Sweeper

Sweeper - the Swiss Army Knife of recording management

Overview

Sweeper is a Custom Firmware package for managing recordings in a variety of ways using custom rules. It started life as a simple utility for tidying up one-off recordings in the top level of the My Video area into folders, hence its name, but has since evolved into a multi-purpose tool.

Once installed, the rules that apply to the recordings and series folders at the top level of the My Video area can be accessed via the Sweeper icon on the main menu or toolbar. It is also possible to define rules for other folders by selecting Sweeper Rules from the OPT+ menu alongside the folder in the web interface.

User Interface

The main sweeper rule screen shows the rules which are currently defined for the folder followed by a set of buttons which can be used to add new rules, save or discard any changes, view or test the configuration and optionally show a textual representation of each rule, updated in real-time as changes are made.

At the bottom of the screen is an option to add a pre-defined ruleset to the rules already on screen. You can choose the set you want to add from the dropdown list and the click on Add to rules to add them to the main screen. Once there you can edit or disable them as required.

No changes are made until the Save changes button is pressed and confirmed.

Anatomy of a Rule

Each rule is show in a box with an icon to the top left indicating whether it is a file or folder rule...

Tokens

Several of the rule actions take parameters, and these parameters can contain tokens that are replaced with information from the recording which is being processed. For example, you could use the Move recording to folder action with an argument of %genre which would place Films in a folder called Films, Children's recordings in one called Children, etc.

The available tokens are shown below:

%genre	Recording genre.
%definition	Definition of recording (HD or SD).
%title	Recording title.
%channel	Channel name.
%lcn	Logical channel number.
%duration	Recording duration (in minutes).
%timestamp	Recording start time as YYYYMMDDHHMMSS.
%yyyymmmdd	Recording start time as YYYYMMDD.
%hhmm	Recording start time as HHMM

Available actions

Action	Description	Parameter
continue	Do nothing and continue to next rule.	None
stop	Do nothing and stop processing rules for this folder.	None
preserve	(deprecated - use stop instead) do nothing and stop processing rules.	None
lock	Lock recording and continue to next rule.	None
unlock	Unlock recording and continue to next rule.	None
move	Move the recording to a folder.	Folder name relative to the system media root, e.g. (Films/Children)
movecreate	move the recording to a folder and create it if it doesn't exist.	Folder name relative to the system media root, e.g. (Films/Children)
renamefile	rename the files that make up the recording and continue to the next rule. The argument will usually contain tokens that are replaced with values from the recording being processed.	New filename base (no extension) e.g. %title_%yyyymmdd_%hhmm
fileunder	Folders only; look for another existing with the same name as the new series recording and, if found, move the new recordings into it.	Folder name from which to start the search (e.g. Films) - leave blank to search from the top level.
fileundercreate	Folders only; as fileunder but if no folder is found then create a new one.	Folder name from which to start the search (e.g. Films) - leave blank to search from the top level.

Available conditions

flag	A flag against the recording, e.g. 'flag New'. Flags are Locked, New, Encrypted, Guidance, ODEncrypted, Shrunk, Deduped.
lcn	Logical channel number, e.g. 'lcn 1', 'lcn {> 1}'
duration	Recording duration in minutes, e.g. 'duration {> 60}'
schedduration	Scheduled recording duration in minutes.
size	Size in bytes
age	Age in hours (measured from recording end time).
wage	Number of hours since last watched, or from recording end time if not watched.
definition	Standard (SD) or high (HD) definition, e.g. 'definition SD'
title	Title contains ..., e.g. 'title {The Big Bang Theory}'
synopsis	Synopsis contains ...
guidance	Guidance contains ...
genre	Recording genre is.. e.g. 'genre Children'
hour	Hour of recording, e.g. 'hour {>= 21}'
filename	Filename on disk contains ...

All conditions can be optionally prefixed with a ! to indicate negation. For example, the condition !lcn 1 means not recorded from channel 1.