Should I switch from Beyond TV...

[clayfree]

I switched too. I was a BTV user since before v3. I waited around for 2 years for them to add in the media and they just won't do it. All in all both work very well but when you get Sage configured it's a beautiful thing. Unfortunately I'm afraid content will be the death of them both. All the new HD programming is just not available or too difficult to implement.

[GTwannabe]

Originally Posted by jominor

I've don't think I've ever seen Sage take more than a couple hundred megs of ram. Things like Weather.com's desktop app, maxthon, and Skype have taken up as much ram and don't do as much.

Also, Java apps don't necessarily need more ram. I would say that you can get buy with a sage server, easily with 512 on an XP box.

Sage is not a ram intensive app. Any app written in any language can be take a lot of resources.

I have commerical processing, three tuners, and IR running 24/7.

Have you looked at your SageTV service memory usage lately? Mine is idling at 148mb right now. It's not uncommon for Sage to use 90-190mb of RAM. That's a lot of RAM for any Windows service to need, and a 512mb XP box will rarely have that much free RAM, causing heavy page file usage.

[jominor]

Originally Posted by GTwannabe

Have you looked at your SageTV service memory usage lately? Mine is idling at 148mb right now. It's not uncommon for Sage to use 90-190mb of RAM. That's a lot of RAM for any Windows service to need, and a 512mb XP box will rarely have that much free RAM, causing heavy page file usage.

I looked at my resources *before* I posted...

I'm currently at 112 and it is recording across 3 tuners. And I disagree that that is at lot of RAM for any service. It depends on that the service is doing. Headless doesn't mean small. As I list, Skype sits there, doing little taking up 50megs. Sage's requirements are trivial by today's standards.


My Sage server is consuming 494 meg with 3 tuners recording, two commerical and processors running.

One more thing, I ran XP for some time on a laptop with 512megs and it is not rare to have free ram. It all depends on what one runs.

1gig simply isn't the bare minimum.

[davephan]

My old Althlon XP 2800+ system was caching memory continueously when the system was setup with 512 meg RAM. I increased the RAM to 1 gig, then the memory consumption dropped to 300 - 400 megs. You may need some RAM headroom to avoid continueously caching memory to disk.

Dave

[gilded07]

davephan: for my old PIII, 700mhz machine, 512 is the ceiling. At one point in the past, I was hoping to increase it but found out that the board's limit is 512mb. Frankly, it's working fine now. The old PC was given to me so I put it to use. This weekend, I borrowed an MVP extender from a friend and SageTV user and I have no complaints. I haven't installed the comskip yet but in watching live TV (directv via serial tuning), recorded sitcoms, photos, and mp3's I'm very impressed. I just need to get comskip installed and I'll feel very good about switching from BTV to Sage.

[SprDtyF350]

Originally Posted by gilded07

I think I understand the role of the apps; I was hoping for more detailed instructions or procedures on how to install. I'm going to look again tonite.

If you are using the original Sage interface and want an easy way to setup Comskip that I find works just fine do this..

Download Comskip Monitor from here http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/down...do=file&id=138

Follow the directions there to install it. This will install Comskip, and tell the monitor program where to find your recordings. It can also be set to run slowly, or not at all during certain hours. Your 700mhz cpu might like that..

Download Comskip Playback from here http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/down...do=file&id=154

Unzip the file into your Sagetv/Sagetv directory. If you put it in the right place you can go to the detailed setup page in Sage, advanced, import Sagetv application package, and then you should be able to pick Comskip playback. Once you do that you can go back to detailed setup, customize, and at the bottom of that page will be a place to play with Comskip settings.

Good luck, and good riddance to BTV..

[gilded07]

when I try to install comskip monitor, I get an error: The comskip monitor service could not be started. A system error has occurred. System error 1067 has occurred. The process terminated unexpectantly. Press any key to continue...

Windows XP Home, SP2, Firefox 2, downloaded to desktop.

Any advice?

Nevermind: I needed to unzip the files first

[SprDtyF350]

Originally Posted by gilded07

when I try to install comskip monitor, I get an error: The comskip monitor service could not be started. A system error has occurred. System error 1067 has occurred. The process terminated unexpectantly. Press any key to continue...

Windows XP Home, SP2, Firefox 2, downloaded to desktop.

Any advice?

Sounds like a permissions issue.. Do you have a password setup on your machine? Pretty sure Comskip monitor is going to use the local user account for the service. Pretty sure it needs a password setup.

[gilded07]

SprDtyF350: your post was very helpful. It took me several tries but I got both downloads installed. Now my CPU is pegged at 100% and is bent over, grabbing it's shorts. I have 6 or 7 sitcoms recorded so I imagine the comskip will run overnight to analyze the shows & remove the commericals.

[SprDtyF350]

Originally Posted by gilded07

SprDtyF350: your post was very helpful. It took me several tries but I got both downloads installed. Now my CPU is pegged at 100% and is bent over, grabbing it's shorts. I have 6 or 7 sitcoms recorded so I imagine the comskip will run overnight to analyze the shows & remove the commericals.

Yeah, I kinda figured it would do that with a 700mhz cpu

That's why I talked about the run slow, or not at all part during certain hours.. I would set it so it doesn't run during the hours you are planning on watching TV.. Or maybe run slow..

I imagine it can't be working any harder than when BTV was doing it's smartskip stuff. I found that program liked to run my CPU all over the place when doing smartskip..

Glad ya got it to work...

[gilded07]

Yes, BTV took ~3 hours to compress a 30 min sitcom from MPEG-2 down to .avi and BTV's comskip utility took some time too. BTV has browser-based web access so I could monitor, real-time, the processing of the recorded shows using a client. I understand Sage has a hack for browser based monitoring of the server as well. I'll look into it next.

[Opus4]

Originally Posted by gilded07

BTV has browser-based web access so I could monitor, real-time, the processing of the recorded shows using a client. I understand Sage has a hack for browser based monitoring of the server as well.

Yes, SageTV has nielm's Webserver, which is quite useful, but there is also the Placeshifter client (which you seem to already know about), that gives you the full SageTV UI at remote locations, though not browser based. I don't remember whether you can access the conversion jobs via the Webserver, but the Placeshifter should be able to do all that needs to be done regarding converting recordings.

- Andy

[davephan]

Originally Posted by gilded07

SprDtyF350: your post was very helpful. It took me several tries but I got both downloads installed. Now my CPU is pegged at 100% and is bent over, grabbing it's shorts. I have 6 or 7 sitcoms recorded so I imagine the comskip will run overnight to analyze the shows & remove the commericals.

Running Comskip and compressing videos from MPEG2 to AVI are both very CPU intensive. Three hours to compress a 30 minute show is not surprising for a slow system. I have some really old systems that should be retired, took about that long. An Athlon XP 2800+ takes about one hour to transcode MPEG2 into Xvid AVI using the Roxy99 two-pass system. My new dual-core 3.0 gig computer still takes about 40 - 50 minutes to transcode an hour of MPEG2 into Xvid AVI. Maybe my 7200 rpm IDE drives are slowing down the process.

You might need to set the task to "low" priority. I found on my older systems, I could not get much response from the GUI to do any other task at the same time unless I setup Comskip or transcoding to "low" priority.

I found that I needed at least an Althlon XP 2800+ CPU to achieve stutter free playback of AVI files with my MVP, consuming close to 100% CPU continueously. The newer 3.0 gig dual-core can transcode video and playback AVI file with the MVP at the same time easily.


Dave

[gilded07]

I've left BTV and I am now a SageTV user. thanx to all the help from the forum; I appreciate it and I consider myself part of the Sage community now. I'm preparing to order my MVP extender. I have a few follow up questions:

1. I'm having trouble w/ the padding. I miss a minute or two on my recorded sitcoms at the beginning. Under favorites manager, I have start time set at two minutes earlier. What am I doing wrong?

2. When watching from my client, it would be great if I could pause and start using the space bar instead of clicking the mouse and then clicking the pause icon. <a carryover from BTV>. Is there a hack for this?

3. I'd like to be able to see the % of space taken / available on the hdd on my server when viewing the recorded shows menu. <a carryover from BTV>. Is there a hack for this?

4. I'd like to be able to see the original air date (not recorded date) as part of the program information when I left click during play back. Is there a hack for this? The way it is set up out of the box is that I have to click on 'View recording detail' before I actually start viewing the show in order to see this. I can't see the original air date during play back...correct?

5. I have the comskip / monitor installed and it works pretty good. However, at the end of the skip, occasionally I have to watch a commercial or two before I get back to the show. I wonder if I have the latest patch of this hack applied. Is this common to have to watch a commercial or two before I get back to the show? And for sporting events, it skips quite a bit of live coverage. Is this normal?

Again, thanx much.

[Opus4]

Originally Posted by gilded07

1. I'm having trouble w/ the padding. I miss a minute or two on my recorded sitcoms at the beginning. Under favorites manager, I have start time set at two minutes earlier. What am I doing wrong?

You may have the option enabled to remove padding for back to back Favs on the same channel. Check Detailed Setup -> Customize. Or, do you mean something else is happening?

2. When watching from my client, it would be great if I could pause and start using the space bar instead of clicking the mouse and then clicking the pause icon. <a carryover from BTV>. Is there a hack for this?

You mean use Space as a play/pause toggle? You could assign the space key to that command, but then you would probably have a hard time entering a space when typing text.

3. I'd like to be able to see the % of space taken / available on the hdd on my server when viewing the recorded shows menu. <a carryover from BTV>. Is there a hack for this?

The hidden extras has an option for a disk space bar across the top of all menus.

- Andy

[gilded07]

Forgive me for the dumb question but where do I fund 'system information' in Sage in order to enable the hidden extras?

[Opus4]

Go to Setup -> Help -> System Information, or just use the Info command while on the Main Menu.

BTW: there is searchable PDF manual in your SageTV install directory, also accessible in the Windows version via Setup -> Help -> View Manual.

- Andy

[gilded07]

ok; I found Sys Info, entered the code and I have the hdd info on the screen. I'll have to take a look at some of the other features this turns on. Thanx.

And, I found the 263 page <gulp!> user manual on the Sage website. I can already tell that it will be very helpful.

[gveres]

What happens when I have run comskip on a recording and then I convert it to an avi or something? In BTV, it was smart enough to keep the commercial information so that I could still skip commercials when playing back the show squeezed file.

I just finished installing comskip monitor and it is churning away so I guess I can find out in a couple of hours.

Thanks
Greg

[gilded07]

Since my server is so slow/old and I'm using a media extender to watch SageTv with I haven't installed the hack for 'showsqueeze' so I don't know. I've been told and I believe it to be accurate, that I'd need much more horsepower to transcode recorded shows from .avi to MPEG-2 so the media extender could play them (did I hear a HD extender is due out?) But that's a very good question. I plan to build a rig in the next couple of months and use this PC (P4, 2.4ghz, 3gb RAM) as my server. At that time, I'll be interested in installing the hack for showsqueeze. If .avi playback doesn't skip commericials during playback, then its useless to me.

The Sage com skip actually skips the commericals rather than just identifying them for you to skip (BTV). I think this is an improvement over BTV.

I'd love to take the best of BTV (outstanding user interface, great out of the box functionality) and STV (true media extender support - not a hack like BTV, infinite expandability) and combine them. It kills me that both have features that I can't live w/out but I can't have them both in one package!