Is 8MB a huge wiz.bin? How to reduce?

[IVB]

I'm having some CPU/response issues with SageTV. I have an AMD2500/512MB headless SageTVServer, and an AMD3200/512MB SageTVClient.

The wiz.bin is currently 8MB. I could go through the favorites and delete the old shows, but it's so slow that it's a PITA and I don't know if it would actually save much space.

1) Is 8MB big enough where it would cause problems?
2) How would I reduce it?
3) Anything else I can do?

FWIW, I'm still on 2.0.18. It's stable, which leads me to not want to upgrade unless I have to.

[Opus4]

The size of wiz.bin shouldn't be an issue... mine is up to 9.5 MB now, and that probably isn't the biggest one out there.

- Andy

[jptaz]

My Wiz.bin is 11.5MB.

I agree this is probably not the issue.
Have you modified the ScheduleLookAhead option in SageTV.properties to beyond 3 days? If you have change it back to 3 days and I suspect the problem should go away. I know I had to in order to avoid problems.

John

[IVB]

Mine says scheduling_lookahead=259200000 - what increment of time is that?

And, what could have been the issue - my server was getting very non-responsive, both inside Sage & out [i.e., file explorer], but had almost zero CPU usage. Then, the HD up & crashed.

I'll make sure I set that time increment appropriately after I go buy another HD and rebuild my whole dang system. The sad thing is that I own & installed Ghost - never bothered to learn how to actually use it.

[jptaz]

you are using the default value of 3 Days....it is in milliseconds so divide by (24 hours *60 minutes *60 Seconds * 1000 Milliseconds)

[waynedunham]

Dang! Mine's a paltry 5.4mb. I know it's not that small because of my lookahead since mines now at 7 days.
Probably because I wasn't archiving stuff, and I have virtually no MP3's or photo's. (it's a PVR dangit, not a photo album or "radio"!)

I made up a small text file for my own use with the milliseconds conversion so I could easily change the # of days if I wanted/needed to.

 ------- milliseconds.txt --------

milliseconds / 1000 / 3600 = hours
hours * 3600 * 1000 = milliseconds
 
milliseconds / 1000 / 3600 / 24 = days
days * 24 * 3600 * 1000 = milliseconds

Original line from Sage.properties
 "scheduling_lookahead=259200000"

1 day  = 86400000  milliseconds
2 days = 172800000 milliseconds
3 days = 259200000 milliseconds (default value in sage.properties as of Sagev2 and Sagev3)
4 days = 345600000 milliseconds
5 days = 432000000 milliseconds
6 days = 518400000 milliseconds
7 days = 604800000 milliseconds
8 days = 691200000 milliseconds
9 days = 777600000 milliseconds
10 days = 864000000 milliseconds
11 days = 950400000 milliseconds
12 days = 1036800000 milliseconds
13 days = 1123200000 milliseconds
14 days = 1209600000 milliseconds

 ------- end -------

[jptaz]

Performance of the lookahead is related to the number of encoders more than size.

When I had 4 PVR 250s in my computer it was fine with 7 day look ahead, but when I added a PVR 500 Dual tuner bringing the total to 6 it caused problems unless I set it to the default 3 days.

John

[Narflex]

My Wiz.bin file is 20MB. But I've been using it the longest as you'd imagine. I've got stuff in my library that I recorded back in 2002! (so yes, I've been using the same Wiz file for 3 years now)

[blade]

My wiz.bin is only 7mb, but the server is only a celeron-366 with 320mb of ram and I have no problems. So I doubt the size of anyone's wiz.bin is bringing their system to it's knees.

[malore]

For anyone interested in cleaning house on their SageTV database, I figured out how to do it using my Viewing History menu. I've only tested it using V3, but it probably will work with V2 as well. All it takes to get a show removed is to clear it watched status and clear it's don't like status(even if it currently isn't marked don't like). So what I did was to set the display filter to only display shows that are not favorites (maybe also "like" if you want have SageTV remember the shows you hate). Then I cleared the watched status for anything I wanted to get rid of. Next, I added not watched to the display filter and checked that it only display shows I wanted to remove. Latestly, I switched the grouping to a single group and then used the options menu to "clear all watched" and "clear all don't like". If you don't want to wait until the next maintenance cycle, you can exit SageTV and clear the wizard/last_maintenance setting in the sage.properties file. Be sure to back up you wiz.bin file before doing this, just in case you don't like the results. It's easier than it sounds, now my viewing history just has the shows I like.

[that_kid]

Ok I must be doing something wronge because my wiz.bin file is 25 megs.

[malore]

The guide data can make up a large portion of your wiz.bin. For example, my viewing history has 2000 shows, while the guide has 14000. If you have a huge number of channels and have them all enabled then you'll have a lot of guide data.

[dagar]

Originally Posted by that_kid

Ok I must be doing something wronge because my wiz.bin file is 25 megs.

LMAO Nah, you may be winning

[IVB]

Originally Posted by malore

The guide data can make up a large portion of your wiz.bin. For example, my viewing history has 2000 shows, while the guide has 14000. If you have a huge number of channels and have them all enabled then you'll have a lot of guide data.

So....does that mean that if I cut out all the garbage channels that we never watch, I could see some performance improvements? If yes, where would those improvements be?

[that_kid]

Originally Posted by dagar

LMAO Nah, you may be winning

LOL, I do have alot of guide data as I have alot of direct tv channels not to mention the cable channels I have. At least it's good to know everything is as it should be

[mayamaniac]

Yeah, trim your guide data, disable any channels you don't watch, plus it makes the Guide easier to scroll through without useless channels cluttering it up. My Wiz.bin is about 12M, its about a year old. And the only reason it lasted that long was due to my backup procedure, which is described in my signature below. I had to restore Wiz.bin from backup several times due to corruptions.

[dagar]

Mine is ~13mb -- I currently have D* with about 200GB of content and I've been running it for about 1.5 years.