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vdr/MANUAL
2000-12-28 12:57:16 +01:00

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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 - - Disable Decrement - Search back
Right Next group - - Enable Increment - 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 - - New New - - Skip -60s
Yellow - - Delete Delete - Delete Skip +60s
Blue - Resume Mark Mark - - Stop
0..9 Ch select - - - Numeric inp. - -
* 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 half a 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.
* 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.
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.
LnbFrequLo = 9750 The low and high LNB frequencies (in MHz)
LnbFrequHi = 10600
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' turns off scanning on a single card system.
* 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').