnick]

Yes, it should be possible, although perhaps not as easy as running an off-the-shelf tool.

I know next to nothing about MythTV, but if you can get the data out in XML form, you should be able to import it into Sage using Nielm's web server plugin. You may need to do some massaging of the XML data to make it compatible with Nielm's importer.

Or if you have some Java programming ability, you can write your own importer using the SageTV API.

The key question in either case is whether the Data Direct IDs you have can be translated into the Zap2It IDs used by the Sage DB. Again, I'm not an expert on that, but a few moments of Googling seem to indicate that they can be.

So depending on how much work you're willing to put into it, you should be able to get essentially all your data ported over one way or another.

[drewg]

Originally Posted by GKusnick

I know next to nothing about MythTV, but if you can get the data out in XML form, you should be able to import it into Sage using Nielm's web server plugin. You may need to do some massaging of the XML data to make it compatible with Nielm's importer.

Are you talking about his BTV importer? (http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/down...do=file&id=202)

I downloaded that, and it seems to just be a binary jar file, even after unzipping the class files seemed to be binary. How do I determine what file format it expects? I may be missing something; I'm a professional programmer, but I do *nix device drivers and I'm more of a C/assembly/shell/sed/awk type person, and I'm pretty java illiterate. Are there example BTV xml files somewhere I could use as a template? I'm sure I could write some sort of script to generate an xml file (or set of files), but I just don't know what to put in the file.

BTW, Does SageTV expect the "new" expanded 12 digit DataDirect / Zap2it Program IDs, or the old 10 digit ones? Eg, EP006883590046 vs EP6883590046 ?

Thanks,

Drew

[GKusnick]

I mean the Web-based User Interface, which (among many other features) has commands for importing and exporting program data in XML form. (Disclaimer: I don't use this plugin myself, but lots of people swear by it.) The XML format is documented in the wiki pages. (The BTV converter is apparently just a standalone Java app for converting BTV-format XML files into webserver-format XML files. You still need the webserver to do the import.)

Looks like the EPG IDs are ten digits, but you can verify that for yourself on the Recording Detail screen.

[drewg]

Originally Posted by GKusnick

I mean the Web-based User Interface, which (among many other features) has commands for importing and exporting program data in XML form.

Aha! Thanks, this looks to be exactly what I was looking for.

Drew