Video Disk Recorder User's Manual --------------------------------- * 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: Key Normal Main Channels Timer Edit/New Recordings Replay Up Ch up Crsr up Crsr up Crsr up Crsr up Crsr up Play 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 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 - Green - Language New New - Rewind Skip -60s Yellow - - Delete Delete - Delete Skip +60s Blue - Resume Mark Mark - Summary Stop 0..9 Ch select - - - Numeric inp. - Editing * 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. In the "Timers" menu, the current timer can be enabled or disabled with the "Right" or "Left" key, respectively (enabled timers are marked with ">"). "Ok" here opens the "Edit timer" menu. 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"). The "Red", "Green", "Yellow" and "Blue" buttons have special meanings in various menus and are listed at the bottom of the on-screen-display. At any point in the menu system, pressing the "Menu" key again will immediately leave the menu system (discarding any pending changes). * 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. 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 There are four ways to select a channel: 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". 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 far will define the channel number. 4. From the "Now", "Next" and "Event" menus (accessible through the "Schedule" menu) by pressing the "Blue" button. Pressing the '0' key in normal viewing mode toggles between the current and the previous channel. 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. To bring up the channel display without switching channels you can press the "Ok" button. * 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. Recordings made form such channels will contain both audio tracks, and when replaying the desired audio track can be selected the same way. * 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 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 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) to start playback. New recordings are marked with an '*'. Playback can be stopped via the "Main" menu by selecting "Stop replaying", 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 The following keys have the listed meaning in Replay mode: - Up Resumes normal replay from any "pause", "forward" or "backward" mode. - 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 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. - Green Yellow Skips about 60 seconds back or forward. Pressing and holding down the button performs the function until the button is released again. - 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. * 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 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). If this field is left blank, the channel name will be used to form the name of the recording. A timer can also be programmed by pressing the "Red" button on the "Schedule", "Now", "Next" or "Event" menus. * Parameters in the "Setup" menu Select "Setup" from the "Main" menu to enter the setup menu. From there you can 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): OSDLanguage = 0 Defines the language used to display the OSD texts. 0 = Englisch 1 = Deutsch 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) LnbFrequHi = 10600 (these have no meaning for DVB-C receivers) 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. * 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 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 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').