Media Browsing-Parental control-files greater than 2 GB

[Slickferret]

I am just a regular user of SageTV, so I don't know all the tech details and tricks to SageTV.

Parental Control issue - I am finding that through the Hauppauge media extender on a TV, that anyone can freely browse through all the external drives of the base SageTV server computer, not just the files drives/folders designated for importing. Is there any way to prevent anyone/everyone from freely browsing the ENTIRE server computer using the remote control on a Hauppauge Media Extender at a TV? I have a total of 13 hard drives on this computer. (~5 TB)

Media import files size issue - I increased the recording quality to from 2.0 GB/hr to 2.4 GB/hr (DVD format) in order to get subtitles on recorded TV shows (right thing to do?). Now I find that SageTV will only display the previous 2.0 GB sized files when looking at imported media (Media Center-imported videos). It doesn't see the 2.4 GB files even though they are there. I find that if I browse in SageTV, that I can see the files. But one can also see every single other media file on the entire computer (see above Parental Control issue). Does SageTV have difficulties seeing files greater than 2.0 GB or those recorded in the 2.4 GB?

I would appreciate some "sage" advice. (bad pun)

[nielm]

Usign my dynamic menus, you can remove the 'browse media files' menu item..

[nielm]

and for your second problem, I am a bit confused as to what the problem is...
Recorded TV files will never show up in Imported Videos, but in the Sage Recordings list.

[Slickferret]

Thanks for the responses. I left out some detail I guess. One hard drive is dedicated for SageTV recordings only. A second hard drive is for playing of SageTV recordings. I semi-periodically move files from the recorded folder of the recording drive into the the server hard drive. The server drive folder is designated as an import folder in SageTV. Hence I find my recordings in the Imported media as opposed to Archived media.

This is so I don't overtax a single hard drive trying to record three shows at one time while two or more TV's are trying to request shows be sent to them. I may add even another capture card to the computer. I suspect the hard drives can handle 5 or more separate read-write processes easily if the drive is not too full. I just spent the extra money for the extra drive to separate those processes.

I found out last night that the 2.4 GB files (DVD quality) do not have the subtitles as I had thought based on comments/advice in this forum. How does one get subtitles for recorded TV?

I do like the better picture quality with the 2.4 GB files as compared to the 2.0 GB files (not digital cable broadcast- just regular cable broadcast). But as mentioned previously, they will not display in Imported media. One has to browse to find them.

I like the "remove browsing" suggestion that nielm provided. But that would put me in a pickle of a situation if I want to keep recording at 2.4 GB. I would not be able to find them as they do not show up in Imported media for some reason.

My issues/questions are as follows:

1) How, if possible, to get 2.4 GB files to show up in Imported media listings when they are present.
2) How to get Closed Captioning in TV recordings.
3) Parental Control from browsing the entire server computer from any mdeia extender TV. The "remove browsing" possibility is one suggestion but leaves me not being able to find files recorded at 2.4 GB.

Any help from the more experienced users would be appreciated. I appreciate nilem's suggestions. Thanks.

[blade]

Originally Posted by Slickferret

This is so I don't overtax a single hard drive trying to record three shows at one time while two or more TV's are trying to request shows be sent to them.

I think you're greatly over estimating the demand placed on the disks. If you use multiple recording drives Sage will write to the one with the most free space. So the load during capture will usually be spread out. Not to mention the throughput requirements for capturing a SD show are a fraction of what any modern drive is capable of. I have two recording disks and can easily capture 4 shows at 3.2 gb/hr while processing all 4 with comskip as they record and stream to 2 clients without any issues at all. It makes no difference if all the shows are being written to and read from the same drive or not.

As for your problem the size of the file shouldn't have anything to do with whether or not it shows up in the imported videos folder. I have +3gb files in mine. Have you tried refreshing your media library or whatever Sage calls the function?

[nielm]

Sage records at 3GB/hr == 0.8MB/sec
According to Nero, my drives can do 50Mb/s

You really don't have to worry about taxing your drives...

[Opus4]

After moving recordings to an import dir, you may find them still in the SageTV Recordings list because it can still tell they are recordings unless you rename them & remove the ID at the end of the filename. Or, you may need to use Setup-> Refresh Imported Media.

- Andy

[Slickferret]

We are getting into areas of discussion that I was not intending to get into. When we/I transfer recorded shows to the server drive, the recorded shows are put into sorted folders (i.e. Kim, Janelle, Kim and Janelle, John, John and Kim, John and Janelle,, etc.) We do this for ease of finding shows that are specific to each our interests including the various permutations of watcher audience. In an archived list one could locate the shows in a little more time. Bottom line is that we like our little folder way of organizing which uses Import Media as opposed to Archived Media.

I may have gone into overkill mode on the had drive capacity issue. However, I have personally pushed some Seagate external hard drives to the point of tripping (resettting). Once you get it 75% full and it has some (a lot) fragmentation, the 50 MB/s value (for external USB SATA hard drives) is much lower than for an empty drive. Additionally, at 75% capacity, defrag doesn't always defrag it (Windows defrag). Seagate online diagnostics showed that these drive were functionally fine. They just got really hot and tripped off.

My new system as designed to prevent that from happening. I am running two internal 750 GB Seagate SATA drives with reported throughput of 3GB/s each. So I probably fixed my previous problem of taxing the drives. Separating the recordings between the drives is probably not needed now. We do like the folder organization which requires Import Media.

Enough history. The questions and where they stand:
1) getting 2.4 GB files to show up in imported media: The refresh suggestion was sort of the right thing to do (maybe). I don't know what actually occurred to correct this. We started the 2.4 GB recordings at the beginning of this week (up from 2.0 GB) but could not seem them in the imported media folders using a media extender, even late as yesterday. Today I can see the 2.4 GB files both on the server computer and using a media extender at the TV. It might have been a reboot of a computer or a reset of the media extender that corrected it - a "refresh" of sorts. I did also try to install the Nielm customization module last night- downloaded it, put the files where they looked like they should go (JAR and STV folders), but did not figure out how to import the .STV yet (I am not very tech savy).

2)Closed captioning on TV shows - haven't figured this out

3)prevent browsing of server computer from media extender-now just have to figure out how to impliment the nielm customization module to remove browsing option.

Additional advice welcomed. Closed captioning??

[ke6guj]

what tuner cards are you using?

AFAIK, you can only get CC to work with a PVR-250 or PVR-350. No other cards have the neccessary driver settings for Sage to capture the CC stream.

I heard that firewire capturing may be able to have the CC stream captured in the file, but I don't know how to do that.

[Opus4]

BTW: Closed Captioning is covered in Appendix K of the SageTV manual.

- Andy