Feature request: smarter watched files management

[CadErik]

Currently, the way sage tv handles space is either by

• Limit the number of recorded shows
• Delete watched shows when sagetv is running out of space

My issue is not so much space, but rather that it gets annoying to manage manually tons of shows and what I'd like to see is a limit on the number of watched shows for each favorite. For some shows I like to keep everything but some other, I want to keep everything new but save space by deleting watched shows.

[tchapin]

Hi there. When your recording space becomes full, Sage will start deleting programs, starting with the watched ones, unless you change your keep setting to "until I delete".

I think that's one of the downsides to having the free space bar. When I had TiVo, I didn't think about such things, and the device handled all the space management stuff automatically. But now with Sage that I have the free space bar, I feel compelled to manage it and I get nervous when I get less than 50 GB free...

The setting that you're talking about is interesting though.

[ONLYinHD]

Originally Posted by CadErik

• Limit the number of recorded shows
• Delete watched shows when sagetv is running out of space

Good suggestion.

I'd also suggest looking into more hard drive space (it's so cheap nowadays).
Don't delete it - Just get a bigger drive!

[CadErik]

Originally Posted by ONLYinHD

Good suggestion.

I'd also suggest looking into more hard drive space (it's so cheap nowadays).
Don't delete it - Just get a bigger drive!

Before I added more storage, shows were just piling up (watched and unwatched) and then when the drive became full, SageTV started deleting watched shows but in no order - there was stuff I wanted to keep and other stuff which I really did not care about. I was hoping somekind of smarter priority could be used...

Since then, I added a terabyte drive (yes they are cheap) and I haven't had any storage issue yet but now that I'm not watching the storage anymore, I don't want to run into the same issue.

Erik.

[nick_l]

Originally Posted by CadErik

Before I added more storage, shows were just piling up (watched and unwatched) and then when the drive became full, SageTV started deleting watched shows but in no order - there was stuff I wanted to keep and other stuff which I really did not care about. I was hoping somekind of smarter priority could be used...

Clearly this is my day to not understand things, but why don't you just delete the shows you have watched & no longer want to keep and archive the ones you do (Sage can even ask you automatically at the end of each show)?

Also, of course Sage isn't just randomly deleting shows. The priority for when a show is deleted by sage is covered in the manual, starting on page 257, but basically (from the manual) This ranking means that recordings marked as Don't Like are deleted first; then Live TV; then shows marked as watched; then Intelligent Recordings; then deletable Favorites. If two shows have the same priority, the older of the two will be deleted first.

There is a way to have Sage show you what recordings would be next in line for deletion. As I never use it, I cant remember if it is part of SageMC or part of the web inerface. If you are interested Im sure someone will be able to tell you.

Nick

[CadErik]

Originally Posted by nick_l

Clearly this is my day to not understand things, but why don't you just delete the shows you have watched & no longer want to keep and archive the ones you do (Sage can even ask you automatically at the end of each show)?

Very simple - there are some shows I want to watch again or otherwise my wife watches and I want to watch them too.

Originally Posted by nick_l

Also, of course Sage isn't just randomly deleting shows. The priority for when a show is deleted by sage is covered in the manual, starting on page 257, but basically (from the manual) This ranking means that recordings marked as Don't Like are deleted first; then Live TV; then shows marked as watched; then Intelligent Recordings; then deletable Favorites. If two shows have the same priority, the older of the two will be deleted first.

Sure but 99% of my recording are favorites so I'm talking about managing the favorites. I used to make all favorites deletable but I found out it is not a good idea, even if there is storage left, I might loose a show recording that will never air again.

Originally Posted by nick_l

There is a way to have Sage show you what recordings would be next in line for deletion. As I never use it, I cant remember if it is part of SageMC or part of the web inerface. If you are interested Im sure someone will be able to tell you.

Yeah I know that one but if I had time to manually check the recordings next in line I wouldn't need any of this.

Erik.

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by CadErik

Very simple - there are some shows I want to watch again or otherwise my wife watches and I want to watch them too.

Those would fall under "archive" them. Or have you tried the Keep at Most, and Auto Delete settings to achieve what you want?

[nick_l]

Originally Posted by CadErik

Very simple - there are some shows I want to watch again or otherwise my wife watches and I want to watch them too. Erik.

Which is why I suggested mark them archived. You could also mark them as manual recordings, which sage will not delete and which will keep them in the standard recodings list, or mark them unwatched, which are one of the last to be delted.

Originally Posted by CadErik

Sure but 99% of my recording are favorites so I'm talking about managing the favorites. I used to make all favorites deletable but I found out it is not a good idea, even if there is storage left, I might loose a show recording that will never air again.Erik.

How? Sage doesn't just randomly decide to delete recordings. If you have adiquate space, nothing will be delted, period (unless you have a keep at most lilmit, or you delete it manually). I have 199 favorites, all marked to delete automatically, most marked keep 15. Sage has never once deleted one of my shows randomly.

Originally Posted by CadErik

Yeah I know that one but if I had time to manually check the recordings next in line I wouldn't need any of this.

Erik.

I dont know what to say to this.

Nick

[CadErik]

Originally Posted by nick_l

How? Sage doesn't just randomly decide to delete recordings. If you have adiquate space, nothing will be delted, period (unless you have a keep at most lilmit, or you delete it manually). I have 199 favorites, all marked to delete automatically, most marked keep 15. Sage has never once deleted one of my shows randomly.

My whole point is the case where you don't set auto delete on the favorite and you start running out of space. There are cases when you don't want to use auto delete. And, yes, archive works but again that is manual.

Erik.

[nick_l]

Originally Posted by CadErik

My whole point is the case where you don't set auto delete on the favorite and you start running out of space. There are cases when you don't want to use auto delete. And, yes, archive works but again that is manual.

Erik.

Clearly either I dont understand what you really want, or you dont really understand how sage works. In your first post you said "My issue is not so much space, but rather that it gets annoying to manage manually tons of shows and what I'd like to see is a limit on the number of watched shows for each favorite. For some shows I like to keep everything but some other, I want to keep everything new but save space by deleting watched shows."

This is EXACTLY how sage currently works. If you consider a favorite to be too important to be deleted automatically, you set it to not delete automatically. Sage keeps everything, up to the number you tell it to keep. For favorites that arent so special you set it to delete automatically. Watched shows are always deleted before unwatched shows so, for instance, if you had a favorite with 6 shows in it and 3 where watched, if Sage was running out of space Sage would have to delete those 3 watched shows, plus every other watched show marked available for delete, before it would delete your 3 unwatched shows. Isn't that what you want to happen?

Not to mention, all this would go away with the addition of a $60 Hard drive.

Nick

P.s.I think I figured it out. Are you saying that you want to tell Sage that some shows that it is allowed to delete are more deletable than other shows that it is allowed to delete? If so, I don't know what to tell you.

[evilpenguin]

I'm for this type of advanced recording management options. There are actually quite a few i'd like to see...

• Deleted watched first like the OP describes - I like this show and like to have the whole season archived, but if I need room and i'm out of syndicated shows to delete, you can delete the watched episodes of this one.
• Syndicated Mode - A show like Seinfeld or the Simpsons that's on daily and I like to watch, but I never want it to affect the scheduling of another show and always the first to delete for space purposes.
• Only record N per day -Seinfeld is on 4-8 times a day depending on the day, I only keep 4 at a time, that means that someday up to 4 episodes are recorded and then immediately deleted.
• Record first available -I like watching the first run of Mythbusters ASAP, but i'll often find that Sage's scheduler will push it back to make room for another show with a lower priority.
• Only delete watched episodes - I record Everyday Italian, but only check them out once a week when i'm going to be cooking dinner. The rest of the time its fine if it just holds onto the 4 epiosdes it has rather than overwritting them with new ones.
• Only record on a single day - I only care about the college football games on Saturday and don't want to catch any of the random game recaps that air during the week.
• Deleted watched first - I like this show and like to have the whole season archived, but if I need room and i'm out of syndicated shows to delete, delete the watched episodes of this one
• Never delete a first run to make room for a rerun - South Park is on 2-3 times per day, I save four, a first run episode gets recorded but before I get to watch it its deleted to make room for the next two days worth of reruns.

RE: Just buying more drives - The more space you have the more important it actually is to have options like this.

[GKusnick]

Originally Posted by evilpenguin

I'm for this type of advanced recording management options. There are actually quite a few i'd like to see...

I don't disagree with any of your wishlist items, but I think that providing a wide variety of detailed management features like this is best achieved by an ecology of third-party add-ons rather than an in-house effort on the part of the Sage devs to satisfy everyone's idiosyncratic wishes.

[evilpenguin]

Yeah, but how many things on that list are possible via the provided API? As far as I can tell, just the day of the week one (and that's actually already available in the default STV). Other than that they would all require core changes to the scheduler, which rules out 3rd party stuff.

[nick_l]

Far be it from me to argue with someone of your experience with Sage, but cant at least a few of these be accomplished now?

Originally Posted by evilpenguin

I'm for this type of advanced recording management options. There are actually quite a few i'd like to see...

• Deleted watched first like the OP describes - I like this show and like to have the whole season archived, but if I need room and i'm out of syndicated shows to delete, you can delete the watched episodes of this one.
  So, instead of deleting watched shows by age, you would like to create a priority order for them to be deleted in? I could see that, but what would the default be?
• Syndicated Mode - A show like Seinfeld or the Simpsons that's on daily and I like to watch, but I never want it to affect the scheduling of another show and always the first to delete for space purposes.
  I like this one. Although, truthfully it's never been a scheduling problem for me personally. However the setting above would take care of deletion, so an option for never affect scheduling would be all that was needed.
• Only record N per day -Seinfeld is on 4-8 times a day depending on the day, I only keep 4 at a time, that means that someday up to 4 episodes are recorded and then immediately deleted.
  I dont understand. Isn't the net effect the same, 4 shows?
• Record first available -I like watching the first run of Mythbusters ASAP, but i'll often find that Sage's scheduler will push it back to make room for another show with a lower priority.
  Sounds plausable,although additional tuners would mostly mitigate the need for this one (not always possible, I know).
• Only delete watched episodes - I record Everyday Italian, but only check them out once a week when i'm going to be cooking dinner. The rest of the time its fine if it just holds onto the 4 epiosdes it has rather than overwritting them with new ones.
  I dont understand this one, I guess. Can't you just set the favorite to not delete and keep 4?
• Only record on a single day - I only care about the college football games on Saturday and don't want to catch any of the random game recaps that air during the week.
  Isn't this one already possible?
• Deleted watched first - I like this show and like to have the whole season archived, but if I need room and i'm out of syndicated shows to delete, delete the watched episodes of this one. Isn't this the same as the first sinario?
• Never delete a first run to make room for a rerun - South Park is on 2-3 times per day, I save four, a first run episode gets recorded but before I get to watch it its deleted to make room for the next two days worth of reruns.
  This one would be solved by a fav for reruns and a fav first runs.

RE: Just buying more drives - The more space you have the more important it actually is to have options like this.


Not to niggle, but that doesn't make any sense to me. If you have 1 terabite of free space or 15 terabites of free space, Sage will not need to invoke any of these rules (with the exception of scheduling priorities) so the options would be irrelevant, correct? The more RECORDINGS you have, the more important the options are.

Nick

P.s. I hope I didnt antagonize you, just trying to get a handle on what you said.

[GKusnick]

Originally Posted by evilpenguin

Yeah, but how many things on that list are possible via the provided API? As far as I can tell, just the day of the week one (and that's actually already available in the default STV). Other than that they would all require core changes to the scheduler, which rules out 3rd party stuff.

Maybe all that's needed in the core is a SetDeletionPriority() API method. Third-party devs can then use whatever arcane rules they like to assign deletion priorities to recordings. That seems like a better solution to me than trying to shoehorn everybody's rule wishlist into the core.

Those of us old enough to remember the Bell system breakup will recall that the market for diverse phone features and appliances didn't exist until the monopoly on phone manufacture was broken. The same principle applies here. The best way to satisfy a diversity of individual tastes is with a diversity of competing add-ons, rather than expecting the Sage devs to do it all.

[evilpenguin]

Originally Posted by GKusnick

Maybe all that's needed in the core is a SetDeletionPriority() API method. Third-party devs can then use whatever arcane rules they like to assign deletion priorities to recordings. That seems like a better solution to me than trying to shoehorn everybody's rule wishlist into the core.

No arguments here, I'm all about feature requests for things that will let me implement my own feature requests Honestly, my ideal would be for Sage to have their entire scheduler/deleter(?) logic read out of easily extendable configuration files rather than hard-coded logic.

[evilpenguin]

• Deleted watched first like the OP describes - I like this show and like to have the whole season archived, but if I need room and i'm out of syndicated shows to delete, you can delete the watched episodes of this one.
  

  So, instead of deleting watched shows by age, you would like to create a priority order for them to be deleted in? I could see that, but what would the default be?

  Well, this, along with syndication would be additional criteria with which to judge a show ready for deletion. I'd order it
  
  1) Delete syndicated shows first
  2) Delete favorites marked like this second
  3) Then, finally, delete by age.
  
  Actually, I have more i'd throw in there, but that's the gist.
  
• Syndicated Mode - A show like Seinfeld or the Simpsons that's on daily and I like to watch, but I never want it to affect the scheduling of another show and always the first to delete for space purposes.
  

  I like this one. Although, truthfully it's never been a scheduling problem for me personally. However the setting above would take care of deletion, so an option for never affect scheduling would be all that was needed.

  Like I said above, syndicated shows would automatically go to the top of the deletion order and nothing else could be deleted while a syndicated show remained, watched or unwatched.
  
• Only record N per day -Seinfeld is on 4-8 times a day depending on the day, I only keep 4 at a time, that means that someday up to 4 episodes are recorded and then immediately deleted.
  

  I dont understand. Isn't the net effect the same, 4 shows?

  This one is purely for the sake of your hard drives. At the end of the day I may only have 4 shows, but you've recorded 8 which means gigs of unnecessary writes.
  
• Record first available -I like watching the first run of Mythbusters ASAP, but i'll often find that Sage's scheduler will push it back to make room for another show with a lower priority.
  

  Sounds plausable,although additional tuners would mostly mitigate the need for this one (not always possible, I know).

  This is specifically a not possible case, as only one of my tuners can record the channel Mythbusters is on. Actually, this is a bit of an off shoot of the syndicated mode above as its always Seinfeld re-runs that are doing this.
  
• Only delete watched episodes - I record Everyday Italian, but only check them out once a week when i'm going to be cooking dinner. The rest of the time its fine if it just holds onto the 4 epiosdes it has rather than overwritting them with new ones.
  

  I dont understand this one, I guess. Can't you just set the favorite to not delete and keep 4?

  Well, this is another hard drive protection one. There are some shows where if I don't watch an episode it means I don't want to watch it and Sage should overwrite it with a new one, but there are others where I don't want this behavior. If I have 4 episodes and I only watch one, then it should only record one more until I watch another. I know I could manually go though and prune my shows, but why should I have to if its something the scheduler could do for me.
  
• Only record on a single day - I only care about the college football games on Saturday and don't want to catch any of the random game recaps that air during the week.
  

  Isn't this one already possible?

  Yep, already possible and i'm already doing it.
  
• Deleted watched first - I like this show and like to have the whole season archived, but if I need room and i'm out of syndicated shows to delete, delete the watched episodes of this one
  

  Isn't this the same as the first sinario?

  Yep, copy and paste error
• Never delete a first run to make room for a rerun - South Park is on 2-3 times per day, I save four, a first run episode gets recorded but before I get to watch it its deleted to make room for the next two days worth of reruns.
  

  This one would be solved by a fav for reruns and a fav first runs.

  Yep, I already do this for like 5 of my shows, but its a pretty crazy work around for the behavior I would imagine a majority of people would expect.

[Fuzzy]

I guess I'm another that isn't quite understanding the situation the OP is trying to describe. It seem to me he has some favorites that he doens't want auto-deleted. fine.. turn on auto delete.. that feature is already there. He is also asking that it only delete watched shows before unwatched shows... that is also already a feature...

[nick_l]

Originally Posted by evilpenguin

• Deleted watched first like the OP describes - I like this show and like to have the whole season archived, but if I need room and i'm out of syndicated shows to delete, you can delete the watched episodes of this one.
  Well, this, along with syndication would be additional criteria with which to judge a show ready for deletion. I'd order it
  
  1) Delete syndicated shows first
  2) Delete favorites marked like this second
  3) Then, finally, delete by age.
  
  Actually, I have more i'd throw in there, but that's the gist.
  
• Syndicated Mode - A show like Seinfeld or the Simpsons that's on daily and I like to watch, but I never want it to affect the scheduling of another show and always the first to delete for space purposes.
  Like I said above, syndicated shows would automatically go to the top of the deletion order and nothing else could be deleted while a syndicated show remained, watched or unwatched.
  
• Only record N per day -Seinfeld is on 4-8 times a day depending on the day, I only keep 4 at a time, that means that someday up to 4 episodes are recorded and then immediately deleted.
  This one is purely for the sake of your hard drives. At the end of the day I may only have 4 shows, but you've recorded 8 which means gigs of unnecessary writes.
  
• Record first available -I like watching the first run of Mythbusters ASAP, but i'll often find that Sage's scheduler will push it back to make room for another show with a lower priority.
  This is specifically a not possible case, as only one of my tuners can record the channel Mythbusters is on. Actually, this is a bit of an off shoot of the syndicated mode above as its always Seinfeld re-runs that are doing this.
  
• Only delete watched episodes - I record Everyday Italian, but only check them out once a week when i'm going to be cooking dinner. The rest of the time its fine if it just holds onto the 4 epiosdes it has rather than overwritting them with new ones.
  Well, this is another hard drive protection one. There are some shows where if I don't watch an episode it means I don't want to watch it and Sage should overwrite it with a new one, but there are others where I don't want this behavior. If I have 4 episodes and I only watch one, then it should only record one more until I watch another. I know I could manually go though and prune my shows, but why should I have to if its something the scheduler could do for me.
  
• Only record on a single day - I only care about the college football games on Saturday and don't want to catch any of the random game recaps that air during the week.
  
  Yep, already possible and i'm already doing it.
  
• Deleted watched first - I like this show and like to have the whole season archived, but if I need room and i'm out of syndicated shows to delete, delete the watched episodes of this one
  
  Yep, copy and paste error
• Never delete a first run to make room for a rerun - South Park is on 2-3 times per day, I save four, a first run episode gets recorded but before I get to watch it its deleted to make room for the next two days worth of reruns.
  Yep, I already do this for like 5 of my shows, but its a pretty crazy work around for the behavior I would imagine a majority of people would expect.

All other things aside, what would the critera be for determining a "syndicated" show? Would it be purely a manually set item or would Sage be expected to figure this out in some way?

Perhaps a ranking of High, Medium and Low importance for favorites might suffice without making things too complicated. High would mean favor this shows first runs over other shows and only delete watched shows when there is no other option available. Medium would be the default choice and be akin to Sages current behavior. Low would be akin to Sage's current treatment of intelligent recordings.

I hope you dont mind the discussion, I know its all hypothetical, but I find it interesting.

Nick

P.s. Are there really that many people who watch programs and then just leave them for Sage to deal with? I always delete a show after watching, provided I don't actually want to keep it for some reason. I wonder if Sage (the program) provides Sage (the company) with this information on our viewing habbits. I do know that TiVos do report back quite an extensive list of information.

[GKusnick]

Originally Posted by nick_l

I wonder if Sage (the program) provides Sage (the company) with this information on our viewing habbits.

We've been assured many times that it doesn't, both on the forums and in the published privacy policy, and it tends to make the devs testy when you accuse them, without evidence, of planting spyware in their products.