1.1 Menu Commands

This menu displays commands that can be executed on the current item. There are 8 built-in commands:

 - Repeats: Searches for repeats
 - Record
 - Switch
 - Create search
   Switches to search menu and adds a new search with the name of the current
   item (to avoid editing the name manually)
 - Search in recordings:
   Search the recordings for a broadcast with the same name
 - Mark as 'already recorded':
   This puts the selected event in the file epgsearchdone.data and instructs
   epgsearch to avoid recording this event if an according search timer is set
   to "avoid repeats". An already created timer will be automatically removed
   with the next search timer update.
 - Add/Remove to/from switch list?:
   Controls the switch list. If there is an event in the switch list, epgsearch
   will announce it and switch to the event before it starts. To access the
   complete switch list, call 'Search/Actions/Switch list'.
 - Create blacklist:
   A blacklist is used to ignore events when using search timers. A search
   timer can be setup to ignore events from arbitrary blacklists.

You can add your own commands to this menu by editing the file epgsearchcmds.conf in the epgsearch config directory. There's a sample conf file with some sample commands (see directory 'scripts', taken from vdr-wiki.de, thanks to the authors).

The format of the file is the same as VDR's commands.conf or reccmds.conf. When a command is executed the following parameters are passed to it:

 $1: the title of the EPG entry
 $2: the start time of the EPG entry as time_t value (like in the
     shutdown script)
 $3: the end time
 $4: the channel number of the EPG entry
 $5: the long channel name of the EPG entry
 $6: the subtitle of the EPG entry, "" if not present

To execute a command from the main menu you can also press its associated number without opening the commands menu.

1.2 Menu search

Here you can add, edit, delete and execute your own queries on the EPG. The usage and behavior of this menu is similar to VDR's timer menu.

1.2.1 Menu edit search

Most things in this menu are quite clear, so only some notes on:

- Search term:

The term to search for. If you like to search for more words, separate them by blanks. Leaving this empty (combined with search mode 'Phrase') will match anything. This is useful, if you search e.g. for anything that starts between some times on a specific channel.

With 'blue' you can also select a template for the new search. If one of the templates is set to default, new searches will automatically get the settings of the default template.

Note: fuzzy searching is limited to 32 chars!

- Search mode:

'Phrase' searches for the expression within the EPG. 'All words' requires, that each word of the expression occurs in the EPG item. 'at least one word' requires, that only one word occurs in the EPG item. 'Match exactly' requires, that your search term matches exactly the found title, subtitle or description.

With 'Regular expression' you can setup a regular expression as search term. You don't need a leading and trailing '/' in the expression. By default these are POSIX extended regular expressions. If you like to have Herl compatible regular expression, simply edit the plugins Makefile and uncomment '#REGEXLIB = pcre' to 'REGEXLIB = pcre' (you will need pcreposix installed, comes with libpcre from www.pcre.org, but it's already part of most distributions).

See also epgsearch(4) 'Description of the search process'.

- Use content descriptor

Some providers deliver content descriptors in their EPG, like "Movie/Drama", "Documentation",...(available with vdr-1.7.11) Select here the descriptors to search for. Multiple choice is possible, that must match with all given descriptors (AND operator).

- Use extended EPG info:

Only available if configured, see below 'Using extended EPG info'.

- Ignore missing categories:

If set to 'Yes' this tells epgsearch that a missing EPG category should not exclude an event from the results. Caution: Using this without any other criterions could flood your timers.

- Use channel:

Search only for events in the given channels interval, channel groups or FTA channels only.

Channel groups (e.g. sport channels or Pay-TV channels) can be managed with a sub-menu called with 'blue'.

ATTENTION: After changing the channels order please check the settings of your search timers!

- Use day of week:

Besides the weekdays you can also set up a user-defined selection, e.g. search only on Monday and Friday.

You'll find the user-defined selection in the list after Friday.

- Use blacklists:

Blacklists are a way to exclude unwanted events. Select only global, one, more or all blacklists here. If any search result is also contained in one of the selected blacklists it will be skipped.

- Use in favorites menu:

Only available if turned on in setup. With this option you can mark a search to be used in the favorites menu. The search results of all these searches are listed in the favorites menu.

- Result menu layout:

Only available if you have defined more than one menu template for search results in epgsearchmenu.conf. This option is used to assign a different menu layout for the search results of this search.

- Use as Search Timer:

If set to yes, the plugin will do a background scan of the EPG in certain intervals and add a timer, if there is a match. You have to activate the 'search timers' in the setup. If set to "user defined" one can specify time margins with key 'blue' where the search timer is active or not.

- Action:

Default action is creating a timer for the search results. But you can also choose to simply announce the found event via OSD as soon as it is found or to automatically switch to the event before it starts. It's also possible to get an announcement via OSD before the event starts and to switch to its channel with 'Ok'.

- Serial recording:

If set to yes, the recordings will be stored in a folder with the name of the broadcasting and the recordings itself will have the name of the episode. If there is no episode name, the date and time of the recording will be used.

- Directory:

Here you can assign a directory, where the recording should be stored, e.g. 'SciFi'. Use the key 'blue' to select directory entries already used in other search entries or given by entries in the file epgsearchdirs.conf (simply place your directories here one at each line without the leading video directory, also see MANUAL). If your provider delivers extended EPG infos you can also use variables like "%Genre%" or "%Category%" in your directory entry. These are replaced with the current EPG info, when a timer is created.

See also epgsearch(4) 'Using variables in the directory entry of a search timer'.

- Delete recordings after ... days:

Some recordings should only be kept for a few days, like news. With this feature you can tell epgsearch to delete them automatically after ... days.

- Pause if ... recordings exist:

If the given numbers of recordings currently exists, then epgsearch will not create further timers. After deleting one or more recordings it will go on generating new timers.

- Avoid repeats:

If you don't want to record repeats, this feature tries to check if an event was already recorded/programmed and skips it. Please refer to the section 'Avoid repeats - internals' below before using it.

- Allowed repeats:

If you like to accept a certain amount of repeats you can give here their number.

- Only repeats within ... days:

Give here the number of days a repeat has to follow its first broadcast. 0 is equal to no restriction.

- Compare title:

When comparing to events then specify here if the title should be compared.

- Compare subtitle:

When comparing to events then specify here if the subtitle should be compared. With 'if present' epgsearch will classify two events only as equal if their episode names match and are not empty.

- Compare description:

When comparing to events then specify here if the description should be compared.

For comparison all parts of the description, that look like a category value, are removed first. The remaining text will be compared. If this is similar at the value of the next option (regarding the Levinshtein-Distance algorithm) then it will be accepted as equal.

- "Min. match in %:"

The needed minimum match of descriptions in percent.

- Compare date:

Sometimes an event is repeated many times within some period (day, week, month,...), but one cannot distinguish the repeats based on the EPG contents. So the only information is its time. To use this for comparison select the appropriate period.

- Compare categories:

With the button 'setup' you can also specify which categories should be compared. As with subtitles an event is different if it has no according category value.

- Priority, lifetime, margins for start and stop:

Each search timer can have its own settings for these parameters. Defaults can be adjusted in the plugins setup.

- VPS:

If set to yes, VPS is used, but only, if activated in VDR's setup menu and if the broadcasting has VPS information.

- Auto delete:

to automatically delete a search timer if the following is true:

 * after x recordings, or
 * after x days after the first recording
    

Only complete recordings are counted. The deletion is executed directly after the correspondig recording

To toggle the flag 'Use as search timer' without editing the search entry you can use the key '2'. This will call directly the second command of the command menu.

1.2.2 Menu search results

This menu displays the search results. A 'T' lets you know, that there is already a timer for the event. A 't' means that there's only a partial timer for it, as in standard schedules menu.

1.3 Extended 'now' and 'next' and favorites

By setup, one can add up to 4 additional times to extend the green button, e.g. 'afternoon', 'prime time', 'late night'. Times, that are already passed, are skipped (you will not get 'afternoon' at evening) with the exception that a time will be displayed for the next day, if it is less then 20h in the future. In these menus you can shift the currently displayed time by pressing FastRew or FastFwd to move back and forward in time. If you don't have these keys on your remote, you can access this function by pressing '0' to toggle the green and yellow button to '<<' and '>>'. This toggling can be adjusted by setup.

You can display a progress bar in 'now' and 'next'.

Furthermore you can enable in the setup an favorites list. You can configure your searchtimers ("Use in favorite list") to display their results in you favorite list. This list display event in the next 24 hours ordered by time.

1.4 Menu setup

1.4.1 General

- Hide main menu entry:

This hides the main menu entry 'search'. Attention: when the plugin is assigned to key 'green' then hiding the plugin will give you VDR's standard schedule menu (see below to avoid this).

- Main menu entry:

If not hidden, the name of main menu entry can be set here. Default is 'Program guide'. Note: If you set it to something different from the default then the main menu entry is no longer dependent on the OSD language. Setting it back to default or empty restores this behavior again.

- Start menu:

Select the starting menu 'Schedules' or 'Now'

1.4.2 EPG menus

- Ok key:

Choose here the behavior of key 'Ok'. You can use it to display the summary or to switch to the corresponding channel. Note: the functionality of key 'blue' (Switch/Info/Search) depends on this setting.

- Red key:

Select if you like to have Standard ('Record') or 'Commands' as assignment for key 'red'.

- Blue key:

select if you like to have Standard ('Switch') or 'Search' as assignment for key 'blue'.

- Show progress in 'Now':

In the menu 'what's on now' you can display a progress bar, that displays the progress of the current item.

- Show channel numbers:

Select this if you like to have a leading channel number before each item in the EPG menus.

- Show channel separators:

Display channel group separators between channel in the menus 'Overview now',...

- Show day separators:

Display a day separator between events on different days in the schedule menu.

- Show radio channels:

Also list radio channels.

- Limit channels from 1 to:

If you have a large channel set you can speed up things when you limit the displayed channels with this setting. Use '0' to disable the limit. If the current channel is above the limit, the limit is ignored and all channels will be displayed again.

- 'One press' timer creation:

If set to 'yes' a timer is immediately created when pressing 'Record', else the timer edit menu is displayed.

- Show channels without EPG:

Display channels without EPG to allow switching or create a timer.

- Time interval for FR/FF [min]:

In the menus 'now', 'next', 'user def 1', ... you can shift the displayed time by pressing FastRew, FastFwd on your remote control. Adjust the amount of minutes to jump here.

- Toggle Green/Yellow:

If you don't have FastRew, FastFwd on your remote control, set this to yes. When pressing '0' in the menus, this toggles the assignment of the color keys and assigns e.g. '<<' and '>>' to 'green' and 'yellow'.

- Show favorites menu:

A favorites menu can display a list of your favorite broadcasts. Enable this if you want an additional menu besides 'Now' and 'Next'. You can choose between displaying this menu before or after the menus with user-defined times. Any search can be used as a favorite. You only have to set the option 'Use in favorites menu' when editing a search.

- for the next ... hours:

This value lets you adjust the timespan used to display the favorites.

1.4.3 User-defined EPG times

- Use user time 1..4:

Add up to 4 user-defined times besides 'now' and 'next'.

- Description:

Name of the user-defined time, e.g. 'Afternoon', 'Prime time', 'Late night'.

- Time:

The associated time of the user-defined time.

1.4.4 Timer programming

- Use VDR's timer edit menu:

When programming a standard timer epgsearch uses an extended menu, that also supports a directory item, user defined weekday selection and subtitle completion. If you are using a patched version of VDR, that also has an extended timer edit menu and like to use this menu rather than epgsearch's then set this option to 'Yes'.

- Default recording directory:

This entry will be used in standard timer programming as default directory. You can also use EPG category variables (e.g. 'My Movies~%Category%~%Genre%'). When the timer edit menu is launched epgsearch tries to replace all variables with the values found in the description of the event. If not all variables could be replaced then the directory item is left blank.

- Add episode to manual timers:

When manually adding a timer epgsearch can automatically add the episode name to the timer file resulting in a sub-folder for the later recording, that is named with the episode name. Choose here how this should be done. 'smart' tries to recognize if this makes sense. Therefore it checks the length of the event and skips the subtitle if the event has more than 80min.

- Default timer check method:

Manual timers can be checked for EPG changes. Here you can setup the default check method for each channel. The following methods exist:
* no check
* by event ID: checks by an event ID supplied by the channel provider.
* by channel and time: check by the duration match.

Not all channels provide a proper event ID, so you can setup the default for each channel here. When programming a manual timer, this default use used in epgsearch's own timer edit menu.

1.4.5 Search and search timers

- Use search timers:

If yes, the plugin makes a background scan of the EPG and adds timers if it finds matching entries. This applies only to searches that are marked with 'use as search timer'.

Search timers will always be created local, even if SVDRPDefaulthost is set to a different host.

- Update interval:

The update interval of the background scan for search timers in minutes.

- SVDRP port:

For VDR versions through 1.7.14, the default SVDRP port was 2001. Starting with vdr-1.7.15 it was changed to 6419. If you want to use a port other than the default, set it here to get the search timers working.

- Default Priority:

Default priority of generated timers.

- Default Lifetime:

Default lifetime of generated timers.

- Margin at start/stop:

Default margins of generated timers.

- No announcements when replaying:

suppress event announcements while any replay is active.

- Recreate timers after deletion:

epgsearch remembers by default which timers where already created by search timers and will not recreate them if they were removed. To disable this behaviour set this to 'Yes'.

- Check if EPG exists for ... [h]:

If you get EPG content from external providers it is possible, that something fails and some recordings are skipped because of the missing EPG. With this function one can check if EPG content exists for the next ... hours. With '0' the check is disabled.

- "Warn by OSD:"

Set this to 'Yes' to get warned via OSD.

- "Warn by mail:"

Set this to 'Yes' to get warned by email. Please configure the email account in 'email notification'

- "Channel group to check:"

select hier the channel group to check. Perhaps you have to create it before in 'channel groups'

- Ignore Pay-TV channels:

Set this to 'Yes' if you don't want to have events from Pay-TV channels when searching for a repeat.

- Search templates:

Here you can manage search templates which can be used when creating a search.

- Blacklists:

Here you can manage blacklists which can be used to suppress unwanted events within a search. A blacklist can also be marked as global. Since the default setting of a search timer for 'use blacklists' is 'only global', this is a simple way to exclude unwanted events form all search timers, except: If the search timer has the option 'use blacklists: none' no blacklists are taken into account. Also the search for repeats within the OSD ignores any blacklists.

- Channel groups:

Here you can setup channel groups (e.g. Sport channels, Pay-TV channels) that can be used as criterion in searches. The same can be done in the search edit menu.

Important: if you get your EPG from external sources make sure that search timer updates are disabled while your EPG is updated. The reason for this is that epgsearch will remove timers without events assigned to them. This situation can exist while the new EPG is feeded to VDR. A simple way to disable search timer updates is to use the SVDRP command SETS in your EPG update script:

svdrpsend plug epgsearch SETS off

<your EPG update script>

svdrpsend plug epgsearch SETS on

1.4.6 Timer conflict checking

- Ignore below priority:

If a timer will fail with a priority below the given value, you won't get an OSD message about this and the conflict will be classified as 'not relevant' in the conflicts overview.

- Ignore conflict duration less ... min.:

If a conflict will last only the given minutes it will not produce an OSD message and the conflict will be classified as 'not relevant' in the conflicts overview.

- Only check within next ... days:

Here you can specify the day range that should be used for the conflict check.

- Check also remote conflicts:

If SVDRPPeering is active, conflicts for remote timers will be checked, if set to "yes". For this to work epgseach-plugin has to be active on the remote host too. Default is "no".

- After each timer programming:

This performs a conflict check after each manual timer programming and - if the new/modified timer is involved in a conflict - pops up an OSD message about it.

- "When a recording starts:

Set this to 'yes' if the conflict check should be performed when a recording starts. In the case of a conlfict you get immediately a message that informs you about it. The message is only displayed if the conflict is within the next 2 hours.

- After each search timer update:

Specify here if you want to have a conflict check after each search timer update. If set to 'No':

- every ... minutes:

performs a conflict check in the background every ... minutes and informs about relevant conflicts via OSD. Set this to '0' to disable this feature.

- if conflicts within next ... minutes:

- Avoid notification when replaying:

Set this to 'yes' if the don't want to get OSD messages about conflicts if you currently replay something. Nevertheless messages will be displayed if
the first upcoming conflict is within the next 2 hours.

Also have a look at epgsearch(4), section 'Working with the timer conflict menu'.

1.4.7 Email notification

Please make sure, that 'sendEmail.pl' is in the path of your executables and that the 'epgsearchupdmail.templ' and 'epgsearchconflmail.templ' exists in epgsearch's configurations directory!

- Search timer notification:

Enable this, if you want to get an email notification, when the search timer background thread has

  - created a new timer
  - modified an existing timer
  - deleted a timer, that was void because of EPG changes or other user
    actions.
    

(Also requires 'Use search timers' in the search timer setup to be activated.)

- Time between mails [h]:

For search timer notifications one can set the minimum distance in hours between the mails. As soon as this time has elapsed a new mail is sent after the next search timer update. A value of '0' means no delay and will cause immediate mail delivery.

- Timer conflict notification:

Enable this, if you want to get an email notification about timer conflicts. The notification will only include 'relevant' conflicts as specified in the timer conflict setup. epgsearch will always send a new notification if there is any change in the current conflicts.

(Also requires 'After each search timer update' or 'every ... minutes' in the conflict check setup to be activated.)

- Send to:

The mail address of the recipient. Note: Some providers (like Arcor) don't allow the same address for sender and recipient.

- Mail method:

You can choose between:

  - sendEmail.pl: this is a simply script shipped with epgsearch, that allows
    mail delivery also on systems without a configured mail server. Please
    copy it to your $PATH
  - sendmail: requires a properly configured mail system
    

- Email address:

Your full(!) email account address to be used for sending the mail.

- SMTP server:

The name of your SMTP server to be used for sending the mails.

- Use SMTP authentication:

Select 'yes' if your account needs authentication to send mails.

- AUTH user:

Specify the accounts username if your account needs authentication.

- AUTH password:

Specify the accounts password if your account needs authentication. Note: The password is saved as plain text. You have to make sure on your own that your system is safe and no VDR configurations files are visible to non authorized persons.

After the account setup, check if it works with 'Test'. If you are using 'sendEmail.pl' for mail delivery, there should be something like 'Email sent successfully' at the end of the test output. The test function is not available for method 'sendmail'.

Also have a look at epgsearch(4), section 'Email notifications'.

2.1 'Avoid repeats' - internals

This section explains the feature 'Avoid repeats' for a search timer. Sometimes one cannot avoid double recordings of an event only by setting the corresponding search criterions.

Therefore the feature 'avoid repeats' tries to check before creating a timer, if the same event was already recorded in the past or if there is a timer that records the same event. If so, there will be no new timer for the event.

2.2 How do we compare two events?

To check if two events are the same there are many possible settings for a search timer. You can choose the title, subtitle, description or extended EPG categories within the description of an event to be compared with the elements of another event.

This comparison is always done case-sensitive and for the whole term. But the description of an event makes an exception of this. First all text within the description will be truncated that looks like an extended category entry, e.g. 'Rating: tip'. An extended category entry is a line of text beginning with max. 40 signs, followed by ':' and ending with max. 60 further signs. The reason for this cutting is that some categories like the rating of an event are not part of the description of the repeat of the same event.

The remaining text will now be compared by length. If the difference is bigger then 90%, then we rate the description of the two events as different. If not, we apply the Levinsthein-Distance-Algorithm (LD), which makes a fuzzy text comparison. We accept the description of the events as equal, if LD returns a match of more then 90%. Since LD is quite runtime intensive (O(mn)), you should not choose 'compare description' as the only comparison criterion, but combine it always with other criterions.

2.3 How and when do we compare?

As already mentioned each search timer update checks search timers with this feature for recordings in the past or an already existing timer for the same event.

To remember past recordings epgsearch stores their info in the file epgsearchdone.data. You can have a look at the contents of this file calling 'show recordings done' in the 'actions' of the searches menu. This file only stores info about recordings that are complete, i.e. that started and stopped just in time. So a broken recording will not be stored in this file and epgsearch will automatically try to record the next repeat, if there is any.

How to use it?

As you see, the whole feature depends on the quality of the EPG. After creating such a search timer, you should first check if it does what is intended. Therefore the menu of search results has an additional mode for the key 'blue' named 'Timer preview'. Here you can see, what timers the next update would create. Existing timers are labeled with 'T', future timers with 'P'.

Hint: If the programming results in a conflict simply disable the conflicting timer in the timers menu. The next search timer update, will try to program a different timer for the same event, if it exists.

When it works not correctly :-)

To get a better control of the programming or not-programming of the timers when using this feature a log file was introduced. When starting epgsearch with the command line option '-v n' where n is the log level than you get additional info in the file epgsearch.log. Available log levels are 0 (no logging) to 3 (extended logging). See also the manual for the command line options.