New XMLTV Import Tool

[StephaneM]

Hello Kevin,

Originally Posted by kdorff

epg/epg_import_plugin=xmltv.XMLTVImportPluginzap2it.Zap2ItImportPlugin

.../...

Any thoughts on what I am missing?

You are not missing anything, the setup has not done it's job properly (my fault). The problem is the epg/epg_import_plugin line it should be :

epg/epg_import_plugin=xmltv.XMLTVImportPlugin

So shut down SageTV, and modify this line in the sage.properties file and restart sage and setup your tuners, this time it will work.


Regards,
Stéphane.

[kdorff]

Originally Posted by StephaneM

Hello Kevin,

You are not missing anything, the setup has not done it's job properly (my fault). The problem is the epg/epg_import_plugin line it should be :

epg/epg_import_plugin=xmltv.XMLTVImportPlugin

So shut down SageTV, and modify this line in the sage.properties file and restart sage and setup your tuners, this time it will work.


Regards,
Stéphane.

This solved it. Was there something I could have done differently or is it an issue with the installer or??

Thanks for your great work! Now I can finish evaluating BeyondTV vs SageTV. I am currently kind of leaning toward SageTV, I like the interface better, I think. I need to get Girder setup. Sage does seem to eat a lot of CPU, though -- probably the crappy video card I have in this system. We'll see!

Kevin

[StephaneM]

Hello Kevin,

Originally Posted by kdorff

This solved it. Was there something I could have done differently or is it an issue with the installer or??

It is an issue with the Installer.

I am currently kind of leaning toward SageTV, I like the interface better, I think. I need to get Girder setup.

I like the BTV interface better, but maybe because I am used to it. With SageTV I use the SageMC STV otherwise the native SageTV interface is not nice.

Sage does seem to eat a lot of CPU, though -- probably the crappy video card I have in this system.

It is probably the video decoder. If you have not yet tweaked SageTV, you are using the SageTV MPEG2 decoder and it doesn't support hardware acceleration. So you'll have to use NVIDIA decoder for instance (Personally I use the SnapStream decoder )

Regards,
Stéphane.

[nielm]

Originally Posted by StephaneM

My Importer will always try to re-use an EPGID if it can, based on what it can find on the XMLTV file :

* The program title
* The Episode title
* The Episode number (xmltv_ns system only / onscreen is only used to "decorate" the episode title if found)
* The program description OR air date (user choice)

When the Importer found an episode title or an episode number, it will not use the program description to try to identify the program. However the Importer will always try to "match" the episode title and episode number and in case of inconsistency will correct the situation.

So if there is a program title/episode title matching a previous showing (but no episode number), it will use the same EPGID, even if the description is different?

One other question: does it generate only SHxx/EPxxx ID's, or does it also generate MVxxx IDs for movies?

Note: you can always contact a grabber author for improving the grabber. It is always better to try to have clean XMLTV data

Sadly, the grabber author (a certain nielm!) cannot do much to improve the data: the website I grab from does not give any episode ID, and some of the time does not even give episode names!

[StephaneM]

Originally Posted by nielm

So if there is a program title/episode title matching a previous showing (but no episode number), it will use the same EPGID, even if the description is different?

Yes it will use the same EPGID. It also don't use the description when an ep.title or an ep.number is available.

One other question: does it generate only SHxx/EPxxx ID's, or does it also generate MVxxx IDs for movies?

Yes it generates SH / EP and MV IDs (but only if the category identify the show as a movie), by default program are SH, but if another ep. is found the Importer change the ID to be EP (or it is straight EP if ep.number / ep.title or category identify the show as a series).

Sadly, the grabber author (a certain nielm!) cannot do much to improve the data: the website I grab from does not give any episode ID, and some of the time does not even give episode names!

Have you ever thinked of using two web sites (or more) to create your XMLTV file? This what I do personally to retreive as much infos as I can.

What's great with my Importer is its ability to correct itself, that is : if your data are not great one week, but more precise the week after, the Importer will notice about it and will try to rearrange things (because the Importer is stateful: with it's lookup table and because it reload data previously imported, this ensure continuity).

For instance, I do grab 15 days of data, but only 7 days are well described (ep.title / ep.number etc...), but after 7 days I do not have ep.title but sometimes ep.number and it's working well.

Regards,
Stéphane.

[StephaneM]

What's new :

• Fixed (1.4) : Installer was not editing the sage.properties file properly when a previous XMLTV plugin was installed.
• Fixed (1.4) : In some situation channels were not imported into SageTV.

[something fishy]

I'm interested in trying this, but I have issues with Java 1.5.6. Will this not run under 1.4.2?

Cheers
Eric

[StephaneM]

Hello Eric,

Originally Posted by something fishy

I'm interested in trying this, but I have issues with Java 1.5.6. Will this not run under 1.4.2?

You can try, but I don't think it will work (the conversion in the Importer GUI will work, but SageTV may not load any data).

What kind of issues have you with the JRE 1.5?

Regards,
Stéphane.

[something fishy]

Sage has started intermittently crashing to the desktop (no error message: just one minute playing video, the next I'm looking at the desktop. Most of the time I can't even find either a sage or a java error log). It started when I upgraded Java from 1.4.2 to 1.5.6 and so far rolling back to 1.4.2 seems to have stopped it. This thread:

http://forums.freytechnologies.com/f...ad.php?t=16957

Has the details.

Eric

[StephaneM]

Originally Posted by something fishy

Sage has started intermittently crashing to the desktop (no error message: just one minute playing video, the next I'm looking at the desktop.

Well it is a serious one. I don't have this issue personally.

I have two other issues, when watching Live TV, and selecting a new show to watch SageTV freeze after selecting "Watch Now", or SageTV doesn't close completely.

It seems to me that those issues (and maybe yours) are not Java related, but instead DirectX related. I see in another thread that applying the latest DirectX release can cure the "Watch Now" problem.

That said, I looked at the Java API and it seems that the XML API I use are in the 1.4.2 JRE, so you can try to use the Importer (after all it will do no harm, if it doesn't work, you just uninstall it and it will restore your current plugin => you may have though to check that your sage.properties file does make reference to your old plugin).

Upon testing the Importer :

* Verify that you have XML files in the C:\Program Files\SageTV\SageTV\3rdPartyGuideData folder (and that those files seems to contain your guide data)
* Verify after setting up the tuners the xmltv.log file, this is this file that log entries for the "Java" part of the Importer.

Regards,
Stéphane.

[something fishy]

I was able to get this working perfectly on my development box using Java 1.5.6 (though I had to drop out of the startup wizard to get the importer to fully accept C:\program files\frey technologies as the location for Sage).

But then rolling back to 1.4.2 deleting the source and trying to add it back doesn't work. I'm not seeing any listings entries after the Cable or Satellite / Local broadcast screen.

So I guess it really does need 1.5.6.

Nice program BTW

Cheers
Eric

[Alfiegerner]

Hey Stephane,

Thanks very much for all your help - I've got it running fine now with 1.4

At last I'm getting some re-runs

As a feature request, is there any way you could run your transformer and the xmltv grabber in low-priority?

I've installed this pretty much as the same time as installing 5.0.2 and I'm now getting java OutOfMemoryError errors. I'm not sure if this is due to a problem with this importer or with 5.0.2 in general but I thought I'd ask if anyone else is seeing this.

Thanks again.

[StephaneM]

Originally Posted by something fishy

So I guess it really does need 1.5.6.

Okay, now we are fixed.

So what don't you use your dev. machine to find out why SageTV exit to the desktop when playing a video...

Usually I'm rather good to find the source of a problem, from what I have read on the other thread, it seems to me that the "drop out to desktop" is only seen on machine with a Nvidia graphic card.

For instance "rickgillyon" had this issue on his server (nividia card) and now use a dedicated client with an Intel video chipset and he doesn't suffer from the issue anymore.

I do have an ATI card (on both my dev. computer and my HTPC) and do not suffer from this issue.

I also see that you are all using the nvidia dvd decoder (I am not, I do have deinterlacing issue with the nvidia decoder on some DVB-T channels).

So, I would apply some basic troubleshooting steps, like use a basic SageTV setup :

* Overlay
* no 3D Acceleration
* Sage MPEG Decoder
* no custom STV

Then I would change these parameters one by one, in this order

* 3D Acceleration from Off to On => Test
* Overlay : from Overlay to VMR => Test
* MPEG Decoder : from Sage one to Nvidia One => Test
* Apply custon STV => Test

There is also many many issues with Nvidia graphic driver, I always seen on BTV forums issues appearing with each driver release.

This kind of problem is very difficult to solve, because obviously it's not directly SageTV issue, but rather a combination of factors that will concern only some systems. So SageTV dev. team cannot find a fix until they reproduce the problem (or at least that the problem do generate an evidence on the affected user system through SageTV logs).

For this issue I would bet on the video card driver.

Regards,
Stéphane.

[StephaneM]

Originally Posted by Alfiegerner

As a feature request, is there any way you could run your transformer and the xmltv grabber in low-priority?

The transformation process is already a background process (BelowNormal). However the grabber is launched "as is" and the Importer thread is sleeping until the grabber(s) is(are) done.

I've installed this pretty much as the same time as installing 5.0.2 and I'm now getting java OutOfMemoryError errors. I'm not sure if this is due to a problem with this importer or with 5.0.2 in general but I thought I'd ask if anyone else is seeing this.

The Importer will consume a great amount of memory but with 1GB RAM you'll not notice any adverse effects (however with 512MB the transformation process will take a longer time to complete and your PC will be paging like crazy).

Though I don't think the Importer will cause OutOfMemoryError in SageTV. The GUI part of the Importer is not related to SageTV and will release consumed memory on termination of the transformation process and the Java Classes used to load data into SageTV shouldn't cause any trouble.

I'm now running the Importer for a few week with SageTV 5.0.2 (it runs two times a week at 08:00 in the morning, however my XMLTV file is grabbed separately at 03:00 in the morning on another computers) and all is fine.

Regards,
Stéphane.

[henk99]

Hi,

For some reason i can't get this util installed. It keeps asking about .NET version 1.4. I already have .NET installed but this is version 2. I quits the install because it can't find 1.4. However, i have other software that relies on version 2. So i can't really revert back to a lower version number.
Any ideas?

[StephaneM]

Originally Posted by henk99

For some reason i can't get this util installed. It keeps asking about .NET version 1.4.

Yes, the Importer is build on .Net 1.1

I already have .NET installed but this is version 2. I quits the install because it can't find 1.4. However, i have other software that relies on version 2. So i can't really revert back to a lower version number.

You can install .Net 1.1 and .Net 2 on the same PC without problems (though usually you first install 1.1 then 2, but installing .Net 2 doesn't uninstall .Net 1.1).

This can be confusing, but this way you are always guaranteed that applications written in .Net 1.1 will not get broken because of .Net 2.

Regards,
Stéphane.

[Alfiegerner]

Originally Posted by StephaneM

The Importer will consume a great amount of memory but with 1GB RAM you'll not notice any adverse effects (however with 512MB the transformation process will take a longer time to complete and your PC will be paging like crazy).

Though I don't think the Importer will cause OutOfMemoryError in SageTV. The GUI part of the Importer is not related to SageTV and will release consumed memory on termination of the transformation process and the Java Classes used to load data into SageTV shouldn't cause any trouble.

Thanks again for the reply Stephane. I went back to my old xmltv importer and it worked fine again without sage locking up or giving any OutOFMemory errors. Just to let you know I've got 1 gb ram and I've never got a memory error before with sage. Could having 100+ channels cause the problem?

I'll give your one another go later on tonight to see if I can work out what the problem is /was. I have enabled java logging now so hopefully that might help tracking down the problem (if it its still there).

[Mahoney]

I'm having isues using this plugin, I'm afraid. I have defined 3 lineups (Freeview, Analogue and Sky). Some of the channels exist in all three lineups - I've attached the XML that the plugin generates.

Problem is that whether I select the Freeview or the Analogue lineup in Sage, I get the Analogue channels and numbers.

Any help apreciated.

[Mahoney]

Couple of other suggestions:

1) When adding this importer as a task, allow the user to specify a password so the don't have to be logged in for it to run. I knew wher to go to edit this, others might not.

2) Issue a warning before closing the edit channels box if any work has been done and not persisted. First time through I thought "Update" just saved, so I was clicking it as I went along and when I needed to exit briefly I closed the window, to lose 10 minutes work as some of the channels still had errors.

[StephaneM]

Originally Posted by Alfiegerner

Thanks again for the reply Stephane. I went back to my old xmltv importer and it worked fine again without sage locking up or giving any OutOFMemory errors.

Okay, can you tell me where exactly you see these errors?

Also :

* do you have errors when SageTV is actually loading the guide data (every 24 hours)?
* do you have errors when the Importer is currently converting the data to be loaded?
* other times?

Could having 100+ channels cause the problem?

Maybe I only have 48 channels (15 days listing).

I have enabled java logging now so hopefully that might help tracking down the problem (if it its still there).

If you find any thing in the log, then follow it up to me.

Regards,
Stéphane.