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Video Disk Recorder User's Manual
---------------------------------
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* Remote Control Keys
The following remote control keys are used to control the VDR
operation. To keep the number of different keys as small as
possible, several keys have different meanings in the various
modes:
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Key Normal Main Channels Timers Edit/New Recordings Replay
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Up Ch up Crsr up Crsr up Crsr up Crsr up Crsr up Play
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Down Ch down Crsr down Crsr down Crsr down Crsr down Crsr down Pause
Left Prev group - Page up Disable Decrement Page up Search back
Right Next group - Page down Enable Increment Page down Search forward
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Ok Ch display Select Switch Edit Accept Play Progress disp.
Menu Menu on Menu off Menu off Menu off Menu off Menu off Menu on
Back - Menu off Main menu Main menu Discard Main menu Recordings menu
Red - Record Edit Edit - Play Jump
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Green - Language New New - Rewind Skip -60s
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Yellow - Eject DVD Delete Delete - Delete Skip +60s
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Blue - Resume Mark Mark(1) - Summary Stop
0..9 Ch select - - - Numeric inp. - Editing
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Power Shutdown - - - - - -
Volume+ Volume up - - - - - -
Volume- Volume down - - - - - -
Mute Mute - - - - - -
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(1) The "Mark" button in the "Timers" menu only works if sorting the timers
has been disabled in the "Setup" menu.
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* Navigating through the On Screen Menus
The "Main" menu can be called up with the "Menu" key of your remote
control unit. The "Up" and "Down" keys are used to select a specific
item. The "Left" and "Right" keys can be used to change options, and
the numeric keys allow direct input of numeric data. The "Ok" key
confirms any changes (or switches to a channel in the "Channels" menu).
The "Back" key goes back one level in the menu structure, discarding
any changes that might have been made in the current menu.
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In the "Timers" menu, the current timer can be enabled or disabled with
the "Right" or "Left" key, respectively (enabled timers are marked with '>',
timers that are currently recording are marked with '#').
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"Ok" here opens the "Edit timer" menu.
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Textual options, like channel names or recording file names, can be edited
by pressing the "Right" button (which puts brackets around the current
character as in "[R]TL"), selecting the desired character position with
"Left" and "Right", and changing the character with the "Up" and "Down"
keys. "Ok" then confirms the changes. The special character '^' can be used
to "cut off" a string at this position. When this character is visible in the
brackets (as in abc[^]), the next press to the "Left" or "Ok" button will
actually cut off the string. Using "Up" and/or "Down" brings back the
original rest of the string (unless you have pressed "Left" or "Ok").
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The "Red", "Green", "Yellow" and "Blue" buttons have special meanings
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in various menus and are listed at the bottom of the on-screen-display.
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At any point in the menu system, pressing the "Menu" key again will
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immediately leave the menu system (discarding any pending changes).
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* The "Schedule" Menu
The "Schedule" menu implements VDR's "Electronic Program Guide" (EPG).
Select "Schedule" from the "Main" menu and you get a list of all upcoming
broadcasts on the current channel.
"Up" and "Down" can be used to scroll through this list, and pressing "Ok"
displays detailed information about the selected programme. Pressing "Ok"
again (or pressing "Back") gets you back into the "Schedule" menu.
From the "Schedule" menu, the "Green" button opens the "What's on now?"
menu, which displays all programmes that are currently running on all
channels that broadcast their programme information on the current
transponder, or from channels that have been current lately (VDR stores
all information it gathers in an internal list). The more channels you
have been switching through lately, the longer this list will be.
The "Yellow" button opens the "What's on next?" menu, which lists all
programmes that will start next on all channels.
Inside the "What's on now/next?" menus the "Green" button toggles between
the "Now" and "Next" display, and the "Yellow" button takes you to the
"Schedule" menu of the current channel in the list.
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The "Red" button allows you to instantly program a timer to record the
selected programme. You will get into the "Edit Timer" menu in which
everything has already been filled in, and you can make any modifications
you may want to apply. Note that the Start and Stop time are offset by the
MarginStart and MarginStop parameters (see Setup) in order to make sure the
entire programme is recorded in case it doesn't exactly adhere to its
published start/stop times. Of course, no guarantee can be given that the
default margin values will be sufficient, so in case this recording is
really important you may want to add an extra margin ;-)
The "Blue" button can be pressed to switch to the channel with the selected
programme.
* Selecting a Channel
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There are four ways to select a channel:
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1. With no On Screen Menu displayed press the "Up" or "Down" key to switch
to the next higher or lower channel.
2. Press the "Menu" button to bring up the On Screen Menu, select "Channels"
and browse through the list with the "Up" and "Down" key; to switch to the
selected channel press "Ok".
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3. Directly type in the channel number with the numeric keys ('0'..'9');
if no key is pressed for about one second, the digits collected so
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far will define the channel number.
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4. From the "Now", "Next" and "Event" menus (accessible through the "Schedule"
menu) by pressing the "Blue" button.
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Pressing the '0' key in normal viewing mode toggles between the current and
the previous channel.
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After switching to a different channel the channel number and name, as well
as the current time are displayed at the top of the screen. If available, the
'current/next' information will be displayed below this line. This display
automatically goes away after about five seconds, or if any key is pressed.
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To bring up the channel display without switching channels you can press
the "Ok" button.
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* Selecting language specific audio track
If the current channel provides different audio tracks (typically for
different languages), the "Green" button in the "Main" menu can be pressed
to toggle between these. There can be two different audio PIDs per channel,
assuming that typically a channel broadcasts a country specific language
plus the movie's original soundtrack.
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Recordings made form such channels will contain both audio tracks, and when
replaying the desired audio track can be selected the same way.
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* Switching through channel groups
If the 'channels.conf' file contains "group separators" you can switch
through these groups by pressing the "Left" and "Right" key while no
menu is being displayed. The channel display will show the name of the
group, and if you press the "Ok" button while the group name is being
displayed, you will switch to the first channel of that group.
Channel groups can be whatever you decide them to be. You can either
group your channels by "Bouquet", by language, genre or whatever your
preferences may be.
* Instant Recording
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You can start recording the current channel by pressing the "Red" button
in the "Main" menu. This will create a timer event named "@channelname" that
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starts at the current time and records for two hours.
If you want to modify the recording time you need to edit the timer.
Stop instant recording by pressing the "Menu" button and selecting
"Stop Recording", or by disabling the timer.
* Replaying a Recording
All recordings are listed in the "Recordings" menu. Browse through the
list with the "Up" and "Down" button and press "Ok" (or the "Red" button)
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to start playback. New recordings are marked with an '*'.
Playback can be stopped via the "Main" menu by selecting "Stop replaying",
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or by pressing the "Blue" button outside the menu.
A previously stopped playback session can be resumed by pressing the "Blue"
button in the "Main" menu.
* Replay Control
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The following keys have the listed meaning in Replay mode:
- Up Resumes normal replay from any "pause", "forward" or "backward"
mode.
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- Down Halts playback at the current position. Press again to continue
playback.
- Blue Stops playback and stores the current position, so that
playback can be resumed later at that point.
- Left
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Right Runs playback forward or backward at a higher speed; press
again to resume normal speed. If in Pause mode, runs forward or
backward at a slower speed; press again to return to pause mode.
Pressing and holding down the button performs the function until
the button is released again.
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If "Multi Speed Mode" has been enabled in the "Setup" menu, the
function of these buttons changes in a way that gives you three
fast and slow speeds, through which you can switch by pressing
the respective button several times.
- Red Jump to a specific location. Enter the time you want to jump to
and then press "Left" or "Right" to jump relative to the current
position, "Up" to jump to an absolute position, and "Down" to
jump and pause at an absolute position.
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- Green
Yellow Skips about 60 seconds back or forward.
Pressing and holding down the button performs the function until
the button is released again.
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- Ok Brings up the replay progress display, which shows the date,
time and title of the recording, a progress bar and the
current and total time of the recording.
Press "Ok" again to turn off the progress display.
- Back Stops replaying and brings up the "Recordings" menu. This can be
used to easily delete a recording after watching it, or to switch
to a different recording.
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* Editing a Recording
While in Replay mode, the following keys can be used to manipulate editing
marks:
- 0 Toggles an editing mark. If the mark indicator shows a red triangle,
the current mark is deleted. Otherwise a new mark is set at the
current position.
- 4, 6 Move an editing mark back and forward. You need to first jump to
an editing mark for this to work.
- 7, 9 Jump back and forward between editing marks. Replay goes into still
mode after jumping to a mark.
- 8 Positions replay at a point 3 seconds before the current or next
"start" mark and starts replay.
- 2 Start the actual cutting process.
Editing marks are represented by black, vertical lines in the progress display.
A small black triangle at the top of the mark means that this is a "start"
mark, and a triangle at the bottom means that this is an "end" mark.
The cutting process will save all video data between "start" and "end" marks
into a new file (the original recording remains untouched). The new file will
have the same name as the original recording, preceeded with a '%' character
(imagine the '%' somehow looking like a pair of scissors ;-). Red bars in the
progress display indicate which video sequences will be saved by the cutting
process.
The video sequences to be saved by the cutting process are determined by an
"even/odd" algorithm. This means that every odd numbered editing mark (i.e.
1, 3, 5,...) represents a "start" mark, while every even numbered mark (2, 4,
6,...) is an "end" mark. Inserting or toggling a mark on or off automatically
adjusts the sequence to the right side of that mark.
Use the keys described under "Replay Control" to position to, e.g., the
beginning and end of commercial breaks and press the '0' key to set the
necessary editing marks. After that you may want to use the '7' and '9'
keys to jump to each mark and maybe use the '4' and '6' keys to fine tune
them. Once all marks are in place, press '2' to start the actual cutting
process, which will run as a background process. When replaying the edited
version of the recording you can use the '8' key to jump to a point just
before the next cut and have a look at the resulting sequence.
Currently editing marks can only be set at I-frames, which typically is
every 12th frame. So editing can be done with a resolution of roughly half
a second. A "start" mark marks the first frame of a resulting video
sequence, and an "end" mark marks the last frame of that sequence.
* Programming the Timer
Use the "Timer" menu to maintain your list of timer controlled recordings.
The parameters in the "Edit Timer" menu have the following meanings:
Active: Defines whether the timer will be processed (set it to 'no' to
temporarily desable a timer).
Channel: The channel to be recorded (as defined in the "Channels" list).
Any changes made in the "Channels" list (like renaming or
reordering channels) will be automatically reflected in the
timers settings.
Day: The day on which this timer shall start. This can be either a
"day of month" (1..31), which allows programming a "single shot"
timer that hits once and is deleted after it ends. Single shot
timers can be programmed up to one month into the future.
Another option here are "repeating timers" which are defined
by listing the days of the week on which they shall record.
For example, a timer that shall record every monday and wednesday
would have a Day setting of "M-W----".
Start: The start time of the timer in hh:mm as 24 hour ("military") time.
Stop: The stop time of the timer.
Priority: The Priority (0..99) is used to decide which timer shall be
started in case there are two or more timers with the exact same
start time. The first timer in the list with the highest Priority
will be used. This value is also stored with the recording and is
later used to decide which recording to remove from disk in order
to free space for a new recording. If the disk is full and a new
recording needs more space, an existing recording with the lowest
Priority (and which has exceeded its guaranteed Lifetime) will be
removed. If all available DVB cards are currently occupied, a
timer with a higher priority will interrupt the timer with the
lowest priority in order to start recording.
Lifetime: The number of days (0..99) a recording made through this timer is
guaranteed to remain on disk before it is automatically removed
to free up space for a new recording. Note that setting this
parameter to very high values for all recordings may soon fill up
the entire disk and cause new recordings to fail due to low disk
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space. The special value 99 means that this recording will live
"forever", and a value of 0 means that this recording can be
deleted any time if a recording with a higher priority needs disk
space.
File: The name under which a recording created through this timer will
be stored on disk (the actual name will also contain the date and
time, so it is possible to have a "repeating timer" store all its
recordings under the same name; they will be distinguishable by
their date and time).
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If the file name contains the special character '~', the recording
will be stored in a hierarchical directory structure. For instance,
a file name of "Sci-Fi~Star Trek~Voyager" will result in a directory
structure "/video/Sci-Fi/Star_Trek/Voyager". The '~' character has
been chosen for this since the file system's directory delimiter '/'
may be part of a regular programme name.
Repeating timers create recordings that contain the 'Subtitle'
information from the EPG data in their file name. Typically (on tv
stations that care about their viewers) this contains the episode
title of a series. The subtitle is appended to the timer's file name,
separated by a '~' character, so that it results in all recordings
of this timer being collected in a common subdirectory.
If this field is left blank, the channel name will be used to form
the name of the recording.
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A timer can also be programmed by pressing the "Red" button on the "Schedule",
"Now", "Next" or "Event" menus.
* Stopping a recording on the primary DVB interface
If the primary DVB interface is currently recording, the user can't switch
the channel or replay another recording on that interface. However, if there
is an other DVB interface that is currently not recording and provides the
necessary conditional access facilities to continue the recording that is
currently being performed on the primary DVB interface, the Main menu will
contain an option that allows you to stop recording on the primary DVB
interface. Select that option to stop the ongoing recording and thus free the
primary DVB interface to allow channel switching or replaying. The interrupted
recording will be continued on an other free DVB interface. There may be a
short discontinuity at that point when replaying that recording later, so you
may want to place such an action for instance in a commercial break.
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* Parameters in the "Setup" menu
Select "Setup" from the "Main" menu to enter the setup menu. From there you can
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modify the following system parameters (note that "boolean" values will be
displayed as "no" and "yes" in the "Setup" menu, while in the setup file they
are stored as '0' and '1', respectively):
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OSDLanguage = 0 Defines the language used to display the OSD texts.
0 = Englisch
1 = Deutsch
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2 = Slovenian
3 = Italian
4 = Dutch
5 = Portugese
6 = French
7 = Norwegian
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PrimaryDVB = 1 Defines the primary DVB interface (i.e. the one that
will display the menus and will react on input through
the remote control). Valid values range from '1' to the
number of installed DVB cards. If more than one DVB card
is installed and a recording is to be started, the
program will try to use a free DVB card that is different
from the primary DVB interface, so that the viewer will
be disturbed as little as possible.
ShowInfoOnChSwitch = 1 Turns the display of the current/next information on
or off when switching the channel. The information is
always displayed when pressing the "Ok" button in
normal viewing mode.
MenuScrollPage = 1 0 = when pressing the "Down" ("Up") key while the cursor
is on the last (first) line of a list page, the
list is advanced by a full page and the cursor will
be at the top (bottom) of that page
1 = dto., but the cursor remains at the bottom (top) of
the page (this mode allows for faster scrolling
through long lists).
MarkInstantRecord = 1 Defines whether an "instant recording" (started by
pressing the "Red" button in the "Main" menu) will be
marked with a '@' character to make it distinguishable
from timer recordings in the "Recordings" menu.
0 = instant recordings will not be marked
1 = instant recordings will be marked.
LnbSLOF = 11700 The switching frequency (in MHz) between low and high LOF
LnbFrequLo = 9750 The LNB's low and high local oscillator frequencies (in MHz)
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LnbFrequHi = 10600 (these have no meaning for DVB-C receivers)
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DiSEqC = 1 Generally turns DiSEqC support on or off.
0 = disabled
1 = enabled
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SetSystemTime = 0 Defines whether the system time will be set according to
the time received from the DVB data stream.
0 = system time will not be set
1 = system time wil be set
Note that this works only if VDR is running under a user
id that has permisson to set the system time.
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MarginStart = 2 Defines how many minutes before the official start time
MarginStop = 10 of a broadcast VDR shall start recording, and how long
after the official end time it shall stop recording.
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EPGScanTimeout = 5 The time (in hours) of user inactivity after which the
DVB card in a single card system starts scanning channels
to keep the EPG up-to-date.
A value of '0' completely turns off scanning on both single
and multiple card systems.
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EPGBugfixLevel = 2 Some tv stations transmit weirdly formatted EPG data.
VDR attempts to fix these bugs up to the given level:
0 = no EPG fixing
1 = basic fixing of text location (Title, Subtitle and
Extended Description)
2 = removal of excess whitespace and hyphens, mapping of
wrongly used characters
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3 = fixing the date in timestamps between 00:00 and 06:00
(use with care - hopefully one day Pro7 and Kabel1
will learn how to read the clock/calender)
Default is '2', which will do all textual fixes, but
leaves out the timestamp fixes, since these might cause
recordings to fail. Use '3' at your own risk.
Note that after changing the setting of this parameter
any EPG data that has already been received will remain
in its existing format - only newly received data will
be fixed accordingly. Restart VDR if you want to make sure
all data is fixed.
SVDRPTimeout = 300 The time (in seconds) of inactivity on an open SVDRP
connection after which the connection is automatically
closed. Default is 300, a value of 0 means no timeout.
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SortTimers = 1 Turns sorting the timers in the "Timers" menu on/off.
Timers are sorted by ascending start times, with the
first one being the next timer that will start.
PrimaryLimit = 0 The minimum priority a timer must have to be allowed to
use the primary DVB interface, or to force another timer
with higher priority to use the primary DVB interface.
This is mainly useful for recordings that should take
place only when there is nothing else to do, but should
never keep the user from viewing stuff on the primary
interface. On systems with only one DVB card, timers
with a priority below PrimaryLimit will never execute.
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DefaultPriority = 50 The default Priority and Lifetime values used when
DefaultLifetime = 50 creating a new timer event. A Lifetime value of 99
means that this recording will never be deleted
automatically.
UseSubtitle = 1 Repeating timers use the EPG's 'Subtitle' information to
create recording file names in a hierarchical structure
(for instance to gather all episodes of a series in a
common subdirectory). This parameter can be used to
control this.
0 = don't use the 'Subtitle'
1 = use it (and create subdirectories)
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VideoFormat = 0 The video format (or aspect ratio) of the tv set in use.
0 = 4:3
1 = 16:9
ChannelInfoPos = 0 The position of the channel info window in the OSD.
0 = bottom
1 = top
OSDwidth = 52 The width and height of the OSD .
OSDheight = 18 The valid ranges are width=40...56, height=12...21.
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OSDMessageTime = 1 The time (in seconds) how long an informational
message shall be displayed on the OSD. The valid range
is 1...60.
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MaxVideoFileSize=2000 The maximum size of a single recorded video file in MB.
The valid range is 100...2000. Default is 2000, but
you may want to use smaller values if you are planning
on archiving a recording to CD.
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SplitEditedFiles = 0 During the actual editing process VDR writes the result
into files that may grow up to MaxVideoFileSize. If you
prefer to have each marked sequence stored in a separate
file (named 001.vdr, 002.vdr, ...) you can set this
option to 1.
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MinEventTimeout=30 If the command line option '-s' has been set, VDR will
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MinUserInactivity=120 automatically shutdown the computer if the next timer
event is at least MinEventTimeout minutes in the future,
and the user has been inactive for at least
MinUserInactivity minutes. Setting MinUserInactivity
to 0 disables the automatic shutdown, while still
retaining the possibility to manually shutdown the
computer.
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MultiSpeedMode = 0 Defines the function of the "Left" and "Right" keys in
replay mode. If set to 0, one speed will be used, while
if set to 1 there will be three speeds for fast and slow
search, respectively.
0 = off
1 = on
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ShowReplayMode = 0 Turns displaying the current replay mode on or off.
0 = off
1 = on
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* Executing system commands
The "Main" menu option "Commands" allows you to execute any system commands
defined in the configuration file 'commands.conf' (see FORMATS for details).
The "Commands" option will only be present in the "Main" menu if a valid
'commands.conf' file containing at least one command definition has been
found at program start.
This feature can be used to do virtually anything, like checking for new
mail, displaying the CPU temperature - you name it! All you need to do is
enter the necessary command definition into 'commands.conf' and implement
the actual command that will be called. Such a command can typically be a
shell script or a Perl program. Anything that command writes to stdout will
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be displayed on a result screen after executing the command. This screen will
use a 'fixed' font so that you can generate formatted output. In order to
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avoid error messages going to stderr, command definitions should redirect
stderr to stdout (see FORMATS).
WARNING: THE COMMANDS DEFINED IN 'commands.conf' WILL BE EXECUTED UNDER THE
======= SAME USER ID THAT VDR IS RUNNING WITH. BE VERY CAREFUL WHEN
DEFINING THESE COMMANDS AND MAKE SURE THEY DON'T HARM YOUR SYSTEM,
ESPECIALLY IF YOU ARE RUNNING VDR UNDER A HIGH PRIVILEGED USER ID
(LIKE 'root').