Some quick and dirty simple questions...

[Shield]

Ok, so I'm in love with SAGETV. The developers created a product that I would've created if I could develop. I've bought 6.1, the client and the placeshifter. Gotten the MovieTimes and Sage16X9 going. Got HD going with a HDHomerun.

I will read more up on all of these topics, but before I do the research:

1. Is there a way to create and burn DVD's with full menus from recorded shows AND from Media directories? One that's worth the hassle (of installing) over just authoring one with Nero or Roxio (or Ulead Movie Studio) ?

2. What's the deal with .my files?

3. What else will I need to have comskip work after I load the 6.1 server and sagemc? It seems crazy that it's in all the menus yet doesn't work?

4. Has anyone ever gotten the Multispeed FF/RW to work with SageMC? I'd much prefer that over the "jump ahead and back" style of rewinding and fast-forwarding.

5. Explain "Offline DVD's" to me. I have a few ripped DVD's with the typical AUDIO_TS and VIDEO_TS folders that I just added to my import library and can play them just fine (through the My Videos link). I've specified a folder for the path to the offline DVD's and I don't know what the next step is. Will it interface with the main menu somehow of "Play DVD" (even though I never have a DVD in the drive). I've tried disabling the "Has DVD Rom drive" and it still says there's no DVD in the drive.

6. What settings do you recommend quality-wise for HD recording? What about for standard NTSC cable? I don't see that big of a difference really.

7. Anyone have a list of shortcut keys that will work that aren't in use by default? I have a MX-650 by URC and a IR wireless keyboard that I want to learn a few more shortcut keys with. I.E. Shift +6 is free, Shift+3 is in use, etc.

8. Out of the box, my mp3's that were converted from .flac files don't play unless I skip forward about 10 seconds. Is this normal?


THANKS IN ADVANCE to anyone / everyone who can give me answers here. I'm an IT/Gadget person and love technology, (and was an early HD adopter) and SAGETV is just a wonderful, smart, well-written STABLE program!

[GKusnick]

Most of your questions seem to be specific to SageMC or other third-party add-ons. Questions of that sort should be posted in the Customizations section of the forum. Generally you'll want to find the existing support thread for a given add-on and post your question there, or else make a new thread with the name of the specific add-on clearly indicated in the thread title (so that the add-on author will notice it).

Originally Posted by Shield

6. What settings do you recommend quality-wise for HD recording? What about for standard NTSC cable? I don't see that big of a difference really.

Recording quality setting are irrelevant for HD, which is already encoded to MPEG before broadcast. Sage just writes the encoded stream to disk without any further compression.

Encoding quality does matter for analog NTSC channels, but if you're not noticing much difference between the various quality settings, go for one that produces smaller files. If you plan on burning recorded programs to DVD, choose one of the DVD-compatible quality settings so that your DVD-burning software won't have to re-encode it.

[nielm]

Originally Posted by Shield

7. Anyone have a list of shortcut keys that will work that aren't in use by default? I have a MX-650 by URC and a IR wireless keyboard that I want to learn a few more shortcut keys with. I.E. Shift +6 is free, Shift+3 is in use, etc.

Detailed Setup/Commands/Link
This will list all the possible commands, and the currently defined shortcut keys. For those commands which do not have a shortcut, you can define new ones...

6. What settings do you recommend quality-wise for HD recording?

I believe that for digital TV, the quality settings are ignored -- Sage gets grabs the digital signal at whatever quality it is, and saves it to disk.

What about for standard NTSC cable? I don't see that big of a difference really.

Record something with a lot of movement (sports) at Max MPEG2, and then at Fair, and compare the 2 to see the difference. Then find the best compromise. (I record at DVD std)...

8. Out of the box, my mp3's that were converted from .flac files don't play unless I skip forward about 10 seconds. Is this normal?

no. Verify that the same problem occurs in the default STV, then log a fault to Sage.

4. Has anyone ever gotten the Multispeed FF/RW to work with SageMC? I'd much prefer that over the "jump ahead and back" style of rewinding and fast-forwarding.

it currently does not work -- I have not had time to figure out why, and as I don't actually use SageMC...

[davidk21770]

Some that others haven't answered yet...

Originally Posted by Shield

2. What's the deal with .my files?

They provide the content that is displayed when you are in Sage TV recordings.

Originally Posted by Shield

3. What else will I need to have comskip work after I load the 6.1 server and sagemc? It seems crazy that it's in all the menus yet doesn't work?

A program to generate the comskip .edl or .txt file (.edl works better -- more accurate). I use ShowAnalyzer, but others prefer comskip. Then you need to run the program (ShowAnalyzer or comskip) to generate the .edl or .txt files. This can be done in the Sage menus or automatically using dirmon or a similar utility. I'm not sure where in the menus since I create them automatically.