Managing Recordings

Managing Recordings

Everything on this page works on the marked entries, or on the entry under the cursor when nothing is marked (see Selecting entries).

A recording is more than one file: next to Title.ts there are .eit, .meta, .xmeta, .cuts, a cover .jpg and so on. MovieCockpit treats all files that share the recording's base name as one unit, so delete, move and copy always take them together.

Deleting and the trashcan

Delete (red, level 1) does not remove anything at once. It moves the recording into the trashcan of the disk it is on:

/media/hdd/movie/Series/Episode.ts
        becomes
/media/hdd/movie/.Trash/Series/Episode.ts

The sub-folder is kept, so the recording can go back where it came from.

• The trashcan shows as the first row of the home directory (if Show trashcan directory is on). Open it with Trashcan (blue, level 1).
• Inside the trashcan, Delete removes the entries for good, after a confirmation that lists the names.
• Restore (yellow, level 1, inside the trashcan) moves entries back into the folder they were deleted from.
• Empty trashcan (red, level 2) deletes everything in the trashcan, after a confirmation.
• Moving a recording to the trashcan updates the modification time of its files, so the retention period counts from the day you deleted it, not from the day it was recorded.

Automatic clean-up

MovieCockpit itself only empties the trashcan when you ask it to. If PowerCockpit is installed and Enable auto trashcan cleanup is on (default), it purges the trashcan whenever the box is switched off (shutdown / deep standby). Entries older than the File retention period in trashcan (default 3 days, 0 to 30) are removed. With a retention of 0, everything goes. See Settings.

A running recording

If a selected recording is still being recorded, Delete first asks "Stop recording(s)?". After you answer yes, the recording is stopped and then deleted as above. The STOP key on its own stops the running recordings among the selection and does not delete them.

One entry, several disks

Because all bookmarks are merged into one library (see Storage and Network), a folder that exists on more than one disk appears once in the list. Delete, and Move within one disk, apply to the entry on every disk that has the same relative path. Remember this before deleting a "Series" folder that you have spread over a hard disk and a NAS.

Move and copy

Move (yellow, level 1) and Copy (yellow, level 2) open a folder chooser. It lists your bookmarks and lets you open or create folders. System directories such as /bin, /etc, /usr and /var cannot be chosen.

• The target disk must be mounted, otherwise you get "... is not mounted".
• Copying, and moving across disks, first check the free space. The target needs at least 1.25 times the size of the entries free; otherwise you get "Not enough space in target directory for video file" and nothing is done for that entry.
• Running recordings are skipped with a message (Can't move recordings / Can't copy recordings).
• The work runs as background jobs (JobCockpit). You can keep browsing. Entries that are being processed show Moving, Copying or Deleting in the date column, are shown in the selection colour, and cannot be opened. Pressing OK on one opens the progress screen. Key 8 opens it too.
• When several entries are processed, the list is refreshed once when the work calms down, not after each file.

Series folders

MovieCockpit can keep a series together in one folder.

Automatically. When a recording ends, MovieCockpit looks in the folder where it was saved for a sub-folder whose name is the beginning of the recording's title. If it finds one, the recording is moved into it.

Example: with a folder Tatort, a new recording Tatort: Der Pott is filed into Tatort. Use reasonably specific folder names, because a folder A would catch every title that starts with an A.

A recording you are currently playing is not moved.

Manually.

• Create series directory (function menu) suggests a folder name taken from the title of the entry under the cursor: the part before the first : (or, if the title has none, before - or (). Edit the name on the on-screen keyboard and confirm. The new folder starts with Date sort up, so episodes are listed in order.
• Move to series directory (function menu) moves the marked entries into the folder that matches them by the rule above.

A series folder can have a cover too (see Covers and Metadata).

Archive

The archive moves finished recordings from one disk to another, for example from the internal hard disk to a USB or NAS disk, keeping the folder structure. Typical use: record to a fast internal disk, archive to a large one.

Set it up in Settings: turn on Enable archive, choose the source and the target bookmark. They must both exist and must be different.

It moves every recording below the source directory to the same relative place under the target. It skips:

• recordings that are still running,
• everything in the trashcan,
• symbolic links.

Afterwards a trim job runs so that flash media (SSD, SD card) are told which blocks are free.

With Enable archive on, start it with Archive (yellow, level 3, or the function menu entry), or let PowerCockpit run it when the box is shut down. With Enable archive off the button and the menu entry are not shown and nothing is archived. If a source or target directory is missing, a message tells you to fix the setup.

Other functions

Function	What it does
Reset progress (red, level 4)	Forgets the watched position of the marked entries
Remove all marks (menu)	Deletes cut-list marks of the marked entries
Delete cover (menu)	Deletes the cover image file and the cached cover
Reload cache (red, level 3)	Rescans all mounted bookmarks, see Cache Database
Timer list (yellow, level 4)	Opens the Enigma2 timer list