Media And Microcode : DVR

Microcode: Cleaning up DVR with Get-RecordedTV

JamesBrundage — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 03:51:01 GMT

The first simple way we can approach cleaning up DVR is by making the assertion that shows you don't want as much you won't record as often. Suppose you record a movie once, or a game, or the pilot of a really bad TV show. After a month or so it's still on your hard drive, taking up space but for some reason avoiding the Windows Media Center's cleanup bots.

Now that we've got a fairly mature Get-RecordedTV, we can use it to delete a certain number of files from your collection until we reach a desired amount of freed space.

function Remove-DVRBySeries($cleanupSize = 1gb, $episodeCount = 1)
{
    $shows = @()
    # Pipe the results of Get-RecordedTV so that we can see progress
    $perc = 0

    Get-RecordedTV | Foreach-Object {
        $perc+=5
        if ($perc -gt 100) { $perc = 0 }
        Write-Progress "Getting DVR Metadata" "$($_.Series) - $($_.Episode) - $($_.Channel)" -perc $perc
        $shows+=$_
    }
    $showsbySeries = $shows | Group-Object Series
    $allSeries = $showsBySeries |
      Where-Object { $_.Count -le $episodeCount} |
      Sort-Object Count
    foreach ($series in $allSeries)
    {
        foreach ($e in $series.Group) {
            $response =Read-Host "Delete $($e.Series) - $($e.Episode) (Yes/No)"
            if ($response -ilike "*Yes*") {
                if ($e.File) {
                    Write-Progress "Deleting $($e.Series) - $($e.Episode)" `
                       "$($e.Size / 1mb) megabytes saved - $(($cleanupSize - $e.Size)/1mb) remaining"
                    Remove-Item $e.File
                    $cleanupSize-=$e.Size
                } else {
                    Write-Error "$($e.Series) - $($e.Episode) File Not Found"
                }
            } else {
                Write-Progress "Skipping show by user request" "$($e.Series) - $($e.Episode)"
            }
            if ($cleanupSize -le 0) { return }
        }
    }
}

This script will remove shows with one or fewer episodes until it has saved 1gb of space. If you want to make it save more, use the cleanupSize parameter. If you want it to check series with more episodes, use the -episodeCount parameter. It will ask to make sure you want to delete each show, and will stop once it has saved you enough space.

The script above uses a lot of simple PowerShell benefits. Let's take a closer look at each:

CleanupSize uses 1gb as its default. In PowerShell, you can use gb,mb,and kb as numbers, e.g. 1gb, 10mb, or 640kb
By piping Get-RecordedTV to ForEach-Object, I am able to store the results of Get-RecordedTV as they come in, instead of waiting for all of them to be completed, I can use Write-Progress to display each show as it comes in. Since I don't know how long it will take, I can just wrap the progress bar around whenever I get to 100%.
Group-Object will group all of the shows by the value of the series property
Sort-Object is used to sort the results of Group-Object by the number of items in each group (in our case, the number of recorded episodes of a series)
Write-Progress is used again to update the user as files are deleted or skipped
Read-Host displays a prompt and asks for user input
-ilike is a case insentive like, so $response -ilike will match "Yes", "yeS', or "Yes Sir", sadly, the logic will also catch "Yes, I mean No!"
Write-Error politely informs me that a file cannot be deleted, but does not stop execution of the script (this the important difference between Write-Error and throw)

That's it. We've brought one train of thought to an end. With this script, I was able to quickly and easily cleanup almost 40gb of shows that I wasn't watching. I hope it helps you clean up your hard drive, and I hope that explaining how to get here has increased your understanding of PowerShell scripting and problem solving.

Hope this helps,

James

Microcode: Getting DVR MetaData with Search-WindowsDesktop

JamesBrundage — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 00:35:00 GMT

In the previous post, i explained that I was trying to find a way to get at the information about my TV shows, and introduced you to some of the thought process that went into finding out information about my DVR. I then solved the most important portion of my DVR problem (extracting out the metadata) in a way that was flexible enough to apply to be used for other potential projects, like Getting Photo Metadata or Getting Contact Metadata.

Here's the Search-WindowsDesktop function again:

function Search-WindowsDesktop($fields, $filter)
{
    $connection = New-Object -comObject "ADODB.Connection"
    $recordSet = New-Object -comObject "ADODB.RecordSet"

    $null = $connection.Open("Provider=Search.CollatorDSO;Extended Properties='Application=Windows';") > $null

    $ofs = ","
    $query = "SELECT $fields"
    $query += " FROM SYSTEMINDEX $filter"
    $null = $recordSet.Open($query, $connection)

    if ($recordSet.EOF) { return }
    $recordSet.MoveFirst()

    while (-not $recordSet.EOF) {
        $result = New-Object Object
        foreach ($field in $fields) {
            $result | Add-Member NoteProperty $field $recordSet.Fields.Item($field).Value
        }
        $result
        $recordSet.MoveNext()
    }

    $null = $recordSet.Close()
    $null = $connection.Close()

    $connection = $null
    $recordSet = $null
}

I also introduced the way I think solve problems by looking at the smaller problems they contained. My starting point was that I was trying to prune my Windows Media Center dvrms files. I could have gone about getting rid of Windows Media Center files in a less elegant way, but I would have regretted it. For instance, I could have pruned the files just on size, but I would have Lost Lost. But going down the path of getting metadata lets me do more related tasks.

I strongly believe that whenever problem solving, it is key to examine not just the problems that you are working with, but to look at the related problems. The root problem in this case was that dvrms files are my appetite for video on demand are both large enough to flood my disk. If I pruned my collection on size, not only would I have lost Lost, but I would only have the option of losing the files forever. By getting the DVR metadata, I open up the door to a number of more promising paths:

I can back up certain shows to other hard drives
If I can find a way to remove commercials

I can burn a DVD of the files

If I can find the right API,

I can convert the files to another file format

Getting the metadata solves the problem in a better and more flexible way than does chopping by file size. Researching it also exposed me to other cool things that I can do, and give me a reference to use while creating my DVR Metadata script. Using PowerShell, I tried running queries one by one for each of the properties on the Recorded TV reference to discover which ones work and determined if the return values were helpful.

Here's the result of my efforts:

function Get-RecordedTV() {
Search-WindowsDesktop 'System.Title',
    'System.RecordedTV.EpisodeName',
    'System.RecordedTV.ChannelNumber',
    'System.RecordedTV.StationName',
    'System.RecordedTV.IsRepeatBroadcast',
    'System.RecordedTV.StationCallsign',
    'System.RecordedTV.ProgramDescription',
    'System.RecordedTV.IsSAP',
    'System.RecordedTV.IsHDContent',
    'System.RecordedTV.RecordingTime',
    'System.Video.FrameHeight',
    'System.Video.FrameWidth',
    'System.Video.EncodingBitrate',
    'System.Media.DateEncoded',
    'System.ParentalRating',
    'System.Size',
    'System.ItemURL',
    'System.RecordedTV.RecordingTime' "WHERE System.RecordedTV.ChannelNumber IS NOT NULL"
}

I know it really doesn't look like it, but that can be written as a one-liner. By using an existing system and writing a generic function, I was able to write this Get-RecordedTV function simply by providing the data I needed to my Search-WindowsDesktop function.

Since the Search-WindowsDesktop function returns objects with property names, it is possible to use a number of built-in PowerShell commands to help you look through the data.

Here are the Cmdlets you can use to explore objects:

Group-Object	Creates groups of objects on a type or expression
Select-Object	Selects properties from an object or make new ones on the fly
Sort-Object	Sort a list of objects by a property
Where-Object (or ?)	Filters the objects by an expresson
Foreach-Object (or %)	Performs an action on each of the input objects

One quick thing I can see this way is what TV station I watch the most:

Get-RecordedTV | Group-Object 'System.RecordedTV.StationCallSign' | Sort Count -Descending

Another thing I can do with a simple change is group by Parental Rating instead

Get-RecordedTV | Group-Object 'System.ParentalRating' | Sort Count -Descending

And of course, I can sort on the size and the time recorded:

Get-RecordedTV | sort 'System.RecordedTV.RecordingTime' -descending

Get-RecordedTV | sort 'System.Size' -descending

Now I have the potential to build a much more flexible TV pruning solution. In a future post, I'll show how you can resolve the ItemURL to a real file and, finally, how to prune the files you don't want by any criteria you'd like.

Hope this helps,

James Brundage

Microcode: Windows PowerShell, Windows Desktop Search & Problem Solving

JamesBrundage — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 23:16:00 GMT

In the pursuit of my passion of media (specifically, trying to prune my DVR collection in a more flexible way than Windows Media Center), I started getting curious about how I could get the same kind of data that Windows Explorer has about some RecordedTV. Since I could find it using the Search dialog in Windows, I thought that Windows Desktop Search should have some way to get at it as well. After a number of searches, I ran across this little snippet from Greg Stemp's "Hey, Scripting Guy!" column. It walks through how to extract out the DateTaken information from a JPEG. This article provides valuable code snippets from VBScript that I used to create a Windows PowerShell function (Search-WindowsDesktop). The article also contained a small link to a reference of almost every special query field that Windows Desktop Search provides.

That reference is the backbone of a number of scripts that I will post about here, but, in the interests of keeping it simple, I will post the final scripts in a later post. It's also an example of how I go about solving problems. When faced with a problem, my passion for programming partitions the problem. I break each problem into a smaller set of individual problems with independent solutions. This has a number of side-effects:

Increases the possibility that I might have a or know about a solution to a problem similar to the smaller problem
Forces the mind to think of independent solutions to parts, which helps you build a number of reusable components instead of one throw away script
Allows me to search for the answers to the unsolved problems more flexibly
Opens the possibility to finding better answers for the independent problems later on, which can improve the flow and performance of the entire system
Exposes me to potential other problems I could solve at reduced cost

In the case above, I broke the original problem into a few problems:

Where can I find RecordedTV Metadata?
- Where can I find the most metadata? Answer: (Windows Desktop Search)
- How do I get at it from scripts?
  - Where do I usually find scripts? (Answer: Technet)
  - Is there a solution here for RecordedTV? (Answer: not that I can find)
  - What other metadata could I look for?
    - Photos (Answer: Seek and Ye Shall Find - Scripting Windows Desktop Search 3.0)
- How can I display the data? (Answer: Tediously, or I can use Windows PowerShell, which will display the properties on the object for free)

Since the example that I have searches for Photo Metadata, which might be fun to script, Instead of making a function that just gets my recorded TV, I'm going to make a function that can query Windows Desktop Search for any field that I want and can come back with data. Then I will write a script to get out my DVR metadata, but I can always build more interesting stuff from this core component later. By building many things that depend on this core script, and ensuring that they all continue to work, I can make a flexible solution that can be extended upon and improved later.

Here's my function to pull data out of Windows Desktop Search:

function Search-WindowsDesktop($fields, $filter)
{
$connection = New-Object -comObject "ADODB.Connection"
$recordSet = New-Object -comObject "ADODB.RecordSet"

$null = $connection.Open("Provider=Search.CollatorDSO;Extended Properties='Application=Windows';") > $null

    $ofs = ","
    $query = "SELECT $fields"
    $query += " FROM SYSTEMINDEX $filter"
    $null = $recordSet.Open($query, $connection)

if ($recordSet.EOF) { return }
$recordSet.MoveFirst()

    while (-not $recordSet.EOF) {
        $result = New-Object Object
        foreach ($field in $fields) {
            $result | Add-Member NoteProperty $field $recordSet.Fields.Item($field).Value
        }
        $result
        $recordSet.MoveNext()
    }

$null = $recordSet.Close()
$null = $connection.Close()

$connection = $null
$recordSet = $null
}

Here's a a few quick samples of using it that I'll expand upon later:

Search-WindowsDesktop "System.Title", "System.RecordedTV.EpisodeName" "WHERE System.RecordedTV.ChannelNumber IS NOT NULL"

Search-WindowsDesktop "System.Contact.FullName" "WHERE System.Contact.FullName IS NOT NULL"

Search-WindowsDesktop "System.Photo.CameraModel", "System.Photo.ProgramModeText", "System.Photo.OrientationText" "WHERE System.Photo.DateTaken IS NOT NULL"

Hope this helps,

James Brundage