Users of cable systems in the USA, and Comcast in particular, require a cable card device such as Ceton or Silicondust to record programming. Ceton and Silicondust devices are no longer manufactured and it seems cable cards are being phased out.
Here is an alternative method for recording channels on Comcast. It may be extendable to other providers.
- Do not need a cable card device
- You can record all channnels, including those Comcast has converted to IPTV.
- Avoids pixelation caused by poor signals.
- All recordings use H264 encoding. They use less disk space than recordings from a cable card device, including programs that Comcast already encodes in H264.
- Only records stereo audio.
- Does not support closed captions. Note It is possible to record with captions enabled to get "Burned in" captions, but some change to the code will be needed. Let me know by opening a ticket if you need this.
- If the user interface of the Stream App changes significantly, this code will need changes.
- The fire stick sometimes needs powering off and on again if it loses its Ethernet connection. This is not a hard failure, it can continue on WiFi until reset.
- Other occasional problems are documented in the Troubleshooting section below.
The code here can be used for other purposes than MythTV capture.
- Download a list of your available channels and use the list to populate the MythTV listings with all of the channels you are permitted to watch, and only those channels. This way you do not miss anything you are permitted to watch, and you don't have failed recordings when it tries to record from an unauthorized channel. See "Setup the channel list" below.
- Transfer your Xfinity cloud DVR recordings to your local hard drive and watch them using MythTV or any other video player. See "Xfinity DVR" below.
- Transfer videos or movies from Peacock, Amazon, Hulu, etc. to your local hard drive and watch them using MythTV or any other video player. See "Manual Recordings" below.
- Amazon Fire Stick or Fire Stick 4K. Note that this has only been tested with Fire Stick 4K. If a non-4K fire stick is used, it may take longer to tune and some timeouts in the code may need to be changed.
- USB Capture device. There are many brands available from Amazon. Those that advertise 3840x2160 input and 1920x1080 output, costing $5 and up, have been verified to work. These are USB 2 devices. Running
lsusbwith any of them mounted shows the device withID 534d:2109. - USB 2 or USB 3 extension cable, 6 inches or more. Stacking the fire stick behind the capture device directly off the MythTV backend without an extension cable is unstable. Note that some capture devices have the usb connector on a wire attached to the device and these will not need a USB extension. One that I purchased came with a USB extension cable in the box.
- Optional Ethernet adapter for fire stick (recommended). You can either use the official Amazon fire stick Ethernet adapter or a generic version, also available from Amazon. I use the AUVIPAL brand.
- You can use additional sets of the above three items to support multiple recordings at the same time.
- MythTV backend on a Linux device. This must have a CPU capable of real-time encoding the number of simultaneous channels you will be recording.
Since the backend will be encoding real-time, it needs sufficient CPU power. To determine how many fire sticks you can connect, find out how many encodes you can do at one time.
Run this on your backend to get a value:
sysbench --num-threads=$(nproc) --max-time=10 --test=cpu run
Look at the resulting events per second. Based on my simple testing, each encode will take approximately 1200 out of this, when using CRF 21 and preset veryfast. I do not recommend loading the CPU to 100%, preferably do not go much over 50%. If your events per second is 2400 you could do 2 encodes at a time. if it is 10000, you could theoretically do 8 at a time, but I would limit it to 4 or 5.
With preset faster and CRF 22 it needs 2000 events per second for each encode. With preset veryfast and CRF 21 it needs 1200 events per second for each encode. Varying these parameters gives different quality, file size and cpu usage. These parameters are set in the /etc/opt/mythtv/leancapture.conf file.
Since I tested on only a few backends, these figures may not be reliable. This is only a rough guide. Once you have your setup running, set a recording going and run mpstat 1 10 to see the %idle to get a better idea of how much CPU is being used.
A raspberry pi 2 shows events per second of 178. Do not try to run LeanCapture on a raspberry pi!
Connect each fire stick to a capture device, Ethernet adapter, and power supply. If you do not have an Ethernet adapter you can use WiFi. Connect each to a USB socket on the MythTV backend.
Prerequisite software for these scripts can be installed on Linux with the distribution package manager.
- vlc
- tesseract-ocr
- gocr
- ffmpeg
- imagemagick
- jp2a
- adb version 1.0.41 or later
- pv
Note that Ubuntu has an obsolete version of adb in apt. Do not use the out of date version. It does not work with these scripts. Get the latest version from https://developer.android.com/studio/releases/platform-tools . Place adb on your path, e.g. in /usr/local/bin.
Once the prerequisites have been installed, clone the repository from github
If you are not using this for MythTV (see Other Uses above), run this in the terminal before ./install.sh the first time. Put in your user id and group (the user that will be doing recording).
export MYTHTVUSER=<user>
export MYTHTVGROUP=<group>
Install the scripts by running
sudo ./install.sh
The install.sh script tests for the presence of required versions and stops if they are not present. After installing, resboot the system so the udev rule can take effect.
The install script assumes the mythbackend user id is mythtv, and group id is mythtv. It assumes script directory /opt/mythtv/leancap. You can use different values by setting appropriate environment variables before running install.sh the first time. See the top of install.sh for the names.
If there is a new or updated version of the scripts, just run the ./install.sh again. It will not overwrite settings files you have updated.
In order to operate your fire stick while connected to the computer but not yet in use for the backend:
-
Press Home on the Fire Stick Remote.
-
Run vlc on the backend.
-
Select Media, Open Capture device. Select the Video Device /dev/video0 or other even numbered device. Do not select an odd numbered device.
-
Check if your fire stick home screen is displayed. If you have multiple fire sticks, press buttons on the remote to see whether the correct one is displayed. If not, open the next Capture Device (e.g. /dev/video2). Note: The picture may not look good, response may lag, and videos may display like slide shows. Do not worry, this is because vlc does not use optimal settings by default. The display will be good enough for installing apps and changing settings. When you do actual recordings it uses ffmpeg and they look much better.
-
Connect to your WiFi system.
-
Hook up Ethernet if you will be using that and ensure it connects. The WiFi connection will be used as a backup in case the Ethernet connection fails. This happens occasionally, the fire stick reverts to WiFi for no reason.
-
Create a reserved IP address in your router for both the Ethernet and WiFi IP addresses.
-
Make a note of the IP addresses for each fire stick.
-
Optional - add the fire stick IP addresses with useful names to the backend hosts file to make configuration easier.
-
Install and activate the Xfinity Stream App on each fire stick. You need a comcast cable subscription in order to activate it.
-
Disable screen saver on fire stick - set the interval to "never"
-
Screen resolution will be set by the scripts to the value you specify in the /etc/opt/mythtv/leancap1.conf file. You can check here for available values for setting it. Be aware that the devices maximum recording rate is 30fps at 1080 or 60fps at 720. My experience is that video is jerky if using 30fps at 1080 so I use 60fps at 720.
-
Disable automatic updates of applications.
-
Enable developer mode.
-
Switch to user mythtv and run adb against each fire stick Ethernet address. If you are not on a backend and are using the setup for non-mythtv things (see Other Uses above), then do not switch to user mythtv
sudo -u mythtv bash adb connect <IP address or name> -
Respond to the confirmation message that appears on the fire stick display in vlc, and confirm that it must always allow connect from that system. Note that if you connect from a different user id on the same system, adb treats it like another system and prompts you again. Make sure your user id here is the one that will be doing recording.
Channel tuning in the xfinity stream app is by arrowing up an down through a list. There is no way of keying a channel number. This can be time consuming since there are hundreds of channels.
The system uses OCR to see the channel numbers. Occasionally a number is interpreted incorrectly. In all cases I have tried, the error is corrected by the script automatically. However there is a possibility this may cause a failure.
There is a script to download a list of channel numbers from the fire stick and store it on the backend. This speeds up the tuning process and is used for correcting OCR errors. With the list in place, it can tune from channel 15 to channel 702 in 9 seconds. Without the list it takes 23 seconds. Also without the list there is a risk of tuning the wrong channel due to OCR errors.
- DATADIR and LOGDIR: I recommend leave these as is. Change them if you need to store data files and logs in a different location. Note that the default directories are created by install. If you change the names here, you must create those directories manually and change ownership to mythtv.
- VID_RECDIR: Optional. You need to specify a video storage directory here if you want to use leanxdvr, leanfire or leanrec. These are not part of the lean recorder. leanxdvr can be used for recording programs from the Xfinity cloud DVR and adding them to your videos collection. leanfire and leanrec can be used for recording other content from the fire stick (e.g. Youtube videos).
- NAVTYPE: Leave as "All Channels". Default "All Channels".
- MAXCHANNUM: Enter the highest channel number you use. I recommend using 999. Comcast has a policy of numbering all channels with numbers below 1000, and then duplicating the channels in numbers above that. If you want to use those higher numbers for recording, set this to the highest number channel available. If you set it higher than what is present in Comcast, you will get errors in the leancap_chanlist script.
- Email settings: Fill these in to get emails and text messages when there is a problem with the capture device. If you do not want emails or text messages, set EMAIL1 nd EMAIL2 to empty. The messages will go to notify.py.log in the log directory.
There are comment lines in the default file explaining the settings. You need to decide on the screen resolution and frame rate you want to use for recordings. The capture devices mentioned above can handle 1920x1080 at 30fps and 1280x720 at 60fps. The settings here determine what is recorded. If the fire stick uses different resolution, it will be converted in the capture device.
You need one file for each fire stick device, named /etc/opt/mythtv/leancapx, where x is a single character, normally 1-9.
This file prevents pulseaudio grabbing the audio output of your capture devices. Run lsusb and see if there is a value of ID 534d:2109 in the results. This identifies the specific capture device I have listed above. If that is present you need not change this file, it is correctly set up. Otherwise identify the device id by running lsusb -v|less and search for "Video". Look for ID xxxx:xxxx in the corresponding entry and enter those values in the 89-pulseaudio-usb.rules file.
If you change the udev rules, reboot to make sure the change takes effect.
- Startup Before Recording (secs): If you allow your machine to sleep or shut down between recordings, set this to 600 seconds (10 minutes), to allow time for the scan and ready scripts to do their work before a recording starts.
Add a capture card for each Fire Stick / Capture device.
- Card Type: External (black box) Recorder
- Command Path: As below. Change the path if you used a different install location. Set the parameter to the name of the conf file for the specific fire stick device (leancapx).
/opt/mythtv/leancap/leancapture.sh leancap1
- Tuning Timeout: Set to the maximum (65000)
Set up Schedules direct for Comcast as normal
For each EXTERNAL entry, set up as follows:
- Input Name: MPEG2TS
- Display Name: Your perference for identifying the fire stick
- Video Source: Name of the source you set up
- External Channel Change Command: Leave blank
- Preset Tuner to Channel: Leave Blank
- Scan for Channels: Do not use
- Fetch Channels from Listings Source: Do not use
- Starting Channel: Set a value that is in your channel list.
- Interactions Between Inputs
- Max Recordings: 2
- Schedule as Group: Checked
- Input Priority: 0 or other value as needed to determine which device is used.
- Schedule Order: Set to sequence order for using vs other capture cards. Set to 0 to prevent recordings on this device.
- Live TV Order: Set to sequence order for using vs other capture cards. Set to 0 to prevent Live TV on this device. I have never used or tested LiveTV with this recorder. Since it takes a relatively long time to tune, it will be frustrating to use for Live TV. I recommend using another fire stick directly connected to your tv with the Xfinity stream app to watch live tv.
In mythfrontend, set up the following. Note this is a global setting, you do not need to set it up in each front end. This will attempt to prevent losing some 40 seconds when one show follows another on a different channel, by allocating a different tuner. This is only useful if you have two or more capture devices. If it is not possible to avoid back to back recordings it will do them anyway and you may lose 40 seconds from the beginning of the second recording.
mythfrontend -> Setup -> Video -> Recording Priorities -> Set Recording Priorities -> Scheduler Options -> Avoid Back to Back Recordings -> Different Channels
The following setting will reduce the chances of losing the first seconds of a show due to the time taken to tune:
mythfrontend -> Setup -> Video -> General -> General (Advanced) : Set time to record before start of show to 60.
The following setting available on V32 will prevent MythTV from marking a recording as failed if the first 60 seconds are missing due to tuning delay
mythfrontend -> Setup -> Video -> General -> General (Advanced) : Set maximum start gap to 60 and minimum recording quality to 95.
If you have a cable card or other capture device, you can leave that in place while you test the new device or devices, or use it in conjunction with the LeanCapture device. To prevent recordings from using the new devices set the Schedule Order and Live TV order to 0.
Note that while running the test it is important that vlc not be open on the video card.
sudo -u mythtv bash
/opt/mythtv/leancap/leancap_scan.sh
You should see a bunch of messages including screen shots, ending with "Successfully created parameters in /var/opt/mythtv/leancap1.conf". If you have more that one tuner you will see the second set of messages also. If you have more than one tuner you can do them separately as follows
sudo -u mythtv bash
/opt/mythtv/leancap/leancap_scan.sh leancap1
/opt/mythtv/leancap/leancap_scan.sh leancap2
....
This way you can see if each one is correctly initialized.
Run this from a command line
/opt/mythtv/leancap/leanvlc.sh leancap1
This will open vlc and show the fire stick at 1280x720. Make sure audio and video are working. Repeat this with leancap2 etc. if you have those set up.
Note that while running the test it is important that vlc not be open on the video card.
sudo -u mythtv bash
/opt/mythtv/leancap/leancap_ready.sh leancap1
You should seee a bunch of screen messages, ending with
All Channels
*****
disconnected fire-office-eth
Press ctrl-c to end the script, which otherwise repeats the process every 5 minutes.
Run /opt/mythtv/leancap/leanvlc.sh leancap1. You should see the page of "Favorite Channels" and the channel numbers and programs displayed. Close vlc.
Repeat the menu navigation test for each tuner if you have more than one.
This creates your channel list in /var/opt/mythtv/All Channels.txt
sudo -u mythtv bash
/opt/mythtv/leancap/leancap_chanlist.sh leancap1
This only needs to be run on one tuner (any one). The channel list created is used on all tuners.
This takes about 3 minutes. After it has run, it may report errors. The errors are reported and also stored in /var/opt/mythtv/All Channels_errors.txt. For example:
Line 63 12 changed to 110
This tells you an error was found in line 63 of the output file and needs to be fixed. The number 12 was changed to 110 to fix the error but this is probably not the correct fix. Copy /var/opt/mythtv/All Channels_gen.txt to /var/opt/mythtv/All Channels.txt and fix the errors there. Edit that file, look for line 63. Look at your comcast channel lineup and if the number it put there (e.g.110) is incorrect, fix it.
If you correct something, you can create a file called that will be used for future runs of leancap_chanlist.sh if they encounter the same error. If the channel after 109 was misinterpreted as 12 but should be 112, and the channel after 710 was misinterpreted as 71 but should be 711, put these two lines in the file.
109 12 112
710 71 711
After setting up the channel list, you have a listing of all the channels that you can receive. If you are using schedules direct with tv_grab_zz_sdjson_sqlite, you can use this list to make sure that all of your channels are in the listings and none of the channels you are not permitted to view have listings. Copy the "/var/opt/mythtv/All Channels.txt" file to a new file in another location. Edit that file to create sql statements as follows. This assumes you have already set up the channels in sqlite:
update channels set selected = 0;
update channels set selected = 1 where channum = 2;
Repeat the second line for all channels in the list. Run it against your sqlite database (assuming channelfile is the file you created):
sudo -u mythtv bash
sqlite3 SchedulesDirect.DB < channelfile
Note that while running the test it is important that vlc not be open on the video card.
Make sure you have set up the channel list in /var/opt/mythtv/All Channels.txt as described above.
sudo -u mythtv bash
/opt/mythtv/leancap/leancap_tune.sh leancap1 704
where 704 is the number of one of your channels that is in your list.
You should see a bunch of messages ending with "Complete tuning channel: 704 on recorder: leancap1". Run /opt/mythtv/leancap/leanvlc.sh leancap1. You should see video playing from the selected channel. Press the back button on your fire remote to end it or it will continue playing for ever. Close vlc.
Note you can also add a NOPLAY parameter to tune the channel and leave it selected in the list:
sudo -u mythtv bash
/opt/mythtv/leancap/leancap_tune.sh leancap1 704 NOPLAY
Repeat the tuning test on other tuners.
Enable the leancap-scan service:
sudo systemctl enable leancap-scan.service
Reboot so that the udev setting can take effect and the leancap-scan service can be started. Look in the log directory /var/log/mythtv_scripts to see if there are any errors displayed in the leancap_scan or leancap_ready logs.
The leancap_scan servicefirst runs leancap_scan.sh to set up the devices for each tuner. Then it starts leancap_ready.sh for each tuner. These run continuously. They navigate the fire stick user interface to the channel list. Every 5 minutes they re-check that the channel list is still visible. This way, when a recording is starting, it does not have to waste time starting up the android application and getting past the menus to the channel list. If you open vlc with leanvlc.sh leancapx you will see that it is on the channel list. Do not run leanvlc if a recording is starting soon and make sure to close vlc again. Recordings cannot be done while it is open in vlc.
Periodically run the script to setup the channel list, when no recording is scheduled, in case it changes. You can set it to run weekly on a schedule under the mythtv user.
sudo -u mythtv bash
/opt/mythtv/leancap/leancap_chanlist.sh leancap1
The script is set up so that if there is no change, nothing will be done. If there is a change and there is no error that needs fixing, it will automatically overwrite the list. In there is a change and there is an error it will email you. Also the script is set up so that if a recording needs to start while the script is running, the script will stop so that recording can continue.
While the fire stick is set up as a capture device, it is dedicated to that task. You cannot use it for any other apps. Put the remote in a safe place where nobody will touch it. To be extra sure remove its battery.
Any time you need to do any work on a fire stick (reset resolution, update, etc.), you need to do as follows.
-
Make sure nothing is scheduled to record in the near future.
-
Stop the service:
sudo systemctl stop leancap-scan.service -
Run the below script on the backend, with leancap? as the id of the fire stick.
/opt/mythtv/leancap/leanvlc.sh leancap? -
Use the fire stick remote to perform any needed work.
-
Repeat with other fire sticks as needed.
-
Close vlc
-
Start the service again:
sudo systemctl start leancap-scan.service
This can be done without MythTV. You don't need MythTV installed. You can run this on a separate machine. Also you do not need to be an Xfinity or Comcast user, this can be used to record anything that shows on a fire stick.
If you are not using MythTV backend on the machine, install the software as described above. You will not do the MythTV configuration. Do not enable the leancap_scan service.
You must run all scripts under the same user id that originally authorized adb. If you installed under the mythtv user then you need to do
sudo -u mythtv bash
before running any of these scripts. Preferably you should not run these on your myth backend, since they may interfere with your scheduled recordings. The descriptions that follow assume you are not running these on your mythtv backend and have installed them under your normal logon id.
Manually run the scan using terminal. This has to be done again if you have rebooted or replugged usb devices since it was last run:
/opt/mythtv/leancap/leancap_scan.sh
There are two scripts available for recording, leanfire.sh and leanrec.sh.
leanfire.sh is to record a single movie or video, or a series of videos with autoplay turned on. You can tune to an application (CBS App, Prime, etc.), have autoplay on, go to the first episode and start recording. It all gets recorded into one file that you can split up later if you wish.
leanrec.sh is designed for use with autoplay turned off, to record a single episode and leave the app in a state where the next episode is ready to record. You set up a shell script that executes it repeatedly with different episode numbers. Each execution checks that the correct next episode is on screen and records it. This way you get a series of videos, one for each episode, with appropriate file names for each episode.
Run /opt/mythtv/leancap/leanvlc.sh leancap?. Use the remote to navigate to the show or video you want to record. Get to the point where pressing enter on your remote would start playback. Do not press enter on your remote.
Run leanfire in terminal. You can get a full list of options by running it with -h.
/opt/mythtv/leancap/leanfire.sh
This will display a message ending with "Type Y to start"
Type Y in the terminal window. vlc will close, the script will send the Enter button and ffmpeg will start recording. Leave the terminal window open. In file manager look for the video directory (directory specified by VID_RECDIR= in /etc/opt/mythtv/leancapture.conf). You should see an mkv file there with the current date and time as name. Refresh until that file is at least 1MB, then you can open it with vlc. See if your recording is going OK. Close vlc and let it continue recording.
There is a time limit of 6 hours, which can be changed by the --time command line option. Recording stops after the specified time or after playback stops. If autoplay is set in the application it will normally carry on playing the next episode. If not it will stop after one episode.
To check if your recording is done and if it is busy recording some other show you don't want, open the mkv file in vlc and skip to near the end. If if is recording stuff you don't want, press Control-C in the terminal window and that will end recording.
When recording ends for any reason, whether time limit, blank screen or control-C, the script navigates the fire stick back to the home screen, unless the --nohome option is used.
This lets you record multiple episodes of a series and store each episode in a separate file. You need to set autoplay off in the android app you are using.
Run /opt/mythtv/leancap/leanvlc.sh leancap?. Use the remote to navigate to the show or video you want to record. Get to the point where pressing enter on your remote would start playback. Do not press enter on your remote.
Check if you see "Season x Episode y" or "Season x (y)" on screen where x is the season and y is the episode. If so you are good to go. If not, find some text on screen or some different format of season and episode, that will uniquely identify the episode.
Set up a shell script like the following example. This assumes that as soon as it is finished playin an episode it is immediately ready to play the next one.
#!/bin/bash
set -e
/opt/mythtv/leancap/leanrec.sh -t "Judy Justice" -S 1 -E 67
/opt/mythtv/leancap/leanrec.sh -t "Judy Justice" -S 1 -E 68
/opt/mythtv/leancap/leanrec.sh -t "Judy Justice" -S 1 -E 69
/opt/mythtv/leancap/leanrec.sh -t "Judy Justice" -S 1 -E 70
/opt/mythtv/leancap/leanrec.sh -t "Judy Justice" -S 1 -E 71
/opt/mythtv/leancap/leanrec.sh -t "Judy Justice" -S 1 -E 72
Another example, for the CBS app where the season and episode are not shown the expected way. In this case when episode 1 is selected you can already see 2 on screen and so on. Also in this case you need to press UP after an episode to get to the next one.
#!/bin/bash
set -e
leanrec.sh -t Ghosts -S 1 -E 1 --srch "2. Hello" --postkeys UP
leanrec.sh -t Ghosts -S 1 -E 2 --srch "\n3\." --postkeys UP
leanrec.sh -t Ghosts -S 1 -E 3 --srch "\n4\." --postkeys UP
leanrec.sh -t Ghosts -S 1 -E 4 --srch "\n5\." --postkeys UP
leanrec.sh -t Ghosts -S 1 -E 5 --srch "\n6\." --postkeys UP
leanrec.sh -t Ghosts -S 1 -E 6 --srch "\n7\." --postkeys UP
Note if you put /opt/mythtv/leancap in your path you can just use leanrec.sh without its full path. You can get a full list of options by running it with -h.
The title is used only for naming the directory where the recording is stored. The season and episode are used for checking that the correct episode is on screen and for naming the episode. If a search string is supplied that is used instead of season and episode to verify the correct episode is on screen.
The script will send the Enter button and ffmpeg will start recording. Leave the terminal window open. In file manager look for the video directory (directory specified by VID_RECDIR= in /etc/opt/mythtv/leancapture.conf). You should see a directory with the show title and in that directory a file SnnEnn.mkv for the episode. Refresh until that file is at least 1MB, then you can open it with vlc. See if your recording is going OK. Close vlc and let it continue recording.
There is a time limit of 2 hours per episode, which can be changed by the --time command line option. Recording stops after the specified time or after playback stops. If autoplay is set in the application it will normally carry on playing the next episode. If not it will stop after one episode.
To check your recording while still busy recording, open the mkv file in vlc. If it is recording the wrong thing, press Control-C in the terminal window and that will end recording.
When recording ends, the script leaves the fire stick where it returns from playback, ready for the next episode.
This can be done without MythTV. You don't need MythTV installed. You can run this on a separate machine. This does require you to be a Comcast customer and to have the Xfinity Cloud DVR feature in your plan. Using the fire stick app, the android app or Firefox browser, you can search program names and set them to record from your subscribed channels.
When you have one or more programs recorded on Xfinity, you can use this script to get them into mkv files on your computer. Why do this? Xfinity only gives 20 hours of recording by default and also only allows you to keep your recordings for 1 year.
Manually run the scan using terminal. This has to be done again if you have rebooted or replugged usb devices since it was last run:
/opt/mythtv/leancap/leancap_scan.sh
If that is successful, run the leanxdvr in terminal:
/opt/mythtv/leancap/leanxdvr.sh
This will immediately navigate to your recordings on the fire stick and record them into files in the video directory (directory specified by VID_RECDIR= in /etc/opt/mythtv/leancapture.conf). Each file is placed in a subdirectory of the series name and the file is named with the season, episode and subtitle. You need not do anything, it will transfer all your recordings and delete them from Xfinity.
While recording is in progress you can check it by opening the mkv files with vlc. Note the files are named with only season and episode until the recording ends, at which time the subtitle is added to the name.
There is no option to prevent recordings being deleted from Xfinity after being recorded to your local drive. Xfinity has a recover deleted option but that does not work once all shows have been deleted.
If the process is interrupted (e.g. by control-C in the terminal window), one recording will be incomplete. You can start the script again and it will restart the incomplete recording from the beginning again, so you won't lose anything.
Some series are available for streaming for a time after the broadcast. Some may also be available for an extended time. There is a script to record from these.
The same comments apply as for XFinity DVR regarding installation and running scan.
Run this command in terminal. Without parameters it shows you the command syntax.
/opt/mythtv/leancap/leanxvod.sh
Required parameters are title, season, episode. It is best to first logon to the fire stick and search the XFinity application to make sure what is available. Only "free to you" episodes can be recorded here.
You can record a bunch of episodes by putting them in a script and running it. For example put the following in a file and run it. This is useful if you missed some episodes.
#!/bin/bash
/opt/mythtv/leancap/leanxvod.sh -t "Young Sheldon" --season 5 --episode 5
/opt/mythtv/leancap/leanxvod.sh -t "Young Sheldon" --season 5 --episode 6
/opt/mythtv/leancap/leanxvod.sh -t "Chicago P.D." --season 9 --episode 7
/opt/mythtv/leancap/leanxvod.sh -t "Chicago P.D." --season 9 --episode 8
Each episode is written to a file in a subdirectory of the VID_RECDIR from leancapture.conf. Each recording is placed in a sub directory named for the series title, with the recording being named with original airdate, season and episode, and subtitle.
The series name must be an exact match. The script is prone to OCR errors. There is code to fix errors that I found, but there could still be problems. If there is an error the script cannot recover from, it will terminate without recording.
If any usb capture devices are unplugged or replugged, you need to restart the service:
sudo systemctl restart leancap-scan.service
or, if this is not a backend, just run the scan again:
/opt/mythtv/leancap/leancap_scan.sh
Please feel free to open a support ticket for any specific errors.
If a recording fails, you can use leanfire, leanrec or leanxvod to record it (see Manual Recordings above), depending on where you can find it. You will need to find what service carries prior episodes. Recnt episodes are normally available on xfinity vod (see leanxvod above), older ones may be on the CBS app, peacock app, Hulu or others.
- Fire stick loses ethernet connection. Randomly, once every few months, a fire stick reverts to wifi. This may not be a problem. It can still record over wifi, but it is best to reset it to ethernet. An email is sent by the scripts when this happens. This happens equally with Amazon's ethernet adapter and third party ethernet adapters. The only solution I have found is to disconnect power from the fire stick and reconnect. Rebooting the fire stick from the settings menu does not fix it, it still only recognizes wifi after the reboot. If anybody finds a better solution please let me know. I believe it may be a power problem and you may be able to avoid it by finding a power source that can supply more current.
- Interruptions during recording. If Xfinity stops because of a network error, sometimes it displays a message that says "Try again later" or something equally useless. The script will try re-tuning after a couple of minutes. It will keep trying to re-tune until the end of the show. This has happened only a couple of times in six months with hundreds of recordings. This may also happen if you lose internet connection. Also if you accidentally press home or return on the remote. When this happens the script sends an email message to let you know it is retrying. Also the recording will be marked as damaged so that MythTV can record the episode again.
- Recordings happen without audio. This has happened once to me. All recordings from a certain time onwards were silent. The problem was in the capture device. Re-powering the fire stick and rebooting the backend made no difference. It was solved by unplugging the usb device and replugging it, thereby effectively rebooting the usb device. I have added code to a userjob that runs after every recording to check if there is audio and send an email if there is not. That user job is at https://github.com/bennettpeter/mythscripts/blob/master/install/opt/mythtv/bin/userjob_recording.sh . Note that this job is highly dependent on my own setup. The relevant code from the job is below. You need to figure out how to get the variables set up. You will need ffmpeg and sox installed.
Code to check for audio
# Examine 1 minute of audio at 5 minutes in
# Returns "Mean norm: 0.010537"
soxstat=($(ffmpeg -i "$fullfilename" \
-ss 00:05:00 -t 00:01:00.0 -vn -ac 2 -f au - 2>/dev/null \
| sox -t au - -t au /dev/null stat |& grep norm:))
if [[ ${soxstat[2]} != ?.?????? ]] ; then
"$scriptpath/notify.py" "sox failed" "$title $subtitle - sox said ${soxstat[@]}"
elif [[ ${soxstat[2]} < 0.001000 ]] ; then
"$scriptpath/notify.py" "$type failed" "$title $subtitle has audio level ${soxstat[2]}"
fi