Comskip monitor and PC Client

[pat_smith1969]

I have Comskip monitor and SageMC running on my server. This has been working well for a year now.

I recently have built a PC based Sage Client for my HD needs (HD Extender is out of stock ). I got most things working on that now but it does not seem to detect the comskip stuff. It does not detect the little markings where there are comercials (dark bars on the play bar), the play bar is completely devoid of any markings that woud show where comercials are. I have 3 MVPs and they all work well with comskip, but the client does not.

Do I need to install Comskip on my Sage Client as well as the server?

[mickp]

There's a gotcha with this. IIRC you need to be accessing your recordings via a unc path (\\servername\sharename) before it will work on the client.

If you share your recording directories on the server and set the server to record to the share rather than directly to a drive path, the sage client will begin accessing the recordings directly via smb rather than streaming them via the sage server. The client will also be able to see the comskip files.

Once you've done this any new recordings should work fine with Comskip. Unfortunately the existing recordings will still be in the db with the previous local path.

There may be a workaround which will alow you to move the existing recordings from the local to the shared path but I've not worked it out


Mick.

[ke6guj]

UNC path recording is the cleanest way to set up recordings so that the client can access the comskip file (and .smi captions as well, if used).

But, there is another option, mapping the server's recording path to the same path on the client. FOr example, if your recording folder on the server was E:\SageTVRecordings\, you could share the root E: drive and map E:\ on the client to the root share. That way, E:\ on the server is the same as E:\ on the client. With that set, the client would be able to go to E:\SageTVRecordings and read any .txt/.edl/.smi files it needed to.

With this method, you don't have to worry about getting the all the db entries that point to E:\SageTVRecordings updated to now show \\Server\SageTVRecordings

[12three45]

Jack, just to clarify what you said, since I wil try this at home.

Currently I have shared out the recording folder but it is on the E: drive and on the Client I have mapped the drive to Z: drive. I should either change the drive letter on the server to Z or change the Client drive map to E:?

Andy

[ke6guj]

Originally Posted by 12three45

Currently I have shared out the recording folder but it is on the E: drive and on the Client I have mapped the drive to Z: drive. I should either change the drive letter on the server to Z or change the Client drive map to E:?

Drive path must match exactly. Easiest would be to remap the Client's E: to the Server's E: drive. You would need to share the root E: drive and map the client to the server's root E: drive. That way the path would be exactly the same.

If that is not possible, then you could change the recording drive on the server to be Z: in Disk Management. You'd also need to tell Sage to record to the Z: drive, and Sage would need to be aware that the E: drive is no longer available and that the recordings are now on the Z: drive. A lot of work. I think in that case, I'd probably just use UNC paths instead.

[12three45]

Thanks Jack, just one more question. Reading about the UNC path, you make the change in WIZ.bin manually?

Andy

[ke6guj]

Originally Posted by 12three45

Reading about the UNC path, you make the change in WIZ.bin manually?

Nope. YOu can't edit wiz.bin manually at all.

You can change to UNC paths inside the UI, or by shutting down sage and modding sage.properties. Inside the UI is easier. YOu could just share the recording folder and then put in \\Server\SageRecordingShare as the recording folder. Then remove E:\SageREcordings from teh recording folder list. Sage won't delete them so don't worry about that. Now, any new recordings will be saved under the UNC path and comskip would work automatically for the clients. But old recordings would still show under E:\SageRecordings. If there aren't a lot of them, you could just ignore that they aren't UNC'ed.

But if it was a problem, I'd create a new recording folder on the E:\ drive. Set that up as the UNC recording folder. Make sure it works and Sage can record to it, then shut down Sage, backup your wiz.bin, and move all the recordings from the old recording folder to the new recording folder. Then restart Sage. Sage will notice that the old recordings have moved and update the recording info to use the UNC path.