So I finally started to auto-archive many of my shows, while still keeping them on my machine. What I noticed with Mythweb is that the 'Recorded programs' page only seems to list shows that in the /myth/tv directory, and not archived shows.

So I wanted to make an identical paged to 'Recorded programs' that just queries my archive by grabbing all the metadata from the filename through the videometadata table in MySQL. (My archiving stores metadata, per the wiki here)

So I figured it would nearly be a copy and paste job with the change of the query. Instead of selecting from the 'recorded' table, it just selects from the 'videometadata'. Of course...it seems now that its a bit more complicated.

I noticed that the query to get the recorded shows is defined by in recording.php. Since it is using QUERY_RECORDINGS as the query command, I tried to hunt for that inside the MythTV source code. (Note: a site I use viewing source via web is here) However, I cannot seem to find this query.

So a few questions:

1) Any tips on how I can find the definition of this query?
2) Am I on the right track with this? As in, am I just doing rework and someone has already created a way to view archived shows via MythWeb and I didn't find it here or on the wiki? (And is it worth my time?)

IMO - No, you're way off in the weeds and almost into the trees.

You're trying to do something in a bizarre round-about way when there's already a better general mechanism. Archiving almost always means getting the recordings OFF the box and OUT of the database to free up space for current content. Thus "archiving to DVD".

If you want the recordings ON the box, with all their recording meta-data intact IN the database, and visible with the other recordings via the TV -> Recorded Programs (rather than say under Video) then you need to keep them as recordings. If you want them in another category of recordings, then do _that_ by creating an "archival" recordings group and assigning them to it. This is exactly the kind of thing that the recording groups and categories mechanisms are for.

Haha figured it seemed way out there

The main reason I was archiving and keeping on the disk was to bring those 1+ gig video files down to 400-500 megs through XViD encoding to save on space. That way I can delete the recording and save the XViD in storage.

But I guess there is a way I can set up auto-transcode to an XViD quality in a seperate recording group instead. That way I never have that 1+ gig file after transcoding at all. So I'll probably just do that. Good Call (and does this make sense? heh)

Ok so I looked a little further into straight XViD encoding. Following the Wikis, I currently have both XViDArchiving and XViDEncoding set up and working.

But in both of these, a *copy* of the original file is made and stored in an archive folder. But I would like to create a recording group like tjc mentioned that will auto-transcode the video to XViD and retain the meta-data, after recording. That way, I only have the XViD avi as the source, and NOT a copy.

Is this possible? If so, would this be set up in the recording groups section of mythtv setup? Looking through the menus, I could only see auto-transcode options to MPEG2 and MPEG4 on the menus. Otherwise, I would guess maybe a User Job? I guess the question really is, how to change the filename associated with the recording so that I can switch from the initial raw video file name tto the newly auto-transcoded XViD file name.

Again you're trying to do something that is already built in, in a more complicated way.

If memory serves "xvid" is mpeg4. From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xvid "Since Xvid uses MPEG-4 Advanced Simple Profile (ASP) compression, video encoded with it is MPEG-4 ASP video (not "Xvid video") and can therefore be decoded with all MPEG-4 ASP compliant decoders"

Set up an appropriate MPEG2 -> MPEG4 transcoder profile and group rules. You probably want to edit the cut points before the transcoding is done so I don't recommend kicking it off automatically.

Reading the MythTV docs is highly recommended.
http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/index.php/User_Manual
http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/index.php/User_Manual:Daily_Use
http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/index.php/Removing_Commercials

Thanks! Setting up a MPEG2 -> MPEG4 transcoder profile works perfectly. I was surprised to hear XViD was MPEG4. When I hear XViD, I immediately think 'avi' and not MPEG4 (despite that one is a file type and one is encoding type).

And thanks for the links to the manuals. I though I read the entire manual, but it turns out I just read the setup process, and not the other links. I may just go ahead and try some auto commercial removal found in that one link below. And also, now if I want to archive, I'll go ahead and use the XViD archiving to go from .nuv to .avi for DVD storage. Thanks again!