STV: malore's STV for SageTV V4

[malore]

I plan on doing some updating over the holidays. I'm not sure what new features or more accurate xml you are refering to, camshaft.

[Opus4]

He means the new featuers in the v4.1 STV that is now in XML format... there weren't a lot of STV changes for v4.1 & so anyone could probably just use malore's import (STVi) to add most of the additional features.

- Andy

[WellThen]

Hi Malore,

I just installed your STV, and I'm very happy with the added features. I was really excited when I saw that you had added a filter for HD shows.

Is there any way you could support a filter (even if I had to manually change it in the Properties file, since I see there's a space problem with more filter options on the screen) to only show nonHD recordings? I want to set up a couple of my clients, that are on machines that don't have the umph for HD, to only show the nonHD shows. It will improve the WAF if she doesn't have to watch for the HD icons to know which shows to avoid...

Thanks!

[WellThen]

Thanks, I found the answer. Even though the menu does not allow you to choose "Not HDTV", if you choose HDTV, the correct option "isAiringHDTV" is added to the properties file as RecordingFilter1. By moving that option name to RecordingFilter2 (which appears to be the "not" filter"), I was able to get only non-HD shows to show in SageTV Recordings, as long as I used your version of the Recordings screen.

Thanks again!

[lonndoggie]

Once upon a time, not long ago, I had Comskip working like a champ in Sage 4 using malore's STV file. Due to other issues I ended up having to reinstall Sage, and now comskip doesn't work in playback--however, the .txt files are being produced, and the time bar shows the commercial segments--but sage simply plays on through.

I've tried various different versions of comskip, including Erik's latest. I installed the latest released version of Sage. I also tried installing Malore's STVi file instead of his STV--all to no avail.

Any ideas? We're missing comskip something fierce around here.

Thanks--

LDog

[malore]

Since the time bar is showing the commercial breaks, it sounds to me like you have everything working, so I just suggest that you check to see if either of the methods for commecial skipping works.

Commercial Skipping in the Media player can be done in two ways.

1. While watching a show, open the options menu (yellow button, esc, right click) and change Com. Auto Skip to Enabled.
2. In Setup -> Detailed Setup -> Commands -> Link Infrared/Keystroke to SageTV Command, link the Custom 4 and Custom 5 commands to something. I suggest using "[" and "]" but anything will work and of course you can also use girder or something else to send these commands. Custom 5 skips ahead to the beginning of the next non-commercial segment. Custom 4 skips back to the previous segment, commercial or non-commercial.

[lonndoggie]

Originally Posted by malore

While watching a show, open the options menu (yellow button, esc, right click) and change Com. Auto Skip to Enabled.

Tried that over and over, changing it back and forth to no avail.

Originally Posted by malore

In Setup -> Detailed Setup -> Commands -> Link Infrared/Keystroke to SageTV Command, link the Custom 4 and Custom 5 commands to something. I suggest using "[" and "]" but anything will work...

Well, [ and ] didn't work, but z and x did (when I entered [ and ], they seemed to record as c and o...odd). So at least I can manually zip through. But my wife says "OK when I'm sitting, but not so great when I'm on the treadmill..." Hmmm...she's got a point there.

So...any further ideas why skip-during-playback isn't working?

Thanks!

LDog

[malore]

No, I can't think of why the manual skip would work but the automatic wouldn't. If you haven't already you could try adding the comskip plugin that nielm put together to the default STV. That plugin doesn't add background commercial processing, so if it works you'll need to use something like Jere_Jones' DirMon.

The other option would be to map any unused or infrequently used buttons on your remote to custom4 & 5.

[lonndoggie]

Originally Posted by malore

No, I can't think of why the manual skip would work but the automatic wouldn't. If you haven't already you could try adding the comskip plugin that nielm put together to the default STV. That plugin doesn't add background commercial processing, so if it works you'll need to use something like Jere_Jones' DirMon.

Might give that a go. Very frustrating, as it used to work. Can't imagine why it doesn't now.

Originally Posted by malore

The other option would be to map any unused or infrequently used buttons on your remote to custom4 & 5.

Keyboard here; have mapped to "f" and "b" (forward and backward), and that's a cool thing.

Thanks again Malore--

Lonndog

[malore]

Originally Posted by lonndoggie

Keyboard here; have mapped to "f" and "b" (forward and backward), and that's a cool thing.

Yes, I knew you had keyboard shortcuts working, but having the commercial skips available on a remote should make it usable even when on a treadmill.

[lonndoggie]

Originally Posted by malore

Yes, I knew you had keyboard shortcuts working, but having the commercial skips available on a remote should make it usable even when on a treadmill.

Well, that's another thing...can't get comskip to work at all on Sage Client, where the treadmill is. Yes, I have UNC paths on both the Sage Client box and Sage Server to specify the recordings directory. The client plays the videos just fine, but it doesn't show the commercial breaks in the timeline.

Oh well...

EDIT: Huzzah! Allofasudden, the client computer is skipping commercials--but only on new recordings. I changed it to use UNC paths the other day, and noticed that skipping still didn't work. Now, a day or two later, skipping is working on new files. Apparently something "sticks" about where/how Sage got the older files.

The server PC still won't auto-skip. At least I've got the keyboard handy.

LJB

[EdwardN]

I was using commercial skip fine with 4.0.0 SageTV and client, but I was having other issues... freezing etc, so I upgraded from 4.0.0 to 4.1.3 SageTV, and to comskip 79_30. Comskip and dirmon are doing a great job creating .txt files for the commercial breaks, and they're working properly with the SageTV server system, but the commercial breaks aren't showing up on the SageTV Client. I have the drive set as a local T: (for TV) on the server, and as T: as a network mapped drive on the client machine.

I've tried using the default STV and just the comskip import stvi, and using the malore3.13.stv without any additional stvi and both ways work fine on the server and don't work on the client.

Is there something I'm missing?

[EdwardN]

Update: I completely uninstalled the client, deleted the install directory, reinstalled and just loaded the malore313.stv and still no commercial detection working. It doesn't appear in the timebar. I'm starting to suspect it's SageTV itself that's causing the issue. Maybe I'll try upgrading to the latest beta.

[snipeman]

Originally Posted by EdwardN

Update: I completely uninstalled the client, deleted the install directory, reinstalled and just loaded the malore313.stv and still no commercial detection working. It doesn't appear in the timebar. I'm starting to suspect it's SageTV itself that's causing the issue. Maybe I'll try upgrading to the latest beta.

Try using UNC pathnames like:

\\mediaserver\sage\sagestorage

rather than your T: settings.

Andy

[EdwardN]

Yeah, tried that too... still doesn't work.

Same drive letter worked fine for 2.2.8, 4.0... Maybe it's something else? I'm at a bit of a loss.

[malore]

It sounds like you're doing everything right. The only suggestion I have is, that if you change to using UNC paths, I believe the change only effects new recordings, so older shows still won't work. You can double check this by looking at the file path at the end of the Recording Detail for the show. If you can open the .mpg file using the path shown on the client, then the comskip code should be able to open the .txt file.

[EdwardN]

So it's the comskip program specifically that doesn't work properly with network drivemapping? Because SageTV itself plays back fine with files recorded to T: both as a local drive and a network-mapped drive.

I will wait and see if the next recorded file displays the comskip options correctly with the unc pathing in place. Thanks for the suggestion.

I set a 1/2 hour show to manually record. Guess I'll know if it worked in about 45 mins.

HAH! Fixed it. Didn't have anything to do with SageTV or comskip. Go figure. Since I kept getting the messages about using a larger block size for a dedicated HD for SageTV, I closed the service, moved the files, reformatted T: with 64k blocks, copied the files back to the drive and started up the service.

What I didn't do was unshare the drive and reshare it. <doh!> It still showed the icon as being shared, and I could still map the drive as a network share, but I just didn't have access to any of the files, including the .txt files, from the client machine. Oddly, the video files still played from sagetv client, even though I couldn't manually open them.

In summary: Network mapping works as well as unc. Windows sharing is bugged if you format the drive.

[malore]

Glad you got it working. The SageTV server provides the network sharing/streaming for the video files, so it is not necessary to have file sharing enabled to watch a show, but the comskip code uses standard file access to read the comskip .txt files, so file sharing in necessary to allow that.

[bobrap]

Hope someone can help me with this. What exactly is the difference between STV: malore's STV for SageTV V4 and the default Sage stv3 using malore_import3.13.stvi? Also, what is the latest version of malore's STV?

[malore]

At the time I made them the only difference between the full .stv and the .stvi was that I reordered some of the menus to place my custom menus on the main menu. The full .stv is out dated, so the malore_import3.13.stvi should be used.

I've made some additional changes to my personal version, but I've experienced some lock ups and other problems, so I don't plan on releasing anything new until I figure out the source of the problems.