Sage TV: Strange Issues - Help? Pls?

[agover]

Hi All,

Ive been using Sage TV for a little while now, but lately ive been encountering some strange issues which I just cant seem to find solutions for. Im hoping others here maybe have some suggestions for me.

Heres whats happening:

1) I cant seem to get sage to actually cancel a "favourite" from the scheduled recordings list (for example if I want to record a show during its first airing not its second). I can actually delete the recording (and its removed from the schedule) but under 5 minutes later it re-appears in the to be recorded list.

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2) Is there a way to force sage to sort recorded shows? I have a favourite set to record "The Alternative" on VH1C and for some reason Sage just randomly orders the show. (Note: VH1C has a standard description so nothing is different between shows except the times / dates of the recording) It doesnt even set the most recent to the number 1 spot.

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3) Is there a way to set Sages behaviour when it exits viewing a video via stop (or when a show viewing is completed)? Sage keeps kicking me all the way back to the main menu if I hit stop or kicks me to the root video menu if a viewing completes. Is there a way to force sage to simply drop me back where I started? (ie if I just finished watching "The Ramones - I wanna be sedated" simply put the cursor right over the same video I just completed rather than moving me)

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4) Does anyone have a suggestion for a htpc front end other than sage standard. Im having some issues because sage appears to be VERY finicky about mpeg format compliance so much so that a fair number of old videos (im talking music videos here) are causing Sage to crash.

Ive tried to get some assistance from Frey on this, but after a couple of emails back and forth Frey simply didnt bother responding after asking for a short clip that caused the problem. (As I cant replicate the issue the only option I have is to send a 40-80Mb file - after I offered to send it I got no further response)

Since this is the case Ive tried using mediaportal as a front end, but for what ever reason this causes Sage to eventually crash. So im kind of stuck at this point - I have around 550 mpg 1/2 music videos and seeing as this issue seems to crop up randomly in them I would need to convert/remux them all which would take literally days.

Does anyone have a suggestion on a good front end to view pre-recorded stuff (like music videos, exported tivo shows etc) that works well with Sage (ie it doesnt cause it to crash at random intervals)?

Thanks for the help

Adam

[Opus4]

Originally Posted by agover

1) I cant seem to get sage to actually cancel a "favourite" from the scheduled recordings list (for example if I want to record a show during its first airing not its second). I can actually delete the recording (and its removed from the schedule) but under 5 minutes later it re-appears in the to be recorded list.

Favorites don't actually get cancelled unless you mark the episode as Watched or Don't Like, but then it will never record it in the future. You can use a custom STV to set the timeslot for a fav to force it to only record during a specified hour. But, if it is recording the 2nd airing, it may be because there is a conflict with the first recording, so by limiting it to the first airing, you may miss some other show.

2) Is there a way to force sage to sort recorded shows? I have a favourite set to record "The Alternative" on VH1C and for some reason Sage just randomly orders the show. (Note: VH1C has a standard description so nothing is different between shows except the times / dates of the recording) It doesnt even set the most recent to the number 1 spot.

See the SageTV Recordings menu section of the manual, starting on p. 34 for the v2.2 manual. The next page discusses the pop-up Options menu, where you can choose how to sort the recordings. There are other options you can set there too.

3) Is there a way to set Sages behaviour when it exits viewing a video via stop (or when a show viewing is completed)? Sage keeps kicking me all the way back to the main menu if I hit stop or kicks me to the root video menu if a viewing completes. Is there a way to force sage to simply drop me back where I started? (ie if I just finished watching "The Ramones - I wanna be sedated" simply put the cursor right over the same video I just completed rather than moving me)

I usually leave a show before it is completely done by using the Back command to return to where I was when I started playing the show. If the show does end & proceeds to another menu, just use Back twice to return to the menu before the playback screen.

- Andy

[abasu2003]

4) Does anyone have a suggestion for a htpc front end other than sage standard. Im having some issues because sage appears to be VERY finicky about mpeg format compliance so much so that a fair number of old videos (im talking music videos here) are causing Sage to crash.

Ive tried to get some assistance from Frey on this, but after a couple of emails back and forth Frey simply didnt bother responding after asking for a short clip that caused the problem. (As I cant replicate the issue the only option I have is to send a 40-80Mb file - after I offered to send it I got no further response)

I don't know how open you are to trying custom STV's but Cayar's (and maybe others) gives you an option to use an external media player for imported videos. I personally use mplayer, which seems to work with just about everything. However, with this particular solution, I should warn you that it seems like it always puts you back to the main menu after you stop. just a thought.


And you could try using a video editor like VideoRedo to send the first part of a file. Seems like that part would also give you an error, if the error comes up as soon as you load the mpg

[agover]

Originally Posted by Opus4

Favorites don't actually get cancelled unless you mark the episode as Watched or Don't Like, but then it will never record it in the future. You can use a custom STV to set the timeslot for a fav to force it to only record during a specified hour. But, if it is recording the 2nd airing, it may be because there is a conflict with the first recording, so by limiting it to the first airing, you may miss some other show.

Actually I keep hitting this in cases where I need to reschedule something. Like I realize a movie came up in the spot that the original favourite would be recorded - alternately I find my DTV reciever is pretty crappy such that I dont like leaving it running all the time, so sometimes I want to move the recording to a point when I can simply record in a block.

See the SageTV Recordings menu section of the manual, starting on p. 34 for the v2.2 manual. The next page discusses the pop-up Options menu, where you can choose how to sort the recordings. There are other options you can set there too.

Ill check that out. Thx.

I usually leave a show before it is completely done by using the Back command to return to where I was when I started playing the show. If the show does end & proceeds to another menu, just use Back twice to return to the menu before the playback screen.

I usually try to do this also. The issue is that I tend to like playing music videos which are very short (2-5 minutes normally), because of the issue im having with Sage crashing (see point 4) I cant use playlists with them but I want to be able to play a number of them back to back. Sometimes (like everyone else) I get distracted and dont manage to catch it before the end.

In many ways sage is really well done, but for other things it has such strange design choices (like kicking you all the way out to main when hitting stop). I will concede that other pvr software have similiar quirks though, like re-ordering channels so your first recordable channel was #1.

I really hope that frey release studio so people can start working around some of the issues. Its great that folks like cayer have release stv's but seeing as so few people have studio it is very limiting.

Thanks for the info none the less.

Happy Easter.

Adam

[agover]

Originally Posted by abasu2003

I don't know how open you are to trying custom STV's but Cayar's (and maybe others) gives you an option to use an external media player for imported videos. I personally use mplayer, which seems to work with just about everything. However, with this particular solution, I should warn you that it seems like it always puts you back to the main menu after you stop. just a thought.

I checked out Cayers back in version 2.1, but I havent tried since upgradign to the new version. Ive been having technical difficulties since the upgrade so I havent had a chance (my wiz.bin file got mashed basically).

I was thinking of checking out meedio (again). But my past experience seems to show that Sage gets unstable if you need to flip back and forth. (not to mention meedio is expensive and high maintenance) I am sure that Sage does not play well with mediaportal (which is free and works pretty good for a frontend aside from this).

And you could try using a video editor like VideoRedo to send the first part of a file. Seems like that part would also give you an error, if the error comes up as soon as you load the mpg

I had tried this one. The problem was that videoredo would fix the issues. In fact I used videoredo to fix the first couple of problem files I found

Basically if I remux the videos the problem goes away. Seeing as I didnt generate the originals I dont know how the issue was generated - my best guess is that a badly written mpeg2 editor was used and failed to finalize the mpeg file.

Thanks

Adam

[Opus4]

Originally Posted by agover

Actually I keep hitting this in cases where I need to reschedule something. Like I realize a movie came up in the spot that the original favourite would be recorded

You want to add a manual recording for a movie that you see in the listings? Just do so...

- If it conflicts with another manual recording at the same time, you will see a notice about it.

- Any favorites scheduled for that time will automatically be rescheduled for another airing time, if possible. If it is not possible (perhaps because there are no other airings), there will soon be a conflict icon at the top of the screen & you can deal with conflicts at Schedule Recordings -> Recording Conflicts.

- Andy