Copy+ / Extract+

[reddwarfcrew]

So, I've caved into SkyQ as part of my annual contract re-negotiation.

My current HDD only has BBC recordings on it (music/gigs etc off BBC4 over the years). Does the Extract+ software still work (+Extract - free software that rips free-to-air recordings from a Sky+ hard disk) as I'd like to extract these and add to my Plex server.

The software hasn't been updated in 7 years and was built for XP. Anyone with experiences with Win10?

[seawright]

Copy+ is only used with white Sky+ boxes. I have no experience of +Extract so I'm unable to give a definitive answer but doubt that it would work as there has been so many changes to the Sky+ HD planner database format since this programme was last updated. The most reliable programme has been ExPVR but like +Extract has not been updated for many years. The ExPVR forums are currently down for maintenance but recent posts have complained of difficulty and failures in this area.

If you are a Linux hacker or know of anyone who is you might like to look at https://sourceforge.net/projects/xtvfs/.

It only mounts the disk readonly so will allow files to be copied to another drive but because it doesn't try to access the planner database will show filenames that have no relationship to the title of the programmes they contain.

[christopherw]

I just used ExPVR to copy recordings to a new 2TB drive in my DRX890 (on whatever the latest software is for the box as of posting). It kept on barfing on one particular recording, so I had to exclude that from the copy process and after that it ran flawlessly. New disk is in and all copied recordings accessible.

If you have similar problems, you can identify the culprit from logs. In my case, this was where it fell over:

    <message>-- Error copying video file: '\S25392\STREAM.STR'.</message>
    <exception>System.Data.SQLite.SQLiteException (0x80004005): constraint failed
UNIQUE constraint failed: SHREC_ITEMS.SHREC_LOCATOR, SHREC_ITEMS.EVENT_ID
   at System.Data.Common.DbDataAdapter.UpdatedRowStatusErrors(RowUpdatedEventArgs rowUpdatedEvent, BatchCommandInfo[] batchCommands, Int32 commandCount)
   at System.Data.Common.DbDataAdapter.UpdatedRowStatus(RowUpdatedEventArgs rowUpdatedEvent, BatchCommandInfo[] batchCommands, Int32 commandCount)
   at System.Data.Common.DbDataAdapter.Update(DataRow[] dataRows, DataTableMapping tableMapping)
   at System.Data.Common.DbDataAdapter.UpdateFromDataTable(DataTable dataTable, DataTableMapping tableMapping)
   at System.Data.Common.DbDataAdapter.Update(DataTable dataTable)
   at pHMb.XTV.Planner.TableCollection`1.Save()
   at ExPVR.FormatWizard.Workers.FormatCopyWorker.InsertShrecItem(IGrouping`2 shrec, PlannerDatabase db)
   at ExPVR.FormatWizard.Workers.FormatCopyWorker.BuildPlanner()</exception>
  </LogItem>

The 25392 recording reference will correspond to the ID in the recording Path when you're exploring the Planner in ExPVR. Find it, select all except that and try again.


Interestingly, the recording it was failing to disk-to-disk copy was fine when I individually copied it to my PC as a .ts file (I was able to play and verify as it was a FTA recording). It must have been either some minor planner or ancillary data corruption - I received those SQLite constraint failed errors in ExPVR each time it tried to start copying that file as part of a full disk copy, and from then on all subsequent recordings didn't transfer.

I didn't spend more than a few hours trying to get it to work, it was an unimportant short programme.

I was expecting ExPVR to not work at all given it seems to have had no updates in several years. Happily, despite a warning about an unrecognised Darwin planner version at load (in my case, "Your planner database version (2.132) is not known to ExPVR."), things went fairly smoothly despite that. Get copying while you can I suppose.

Be sure to watch for the email sent by the ph-mb site after your PayPal transaction completes; it has your licence key and a PayPal transaction reference and you need to input both of these when you register the software. However the PayPal reference the site records is not the one displayed to you in your own PayPal account or in your email receipt.