epgsearch(5)               Epgsearch Version 0.9.24               epgsearch(5)



NAME
       epgsearch - Searchtimer and replacement of the VDR program menu

OVERVIEW
       EPG-Search can be used as a replacement for the default schedules menu
       entry. It looks like the standard schedules menu, but adds some addi‐
       tional functions:

        - Commands for EPG entries with 5 built-in commands like 'show repeats',
          'create search'. One can add own commands for other needs, like adding a
          VDRAdmin auto-timer.

        - Add up to 4 user-defined times to 'now' and 'next' and an optional
          favorites menu

        - Searching the EPG: Create reusable queries, which can also be used
          as 'search timers'.

        - Search timers: Search for broadcasts in the background and add a
          timer if one matches (similar to VDRAdmin's auto-timers) or simply
          make an announcement about it via OSD

        - Avoid double recordings of the same event
          * timer preview
          * recognition of broken recordings
          * fuzzy event comparison

        - Progress bar in 'What's on now' and 'What's on next'

        - Shift the time displayed by key press, e.g. 'What's on now' + 30 minutes

        - Start menu can be setup between 'Schedule' or 'What's on now'

        - background check for timer conflicts with a timer conflict manager

        - detailed EPG menu (summary) allows jumping to the next/previous
          event

        - support for extended EPG info for search timers

        - extension of the timer edit menu with a directory item, user
          defined weekday selection and a subtitle completion.

        - Timer conflict check, informs you over the OSD about conflicts

        - Timer conflict menu, show detailed information about the conflicts
          and let you resolve them

        - Email notifications about search timer updates and timer conflicts

       Works only with >= vdr-1.3.46 or newer.

       Parts of the sources are based on the repeating-ECG patch from Gerhard
       Steiner, who gave me the permission to use them. Thanks for his work!

OPTIONS
       -f file,  --svdrpsendcmd=file
           the path to svdrpsend.pl for external SVDRP communication (default
           is internal communication, so this is usually not needed anymore)

       -c path,  --config=path
           to specify a specific config directory for all epgsearch config
           files, default is ’<plugins configuration directory>/epgsearch’

       -l file,  --logfile=file
           to specify a specific log file for epgsearch (default log file is
           epgsearch.log in the epgsearchs config directory)

       -v n,  --verbose=n
           verbose level for log file. Value 0 means no logging. Other values
           are 1 (general messages), 2 (detailed messages), 3 (planned for
           extra detailed info for debugging purposes)

       -r,  --reloadmenuconf
           reload epgsearchmenu.conf with plugin call. This can be useful when
           testing customized menu layouts.

       -m file,  --mailcmd=file
           the external command to be used for mail delivery. The default uses
           ’sendEmail.pl’. If you are using a different command or script make
           sure that it has the same parameter interface as sendEmail.pl.

CONTENT
        1.    Description
        1.1     Menu commands
        1.2     Menu search
        1.2.1     Menu edit search
        1.2.2     Menu search results
        1.3     Extended 'now' and 'next'
        1.4     Menu setup
        2.    Search timers
        2.1     'Avoid repeats' - internals
        2.2     How do we compare two events?
        2.3     How and when do we compare?
        3.    Usage from other plugins or scripts
        4.    Using extended EPG info
        5.    Replacing the standard schedule menu
        6.    Add-ons

1. Description
       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):

       1.1 Menu Commands

       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 in 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 epgsearchs 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 rec‐
       cmds.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 associ‐
       ated number without opening the commands menu.

       1.2 Menu search

       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.

       1.2.1 Menu edit search

       Most things in this menu are quite clear, so only some notes on:

       - Search term:
           The term to search for. If you like to search for more words, sepa‐
           rate 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 automati‐
           cally get the settings of the default template.

           Note: fuzzy searching is limited to 32 chars!

       - Search mode:
           ’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 expres‐
           sions.  If you like to have Herl compatible regular expression,
           simply edit the plugins Makefile and uncomment #HAVE_PCREPOSIX=1 to
           HAVE_PCREPOSIX=1 (you will need pcreposix installed, comes with
           libpcre from www.pcre.org, but it’s already part of most distribu‐
           tions).

           See also epgsearch(4) ’Description of the search process’.

       - Use extended EPG info:
           Only available if configured, see below ’Using extended EPG info’.

       - Ignore missing categories:
           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.

       - Use channel:
           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 man‐
           aged with a sub-menu called with ’blue’.

           ATTENTION: After changing the channels order please check the set‐
           tings of your search timers!

       - Use day of week:
           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.

       - Use blacklists:
           You can select one or more or all blacklists here. If any search
           result is also contained in one of the selected blacklists it will
           be skipped.

       - Use in favorites menu:
           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.

       - Result menu layout:
           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.

       - Use as Search Timer:
           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 or to
           switch to the event one minute before it starts.

       - Serial recording:
           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 vari‐
           ables 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’.

       - Delete recordings after ... 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.

       - Pause if ... recordings exist:
           If the given numbers of recordings currently exists, then epgsearch
           will not create further timers. After deleting one or more record‐
           ings it will go on generating new timers.

       - Avoid repeats:
           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.

       - Allowed repeats:
           If you like to accept a certain amount of repeats you can give here
           their number.

       - Only repeats within ... days:
           Give here the number of days a repeat has to follow its first
           broadcast. 0 is equal to no restriction.

       - Compare title:
           When comparing to events then specify here if the title should be
           compared.

       - Compare subtitle:
           When comparing to events then specify here if the subtitle should
           be compared. If there is no subtitle than this event is always dif‐
           ferent to an event with/without a subtitle.

       - Compare description:
           When comparing to events then specify here if the description
           should be compared.

           For comparison all parts of the description, that look like a cate‐
           gory value, are removed first. The remaining text will be compared.
           If this is similar at 90% (regarding the Levinshtein-Distance algo‐
           rithm) then it will be accepted as equal.

       - Compare categories:
           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, margins for start and stop:
           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.

       - Auto delete:
           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 com‐
       mand of the command menu.

       1.2.2 Menu search results

       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 par‐
       tial timer for it, as in standard schedules menu.

       1.3 Extended ’now’ and ’next’ and favorites

       By setup, one can add up to 4 additional times to extend the green but‐
       ton, 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’. When using
       text2skin you should use the setup option "text2skin" in the setup
       option "Show progress in ’Now’"/Show progress in ’Next’" (the setting
       ’graphical’ may also work with text2skin, but this depends on the
       selected skin).

       Furthermore you can enable in the setup an favorites list. You can con‐
       figure 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.

       1.4 Menu setup

       1.4.1 General

       - Hide main menu entry:
           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).

       - Main menu entry:
           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.

       - Start menu:
           Select the starting menu ’Schedules’ or ’Now’

       1.4.2 EPG menus

       - Ok key:
           Choose here the behavior of key ’Ok’. You can use it to display the
           summary or to switch to the corresponding channel. Note: the func‐
           tionality of key ’blue’ (Switch/Info/Search) depends on this set‐
           ting.

       - Red key:
           Select if you like to have Standard (’Record’) or ’Commands’ as
           assignment for key ’red’.

       - Blue key:
           select if you like to have Standard (’Switch’) or ’Search’ as
           assignment for key ’blue’.

       - Show progress in ’Now’:
           In the menu ’what’s on now’ you can display a progress bar, that
           displays the progress of the current item. When using text2skin you
           should use the setup option "text2skin" (the setting ’graphical’
           may also work with text2skin, but this depends on the selected
           skin).

       - Show channel numbers:
           Select this if you like to have a leading channel number before
           each item in the EPG menus.

       - Show channel separators:
           Display channel group separators between channel in the menus
           ’Overview now’,...

       - Show day separators:
           Display a day separator between events on different days in the
           schedule menu.

       - Show radio channels:
           Also list radio channels.

       - Limit channels from 1 to:
           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.

       - ’One press’ timer creation:
           If set to ’yes’ a timer is immediately created when pressing
           ’Record’ as introduced in vdr-1.3.38, else the timer edit menu is
           displayed.

       - Show channels without EPG:
           Display channels without EPG to allow switching or create a timer.

       - Time interval for FR/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.

       - Toggle Green/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’.

       - Show favorites menu:
           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.

       - for the next ... hours:
           This value lets you adjust the timespan used to display the
           favorites.

       1.4.3 User-defined EPG times

       - Use user time 1..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.

       1.4.4 Timer programming

       - Use VDR’s timer edit menu:
           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’.

       - Default recording directory:
           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.

       - Add episode to manual timers:
           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.

       - Default timer check method:
           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.

       1.4.5 Search and search timers

       - Use search timers:
           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’.

       - Update interval:
           The update interval of the background scan for search timers in
           minutes.

       - SVDRP port:
           If you are using a SVDRP port other than 2001 then enter this here
           to get the search timers working.

       - Default Priority:
           Default priority of generated timers.

       - Default Lifetime:
           Default lifetime of generated timers.

       - Margin at start/stop:
           Default margins of generated timers.

       - No announcements when replaying:
           suppress event announcements while any replay is active.

       - Recreate timers after deletion:
           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’.

           Default margins of generated timers.

       - Ignore Pay-TV channels:
           Set this to ’Yes’ if you don’t want to have events from Pay-TV
           channels when searching for a repeat.

       - Search templates:
           Here you can manage search templates which can be used when creat‐
           ing a search.

       - Blacklists:
           Here you can manage blacklists which can be used to suppress
           unwanted events within a search.

       - Channel groups:
           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.pl plug epgsearch SETS off

       <your EPG update script>

       svdrpsend.pl plug epgsearch SETS on

       1.4.6 Timer conflict checking

       - Ignore below priority:
           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 clas‐
           sified as ’not relevant’ in the conflicts overview.

       - Ignore conflict duration less ... 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 rele‐
           vant’ in the conflicts overview.

       - Only check within next ... days:
           Here you can specify the day range that should be used for the con‐
           flict check.

       - After each timer programming:
           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.

       - "When a recording starts:
           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.

       - After each search timer update:
           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.

       - if conflicts within next ... 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 fea‐
               ture.

       - Avoid notification when replaying:
           Set this to ’yes’ if the don’t want to get OSD messages about con‐
           flicts 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 con‐
       flict menu’.

       1.4.7 Email notification

       Please make sure, that ’sendEmail.pl’ is in the path of your executa‐
       bles and that the ’epgsearchupdmail.templ’ and ’epgsearchcon‐
       flmail.templ’ exists in epgsearch’s configurations directory!

       - Search timer notification:
           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.)

       - Timer conflict notification:
           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 con‐
           flicts.

           (Also requires ’After each search timer update’ or ’every ... min‐
           utes’ in the conflict check setup to be activated.)

       - Send to:
           The mail adress of the recipient. Note: Some providers (like Arcor)
           don’t allow the same adresse for sender and recipient.

       - Mail method:
           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

       - Email address:
           Your full(!) email account address to be used for sending the mail.

       - SMTP server:
           The name of your SMTP server to be used for sending the mails.

       - Use SMTP authentication:
           Select ’yes’ if your account needs authentication to send mails.

       - AUTH user:
           Specify the accounts username if your account needs authentication.

       - AUTH password:
           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 func‐
       tion is not available for method ’sendmail’.

       Also have a look at epgsearch(4), section ’Email notifications’.

2. Search timers
       This is quite the same as VDRAdmin’s auto-timers, but needs no external
       software. When you create a search, you can give it an option to use it
       as search timer. Now the plugin scans EPG entries in certain update
       intervals (->setup) in the background and creates timers if there are
       matching entries. If you don’t like to get a new timer, but only want
       to be informed about the event set ’Announce only (no timer)’ to yes.
       Since these search timers are quite useful for serials, you can set the
       option ’serial recording’ in a search, which creates timers whose
       recordings are stored in a folder with the serials name and whose
       entries are named with the episode name. If there is no episode name,
       the plugin names the recording with a date/time string.

       To use search timers, you also have to activate them in the plugins
       setup.  Also edit the SVDRP port, if you are not using the default
       2001.

       If you want to trigger a background scan manually simply

       touch /etc/vdr/plugins/epgsearch/.epgsearchupdate

       This can also be part of your shutdown script. (Add here a sleep after‐
       wards to give the plugin the time to finish the scan.)

       For more info about searchtimers please refer to epgsearch(4),
       ’Description of the search process’ and ’How do Search Timers work?’

       2.1 ’Avoid repeats’ - internals

       This section explains the feature ’Avoid repeats’ for a search timer.
       Sometimes one cannot avoid double recordings of an event only by set‐
       ting the corresponding search criterions.

       Therefore the feature ’avoid repeats’ tries to check before creating a
       timer, if the same event was already recorded in the past or if there
       is a timer that records the same event. If so, there will be no new
       timer for the event.

       2.2 How do we compare two events?

       To check if two events are the same there are many possible settings
       for a search timer. You can choose the title, subtitle, description or
       extended EPG categories within the description of an event to be com‐
       pared with the elements of another event.

       This comparison is always done case-sensitive and for the whole term.
       But the description of an event makes an exception of this.  First all
       text within the description will be truncated that looks like an
       extended category entry, e.g. ’Rating: tip’. An extended category entry
       is a line of text beginning with max. 40 signs, followed by ’:’ and
       ending with max. 60 further signs.  The reason for this cutting is that
       some categories like the rating of an event are not part of the
       description of the repeat of the same event.

       The remaining text will now be compared by length. If the difference is
       bigger then 90%, then we rate the description of the two events as dif‐
       ferent. If not, we apply the Levinsthein-Distance-Algorithm (LD), which
       makes a fuzzy text comparison. We accept the description of the events
       as equal, if LD returns a match of more then 90%.  Since LD is quite
       runtime intensive (O(mn)), you should not choose ’compare description’
       as the only comparison criterion, but combine it always with other cri‐
       terions.

       2.3 How and when do we compare?

       As already mentioned each search timer update checks search timers with
       this feature for recordings in the past or an already existing timer
       for the same event.

       To remember past recordings epgsearch stores their info in the file
       epgsearchdone.data. You can have a look at the contents of this file
       calling ’show recordings done’ in the ’actions’ of the searches menu.
       This file only stores info about recordings that are complete, i.e.
       that started and stopped just in time. So a broken recording will not
       be stored in this file and epgsearch will automatically try to record
       the next repeat, if there is any.

       How to use it?

       As you see, the whole feature depends on the quality of the EPG.  After
       creating such a search timer, you should first check if it does what is
       intended. Therefore the menu of search results has an additional mode
       for the key ’blue’ named ’Timer preview’. Here you can see, what timers
       the next update would create. Existing timers are labeled with ’T’,
       future timers with ’P’.

       Hint: If the programming results in a conflict simply disable the con‐
       flicting timer in the timers menu. The next search timer update, will
       try to program a different timer for the same event, if it exists.

       When it works not correctly :-)

       To get a better control of the programming or not-programming of the
       timers when using this feature a log file was introduced. When starting
       epgsearch with the command line option ’-v n’ where n is the log level
       than you get additional info in the file epgsearch.log. Available log
       levels are 0 (no logging) to 3 (extended logging). See also the manual
       for the command line options.

3. Usage from other plugins or scripts
       See epgsearch(4).

4. Using extended EPG info
       Some EPG providers deliver additional EPG information like the type of
       event, the video and audio format, cast,...

       Using tvm2vdr or epg4vdr you can import this into vdr.  To use this
       information with search timers one has to configure it with the file
       epgsearchcats.conf in epgsearchs config directory. The format of the
       file is as follows:

        ID|category name|name in menu|values separated by ','(option)|search mode(option)

        - 'ID' should be a unique positive integer
           (changing the id later on will force you to re-edit your search timers!)
        - 'category name' is the name as delivered by the EPG provider, e.g. 'Genre'
        - 'name in menu' is the name displayed in epgsearch.
        - 'values' is an optional list of possible values
        - 'search mode' specifies the search mode:
          text comparison:
          0 - the whole term must appear as substring
          1 - all single terms (delimiters are ',', ';', '|' or '~')
              must exist as substrings. This is the default search mode.
          2 - at least one term (delimiters are ',', ';', '|' or '~')
              must exist as substring.
          3 - matches exactly
          4 - regular expression
          numerical comparison:
          10 - less
          11 - less or equal
          12 - greater
          13 - greater or equal
          14 - equal
          15 - not equal

       Sample files for epgsearchcats.conf are delivered with the plugin in
       the directory ’conf’.

       Simply copy the one that fits for you to epgsearchs configurations
       directory filename epgsearchcats.conf and then have a look to the
       search timers edit menu (after a restart of VDR).

       Since setting up a new epgsearchcats.conf is a lot of work, I’ve added
       a small tool ’createcats’, that makes the biggest part of the job. It
       should have been compiled with the plugin and exists in the sources
       directory.

       See createcats(1) for information about how to use it.

       Internals: epgsearch scans the summary of an event for the category
       name followed by ’: ’ for all categories that have a corresponding
       value set in the search timer. The search is case sensitive regarding
       the category name as also the value.

5. Replacing the standard schedule menu
       To use this plugin as a replacement for the default green key, simply
       put the line

        Green   @epgsearch

       in your keymacros.conf. If you don’t like to get another plugin entry
       in your main menu, first hide it by setup. Then you could use my
       launcher-plugin and put the line

        Green @launcher x

       in your keymacros.conf, where x is the position of the Epgsearch plugin
       within launchers menu listing.

       Attention: Hiding the plugin without using the launcher plugin or other
       patches that enable calling hidden plugins will show the standard
       schedules menu when you press the green key. This is not needed anymore
       after VDR >= 1.3.32.

       Another approach is using a patch to VDR that replaces vdr’s standard
       schedule menu with epgsearch (vdr-replace-schedulemenu.diff.gz in the
       patches subdir, thanks to the author Uwe/egal@vdrportal). When using
       this patch the entry should look like

        Gree Schedule

       This patch is already included in some patch collections, like the Big‐
       patch.

6. Add-ons
       epgsearch delivers 2 ’mini’-plugins. Both require an installed
       epgsearch (but epgsearch can be hided in the main menu):

       - epgsearchonly:
           For those who only want to use the search feature and/or search
           timers or simply want to have a separate main menu entry for the
           search feature. This plugin creates a main menu entry ’Search’
           which calls epgsearch search menu.  Activation in VDR start script
           with "-Pepgsearchonly".

       - conflictcheckonly:
           The timer conflict check can also have its own main menu entry
           which displays epgsearch conflict overview menu. It has a setup
           option to display an information about the last check directly in
           its main menu entry.  Activation in VDR start script with "-Pcon‐
           flictcheckonly".

       Have fun!

       Christian Wieninger

Advanced description
       See epgsearch(4) or read online

       <http://winni.vdr-developer.org/epgsearch/README.DE>

       <http://winni.vdr-developer.org/epgsearch/README>

       <http://winni.vdr-developer.org/epgsearch/MANUAL>

SEE ALSO
       "epgsearch.conf(5)", "epgsearchcats.conf(5)", "epgsearchcmds.conf(5)",
       "epgsearchdirs.conf(5)", "epgsearchmenu.conf(5)", "epgsearchuser‐
       vars.conf(5)", "epgsearchdone.data(5)", "epgsearchswitchtimer.conf(5)",
       "epgsearchblacklists.conf(5)", "epgsearchchangrps.conf(5)"

FILES
       epgsearch.conf

       Searchtimers. See "epgsearch.conf(5)".

       epgsearchcats.conf

       Categories, advanced epg. See "epgsearchcats.conf(5)".

       epgsearchcmds.conf

       EPG-commands, like the commands in commands.conf. See
       "epgsearchcmds.conf(5)".

       epgsearchdirs.conf

       Pre-defined patches which can be selected while editing an searchtimer.
       See "epgsearchdirs.conf(5)".

       epgsearchmenu.conf

       Configuration of the OSD menu layout. See "epgsearchmenu.conf(5)".

       epgsearchuservars.conf

       User defined variables. See "epgsearchuservars.conf(5)".

       epgsearchdone.data

       The done-data. See "epgsearchdone.data(5)".

       epgsearchswitchtimers.conf

       The switchtimers. See "epgsearchswitchtimer.conf(5)".

       epgsearchblacklists.conf

       The blacklist. See "epgsearchblacklists.conf(5)".

       epgsearchchangrps.conf

       The channelgroups. See "epgsearchchangrps.conf(5)".

       epgsearchtemplates.conf

       Templates for searchtimers. See "epgsearchtemplates.conf(5)".

AUTHOR (man pages)
       Mike Constabel <epgsearch (at) constabel (dot) net>

REPORT BUGS
       Bugreports (german):

       <http://www.vdr-developer.org/mantisbt/>

       Mailinglist:

       <http://www.vdr-developer.org/mailman/listinfo/epgsearch>

COPYRIGHT and LICENSE
       Copyright (C) 2004-2008 Christian Wieninger

       This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
       under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the
       Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your
       option) any later version.

       This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but
       WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MER‐
       CHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the GNU General
       Public License for more details.

       You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along
       with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc.,
       51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301 USA Or, point
       your browser to http://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/gpl-2.0.html

       The author can be reached at cwieninger@gmx.de

       The project’s page is at http://winni.vdr-developer.org/epgsearch

       The MD5 code is derived from the RSA Data Security, Inc. MD5 Message-
       Digest Algorithm.



perl v5.8.8                       2008-04-13                      epgsearch(5)
