MythTv: Don't scan live tv

Making MythTV LiveTv recordings invisible to LinuxMCE

For those who watch a lot of live TV, you'll notice that LinuxMCE adds all of those LiveTV recordings to the LinuxMCE DB. Not only does this fill up the database, but it makes browsing media quite ugly. A side effect of deleting recordings through LinuxMCE is that the recordings cannot be deleted or expired from MythTV, causing the list of recordings to grow out of control. There is an easy way to solve these issues.

Locating and editing the SaveMythRecording.sh file

The file is stored in

/usr/pluto/bin

The first thing to do is make the directory that will hold the recordings:

mkdir /home/public/data/videos/tv_shows_0

Then make a backup of the SaveMythRecording.sh script:

cp /usr/pluto/bin/SaveMythRecording.sh /usr/pluto/bin/SaveMythRecording.sh.bak

Now edit SaveMythRecording.sh with your favorite program:

#!/bin/bash

dir=/home/public/data/videos/tv_shows_0

mv $3/$4 $dir/$4
touch $3/$4
chown mythtv:public $3/$4

echo "$(date) $0-$1-$2-$dir-$4" >> /var/log/pluto/donerecording.log
/usr/pluto/bin/MessageSend dcerouter 0 -1001 2 69 29 "$1" 57 "$2" 35 "$dir/$4"

Prevent UpdateMedia from scanning LiveTV recordings

Create a file, /home/public/data/videos/tv_shows_1.folderlock, to prevent scanning:

touch /home/public/data/videos/tv_shows_1.folderlock

Conclusion

Now when browsing Media, LiveTv recordings will not show in the Video list. Your recordings will never be expired or deleted by MythTv, and MythTv will continue functioning without errors. All LiveTv recordings and scheduled recordings can still be expired and deleted through the MythWeb interface without impacting LinuxMCE.