SageTV Version 6.0 Public Beta is Available

[ke6guj]

Originally Posted by Kirby

So assuming your 750GB is full, based on those time estimates, I could be looking at 4 hours and 6 hours for my 3TB of data? Ouch!!! I certainly hope its not that bad!

I had around 750GB each of Sage Recordings and imported videos, so around 1.5TB total, and it took about 15 minutes running in normal mode, not as a service. I did not have any music in there. Each file was >100megs, so there wasn't 10,000 mp3's that it had to index.

[austin]

Originally Posted by blade

If QAM was available in linux I'd definetly be looking into purchasing it as well, but unfortunately there is next to no information about it. Until I see others posting with working configs and how they got it going. I'm not taking the chance of throwing $$$ down the drain for nothing.

I too have read the Linux forum and I totally agree with you, which is why I am asking in a thread where Narflex and the other Sage highups lurk, to finally get a conclusive answer. As there is no demo out there, and I don't want to waste 80 bucks. Can someone from within Sage please conclusively answer, does QAM work on Linux V6???

[ke6guj]

Originally Posted by chrisc16

Just remember that for every person that complains about the stock STV being "ugly" and needing replacement, there are probably 5 that are content and happy with the standard look and feel. I agree with jominor above; my wife has never asked for a different front end, and in fact when I showed her SageMC, she told me she didn't like it at all! Personally I also dislike the MCE look and style altogether.

-Chris

+1 on that. I loved the stock UI with some minor tweaks. It took some major work on flachbar's part to get me to move over to MCE for the added features. I'd could have cared less about the appearance of MCE, it was all about the features.

[lobosrul]

Originally Posted by mayamaniac

SageMC doesn't work well on a laptop because there's no BACK button. And it doesn't work well with the MVP because its designed to have a small preview window of active content. If you put active content in the background, the menu items become very hard to read. And I like the menu animation stuffs in the latest SageMC16x9, but sometime it hangs and is very slow, and those animations won't work on the MVP. I don't want to run different UI on my MVP or placeshifter clients, so I use deault STV just to have all of them look the same. So as for SageMC being default UI, this is a definite No.

I had the same issues as you did at first (no back button, I use sage in windowed mode on my pc sometimes), but I assigned a key to go back, and set left as back in the options menu. The animated UI can be turned off.

As excited as I was for the new beta, I dont think I'll be upgrading until theres a new SageMC for it... unless I really want to use the placeshifter with DVD's, or h.264 playback using ffdshow breaks again. Plus I belive I bought Sage 4 so i gotstah pay... i suppose their programmers do have to eat.

One final thought: If version 6 does indeed fix FSE (going from windowed to fullscreen), Id really hope that its also available as a small patch to version 5 users!

[Kirby]

Originally Posted by StephaneM

I've quickly tested V6 now and will post bug report later but right now I can say that :

TS file with H.265 cannot be played (this is a H.264 HDTV French DVB-T broadcast). It seems from the log files that SageTV is expecting MPEG2 and as such failed to render the video portion (It's strange because in the description of the video SageTV has figured out the right content of the Transport Stream : AC3 and H.264 video, but generated an ugly thumbnail)

I just tested the playback of Echostar captured H264 video streams in a MPEG2-TS container, and it failed as well. It did create a proper thumbnail as you can see, but the video is NOT 1080P. Its actually 1440x1080i resolution. Ideas anyone?

*edit* It should be noted, that calling SageTVPlayer.exe with the filename in question (starzhd.mpg), gave me a nice playback of the file. so its something that should work inside the actual sagetv.exe as well right?

[Bohica]

Originally Posted by Opus4

Did you see the tips thread in the beta forum? I posted some info that helps find media in the browsers very quickly.

- Andy

Yeah Andy, I did. I will try to get used to it and look at future work you guys are doing before changing it myself :0

Cheers...

[Mark SS]

I'm likely to be testing a lot with V6 to assist with DVB-S and CI support but don't want to miss out on TV because of this.

Will I run into problems if I have the previous stable version and the latest beta installed to different folders?

[Necro]

Originally Posted by Opus4

Screen shots can be deceiving, especially for the media browsers. The underlying core music support and capabilities of the music browser go a long way past what v5 allowed. Why not check it out to see what all can be done before deciding what it does or does not do? Feedback can help developers, but not when it isn't based on first hand experience.

- Andy

Relax guys, I was asking since I know it's a huge issue and many people were asking for an improvement on it. That and - like many others - I don't have the time to install, uninstall, resetup, etc., since the PC is on my main TV and the wife uses it. Tied into the fact that I'm working way WAY too many hours currently (first job type 'bite the bullet' crap...).

Thats why I asked. Just curious...and while screenshots can be deceiving, I'm asked for more so they'd be less so and I can at least see some of the options/improvements prior to weeks from now when I get a chance to try the upgrade.

[AngelofDeth]

Originally Posted by Kirby

So assuming your 750GB is full, based on those time estimates, I could be looking at 4 hours and 6 hours for my 3TB of data? Ouch!!! I certainly hope its not that bad!

Hmm, I have 500+ Gigs, a little less than half of that being on a network, and it only took 5-10 minutes to be up and running...

[rickgillyon]

Originally Posted by Mark SS

Will I run into problems if I have the previous stable version and the latest beta installed to different folders?

You won't be able to have two instances running. Keep stable and test versions in separate folders and just rename the folders depending on which you want to use. Only test when you're not recording!

[rickgillyon]

Originally Posted by Necro

That and - like many others - I don't have the time to install, uninstall, resetup, etc., since the PC is on my main TV and the wife uses it.

I would estimate half hour for setup, then 30 seconds to revert. Then trying the new version takes 30 seconds to rename folders again (you may need to stop the service in-between if you use it). It's that easy. During the course of testing I would sometimes be switching between stable and test versions 10 times a day, no biggie.

And not many people work the hours that I do...

[PSUAviator]

Am I missing something? How do I update the extender interface? I notice that the light on the extender now flashes when I use the remote, and there are a few added menu options...but the interface isn't as changed as the PC-interface is.

[polen]

Minor Features
1. The network adapter that the media extender server binds to can now be specified in the properties file

How do I set this? Whats the line I need to add and what file to add it to? Will this fix my problem with a Multi-homed server? The MVP tries to connect to the wrong IP.

-Polen

[Mike]

2. Media Extender DVD playback with DVD menus and 5.1 audio for hard disk based DVDs

I was under the impression that the extender only had stereo outputs. Could someone educate me on this? Also if 5.1 can be passed, does that mean that a digital output could be used for music also?

Thanks,
mbrew

[ke6guj]

Originally Posted by Mike

I was under the impression that the extender only had stereo outputs. Could someone educate me on this? Also if 5.1 can be passed, does that mean that a digital output could be used for music also?

Thanks,
mbrew

The newer MVP extenders have digital out now.

And I remember a mod that could be done to include a SPDIF output on the older MVPs. I don't know if that will work in Sage though.

[Mark SS]

Originally Posted by rickgillyon

You won't be able to have two instances running. Keep stable and test versions in separate folders and just rename the folders depending on which you want to use. Only test when you're not recording!

That was the plan, unfortunately it looks like I'll have to re-register the correct license key each time I fire up a different version. Can't see anyway around that at the moment.

[Opus4]

Originally Posted by Necro

Just curious...and while screenshots can be deceiving, I'm asked for more so they'd be less so and I can at least see some of the options/improvements prior to weeks from now when I get a chance to try the upgrade.

The v6 manual (see my sig lines or the new manual thread to get just the manual outside the installer) tries to give an overview of the media browsers w/o going into 25 pages explaining every last possible detail. You might want to give that a shot for more info. I toned down the screen shot count there, though, because it keeps pushing up the size of the PDF.

Originally Posted by PSUAviator

Am I missing something? How do I update the extender interface? I notice that the light on the extender now flashes when I use the remote, and there are a few added menu options...but the interface isn't as changed as the PC-interface is.

You've unplugged it & then plugged it back in? The Extender may not revert back to the default STV after an upgrade, so all you have to do is go to Detailed Setup -> Advanced & choose the default STV. It is probably still using the custom STV you set it to.

- Andy

[dvd_maniac]

I have two questions on the new beta and h.264 support.

1. Is it possible to compress recordings into any format ffmpeg can compress to? I would like it if I can compress to h.264.

2. Can the MVP play these files with the Built-in Transcoding?
If so, how well does it work? My mp4 files are AVC and usually around 600kbps if that makes a difference.

[polen]

Originally Posted by polen

How do I set this? Whats the line I need to add and what file to add it to? Will this fix my problem with a Multi-homed server? The MVP tries to connect to the wrong IP.

-Polen

I found this line in sage.properties

miniserver/forced_server_ip=192.168.0.5

Is this it? I set it to my servers IP and the Mini still grabs the other IP of the server.

===from debug log===

Tue 10/3 16:43:11.515 Server got broadcast packet: java.net.DatagramPacket@10e58a3
Tue 10/3 16:43:11.787 Server sent back mini discovery data:java.net.DatagramPacket@10e58a3to /192.168.0.55 3072
Tue 10/3 16:43:11.812 MiniUI got connection from Socket[addr=/192.168.0.55,port=3082,localport=31099]
Tue 10/3 16:43:11.813 MiniUI is adding to its map:000dfe0b122b
Tue 10/3 16:43:11.813 Creating new UI for client:000dfe0b122b
Tue 10/3 16:43:11.814 Creating-2 new UI for client:000dfe0b122b UIManager:localhost@@000dfe0b122b-dd422e
Tue 10/3 16:43:12.087 MiniUI established for 000dfe0b122b
Tue 10/3 16:43:12.510 MiniClient GFX_TEXTMODE=null
Tue 10/3 16:43:12.511 MiniClient GFX_BLENDMODE=null
Tue 10/3 16:43:12.512 MiniClient GFX_DRAWMODE=null
Tue 10/3 16:43:12.512 MiniClient GFX_BITMAP_FORMAT=null
Tue 10/3 16:43:12.513 MiniClient GFX_SCALING=null
Tue 10/3 16:43:12.514 MiniClient GFX_OFFLINE_IMAGE_CACHE=null
Tue 10/3 16:43:12.514 MiniClient GFX_SUPPORTED_ASPECTS=null
Tue 10/3 16:43:12.515 MiniClient GFX_ASPECT=null
Tue 10/3 16:43:12.516 MiniClient GFX_SUPPORTED_RESOLUTIONS=null
Tue 10/3 16:43:12.517 MiniClient GFX_RESOLUTION=null
Tue 10/3 16:43:12.518 MiniClient GFX_COMPOSITE=null
Tue 10/3 16:43:12.518 MiniClient GFX_COLORKEY=null
Tue 10/3 16:43:12.519 MiniClient INPUT_DEVICES=null
Tue 10/3 16:43:12.520 MiniClient DISPLAY_OVERSCAN=null
Tue 10/3 16:43:12.521 MiniClient VIDEO_CODECS=null
Tue 10/3 16:43:12.528 MiniClient AUDIO_CODECS=null
Tue 10/3 16:43:12.531 MiniClient PULL_AV_CONTAINERS=null
Tue 10/3 16:43:12.531 MiniClient PUSH_AV_CONTAINERS=null
Tue 10/3 16:43:12.532 MiniClient FIXED_PUSH_MEDIA_FORMAT=null
Tue 10/3 16:43:12.533 MiniClient DETAILED_BUFFER_STATS=null
Tue 10/3 16:43:12.533 MiniClient PUSH_BUFFER_SEEKING=null
Tue 10/3 16:43:12.534 MiniClient MEDIA_PLAYER_BUFFER_DELAY=null
Tue 10/3 16:43:12.534 MiniClient CRYPTO_ALGORITHMS=null
Tue 10/3 16:43:12.535 Error w/ MiniUI socket of:java.io.IOException: MiniClient does not support Blowfish or DES yet authentication is required for it's connection!
Tue 10/3 16:43:12.535 Error creating new UI:java.lang.RuntimeException: Error creating MiniClient of:java.io.IOException: MiniClient does not support Blowfish or DES yet authentication is required for it's connection!
Tue 10/3 16:43:12.535 Exception in the MiniUIClientReceiver of: java.net.SocketException: socket closed
Tue 10/3 16:43:12.536 Killing UIMgr UIManager:localhost@@000dfe0b122b-dd422e
Tue 10/3 16:43:12.537 Error calling finishWatch from VF goodbye:java.lang.NullPointerException
Tue 10/3 16:43:12.537 Killed VideoFrame
Tue 10/3 16:43:12.538 Saving properties file to clients\000dfe0b122b.properties
Tue 10/3 16:43:12.560 Disposed Window
Tue 10/3 16:43:12.561 Error with new MiniUI connection:java.lang.NullPointerException

---------------------

192.168.0.55 is the other IP that my server has configured.

-Polen

[Zladotimov]

Anybody have any luck getting ac3 to SPDIF passthrough working?
With V4 and V5, I just deleted the ac3filter.ax installed in the Sage folder, (re)install my own version and setup the output redirect in the ac3filter config menu. This doesn't appear to be working anymore.. at least not when playing a file from within Sage. Passthrough _does_ work when playing the file with Windows Mediaplayer... I have set the "mpeg2 audio decoder filter" setting to ac3filter, but that doesn't help.. It seems that Sage ignores any installed ac3 codecs and use its own codec instead.
Any suggestions greatly appreciated.. TIA!