vdr and the audiorecorder plugin

I have a Technotrend DVB-C 1501 card in my home server since half a year, but it stopped receiving epg data correctly after some time (provider changed channels, drivers are from the v4l upstream repository…) and stayed there unusable until I have started to seriously fix it on Tuesday.

I have replaced vdradmin by the live-plugin and I have all (~500) channels by now. With the xineliboutput plugin, I can send the “screen” output (it is a budget card anyway and the machine is headless) to all machines on my network and I can comfortably browse the channels as well with a m3u playlist of the streamdev-server plugin in e.g. vlc. I have even installed the externremux.sh script from the linuxtv wiki and adjusted it. Now the streamdev-server plugin pipes the channels through mencoder, and friend of mine (+me being away) who is linked in by openvpn can now watch with xine over half my upstream (~150kib/s). VDR is really amazing and a nice piece of technology. Today I installed the java program “tvbrowser” which makes it even easier to browse the program and set timers with the Lazy Bones plugin.

Now what I have really been amazed of from the beginning was the audiorecorder plugin, which allows vdr to record(+reencode) all radio channels (mp3 stream with 320 kbit/s [very nice quality]) of one frequency band when either the band is watched anyway or one dvb card is unused. It was not really easy to get it to work on my lenny system, but after getting the pre14 version, compiling it inside the sources of vdr (apt-get source vdr; apt-get build-essential vdr …)  and copying the lib to /usr/lib/vdr/plugins, I finally got it working. I needed to adjust some #includes for libavcodecs though.

What has really been a problem after that and this is why I give you this information, was to find out how to set the channels in the audiorecorder.conf right. I had to check the c-code to find out, so maybe this might help you. Resources on the web a rare and except of one google hit only for dvb-s.

For DVB-C it is for example:

C-41985-1101-28475 /* 1LIVE;ARD WDR */

TYPE-NID-TID-SID[-RID] The RID might be left out, it is “0″ by default. If you use the live plugin you can simply view the program overview in your browser and you will see the correct string as a link parameter if you for example pass over the “Change channel” button.

Now this helps, but it is still a lot of work to type stuff. I am not experienced in awk, but knowing that it can quickly parse it in a list for me, here goes a code snippet which might help you:

cd /var/lib/vdr # default vdr home

grep “:1101:” channels.conf | grep “C:6900:0″ | awk ‘{ FS = “:” } { print $4″-”$11″-”$12″-”$10 ” /* “$1″ */”}’

“1101″ is the transponder band for the radio channels which I’d like to use (ARD for hr,sr,bayern,…), “1073″ would be for (SWR,DASDING,…), “C:6900:0″ is a quick check for radio channels only, as it is always “0″ for radio channels in my channels.conf and then awk passes the matched lines into a list with the commented channel name. I know this is not perfect, I am not into awk/much into grep yet, but it might help you. You still have to remove the first line here and have to shrink it to 12 lines, since this is the max number of simultaniously encoding channels in audiorecorder.

Cheers,
whilo

This is how my audiorecorder.conf looks for now:

C-41985-1101-28402 /* BAYERN 3;ARD BR */
C-41985-1101-28475 /* 1LIVE;ARD WDR */
C-41985-1101-28403 /* BAYERN 4 KLASSIK;ARD BR */
C-41985-1101-28477 /* WDR 3;ARD WDR */
C-41985-1101-28478 /* WDR 4;ARD WDR */
C-41985-1101-28406 /* on3radio;ARD BR */
C-41985-1101-28420 /* hr2;ARD HR */
C-41985-1101-28481 /* 1LIVE diggi;ARD WDR */
C-41985-1101-28421 /* hr3;ARD HR */
C-41985-1101-28423 /* YOU FM;ARD HR */
C-41985-1101-28462 /* SR2 KulturRadio;ARD SR */
C-41985-1101-28463 /* SR3 Saarlandwelle;ARD SR */

Of course values are only right for KabelBW near Mannheim.

Cheers,

whilo

This entry was posted on Freitag, Juni 26th, 2009 at 08:04 and is filed under Debian, FOSS, VDR. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.