A few general Questions before I....

[jaminben]

I have a few genral questions about SageTv before I take the final plunge and purchase the software.
I have done many searches but not really come up with any definitive answers, so please excuse me if these have been covered before and that I've also placed this post in the right place.
Hopefully someone will be able to answer these few questions for me or maybe point me in the right direction.

Currently I'm running the latest trial version of SageTV / Client with MCE16/9. Sever pc is an athlon 3200+, 2gig ram, x800xt 256mb, 1.25TB HDD's, 4 x DVB-t & 1 x DVB-s tuners.
Client pc is an Apple Mac Mini 1.86 core duo, 2gig ram, 70GB HDD, on board GFX, 100Mb wired Lan.

Channel change speed, generally speaking the speed of the server is a bit quicker than the client. Is there anyway to speed up the client channel change speed? (sever 2-5 secs - client 6-8 secs)

Aspect ratio, when watching tv I prefer 16x9 as this fills the screen nicely but when I then switch over to watch an HD film I have to change to original source which I prefer to 16x9. However if I then switch back to tv it will keep the aspect as original source which on some channels will produce a black border. Is there a way of specifying film files to play at source and tv at 16x9.
Is there a way to specify which media gets displayed as source and which is displayed as 16x9.

Film stacking, I have various media which come with 2 disc's/files but havent been able to stack these so they play continuously without the need to start the second file manually. Anyway to achiving stacking?

Transcoding, Files which havent been indexed with an image seem to start transcoding to produce a cover art style image. Now this isnt so bad but for some reason this uses 100% of the cpu and kills my pc. This will also continue even if I close Sage down, the only way to stop it is via end task. Can transcoding be permently disabled?

I like downloading TV shows from the US like Lost, Heros etc but have no way of viewing them in a nice orderly fashion without spending loads of time arranging them or renaming them. Now I used to use Media Portal and that had a nice application (TV Series I beleive it was called) where you'd just drop the file into a folder and it would be it into the correct lineup for that show and also give you the shows synopsys and relevent info for viewing via the UI. Are there any such addons for Sage? If not, how do you view/place your TV shows?

Thats about it, sorry for the long post and again I hope I've not missed any obvious answers which could be found within these forums, but then again I've never been that good at searching for things in forums.

Many Thanks

jaminben

[reggie14]

Channel changing is a little slow in Sage compared to specialized devices like set-top boxes. I don't have a DVB tuner, so I don't know what's normal for those. I do know my server changes the channel in about a second, while my client takes about twice as long. I think it takes a little while for the command to process, then the client must have to buffer a little. Tuning HD takes a lot longer -several seconds longer.

I think the aspect ratio switcher (http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=14146) plugin might help you with your second problem. Alternatively you can program a remote button to cycle through the aspect ratios.

I think you can do film stacking by using playlists with videos. Alternatively, I usually use the folders view with the video screen. Then you can select a folder and tell it to play everything in it.

I don't know if you can do anything to prevent the transcoder from generating thumbnails. I also don't think there are any plugins that would help you with downloaded shows.

[jaminben]

Thanks for the reply reggie, I'll take a look at the aspect ratio switcher but I think programing a remote button to cycle through the aspect ratios is proberly the best solution for me.


Stacking films using playlists is a very neat idea

Cheers

[jaminben]

Anyone else have any ideas about the transcoding for thumbnails, is this a bug? As I said below, even stopping/closing down sage will result in the transcoding continuing until I end the process via windows task manager.

Anyone, please. Its my biggest problem and the one I'd like to sort out the most.

cheers

jaminben

[gplasky]

Originally Posted by jaminben

Anyone else have any ideas about the transcoding for thumbnails, is this a bug? As I said below, even stopping/closing down sage will result in the transcoding continuing until I end the process via windows task manager.

Anyone, please. Its my biggest problem and the one I'd like to sort out the most.

cheers

jaminben

If you're having trouble with transcoding it may be caused by a corrupt file. Unfortunately the only way to trouble shoot this, I think, is to remove all the files and put them back in 1 by 1 until the offending file is found. I don't know if the logs could tell you on what file it starts to hang on but it may be worth a look.


Gerry

[jaminben]

Originally Posted by gplasky

If you're having trouble with transcoding it may be caused by a corrupt file. Unfortunately the only way to trouble shoot this, I think, is to remove all the files and put them back in 1 by 1 until the offending file is found. I don't know if the logs could tell you on what file it starts to hang on but it may be worth a look.
Gerry

Unfortunatly it does this with all my media, .avi, .xvid, .divx, .wmv, .mkv you name it and it will do it. Once its been added to the database its fine, but once a new title gets added its game over until I index it or add an image manually.

I may try an uninstall of Sage and start again, not looking forward to doing that though as I've already indexed nearly 200 films all with there own cover art. Is there anyway to keep all the IMDB info for each film so I dont have to scan all the titles again?

Cheers

jaminben

[gexi]

Have you tried these settings in the sage.properties and sageclient.properties?

video_thumbnail_extraction_time_offset_sec=0
Setting to 0 prevents the transcoder from searching through the file which makes it go a lot faster

video_thumbnail_generation=false
When I set this to false, all my thumbnails were completely erased and now it just uses the channel logo for the thumbnail. My system runs a lot better this way since the transcoder kept getting hung trying to generate an image for videos I had already deleted off the disk.

[jaminben]

Originally Posted by gexi

Have you tried these settings in the sage.properties and sageclient.properties?

video_thumbnail_extraction_time_offset_sec=0
Setting to 0 prevents the transcoder from searching through the file which makes it go a lot faster

Genius, thats sorted the problem out

It still transcodes but it lasts a second or two than stops, so I guess the system was hanging like you said.

Thankyou