Intro:
Master-Timer is a system for automatic recording of series and movies.
Unlike VDR Admin or XXV it isn't a webfrontend for VDR with the added
ability to define timers, but a tool which is dedicated for the task of
creating and programming timers with the greatest possible power and
flexibility. You have to define what/when/how you want to record
something into text-configuration files. You should read the
README/LIESMICH for more details.
A little Warning for upgraders:
- Margins are now in MINUTES not in seconds anymore
It never really made sense for them to be in seconds so i changed them
to minutes. You have to check your config-file and your torecord-file
and divide the margins by 60 Otherwise you get margins of 10 HOURS
with the previous default of 600 seconds.
- You should delete or move aways the files of a previous version as i
have changed the structure of the files a lot and i think it otherwise
may go wrong.
NEW:
- Master-Timer now cares about it's timers
When you change the entry in "torecord" the timer will be changed (if
necessary) If the epg.data changes the timer will be changed (if
necessary) if an entry vanishes from epg.data the timer will be
deleted (can be switched off, default=on)
- Master-Timer doesn't use it's own IDs anymore
For Program-Datan and Timer-Data only Channel:EventID are used for
identifikation: ' (MT-ID:<nr>' => ' (E-ID <Kanal>:<EventID>') Anyone
using the .dat-files directly will notive that program.dat & timer.dat
are restructured to $hash{$channel}{$event_id}
- Related to previous bullet-point, Master-Timer doesn't store anything
in the "Active"-Flag anymore.
- New Option in torecord: "ChannelNo" (see sample/torecord)
With this you can specify channels by number instead by name
- Blocks in torecord can now have sub-blocks (see sample/torecord)
Sub-Blocks share the part between block-begin and first sub-block
You can uses this to consolidate blocks which are for 'nearly' the
same thing
- New Option 'ExpireTimer'
When switched on (default=on) timers stored in timer.dat will be
deleted 7 days after they were expired. Otherwise they will stay in
timer.dat indefinitely (like before)
- New Config-Option 'md5subtitle' (default=on)
On channels with no subtitle or subtitles which equal title, but a
description.
Take the description, make all chars lowerces, strip whitespaces and
punction and then create a md5-sum of the description and put it
into the subtitle. This will make the 'done' option function as good
as possible with such bad data.
- New Config-File 'killsubtitle'
In conjuction with the 'md5subtitle'-option this can be used to kill a
'bad' subtitle from epg.data.
The way for md5summing the description is then clear
CHANGED:
- Almost everthing
- There is only one multicall-binary "run-mt.pl", which has many
symlinks to it with the former script-names.
After starting run-mt.pl it will loads the necessary program-part(s)
from the "parts"-directory and 'eval's (it/them).
- parseepgdata.pl now distinguished between 'new', 'changed',
'unchanged', 'vanished' and 'vanished with timer existing' (In that
order. Last two only if DeleteVanishedTimer is switched on)
- The .pl-files which aren't for execution were moved into the
lib-directory
- All sub-routines which are only used in a single "part" where moved
into that respective "part".
- removed 'Vars/rVars'-Variable and use the Vars directly as they
where global anyway.
- Margins are now in Minutes (see 'A little Warning' above)
- Master-Timer now detects lost connections to VDR and reconnects them
and spits out a warning that "SVDRPTimeout" may be too short.
- There were parsing errors in the code in process_summary for reading
the 'info.vdr' of never VDR-Versions
Thanks to Gregoire Favre for providing a bunch of files to test with.
- Print a warning to read the paragraph about the 'done' functionality
in the README.
- It's is now checked if the config-file (may) have changed and a
complete reevaluation of everything is done if so.
- Many small changed which i forgot
REMOVED:
- Options 'rememberdata' & 'remembertimer'
The only practical use was to reprogramm deleted timers when they
where deleted from VDR.
Replaced by new Option 'CheckForDeletedTimer' (default=on)
- Reading of timers from VDR
Master-Timer doesn't care anymore if there is are non-Master-Timer
timers, you have to make sure that there are no conflicting timers
yourself. This should't be as 'bad' as this sentence sound. 
- Joining of timers
Since VDR 1.1.3 you can have overlapping timers on the same channel,
so this wasn't necessary anymore for a long time
- Option 'preventDouble'
The changed structure of Timers don't support conflicts anymore.
- Option '--check' of movie.pl/series.pl
The use of the 'title = movie'/'title = series' special-torecord has
long superceded that option
Deprecated:
- Dbox2-stuff, the dbox2-recording didn't work reliable anymore, so i
replaced my dbox2 with another VDR machine