shalVideo, a TV record programming Application

Overview
Screenshots
Requirements
Channels
Downloads
FAQs
TO DO
About...

Overview

shalVideo is a TV record sheduling program, the goal is that you can just use your computer just like a video recorder.

The program just gives you the abstraction from other tools you MUST have installed, look at the Requirements for details.

shalVideo reads the channels list from a file that you have to write down, or download if there is one for your place. Right now, thanks to JCamGra, you can create the channels file from xawtv config using the xawitv2svch script

Take a look to channels for details.

Screenshots

The main window of programmed recordings

The dialog for creating new / editing existing recordings

Requirements

shalVideo uses the following applications:

MPlayer, the movie player for linux This program is used as the final recorder (mencoder).
atd: The daemon that schedules tasks in the computer

Channels

Here are some channels files. Please send me your channel file (rportales at terra dot com) if there is not in the list and I will put it here:

Spain
- Valladolid
Nederland (thanks to D.F.A. van der Staal)

The Channels file is written in XML, and its format is as follows:

<Document>
	<Channel name="" freq="" />
	...
</Document>

Where for each channel we want to be recognized, we have to include a line with the name and frequence of the channel.

If you have xawtv intalled and configured you can use the xawtv2svch script to generate the channel file from the xawtv configuration. Thanks to JCamGra (Jose Antonio Caminero Granja).

Downloads

These are the current downloads (last release). I'm now working in a .deb release. I hope rpm works -it's build in a Red Hat 9-, if it doesn't, please mail me rportales at terra dot es.

Current version is 1.4-2

All releases are available at the sourceforge page of the project

BUGFIX: in 1.4-2

Important bug in the mplayer command line construction that makes shalvideo crashing when recording and make it unable to record FIXED, Please Update

Note: The release files updated on 29th July 2004 is incorrect, they are updated since 30th July 2004. The wrong files have been deleted from the server and new ones replaced them. Sorry for the inconvenience.

This version is called: SysAdmin Day Release

CHANGES: in 1.4

Do not use this version. Is buggy

Periodicity is now fully configurable, we can choose the days of the week in wich we want to record.
The saving of the queued recordings is in plain text (Human readable) files instead of a binay one.
Using the v4l2 driver in mplayer is enabled. The driver can be selected and is stored in the config file.
The output file of mplayer has now the correct format so the alphabetical order and the date order is the same.
Fixed some header includes were missing so compilation was possible on RedHat but not in Debian, for example.
Fixed that configuration not saved if no config file exists
French Version thanks to Eric Tanguy

BUGFIXES: in 1.3-2

The default methods in source is -i hope- solved, and compile with no problems with gcc 3.--
The programming periodicity 'from monday to friday' does not worked, this is also solved.

CHANGES & NOTES: in 1.3

Advanced options in records, such custom quality, user strings and specific output directory.
Now the configuration is stored in a directory .shalVideo, the old config file can be used but has to be moved from ~/.shalVideorc to ~/.shalVideo/config
Please DELETE all your programmed records before upgradding from 1.2, the Resources are stored in diferent places and the binary file is different, NO COMPATIBILITY at this point

CHANGES: in 1.2

The Mixer settings are fully configurable in a specific dialog
There is a new Menubar in the main window
The new style of recordings is internal (no scripts) and uses real starting time for recording length. This solves some strange behavior if the computer is off when the recording must start

CHANGES: in 1.1

The records can be programmed with periodicity (once, daily, weekly, Mondoy to Fryday)
The mixer puts the line channel mute when the recording starts and unmutes it when finish (take a look to your .shalVideorc file). Thanks to the taztv project for the sources of the mixer
Some bugs in editing records have been fixed

CHANGES:in 1.0

Now we can edit and delete programmed records.

BUGFIXES: in 0.92

The call to atd did not work when the minutes of starting time were less than 10. This is fixed
The freq field of a channel could not contain letters, so channels in freq like E62 could not be used. This is fixed

FAQ

This section is empty, please send me your quiestions by mail and i will updating with the interesting ones.
For any question, suggestion trouble and so on, you can use the shalvideo-users mailing list, you can suscribe by following this link, you can also read the archieves.

TO DO

The TO DO tasks in this project are:

Check that every new record do not overlaps the existing ones
Create a dialog for channels edition
Allow channel autodetection (zapping based)
Multiple recording backend (transcode, xawrecord, mencoder)
A Wizard Setup
More translations

About...

My name is Raul Portales Fernandez, also known as shalafi. I'm spanish and I have made other free projects, perhaps you will find some of them interesting.

Engendrov:A chess machine
shalPhotoAlbum: An HTML photo album generator.

My personal page is www.shalafi.org (in spanish) and you can contact to me using NEAR ALL instant message protocol or by e-mail:

e-mail: rportales AT terra DOT es
Jabber: shalafi@Jabber.org
AIM: raulpor
YMSN: sla_shalafi

For any question, suggestion trouble and so on, you can use the shalvideo-users mailing list, you can suscribe by following this link, you can also read the archieves.