Description:

• Older tv-recordings are automatically compressed using handbrake +/- moved to a network share folder.
• This is to save space for users who want to keep large numbers of tv-recordings.

Also: currently compressed tv-recordings can't be kept in the database due to filename extension changes, but this plugin would also solve that problem for users.

Mockup:

Installation:

If this was included with tv-server then it would have a button to download handbrake + mkvmerge portable installation and would automatically extract it to the tv-server directory. This is the same way the bundled comskip Launcher works, it is a plugin that is included with tv-server, but you need to download a 3rd party product.

If this was a 3rd party plugin then handbrake portable installation + mkvmerge would be bundled with the plugin
 

Setup:

Pretty self explanatory.

Create button launches the handbrake portable installation so you can create a custom profile and save it.

When you click on select profile, plugin does quick scan to get list of profile names from handrake

How it works:

When conditions are met tvSpaceSaver runs .ts file through handbrake

After running plugin checks that .mkv is not 0 byte file.

If comskip chapter file exists then chapters markers are inserted in mkv file using mkvmerge

If no comskip chapter file then insert chapter marker for pre-record + post-record timestamp

.mkv file is moved to appropriate location if enabled otherwise resides in default folder

If file is moved then a symlink is created
 

If enabled plugin will check to see if symlink has been deleted and if so it will delete the .mkv file

If network share is not available then store mkv in same folder, then move when network share is available and create a symlink after moving the file.

Explanation of options:

Compressing a video lowers the quality.

If you watch + delete the recording within X days then there is no point processing it.

If you use episode management to limit the number of recordings, then there is no point processing a recording since it will be deleted soon anyway. (eg. Daily News, Episodes to keep =2)

Potential problems:

Currently I can not rename a .mkv or .mp4 directly to .ts and get it to play in MePo using recordedTV and LAV Splitter/LAV Video. If mkv then MP crashes, if mp4 then nothing happens.

Might work if we use the mp4 or mkv extension and change the database so it points to .mkv instead, not sure as I don't know how to edit tv-server database to change .ts to .mkv

How do you handle subtitles embedded in the .ts file?