Additional Info for videos

[ThePaladinTech]

Hi - First Post.

Right now all the Sage stuff is being recorded into the default directory on the c: drive of the server. All my old stuff is located on an infrant ready-nas, as is all the music and photos (1.2TB Raid).

I've got Show-analyzer going and DirMon So I'm pleased with that - I am using the default skin(?) and I've read alot about SageMC - if I try something all I need to do to go back is to reload the old SageTV application package??

My thought at this time is to stuff some drives in the server for recording shows (not even bothering raid or striping them) and continuing to use the NAS for long term storage items.

At the moment I'm not understanding the difference between archived videos, recording directories, and imported files (and maybe the answer lies in there...)

I've got several old dvr-ms files as well as some old .tvo files that I'm converting to mpeg. I'd like to be able to add info to these files so when we look them up it isn't just the filename. Any way to do that? some kind of editor? I don't even have a clue what to search for this so if there is a thread that addresses this please point me at it.

[ThePaladinTech]

A little background... I used ShowShifter back in the day, And I've looked at BeyondTV and SageTV before. At the time, and even now it seems many people I know are using BeyondTV but it just looks like you'll outgrow it! So I went with Sage. Between my first brush with a media center application and now I've purchased a tivo series II (and lifetimed it before that went away) - Love the Tivo but it's one tuner in one place ... and as of lately it's taken to chopping off the last 45 seconds of a show ... which is a pain to say the least. I was using Windows Media Center 2005 for about six months but again - it was tied to one machine pretty much and another properiatry format (and I didn't feel right about using the MSDN version work gave me). So that got me looking and I've always preffered software that has an active forum community - which it certainly seems Sage has. I'm cleaning off all of my PCs of MSDN versions of software which is leaving me with one machine that I'm trying UBUNTU Linux on... so at some point I may be migrating to the Linux Version of Sage. but for now my home sage server consists of the following:
(I'll update this when I get the exact specs...)
AMD 64 Single Core (3000+??)
MSI main board
1 or 2 gigs of Ram
MCE500 dual tuner Hauppauge PCI card
MCE Remote
XP Pro (a copy *I* own)
250GB Samsung SATA drive
Nvidia 4400 AGP nic Connected via S-Video to a 32 SDTV.

I may be upgrading the system board to a dual core AMD FX 62 ... if I need to and if I can get that beast running stable.

Maybe this Christmas we will be getting an HD LCD ... if we do it will most likely be 32 - due to space issues in the cabinet. (need to keep the WAF high... and she doesn't like seeing a bunch of AV equipment - ah but if we get sage going great that can hide in the basement ... so who knows)

So much to learn about placeshifting and clients and HD tuners etc!

Thanks for reading!

[ke6guj]

Originally Posted by enzominator

Hi - First Post.

Right now all the Sage stuff is being recorded into the default directory on the c: drive of the server. All my old stuff is located on an infrant ready-nas, as is all the music and photos (1.2TB Raid).

recording to the C: drive may not be the best setup. For now, its OK for testing, but in the long run another drive formatted with 64k sectors would be ideal.

I've got Show-analyzer going and DirMon So I'm pleased with that - I am using the default skin(?) and I've read alot about SageMC - if I try something all I need to do to go back is to reload the old SageTV application package??

Yup, you can just load the original SageTV3.xml file and be back to stock. Or the last updated SageTV3-x.xml file that has your imports in.

My thought at this time is to stuff some drives in the server for recording shows (not even bothering raid or striping them) and continuing to use the NAS for long term storage items.

That is a common method of archiving.

At the moment I'm not understanding the difference between archived videos, recording directories, and imported files (and maybe the answer lies in there...)

OK, recording direcories are the places that Sage stores recordings. Archived recordings would still be in the recording directory, just tagged within Sage that they are archives. What that does is to tell Sage not to delete them, and to show them in the "Archived Recordings" menu to diffentiate them from normal recordings.

Imported files are files that you brought into Sage, instead of Sage recording them. You can specify folders that hold imported files, and Sage will display them in the Imported Videos, Pictures, or Music menus.

If you look at a Sage recording file, you will see somthing like this, CriminalMinds-ChildrenoftheDark-7423041-0.mpg, the 7423041-0 portion is added by Sage, and that is how it knows what the file is about. If you moved the recording to the NAS, and Sage saw it there, it would still know what it was and would display it as a Recording. If you deleted the 74203041-0 from the filename, it would appear as an imported video, even it it was still in the recordings directory.

I've got several old dvr-ms files as well as some old .tvo files that I'm converting to mpeg. I'd like to be able to add info to these files so when we look them up it isn't just the filename. Any way to do that? some kind of editor? I don't even have a clue what to search for this so if there is a thread that addresses this please point me at it.

you can either create an .xml file or .my file with info about the files and Sage will show that in the imported videos menu. Look at this thread for info, http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=21629 .

Or you could try to add them in with the webserver addon, http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=8426 , and actually get them so show up as recordings, in the recordings menu.