At first glance EPG-Search looks like the schedules menu entry of VDR. By pressing the key '0', one can
toggle the bottom color keys to access additional functions (the default assignment of the color keys can
be adjusted by setup):
1.1MenuCommands
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 into 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.
1.2Menusearch
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.
1.2.1Menueditsearch
Most things in this menu are quite clear, so only some notes on:
- Searchterm:
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!
- Searchmode:
'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'.
- Usecontentdescriptor
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).
- UseextendedEPGinfo:
Only available if configured, see below 'Using extended EPG info'.
- Ignoremissingcategories:
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.
- Usechannel:
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!
- Usedayofweek:
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.
- Useblacklists:
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.
- Useinfavoritesmenu:
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.
- Resultmenulayout:
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.
- UseasSearchTimer:
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'.
- Serialrecording:
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'.
- Deleterecordingsafter...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.
- Pauseif...recordingsexist:
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.
- Avoidrepeats:
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.
- Allowedrepeats:
If you like to accept a certain amount of repeats you can give here their number.
- Onlyrepeatswithin...days:
Give here the number of days a repeat has to follow its first broadcast. 0 is equal to no
restriction.
- Comparetitle:
When comparing to events then specify here if the title should be compared.
- Comparesubtitle:
When comparing to events then specify here if the subtitle should be compared. With 'yes' epgsearch
will classify two events only as equal if their episode names match and are not empty. With 'allow
empty' two events may be equal if both subtitles are empty. Normally you would choose "no" in this
case.
- Comparedescription:
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.
- Comparedate:
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.
- Comparecategories:
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,marginsforstartandstop:
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.
- Autodelete:
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.
1.2.2Menusearchresults
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.
1.3Extended'now'and'next'andfavorites
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.
1.4Menusetup1.4.1General
- Hidemainmenuentry:
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).
- Mainmenuentry:
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.
- Startmenu:
Select the starting menu 'Schedules' or 'Now'
1.4.2EPGmenus
- Okkey:
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.
- Redkey:
Select if you like to have Standard ('Record') or 'Commands' as assignment for key 'red'.
- Bluekey:
select if you like to have Standard ('Switch') or 'Search' as assignment for key 'blue'.
- Showprogressin'Now':
In the menu 'what's on now' you can display a progress bar, that displays the progress of the current
item.
- Showchannelnumbers:
Select this if you like to have a leading channel number before each item in the EPG menus.
- Showchannelseparators:
Display channel group separators between channel in the menus 'Overview now',...
- Showdayseparators:
Display a day separator between events on different days in the schedule menu.
- Showradiochannels:
Also list radio channels.
- Limitchannelsfrom1to:
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.
- 'Onepress'timercreation:
If set to 'yes' a timer is immediately created when pressing 'Record', else the timer edit menu is
displayed.
- ShowchannelswithoutEPG:
Display channels without EPG to allow switching or create a timer.
- TimeintervalforFR/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.
- ToggleGreen/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'.
- Showfavoritesmenu:
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.
- forthenext...hours:
This value lets you adjust the timespan used to display the favorites.
1.4.3User-definedEPGtimes
- Useusertime1..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.
1.4.4Timerprogramming
- UseVDR'stimereditmenu:
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'.
- Defaultrecordingdirectory:
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.
- Addepisodetomanualtimers:
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.
- Defaulttimercheckmethod:
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.
1.4.5Searchandsearchtimers
- Usesearchtimers:
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.
- Updateinterval:
The update interval of the background scan for search timers in minutes.
- SVDRPport:
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.
- Delaythreads:
The start of the Searchtimer-Update Thread and the following Conflict check can be delayed after VDR-
Ready between 0 and 300 seconds (Default is 10 secs).
- DefaultPriority:
Default priority of generated timers.
- DefaultLifetime:
Default lifetime of generated timers.
- Marginatstart/stop:
Default margins of generated timers.
- AllowedErrors:
Allowed errors before a recording is marked as incomplete. (not available in vdr 2.4)
- Noannouncementswhenreplaying:
suppress event announcements while any replay is active.
- Recreatetimersafterdeletion:
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'.
- CheckifEPGexistsfor...[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'
- IgnorePay-TVchannels:
Set this to 'Yes' if you don't want to have events from Pay-TV channels when searching for a repeat.
- Searchtemplates:
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.
- Channelgroups:
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
1.4.6Timerconflictchecking
- Ignorebelowpriority:
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.
- Ignoreconflictdurationless...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.
- Onlycheckwithinnext...days:
Here you can specify the day range that should be used for the conflict check.
- Checkalsoremoteconflicts:
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".
- Aftereachtimerprogramming:
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.
- "Whenarecordingstarts:
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.
- Aftereachsearchtimerupdate:
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.
- ifconflictswithinnext...minutes:
- every...minutes:
if you like to have a more frequent check and OSD notification when a conflict appears within the
given time, use this feature.
- Avoidnotificationwhenreplaying:
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'.
1.4.7Emailnotification
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!
- Searchtimernotification:
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.)
- Timebetweenmails[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.
- Timerconflictnotification:
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.)
- Sendto:
The mail address of the recipient. Note: Some providers (like Arcor) don't allow the same address for
sender and recipient.
- Mailmethod:
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
- Emailaddress:
Your full(!) email account address to be used for sending the mail.
- SMTPserver:
The name of your SMTP server to be used for sending the mails.
- UseSMTPauthentication:
Select 'yes' if your account needs authentication to send mails.
- AUTHuser:
Specify the accounts username if your account needs authentication.
- AUTHpassword:
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'.
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