Leave empty file

Request Type:
NEW FEATURE

Summary of the problem or suggestion:

Currently use Silicon Dust HDHomerun as my DVR, and I have MCEBuddy monitor the path, compress/delete the original recording to save space. However, because I delete the original file, my HDHomerun DVR records it again on next airing.

The feature I would request is to delete the original file, but create an empty file with the same name/extension as the original in its place (or just overwrite the file with nothing). This would trick my DVR into thinking that it does not need to record again.

Came up with a simple solution.

PostCustomCommandPath=C:\Windows\System32\cmd.exe
PostCustomCommandParameters=/c aaa > “%sourcefile%”
PostCustomCommandHangPeriod=1
PostCustomCommandCritical=false
PostCustomCommandUISession=true
PostCustomCommandShowWindow=false
PostCustomCommandExitCodeCheck=false

Edit: Didn’t work. Access Denied. Guessing even at the “PostCustom” stage, the file is still being accessed by MCEBuddy. I can create another empty file with this script, but not overwrite the existing one.

Looks like I may need to get creative. Create a queue file, and after each conversion add the file to the queue, at the start of each new conversion, overwrite the files in the queue.

1 Like

That’s the right way to do it AFAIK. Mcebuddy doesn’t lock the source. That may be some other software (eg antivirus) or a file/directory permission issue.

Folks are using the same process to create stub files for HDHR. See this post for a working example