The problem with this is SageTV sees things differently. If you import a video file – even if its a TV show it knows it hasn’t been recorded from the DVR function and therefore relegates it to “Videos.” So what’s a perfectionist to do?
The answer is actually quite simple although I haven’t found a clear-cut how-to on this so I decided to write one myself to help out other overly-orderly SageTV users like myself.
There is another method that involves a very impressive metadata manager for SageTV called BMT (Batch Metadata Tools). I’ll hold that method for a future how-to for now and focus on this simple method using SageTV Web Server:
The complete how-to after the jump…
Steps to Change a SageTV video file to the Recorded TV section
Note: This is assuming you’ve already imported the video in question into SageTV’s database.Step 1 – Install SageTV Web Server following these instructions
Step 2 – Select “Media Library” and “Search Imported Videos” from the top menu of SageTV Web Server
Step 3 – Search for the video. In this example I searched for “Good Eats”
Below you see the found video file which is a mpg. It currently is listed in videos – and I want it to show up under TV.
Step 4 – Select the video file you wish to convert, then click on “Edit Show Info” with your mouse
Step 5 – Put a checkmark in the “Edit Show Information” box. Don’t worry about the warning – it’s been there for years and I have yet to mess up my SageTV database. To be safe you can always back up your wiz.bin (database) file – I recommend you do this regularly anyway.
Step 6 – Once you’ve selected “edit show information” all fields will be editable. Feel free to fill in any of the blanks like show name, episode name, category, description etc. The key here is to make sure "Auto Generate New EPxxx EPGID” is selected with a checkmark. This is what will move the video to the TV section by tricking SageTV into thinking it was recorded by SageTV.
Step 7 – Now you can click on the “update” button at the bottom-left of the page.
That’s it. You can now open up SageTV and the file will be listed under TV. Note that I left the “Show Name” as “Good Eats – S06E11 – Casserole Over” which really isn’t a great way to name it. It’s best to name the show by the series name “Good Eats” and then name the episode name with… well the episode name. But you get the idea.
The other way is a bit more automated and involves a really nice add-on known as BMT (Batch Metadata Tools). I’ll cover that in a future how-to.
