The stock Plex scanners really don’t work well with this kind of data and there really is no feasible manual way of reorganizing everything in order for it to work with Plex.
There have been a few (abandoned) attempts of writing homebrew scanners that can handle the Enigma2 recording format, but all of them seem to suffer from certain bugs and other problems.
So I would like to encourage Plex to add official support for this recordings format in the near future, to the joy of many many European customers.
I don’t get why you need an extra scanner for this, do you want to pull the info out of the extra files, that come with the recording (like the .meta)?
I mean .ts gets recognised, properly matched and treated if you have the right file-names using the online agent.
I push all my .ts enigma2 media to plex and let plex handle it, works fine for me.
Could you please describe your setup and how this works in practice? I’m just getting into my Dreambox and would love to be able to view it’s recordings from Plex.
Do you save the recordings locally on the Dreambox and, if so, how do you point Plex at them? Or do you push the recordings directly to your PMS?
Does Plex recognise the recordings and what do they show up as?
I actually have two Dreamboxes, which save their recordings to an SMB-share on my NAS. This way, both boxes can access recordings, regardless on which one they were recorded.
I have PMS installed on my NAS and pointed it to the directories behind the shares where the dreamboxes save their recordings.
In order for Plex to “understand” the multi-file recording format used by the dreambox (based on Enigma2), something called a “scanner” is needed. The ones that come with Plex out of the box understand normal container files, but are quite useless when it comes to properly parsing the dreambox metadata.
To fix this, some people have written their own parsers in Python, which help Plex retrieve the information from the dreambox files and thus populate its media library in a meaninful way.
I don’t think the stock scanners for movies or tvshows are really cutting it when it comes to .ts files. For one, the recordings usually contain timestamps, station names and whatnot, all of which make their way into the media library after Plex went over the files without understanding the associated .meta and .eit files, resulting in poor matching of the tvdb descriptions and an overall mess instead of a neatly organized media library.
A custom scanner script (see examples here: Scanner for enigma2 .ts files) helps greatly with this, allowing Plex to understand all details of the recording and allowing it to properly organize the media library. Details include whether a recording is one of many series episodes or just a single movie, from which year the movie is and whatnot.
I’m sure one can do without a custom scanner if there only are a few recordings. In my case, I’m looking at over a decade of dreambox recordings, which are literally impossible to use in Plex without the help of a competent scanner script that helps retrieve as much information as possible from the existing recordings.
I was compiling a longer post, but then albert already answered so I cut I short:
I record to the internal HDD of the STB and then automatically push all my recordings to my server’s HDD (and from there to the cloud, but this optional). Plex scans the folders and adds the respective episodes, just as for every other TV show, since my files are provided with the proper file name.
The proper file name comes from the respective setting in the image and/or from SerienRecorder (SR), which is the most epic plugin for recording TV Shows under enigma2. All timers set with SR, end up with recordings named like TV Show - SXXEXX - Episodename.ts. This way, no extra scanner is needed. I also record into a folder structure which is preserved during move of the files and which is recognised by Plex: hdd/records/TV Shows/TV Show/Season XX. Obviously I point Plex to the TV Shows folder and let it scan.
This is where I partly disagree with you @drdebian. I don’t need an extra scanner for the extra data, since Plex simply recognises my file due to folder and file name, just as any other media file not being an enigma2 recording. I don’t know that you are doing differently then I am, but my files are diffenetly picked up and played correctly.
I simply don’t care about the info stored in the extra files, I often even delete them or don’t move them along with the .ts file.
Edit: While looking into the scanner thread I directly see the issue/difference: file naming. If you have a file called 20141023 2258 - Channel 5 HD - Whatever name the show has I understand that Plex doesn’t get what is recorded. I don’t have these problems, because all my recordings are named properly right from the beginning.
Indeed, it all comes down to whether the filenames produced by the recording software follow the syntax needed by Plex to work correctly. In my case, the dreamboxes (in fact all enigma2 based images I know of) use a different syntax for the filenames, one that Plex has a hard time dealing with unless helped by custom scanner script.
It would certainly be possible to rename the files into something more suitable for Plex, but then these renamed files would in turn be rendered useless for the existing dreamboxes, which I still want to be able to use for watching the recordings.
Now while I might be able to come up with a scanner script that fixes the filename issues for Plex, many non-programmer folks might not get as far and end up with a mess of badly named files in their media libraries.
That is not true. As long as you rename all the corresponding files, you don’t lose information. If all files have the same name, the STB detects all information of it.
I used to have a dreambox too, at least in the newnigma2 image there is a setting which gets rid of these ridiculous date tag at the beginning, which is called “short filename” or something similar. You can even manipulate this further in the .py files (forgot which one) to also kill the Channel name. This way, every movie will already end up with the proper title (shows not).
If you don’t use SerienRecorder at least there is the SeriesPlugin, which can rename your recordings automatically AFTER recording to a file name scheme you define.
If you record TVShows/series, I would highly recommend SerienRecorder for the management of it.
Still, I don’t know if the respective plugins are available in a language which is available to you (your former name sounded german at least?).
I’m sure there’s all sorts of plugins I could use to rename stuff into another syntax. It’s just not something I’m comfortable doing, since I like working with stuff that works out of the box. Some images just might not come with those renaming plugins, in which case I would be stuck with a recordings filesystem where some files are named this way and some another, causing major headaches for me. In addition, my recordings go back 10+ years and they all work with every enigma2 based box I had, have or will have in the future.
At the end of the day, to me it seems more logical for Plex to include a proper scanner script that can deal with enigma2-named files instead of me having to rename all my files. After all, this is the whole point of Plex’s flexible and extensible scanner script mechanism, to support as many source libraries as possible, isn’t it? Especially if it’s such a well documented and widely used one as enigma2.
Again, the file name does not decide whether the file will be played or recognised on your dreambox, so your major concern is not worth the headache. The STB will get all its info out of the extra files (like .meta) which are still present with the actual .ts file.
Still, you can proceed as you wish obviously. But if I understand your request correctly, the available scanner that you linked probably does not work (anymore), otherwise you would have a solution at hand. The github of enigma2_dreambox_scanner had it’s last update 4 years ago…
Still I think that enigma2 devices are a niche when compared to the user base of Plex. No one in the US ever heard of enigma2 I guess. And Plex Inc. obviously went down a different path by supporting (HDHR) tuner devices directly. Long story short I would not bet on anything happening officially. So you either hope for a solution in the near future (which I doubt will come), or you become active yourself and prepare your media in a way that plex can recognise and scan it. The decision is all yours, but I guess you have already it made. Alternatively, you can fork the github repo and work on the scanner yourself or find somebody that will do it for you. Unfortunately I have the impression, that the intersection of Plex and enigma2 is not very big, since most people view their stuff directly on their STB and don’t care about fancy stuff like Plex. This is the reason why there is/was no more development for this in the last 4 years. At least the interest in Plex in all the various enigma2 forums is not very big. And dreamplex, the plugin which works in the other direction, is also not actively developed for years.
I decided to go all-in Plex and let the STB only record the stuff, so I also decided to get the file names right from the beginning since I don’t want to waste a lot of energy on it (which I still need to do to some extend nevertheless).
Thanks. SeriesPlugin sounds perfect for my needs. Looks like I can get the Vu+ to record the TV shows directly to a CIFS share, and then rename them so they’re suitable for Plex. Gives me something to play with over the weekend!
Yes this should work. Still, if you tape TV Shows, then SerienRecorder is worth a look. It automates the whole process brilliantly. I am just checking whether if it’s available in English (guess you are not german speaking?). SeriesPlugin should be available in English.
Edit: I have to say, that both plugins are based on a german TV show page (wunschliste.de) and probably also only contains mapping for channels in the DE-AUT-CH region. This means this probably does not work outside of this region I am sorry if I have created wrong expectations
I am sorry if I have created wrong expectations 