How do i not display split folders in watch videos?

[geekyhawkes]

Hi;

I have all of my ripped dvd .iso files on my second harddrive within my myth box mounted at /media/media/videos.

I have a load of .mp4 / divx / mpeg / vob etc files on my nas that i want to view in myth. I have added both locations under the general media libary settings and have access to both folders. (Mounted under /media/nas/videos)

The part i would like to change is the folder icons displayed under media libary-watch videos.

I would like to have all of my collection displayed in one screen without having to navigate between the nas folder and the local media folder.

Is there an easy way i can achieve this in myth? (Is a symblink enough?).

Thanks.

[geekyhawkes]

Is this possible? I am also going to have to install another internal HDD as my media drive is full and it would spoil the Myth interface if i have to pick which hdd to view from via these folders rather than browse all my videos / ripped dvds.

[newlinux]

at worst you could probably symlink each indivual file under your main media directory and scan that one only.

[geekyhawkes]

Wow thats no small job! Im just about to add a 1TB drive having already filled my 500gb drive with about half my dvds!!

Can i not just use a symlink directory 2 directory?

Or is there some kind of batch command from bash i could use to create a bunch of symlinks?

[newlinux]

Wow thats no small job! Im just about to add a 1TB drive having already filled my 500gb drive with about half my dvds!!

Can i not just use a symlink directory 2 directory?

Or is there some kind of batch command from bash i could use to create a bunch of symlinks?
If you symlink directory to directory, I think you'd end up with the same problem (because you'd have a subdirectory in your mythvideo directory). Don't know of any existing scripts, but someone with real shell scripting skills (unfortunately that's not me) could probably do it pretty quick. I could probably do something, but it would take me a while to write it up.

[geekyhawkes]

I guess i will have to have to symlink all of my files and see if that works. Im guessing i could select all the files and choose create link from the gui? See how it works!

[SiHa]

It's surprisingly easy to script this.

I've been fiddling around for a while and came up with this one-liner:

ls /media/*.mpg /media/*.avi | while read i ; do ln -s "$i" /var/lib/mythtv/videos; done

This will list all .mpg and .avi files in /media, and create symlinks with the same name in /var/lib/mythtv/videos.

If you wanted to save this as a script:
#!/bin/bash
ls /media/*.mpg /media/*.avi | while read i
do
ln -s "$i" /var/lib/mythtv/videos
done


The quotes in the ln command are so that it will work with long filenames containing spaces. If you regularly add videos, you could run this as a cron job. Each time it runs, if the symlink already exists, it will just be skipped.

Edit: I've been thinking, and this could probably be simplified by turning it on it's head:
ln -s "`ls /media/*.mpg /media/*.avi`" /var/lib/mythtv/videos

Really it would be neater if each time the script ran it removed all symlinks and re-created them all, so it would update if you removed videos.

rm "`ls -F /var/lib/mythtv/videos/|grep @|cut -f 1 -d \@`"

Will (I think) remove all symlinks from the /var/lib/mythtv/videos directory. ls -F categorises all entries, and symlinks are marked with an @ grep only returns those lines with the '@', and the cut command removes this from the grep results so that 'rm' can remove the file. Note the " ` " is not a " ' ".

Edit: The double quotes should allow for spaces in the filenames - not tested.

Warning This last bit works after minimal testing on my system, but your are strongly advised to test this some more if you intend to use in anger. I don't want to be responsible for you losing all your videos!

Hope this is of some help.

Simon

[geekyhawkes]

Perfect cheers simon! This seems to be just what i am after, i will give it a whirl this weekend!

Great work thanks!

[tgm4883]

Perfect cheers simon! This seems to be just what i am after, i will give it a whirl this weekend!

Great work thanks!

I think you have your video directories set up incorrectly. It sounds like you have /media/nas/videos set up and two directories in that? What do you have your media directory set up as in MythTV? For multiple directories, you should set it up as

/path/to/dir/1;/path/to/dir/2

[geekyhawkes]

I had setup multiple directories in myth but i didnt want to navigate around to view everything i have saved around my various folders etc.

Creating symblinks has solved the problem for me as i just drop symlinks into the myth video directory and then it doesnt matter where the file "really" lives.

[tgm4883]

IIRC, If you setup multiple folders in Myth (not multiple folders under the directory you told Myth), then you don't even need to symlink them. It just shows up in your library

[geekyhawkes]

Ok Thanks.