How to Create Manual Recording Jobs

Question:


How do I create a Manual Recording Job?


Answer:


Manual Recording jobs are useful for setting things to record whether you have guide data available for a given channel or not.  These types of recording jobs require you to manually specify the channel to be recorded, the time it should start, the duration (in hours:minutes), and the frequency.  The benefit here is that these types of recording jobs do not require any program guide data for them to record content.


Manual Recording jobs can be created from the Schedule or the Guide tabs of the SnapStream WebUI.


How to Create a Manual Recording Job from the Schedule tab of the SnapStream WebUI


  • Sign into the SnapStream WebUI, and click Schedule at the top of the page.
  • Click Create Manual on the left side of the page.
  • Fill out the details of the Recording job that you are creating.
    • Title:  Enter the title of the recording job here.  All recordings made by this job will have this title.
    • Description:  A description of the content of the recording, which will be added to metadata for all recordings made by this job.
    • Recording Frequency:  Once, Weekly, Weekdays, or Daily.  Weekdays start at 4:00 AM.  For example, a recording scheduled for 2 AM on Weekdays will actually record Tuesday through Saturday mornings.
    • Start Date:  The date on which the first recording will occur.  Can be used to schedule a manual recording job for the future.
    • Time:  The time at which each recording will start.
    • Length:  The duration of each recording in hours and minutes.
    • Start & End the Recording:  Use these options to modify the start and end times of the recordings by up to three hours.
    • Channel:  The channel on which the recording will occur.
    • Destination Folder:  The video folder to which the recording will be saved.
    • Max Number of Shows: This setting limits the number of recordings from this job that will be kept in the Library. When this limit is reached, the oldest recording from this job will be deleted when the next recording starts.

      Example: Three recordings of "Aqua Teen Hunger Force" exist on the system and the recording job wants to create another recording. Enterprise TV will delete the oldest recording created by the job to "make room" for the new one.


    • Max Number of Days:  Limits the age of recordings created by this recording job.  Once a show in this recording job reaches this many days old, it will be expired and deleted.
  • Click the Save button.


How to Create a Block Based 24/7 Recording Job from the Schedule tab of the SnapStream WebUI


  • Sign into the SnapStream WebUI, and click Schedule at the top of the page.
  • Click Create 24/7 on the left side of the page.
  • Fill out the details of the Recording job that you are creating.
    • Title: Enter the title of the recording job here. All recordings made by this job will have this title.
    • Block Size: The size of each recording block. Options are 30 minutes, one, two, three, four, six, or eight hours.
    • Exclude Block: This option allows the exclusion of a specific time period from a 24/7 recording every day.
    • Individual Exclude Blocks: Allows the exclusion of blocks from 24/7 recordings on a per-day basis.
    • Channel: The channel on which the recording will occur.
    • Destination Folder: The video folder to which the recording will be saved.
    • Max Number of Shows: For 24/7 recordings, this setting limits the number of recording blocks that will be kept in the library from a recording job. This does not limit the number of recordings that the recording job will generate; it only limits the number of recordings that currently exist on the system. Note that the number of days of recording represented by this option will vary depending on the Block Size. For example, setting this option to 32 with a block size of 3 hours will result in expiration of recordings after four days (24/3= 8 blocks/day; 32/8= 4 days before expiration).
    • Max Number of Days: This setting limits the age of recordings created by this recording job. Once a show in this recording job reaches this many days old, it will be expired and deleted. Note: this option is applied continuously, so that recordings with the Max Number of Days option set will be expired at their start time. For example, for a recording with Max Number of Days set to 3, a recording made at 7 PM on March 24 will be expired at 7 PM on March 27.
  • Click the Save button.


How to Create a Manual Recording Job from the Guide tab of the SnapStream WebUI


Option 1:  This first method works whether you have guide data available for the channel you want to record or not.


  • Sign into the SnapStream WebUI, and click Guide at the top of the page.
  • Right-click the channel name that you want to use for your Manual Recording job, and select Create Manual Job.
    mceclip0.png
  • Fill out the details of the Recording job that you are creating.
    mceclip1.png
  • Click the Create button.


Option 2:  This only works if the channel you are wanting to record does not have guide data available for it ("No Information Available" instead of typical program guide data).  This is probably the quickest way to create a Manual Recording job.


  • Right-click the No Information Available section for the channel that you want to create the manual recording job for, and specify the type of manual recording job that you want to create (Once, Daily, Weekly, Weekdays, 24x7). Note: Record Now will make a Record Once Manual Recording job starting now.
    Fill out the Name/Title of the Recording job, duration (in hours:minutes), and any other fields as necessary.
    NOTE:  Depending on the frequency type that you selected above, more or less fields will be necessary to fill out.
    • Record Now looks like below.
      mceclip2.png
    • Record Once, Record Daily, and Record Weekdays all look like below.
      mceclip4.png
    • Record Weekly looks like below.
      mceclip5.png
    • Record 24x7 looks like below.
      mceclip6.png
    • Block Size: The size of each recording block. Options are 30 minutes, one, two, three, four, six, or eight hours.
  • Click the Create button.


Additional Notes:


Creating a Manual Recording job using Option 2 is the quickest way to create a Manual recording job since our software already knows many of the fields you would normally have to specify manually based on the channel info you right clicked, and the frequency you already selected.  However, this method will not work to create Manual Recording jobs if there is guide data populated for the channel.  In this case, you would need to use one of the other methods to create a Manual Recording job instead.


Applies to Version:


9.0 and above.

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