Record one channel; watch another

[Fistboy]

Hi,

Is it possible with SageTV to record one channel while watching another?

I guess I'd need two Tuner cards for this, which is fine - but can the software handle it?

Thanks,
Fistie

[edmc]

Watching a pre-recorded program while recording another only requires a single Tuner/Capture card.

Watching a show "live" while recording another (really the same thing as recording two shows at the same time as far as SageTV is concerned) certainly requires two Tuner/Capture cards. That said, it is one of the very best features of SageTV that this is even possible. I use this all the time! What you will see in your "Guide" is TWO SageTV lines (each SageTV line showing what each Tuner/Capture card is currently tuned to). What's really fun to watch happen is when you have two back-to-back shows on different channels set to record. SageTV will likely decide to use 1 tuner for both. Next, select either one modify it's Start/End time such that the two recordings overlap. Viola, SageTV will move one of the 2 programs to the other Tuner!

[Fistboy]

Cool. I look forward to trying it.

Now I just need to find out if the Hauppauge WinTV Nova-TV PCI is supportded..

Cheers,
Fistie

[Narflex]

Sorry, not at this time.

But if you're a developer its possible to write support for any card that records in MPEG2 by using the network encoder feature of SageTV.

[Fistboy]

Thanks Jeffrey.

I am happy to investigate writing a module to support the card - is there any API documentation for the 'network encoder feature'?

Cheers,
Fistie

[Narflex]

Check out the developer section on our website. And here's some more information beyond that (any questions, email me):

There's now the ability to run encoders remotely using TCP/IP.

Essentially, you can configure SageTV so that all of the commands it would issue to a local capture card are sent across a TCP/IP socket to another machine.
Currently there's a restriction that the video drives must be mapped to the same letters on both machines. 
Of course, this is also highly useful running TCP/IP on the same machine, to implement encoders that aren't currently supported by Sage.

To start experimenting, try this:
1. Modify your Sage.properties file so encoding_host is a machine:port
mmc/encoders/-1698963980/encoding_host=localhost:6969
2. Select that capture card in the SetupWizard
3. If you setup a server that listens on port 6969, you'll see commands being sent to it (see below for how to run SageRecorder in that server mode, it prints out debug data on the protocol)

The protocol works by the client first sending the password encrypted with MD5 as the first line. 
If you dont set a password in the properties file, it'll just send \r\n
Next it should accept one command, send the response and then close the connection down.

Here's the commands:
client send: STOP\r\n
server responds: OK\r\n
This should stop any encoding on that encoding server

client send: START sourceName|channel|durationMilliseconds|filename|encodingQuality\r\n
server responds: OK\r\n
This starts a recording according to the specified parameters

client send: GET_SIZE\r\n
server responds: size in bytes\r\n
This returns the amount of data that has been written to the last started capture file in bytes, \r\n terminated. 

client send: NOOP\r\n
server responds: OK\r\n
This is a 'ping' used by SageTV to detect if an encoder is alive or not, SageTV will actively add/remove them as they go online/offline

SageRecorder 1.3.2 implements this EncodingServer interface. 
If you set the encoding_server property to be a number, then it'll open up a port on that address as an encoding server.