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SageTV Media Extender Discussion related to any SageTV Media Extender used directly by SageTV. Questions, issues, problems, suggestions, etc. relating to a SageTV supported media extender should be posted here. Use the SageTV HD Theater - Media Player forum for issues related to using an HD Theater while not connected to a SageTV server. |
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#1
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HD extender refuses to play wife's video a 2nd time
Hi,
I'm using an HD media extender directly connected to a Linux server. I'm using the latest version of SageTV (6.3.10), and the latest HD Extender firmware (20080204), and Sun's jre 1.6.0_04. I'm having a very bizarre problem playing one particular recording I imported from MythtTV. We started watching it in the HD extender on Thurs night, and it played fine. It was an SD recording, but the quality was quite good. The wife was impressed. We turned it off with roughly 40 minutes left in a 2 hour show. This morning we tried to play it again, and it would not play at all in the extender. We could see the thumbnail, and when we tried to play the video the screen would essentially go black. Hitting info would bring up the timeline, and we could see that it thought it was playing from right where we left off. The video *will* play fine in a MacOSX placeshifter demo I downloaded specially to try to debug this. It picks up right where we left off, and it works great. Also, the "real" video will play fine. This bears some explanation: MythTV records videos using very cryptic filenames. There is no way a human would be able to easily find something using these names. I used a MythTV supplied script to make a directory with symlinks with meaningful names which point to the real, cryptically named files. Eg: % ls -l /video/sage/ | grep Seeger lrwxrwxrwx 1 gallatin mythtv 30 Mar 11 11:14 /video/sage/American Masters - 2008-03-02, 12-00 AM - Pete Seeger- The Power of Song.mpg -> /video/3041_20080302120000.mpg I then pointed sagetv at the /video/sage directory as one of its video import directories. When trying to debug this, I used the "browse" mode on the extender to directly play /video/3041_20080302120000.mpg. This worked fine. I then deleted the file (symlink) from the extender GUI, recreated the link on the Linux box, refreshed the input dirs, and the "new" file appeared, and would play fine. I fast forwarded to 1:20, and stopped the playback. When I went to resume the playback, I had the same symptoms as before (no picture, timeline thought it was playing back the file). So I again "deleted" the file and recreated the link, in preparation for actually watching it tonight. I've tried rebooted the HD extender (both via the "power" button on the remote, and via the power switch on the back of the machine). Neither helped. Note that I've only noticed this problem with this particular video (so far). Other imported recordings are playing fine. This incident was particularly bad, since it was the first time I gave my wife the remote and let her drive. This has seriously hurt the WAF ![]() Help! Drew |
#2
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The first step is to stop believing in this silly WAF concept. It is wrong on many levels. There are requirements, user acceptance, quality, etc....WAF means that you are in some kind of position that you needed to "sell" the idea to your wife or something. There are limitless combinations of encoders, settings, and etc. that a media playing software must play. I have not seen any Sage like application do them ALL without a problem once in a while. If you want to avoid that, then run all videos that might have a problem through a known good re-encode. Then you will have the super stable PVR/Media platform that so many people who talk about "WAF" are after, but then you will have spent a lot of wasted time when you could have told the nuances of such a system to your wife and avoided this whole "WAF" thing.
![]() Regarding not being able to play a particular video, I would submit a ticket to Sage, also asking for the ftp upload credentials, so you can send them a copy of the offending video. Often they will find something they can fix in the Sage side of the equation. Then again, sometimes you just get a bad recording. I have seen it even with commercial PVRs. |
#3
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I think that is a little harsh Madcoder. WAF is a very important factor. A lot of money is spent into this "hobby" that we have. If the wife is not on board, it makes our lives much more difficult.
these extenders are the best stb replacement solution I have seen since 2003. With that in mind, we need these extenders to work with little hassle, so when one of the wife's videos don't work, that is not the definition of little hassle.
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Media Server: Win 7 Home (32 bit), GIGABYTE GA-EP43-UD3L LGA 775 Intel P43 ATX Intel Motherboard, Intel Core 2 Quad Q9505 Yorkfield 2.83GHz, 4 GB Ram, Geforce 9600 GT PCI-E, 1x HD PVR, HD homerun (2x for OTA, 1x for FIOS QAM), 1 x HD Homerun Prime with cablecard from FIOS. Client: Windows 10 Pro Media Extenders: HD-200 x 3, HD-200 x 2 |
#4
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I'm now wondering if it has something to do with the symlink target (eg, the real file) not being writable to the SageTV server. Does SageTV want to write to the .mpg file of an imported recording? Drew |
#5
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#6
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SageTV v6.4.5 - Windows Vista Home Premium HP m8200n, Athlon 64 X2 6000+, 3GB RAM, 3 500 GB SATA/300 7200 RPM HDD's (2) PVR-150MCE's - (1) HVR-1800 HD ATSC/NTSC - (2) MediaMVP's - (2) STX-HD100's |
#7
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Now I have to get back to my wife because the HD100 is acting up and she doesn't like that :-). Ben |
#8
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It sounds like the issue is with the symlink. And Sage needs to be able to write to that directory for various reasons. Deleting the file later is one.
Gerry
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Big Gerr _______ Server - WHS 2011: Sage 7.1.9 - 1 x HD Prime and 2 x HDHomeRun - Intel Atom D525 1.6 GHz, Acer Easystore, RAM 4 GB, 4 x 2TB hotswap drives, 1 x 2TB USB ext Clients: 2 x PC Clients, 1 x HD300, 2 x HD-200, 1 x HD-100 DEV Client: Win 7 Ultimate 64 bit - AMD 64 x2 6000+, Gigabyte GA-MA790GP-DS4H MB, RAM 4GB, HD OS:500GB, DATA:1 x 500GB, Pace RGN STB. |
#9
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I suppose the easiest thing to do will be to remove the link, and copy the file over and see if the behavior persists. Drew |
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