path: root/MANUAL

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      VDR          Channels   Timers     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    Page up    Decrement     Page up     Search back
  Right   Next group  -            Page down  Page down  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     VDR menu   VDR menu   Discard       VDR menu    Recordings menu
  Red     -           Record       Edit       Edit       ABC/abc       Play        Jump
  Green   -           Language     New        New        Ins/Ovr       Rewind      Skip -60s
  Yellow  -           -            Delete     Delete     Delete        Delete      Skip +60s
  Blue    -           Stop/Resume  Mark       On/Off(1)  -             Summary     Stop
  0..9    Ch select   -            -          -          Numeric inp.  -           Editing

  Power   Shutdown
  Volume+ Volume up
  Volume- Volume down
  Mute    Mute

  (1) The "On/Off" button in the "Timers" menu only works if sorting the timers
      has been enabled in the "Setup" menu. Otherwise the Blue button is used
      to "mark" a timer for moving.

* Navigating through the On Screen Menus

  The "VDR" 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 "Blue" key (this is only possible if the "Timers" list is sorted,
  otherwise the "Blue" key is used to mark a timer in order to move it to
  another position in the list). Enabled timers are marked with '>', timers
  that are currently recording are marked with '#'. If a timer has the
  "First day" set so that it will start recording only on the given date,
  it is marked with '!'. The "Blue" key toggles through the "enabled" and
  "disabled" states, and for repeating timers that are currently recording
  also a state that ends this recording prematurely and sets the "First day"
  date so that it will record again the next time the timer hits.
  "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 "Red" key toggles between
  upper- and lowercase characters, while the "Green" key switches between
  insert and overwrite mode. The "Yellow" key deletes the current character
  (or the one to the right of the cursor in insert mode).

  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 "VDR" 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 "VDR" 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 "VDR" 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 '*'.
  If the Setup parameter RecordingDirs has been set and there are recordings
  from repeating timers organized in a subdirectory structure, only the
  directory is displayed and it can be opened by pressing "Ok" (or the "Red"
  button). A directory entry displays the total number of recordings within
  that directory (and any possible subdirectory thereof) as well as the total
  number of new recordings (as opposed to a recording's entry, which displays
  the date and time of the recording).

  If the setup parameter "Use episode name" was turned on when a recording took place,
  VDR adds the "Episode name" (which is usually the name of the episode in case of
  a series) to the recording's name. The "Recordings" menu then displays all
  recordings of a repeating timer in chronological order, since these are
  usually the individual episodes of a series, which you may want to view in
  the order in which they were broadcast.

  Playback can be stopped via the "VDR" 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 "VDR" 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.
            If "Multi Speed Mode" has been enabled in the "Setup" menu, the
            function of these buttons changes in a way that gives you three
            fast and slow speeds, through which you can switch by pressing
            the respective button several times.
  - Red     Jump to a specific location. Enter the time you want to jump to
            and then press "Left" or "Right" to jump relative to the current
            position, "Up" to jump to an absolute position, and "Down" to
            jump and pause at an absolute position.
  - 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 the file name contains the special character '~', the recording
             will be stored in a hierarchical directory structure. For instance,
             a file name of "Sci-Fi~Star Trek~Voyager" will result in a directory
             structure "/video/Sci-Fi/Star_Trek/Voyager". The '~' character has
             been chosen for this since the file system's directory delimiter '/'
             may be part of a regular programme name.
             Repeating timers create recordings that contain the 'Episode name'
             information from the EPG data in their file name. Typically (on tv
             stations that care about their viewers) this contains the episode
             title of a series. The episode name is appended to the timer's file name,
             separated by a '~' character, so that it results in all recordings
             of this timer being collected in a common subdirectory.
             If this field is left blank, the channel name will be used to form
             the name of the recording.
  First day: The date of the first day when this timer shall start recording
             (only available for repeating timers).

  A timer can also be programmed by pressing the "Red" button on the "Schedule",
  "Now", "Next" or "Event" menus.

* Stopping a recording on the primary DVB interface

  If the primary DVB interface is currently recording, the user can't switch
  the channel or replay another recording on that interface. However, if there
  is an other DVB interface that is currently not recording and provides the
  necessary conditional access facilities to continue the recording that is
  currently being performed on the primary DVB interface, the "VDR" menu will
  contain an option that allows you to stop recording on the primary DVB
  interface. Select that option to stop the ongoing recording and thus free the
  primary DVB interface to allow channel switching or replaying. The interrupted
  recording will be continued on an other free DVB interface. There may be a
  short discontinuity at that point when replaying that recording later, so you
  may want to place such an action for instance in a commercial break.

* Parameters in the "Setup" menu

  Select "Setup" from the "VDR" 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):

  OSD:

  Language = English     Defines the language used to display the OSD texts.

  Width = 52             The width and height of the OSD .
  Height = 18            The valid ranges are width=40...56, height=12...21.

  Message time = 1       The time (in seconds) how long an informational
                         message shall be displayed on the OSD. The valid range
                         is 1...60.

  Channel info position = bottom
                         The position of the channel info window in the OSD
                         (either 'bottom' or 'top').

  Info on channel switch = yes
                         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.

  Scroll pages = yes     yes = 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
                         no  = dto., but the cursor remains at the bottom (top) of
                               the page (this mode allows for faster scrolling
                               through long lists).

  Sort timers = yes      Turns sorting the timers in the "Timers" menu on/off.
                         Timers are sorted by ascending start times, with the
                         first one being the next timer that will start.

  Recording directories = yes
                         Turns displaying the Recordings menu as a hierarchical
                         directory structure on or off.

  EPG:

  EPG scan timeout = 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.

  EPG bugfix level = 2   Some tv stations transmit weirdly formatted EPG data.
                         VDR attempts to fix these bugs up to the given level:
                         0 = no EPG fixing
                         1 = basic fixing of text location (Title, Episode and
                             Extended Description)
                         2 = removal of excess whitespace and hyphens, mapping of
                             wrongly used characters
                         Default is '2'.
                         Note that after changing the setting of this parameter
                         any EPG data that has already been received will remain
                         in its existing format - only newly received data will
                         be fixed accordingly. Restart VDR if you want to make sure
                         all data is fixed.

  Set system time = no   Defines whether the system time will be set according to
                         the time received from the DVB data stream.
                         Note that this works only if VDR is running under a user
                         id that has permisson to set the system time. You also
                         need to set the option "Use time from transponder" to a
                         channel that you trust to transmit a reliable time base
                         (not all channels seem to have access to a correct time
                         base...).

  Use time from transponder = 0
                         The frequency of the transponder that shall be used to
                         set the system time. The Setup menu will offer the full
                         list of channels, even if several of them are on the
                         same transponder. Also, when selecting a channel, saving
                         the Setup and opening the Setup menu again, there may be
                         a different channel listed here, since the first one
                         in 'channels.conf' that is on the given transponder will
                         be taken. Note that in order to set the system time from
                         the transponder data the option "Set system time" must also
                         be enabled.

  DVB:

  Primary DVB interface = 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.

  Video format = 4:3     The video format (or aspect ratio) of the tv set in use
                         (4:3 or 16:9).

  LNB:

  SLOF               = 11700  The switching frequency (in MHz) between low and
                              high LOF
  Low LNB frequency  =  9750  The LNB's low and high local oscillator frequencies
  High LNB frequency = 10600  (in MHz, these have no meaning for DVB-C receivers)

  Use DiSEqC = no        Generally turns DiSEqC support on or off.

  CICAM:

  CICAM DVBn m           Defines the "Conditional Access" capabilities of the DVB
                         card 'n'. Each DVB card can provide up to two CICAM
                         methods ('m' = [1, 2]).

                         In the 'setup.conf' file the value consists of the card
                         number, followed by a list of decryption method values
                         (defined in 'ca.conf').
                         For instance
                           CaCaps = 3 101 102
                         would define that card number 3 is able to decrypt
                         "Premiere World" and the "ORF".

  Recording:

  Margin at start = 2    Defines how many minutes before the official start time
  Margin at stop = 10    of a broadcast VDR shall start recording, and how long
                         after the official end time it shall stop recording.
                         These margins are added automatically to timers that
                         are created from the EPG data.

  Primary limit = 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.

  Default priority = 50  The default Priority and Lifetime values used when
  Default lifetime = 50  creating a new timer event. A Lifetime value of 99
                         means that this recording will never be deleted
                         automatically.

  Use episode name = yes Repeating timers use the EPG's 'Episode name' information
                         to create recording file names in a hierarchical structure
                         (for instance to gather all episodes of a series in a
                         common subdirectory). This parameter can be used to
                         control this.
                         no  = don't use the 'Episode name'
                         yes = use it (and create subdirectories)

  Mark instant recording = yes
                         Defines whether an "instant recording" (started by
                         pressing the "Red" button in the "VDR" menu) will be
                         marked with a '@' character to make it distinguishable
                         from timer recordings in the "Recordings" menu.

  Name instant recording = TITLE EPISODE
                         Defines how to name an instant recording. If the keywords
                         TITLE and/or EPISODE are present, they will be replaced
                         with the title and episode information from the EPG data
                         at the time of recording (if that data is available).
                         If this parameter is empty, the channel name will be used
                         by default.

  Instant rec. time = 180
                         Defines the duration of an instant recording in minutes.
                         Default is 180 minutes (3 hours). The stop time of an
                         instant recording can be modified at any time by editing
                         the respective timer in the "Timers" menu.

  Record Dolby Digital = yes
                         Turns recording of the Dolby Digital audio channels on
                         or off. This may be useful if you don't have the equipment
                         to replay Dolby Digital audio and want to save disk space.

  Max. video file size = 2000
                         The maximum size of a single recorded video file in MB.
                         The valid range is 100...2000. Default is 2000, but
                         you may want to use smaller values if you are planning
                         on archiving a recording to CD.

  Split edited files = no
                         During the actual editing process VDR writes the result
                         into files that may grow up to MaxVideoFileSize. If you
                         prefer to have each marked sequence stored in a separate
                         file (named 001.vdr, 002.vdr, ...) you can set this
                         option to 'yes'.

  Replay:

  Multi speed mode = no  Defines the function of the "Left" and "Right" keys in
                         replay mode. If set to 'no', one speed will be used, while
                         if set to 'yes' there will be three speeds for fast and slow
                         search, respectively.

  Show replay mode = no  Turns displaying the current replay mode on or off.

  Miscellaneous:

  Min. event timeout = 30
  Min. user inactivity = 120
                         If the command line option '-s' has been set, VDR will
                         automatically shutdown the computer if the next timer
                         event is at least MinEventTimeout minutes in the future,
                         and the user has been inactive for at least
                         MinUserInactivity minutes. Setting MinUserInactivity
                         to 0 disables the automatic shutdown, while still
                         retaining the possibility to manually shutdown the
                         computer.

  SVDRP timeout = 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.

* Executing system commands

  The "VDR" menu option "Commands" allows you to execute any system commands
  defined in the configuration file 'commands.conf' (see vdr(5) for details).
  The "Commands" option will only be present in the "VDR" 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 vdr(5)).

  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').