1vdr(1) Video Disk Recorder vdr(1)
2
6 vdr - the Video Disk Recorder
7
9 vdr [options]
10
12 vdr implements a complete digital Set-Top Box and Video Recorder. It
13 can work with signals received from satellites (DVB-S) as well as cable
14 (DVB-C) and terrestrial (DVB-T) signals.
15 At least one DVB card is required to run vdr. With it you can watch
17 live TV while recording one or more other broadcasts from the same
18 transponder. It is also possible to start watching a recorded pro‐
19 gramme before the live broadcast has ended (time shifting). In order to
20 record from different transponders simultaneously two or more DVB cards
21 are necessary. By default vdr can support up to eight DVB cards. The
22 primary DVB card (the one your TV set is connected to) can either be a
23 "full featured" card, which means it contains an MPEG decoder and pro‐
24 vides audio and video signal outputs, or you can use some third party
25 plugin that implements software decoding of the MPEG data and displays
26 it via the system's graphics adapter.
27 vdr uses an On Screen Display (OSD) to display its menus. It can be
29 controlled by the PC keyboard, the "Linux Infrared Remote Control"
30 (LIRC), or any other means of remote control, implemented by a third
31 party plugin.
32 Remote access is possible via the "Simple Video Disk Recorder Protocol"
34 (SVDRP), which can be accessed on port 6419, for instance by telnet.
35
37 -a cmd, --audio=cmd
38 Send Dolby Digital audio to stdin of command cmd.
39 --cachedir=dir
41 Save cache files in dir (default is to save them in the video
42 directory).
43 --chartab=character_table
45 Set the character table to use for strings in the DVB data
46 stream that don't begin with a character table indicator, but
47 don't use the standard default character table (for instance
48 ISO-8859-9).
49 -c dir, --config=dir
51 Read config files from directory dir (default is to read them
52 from /etc/vdr).
53 -d, --daemon
55 Run in daemon mode (implies --no-kbd).
56 -D num, --device=num
58 Use only the given DVB device (num = 0, 1, 2...). There may be
59 several -D options (by default all DVB devices will be used).
60 If -D- is given, no DVB devices will be used at all, independent
61 of any other -D options.
62 --dirnames=path[,name[,enc]]
64 Set the maximum directory path length to path (default is the
65 maximum value allowed on the system). If name is also given, it
66 defines the maximum directory name length (default is the maxi‐
67 mum value allowed on the system). The optional enc can be 0 or
68 1, and controls whether special characters in directory names
69 are encoded as hex values (default: 0). If path or name are
70 left empty (as in ",,1" to only set enc), the defaults apply.
71 The length of the video directory name and that of the actual
72 recording directory is subtracted from path, to make sure the
73 directory path will never become too long.
74 --edit=rec
76 Edit the given recording. rec must be the full path name of an
77 existing recording. The program will return immediately after
78 editing the recording.
79 -E file, --epgfile=file
81 Write the EPG data into the given file (default is epg.data in
82 the cache directory). Use -E- to disable this. If file is a
83 directory, the file epg.data will be created in that directory.
84 --filesize=size
86 Limit video files to size bytes (default is 2000M). This option
87 is only useful in conjunction with --edit, and must precede that
88 option to have an effect. size is an integer number and may be
89 followed by one of the letters K, M, G or T to abbreviate Kilo-,
90 Mega-, Giga- or Terabyte, respectively. The given value is
91 silently limited to the program's internal minimum and maximum
92 values.
93 --genindex=rec
95 Generate the index file for the given recording. rec must be
96 the full path name of an existing recording. The recording must
97 be in TS format. If the recording already has an index file, it
98 will be deleted before creating the new one. The program will
99 return immediately after generating the index. Note that using
100 this option while another instance of VDR is currently replaying
101 the given recording, or if the recording has not been finished
102 yet, may lead to unexpected results.
103 -g, --grab=dir
105 Write images from the SVDRP command GRAB into the given direc‐
106 tory dir. dir must be the full path name of an existing direc‐
107 tory, without any "..", double '/' or symlinks. By default, or
108 if -g- is given, grabbing images to disk is disabled.
109 -h, --help
111 Print a help message and exit.
112 -i instance, --instance=instance
114 Use instance as the id of this VDR instance (default is 0). In
115 an environment where several instances of VDR use the same video
116 directory, this parameter can be set to a positive integer value
117 that's unique for each instance, so that they won't interfere
118 with each other in case they record exactly the same broadcast.
119 The number given here will be part of the directory name in
120 which the recordings will be stored.
121 -l level, --log=level
123 Set logging to level. 0 = no logging, 1 = errors only, 2 = er‐
124 rors and info, 3 = errors, info and debug. The default logging
125 level is 3. If logging should be done to LOG_LOCALn instead of
126 LOG_USER, add '.n' to LEVEL, as in 3.7 (n=0..7).
127 -L dir, --lib=dir
129 Search for plugins in directory dir (default is /usr/lib64/vdr).
130 There can be several -L options with different dir values. Each
131 of them will apply to the -P options following it.
132 --lirc[=path]
134 Use a LIRC remote control device. If path is omitted, vdr uses
135 /var/run/lirc/lircd.
136 --localedir=dir
138 Search for locale files in dir (default is ./locale).
139 -m, --mute
141 Mute audio of the primary DVB device at startup.
142 --no-kbd
144 Don't use the keyboard as an input device.
145 -p port, --port=port
147 Use port for SVDRP. A value of 0 turns off SVDRP. The default
148 SVDRP port is 6419. You need to edit the file svdrphosts.conf
149 in order to enable access to the SVDRP port from hosts other
150 than the localhosts. Note that this option only changes the TCP
151 port used for SVDRP commands. The UDP port for discovering peer
152 VDRs in the same network is always set to 6419 and can't be
153 changed.
154 -P options, --plugin=options
156 Load a plugin, defined by the given options. The first word in
157 options must be the name of an existing vdr plugin, optionally
158 followed by a blank separated list of command line options for
159 that plugin. If options contains any blanks, you need to enclose
160 it in quotes, like for example
161 vdr -P "abc -a -b xyz"
163 which would load a plugin named abc, giving it the command line
165 options -a -b xyz. If you want to load all available plugins
166 (without any particular options) you can use
167 vdr -P "*"
169 (note the quotes around the asterisk to prevent wildcard expan‐
171 sion).
172 -r cmd, --record=cmd
174 Call cmd before and after a recording. See the file INSTALL for
175 more information.
176 --resdir=dir
178 Read resource files from dir (default is to read them from the
179 config directory).
180 --showargs[=dir]
182 Read command line arguments from dir (default is
183 /etc/vdr/conf.d), display them to the console and exit.
184 -s cmd, --shutdown=cmd
186 Call cmd to shutdown the computer. See the file INSTALL for more
187 information.
188 --split
190 Split edited files at the editing marks. This option is only
191 useful in conjunction with --edit, and must precede that option
192 to have an effect.
193 -t tty, --terminal=tty
195 Set the controlling terminal.
196 -u user, --user=user
198 Run as user user in case vdr was started as user 'root'. Start‐
199 ing vdr as 'root' is necessary if the system time shall be set
200 from the transponder data, but for security reasons vdr can
201 switch to a lesser privileged user id during normal operation.
202 user can be a user name or a numerical id.
203 --updindex=rec
205 Update the index file for the given recording. rec must be the
206 full path name of an existing recording. The recording must be
207 in TS format. If the recording already has an index file, it
208 will be checked whether it is complete, and will be updated if
209 it isn't. If there is no index file yet, a new one will be gen‐
210 erated. The program will return immediately after updating the
211 index. Note that using this option while another instance of
212 VDR is currently replaying the given recording, or if the
213 recording has not been finished yet, may lead to unexpected re‐
214 sults.
215 --userdump
217 Allow coredumps if -u is given (only for debugging).
218 --vfat For backwards compatibility (same as --dirnames= 250,40,1).
220 -v dir, --video=dir
222 Use dir as video directory. The default is /var/lib/vdr/video.
223 -V, --version
225 Print version information and exit.
226 -w sec, --watchdog=sec
228 Activate the watchdog timer with a timeout of sec seconds. A
229 value of 0 (default) disables the watchdog.
230 If started without any options, vdr tries to read command line options
232 from files named '*.conf' in the directory /etc/vdr/conf.d. Files are
233 read in alphabetical order. See vdr(5) for details.
234
236 SIGINT, SIGTERM
237 Program exits with status 0.
238 SIGHUP Program exits with status 1. This can be used to force a reload,
240 for example if an update has been installed.
241
243 0 Successful program execution.
244 1 An error has been detected which requires the DVB driver and vdr
246 to be reloaded.
247 2 An non-recoverable error has been detected, vdr has given up.
249
251 channels.conf
252 Channel configuration.
253 timers.conf
255 Timer configuration.
256 setup.conf
258 User definable setup.
259 commands.conf
261 User definable commands (executed from the Commands menu).
262 svdrphosts.conf
264 SVDRP host configuration, defining which hosts or networks are
265 given access to the SVDRP port.
266 marks Contains the editing marks defined for a recording.
268 info Contains a description of the recording.
270 resume Contains the index into the recording where the last replay ses‐
272 sion left off.
273 index Contains the file number, offset and type of each frame of the
275 recording.
276 remote.conf
278 Contains the key assignments for the remote control.
279 keymacros.conf
281 Contains user defined remote control key macros.
282 00001.ts ... 65535.ts
284 The actual data files of a recording.
285 epg.data
287 Contains all current EPG data. Can be used for external process‐
288 ing and will also be read at program startup to have the full
289 EPG data available immediately.
290 donerecs.data
292 Contains the names of recordings that have been done by pattern
293 timers with '@' as the first character of the pattern. File
294 names are appended to this file after a recording has finished,
295 and the entire file is read upon startup of VDR.
296 .update
298 If this file is present in the video directory, its last modifi‐
299 cation time will be used to trigger an update of the list of
300 recordings in the "Recordings" menu.
301
303 vdr(5),svdrpsend(1)
304
306 Written by Klaus Schmidinger, with contributions from many others. See
307 the file CONTRIBUTORS in the vdr source distribution.
308
310 Report bugs to <vdr-bugs@tvdr.de>.
311
313 Copyright © 2021 Klaus Schmidinger.
314 This is free software; see the source for copying conditions. There is
316 NO warranty; not even for MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR
317 PURPOSE.
3182.6 27 Dec 2021 vdr(1)