Working IMDB Auto Metadata method, SageTV Post Mortem and a Big Thank You!

[mherce]

With overwhelming disapproval from my family and the failure of Studio to fix some of their issues, my SageTV voyage ends. Over the past 2 months I have installed more than a half dozen different HTPC platforms and my family has been testing, researching and tweaking them with me. Their biggest problem with SageTV (among many) for them is movies. So I thought, why not use what everyone here is using for movies and see if that makes it better. So a couple days ago, our domestic staff spent time manually entering 50 movies into that terrible program, DVDprofiler, and importing it. Turns out the IMDB importer actually gives more info and is better formatted. My 12 year old is a bit of a list maker and yesterday he emailed me a list on why he doesn't like SageTV. The first line translates to "Sages have beards, where is the beard in SageTV?" Anyway, with that list, the SageTV experiment ends in this house.

I first want to say a big thank you to the people of this community. You've been very helpful in answering my questions, when I've posted and in your threads and when my family searched this forum for help. Besides a propensity to become defensive about this app, this is the best answering HTPC forum I've posted to. Thank you! I want to return in kind by suggesting things for the SageTV community to think about demanding from their chosen software and leaving you with a helpful aide on automatic IMDB metadata for your movies.

For our experience with SageTV, there are two major problems. The first I think everyone would agree, is music needs to become a lot better. The list of things that need to become better for the music system in SageTV to come up to par with any of the other HTPCs platforms out there is quite long, but I can mention just one thing which will clearly make the case. There are dozens of high quality freeware visualizations and this company couldn't spend a bit of money to license one of them? The default one, besides being from 1990, doesn't even work half the time. Its hard to believe. Alternatively, why isn't the architecture plugin compatible with the hundreds (actually probably thousands) of WMP visualizations? Which leads to the very major problem SageTV has.

The way SageTV works is just not platform building compatible. The big lesson I learned in going through HTPC apps, is that all of them are structured around building a platform for their users. I guess this is how they compete with MCE's ubiquity. SageTV's approach seems, to me, to limit their users as much as possible. The first problem is the database. Again, the list of problems is long but I can just mention 1 thing and make my case. Genre fields. Since when does a database limit the amount of data in a field which is normally populated by multiple entries? You have category and subcategory, 2 fields total for genre and it makes no sense. The whole approach to the database seems to be intended to limit the user. When it comes to what SageTV calls "imported media", limiting the user makes no sense. On top of that, users don't even have the ability to add useful new database fields to overcome shortcomings.

The second problem is Studio. Frey created a proprietary system that is neither end user friendly nor is developer friendly. I know, I've only looked at studio for a few hours so sure, I am nowhere near fully versed. However, the fundamental fact is that it’s proprietary and not even a complete interface. Case in point, I want to make screens like My Movies. How do I use standard development skills to do that? I can't. To make screen changes I have to work within the widget system, yet there is no way to create field database calls to sort movies by movie rating. Just that alone brings to light so many different problems with the core way SageTV works: there is no ratings field, I cannot add one, I can't really do custom sorts (filters yes but not sorts), it goes on but you get the picture. Using the RWmetadata importer to map the existing parental ratings field (G,PG,R,etc) to IMDB's score one, and even that inbuilt field cannot be sorted.

This is just one example out of many, but in other words, My Movies or any decent movie viewing interface (e.g. coverflow), is impossible to do in SageTV. Heck, I wanted to add a few fields to the music now playing to read from ID3 tags and I discovered how difficult that is. It should be just a matter of adding fields to a template. Its not even close to that. Then there is no way to read the lyrics tag consistently. I don't know if this is a problem with the music parser, the core, or something I am doing. Doesn't matter, I put 40 minutes into it and its just a simple read from an ID3 tag. This app is not developer friendly and not end user friendly, is the point. In other HTPC apps, I was able to add fields in a few minutes. So for users, this means you can never easily customize what is displayed on your screen without requiring someone with skills to spend lots of time doing it for you for free (how often does that happen?).

The fact that I had to borrow a friend’s key just to see studio, makes no sense unless the idea is to hide its shortcomings from trial users. Again, it brings us back to the mentality of this software in actively trying to limit the user. If I wanted to make SageTV addons for people here, what difference does it make if I use/own SageTV or not? If it wasn't for that whole trial thing, I would've actually gotten into studio a month ago and probably cranked out a few of these basic screen improvements to share with people. Who loses there? It’s not the trial user. For your perspective, this also means that 3rd party developers would never even look at SageTV to port some of their plugins for it. Considering the amount and variety of plugins that all the other HTPC apps have, it should be pretty obvious to the users here that something is wrong.

My family has decided to go with Media Portal, ending my MCE replacement search. Its TV server is running like a champ on my WHS machine and its plethora of features is astounding. One of which is a very complete movie system. Still not as good as My Movies overall, but it brings some features to the table that My Movies was lacking. This couple of months was a fun family activity which I recommend. It’s ironic that I have money to burn on this and am ending up with free software. Most of you probably have MCE somewhere on one of your computers right now. If so, I encourage you to install and setup My Movies (link) with a couple of titles to see what could be. Setup is super fast and easy and My Movies is free. Then return to SageTV and demand better from your chosen product.

If we went with SageTV, I would've written a scraper similar to the TV.com one for IMDB. That's another issue with SageTV, and where Media Portal shines, there is no focus on automation. The TV.com scraper is the only plugin you can automate. Everything else with SageTV requires manual input and is a pure waste of time. Media Portal and most other HTPC software I tested, it’s all automated (also a point for 3rd party apps over MCE, where not all plugins are automated). SageTV is the exception, painfully so. This may be more an issue with the plugin developers, but my guess is its probably due to the user-limiting way SageTV is built, as mentioned above.

Anyway, I started figuring out how to get the IMDB metadata into SageTV on a bulk scale before I would write the app and I was successful for my test case of 600 movies. Since I’m no longer going to write the app, I want to share how I did it with you. It’s not neat or elegant, my solution would've taken most of this into 1 app but it works and can be totally automated. I suggest pulling 3-4 movie titles into a test folder and work on it till you got it right before doing it for a lot of movies.

• Download VrokSub
• You need a text parser and file renamer. I use Magic File Renamer which does both and can be called from a command line (i.e. batch file) with the preset as an argument
• Configure VrokSub to your movie library. This app is limited in that it won't get IMDB info if it also doesn't get subtitles. So, if you are already using and have SMIs, remove SMI from the config file. Make sure “/nfo” is in your parameters list. If you also have srts or subs, you need to remove those too but it must get one of the subtitles otherwise it won't get the IMDB info.
• Run vroksub. Tweak till its doing what you need it to do. It will also fetch cover image, rename the file name, move the files into a new folder under any path you set and named as you choose. All is set in the configuration (read the readme).
• When you have VrokSub working, open one of the nfos it creates. You see all the info is there, you just need to parse it and rename the extension to .my
• Use your text parser to rename fields. You want it to conform to SageTV's .my file standard like:
  
  

  title=2001: A Space Odyssey
  TVOverview=2001 is a story of evolution. Sometime in the distant past someone or something nudged evolution by placing a monolith here on earth (presumably elsewhere throughout the universe as well) Evolution then enabled man to reach the moon's surface where he finds yet another monolith, one which signals the monolith-placers that we have evolved that far. Now a race begins between computers (HAL) and man (Bowman) to reach the monolith-placers, the winner will achieve the next step in evolution, whatever that may be
  TVStartDate=6 April 1968
  TVGenre=Adventure/Sci-Fi
  TVActors=Keir Dullea (Dr. Dave Bowman), Gary Lockwood (Dr. Frank Poole),William Sylvester (Dr. Heywood R. Floyd), Daniel Richter (Moon-Watcher), Leonard Rossiter (Dr. Andrei Smyslov), Margaret Tyzack (Elena), Robert Beatty (Dr. Ralph Halvorsen), Sean Sullivan (Dr. Bill Michaels), Douglas Rain (HAL 9000 (voice)), Frank Miller (Mission controller (voice)), Bill Weston (Astronaut), Ed Bishop (Aries-1B Lunar shuttle captain), Glenn Beck (Astronaut), Alan Gifford (Poole's father), Ann Gillis (Poole's mother)
  TVRating=8.4
  TVDirector=Stanley Kubrick
  TVProducer=Stanley Kubrick
  TVWriter=Arthur C. Clarke

  Note: You have to turn ", " into "/". Turn "; " into "=". You have to limit the genre fields to the first two (erase the rest) if you want to avoid getting genres like "action/adventure/mystery" instead of "Action", "Adventure". This is a limitation of the limited and closed SageTV database. Magic File Renamer allows regular expression matching, which makes this easy. Lastly, I am using the IMDB rating in place of the Ratings Board certification, in my example. Though, as I noted, this field is not sortable, even in studio.
  
• After you parse the text, then you need to rename the file from <movie name>.nfo to <movie name>.my. This can be done in Magic File Renamer or simply by a move command in your batch file
• Run the RW metadata importer and you're all set.

I successfully tested this with a test library of 600 titles over 2 weeks running a batch file to call all of this every day at 4am. When I stopped doing it last week, the library had added 24 more movies which was all successfully and automatically tagged. Unfortunately I had to keep running the RWmetadata import manually. So its not all automatic.

Boy, this turned out a ton longer than I intended. I guess writing too much is a journalist's curse (often we get paid by word) and this journalist is badly in need of his editor . I started with SageTV when MS's website pointed me to SageTV over 2 months ago. After a weekend, I initially found SageTV to be very limited, and quickly moved on. This month, my 10 year old saw the Center Stage theme and accused me of not giving SageTV a fair shot, since all they had seen of it was the stock STV. With that ringing accusation, I overcompensated by putting a big part of my HTPC time into tricking out SageTV as much as I could. I guess it became a bit of an obsession to make up for my kid's accusation. In the end, I do not feel I have wasted my time but I hope that some of my insights can help this become a much better product, so I can return someday. Till then thanks again from my whole family for all the help, and I wish you all luck with your chosen HTPC app.

[viperdiablo]

"My family has decided to go with Media Portal, ending my MCE replacement search. "


Interesting thread, I am new to Sagetv and find it a very good product. Iam curious to know, does the Hauppauge HD PVR work with Media Portal? Because to me that is a must.

[ldavis]

To me, this whole argument here really is a dichotomy of the end user. Many users are very interested in the ability to customize the interface, almost as a personal artistic expression. For those types, SageTV might not be the best option unless that end user has the time to put into learning Studio. For them, the ability to customize the look and add (what I would call) small improvements are just as much a part of the core functionality as the ability to record TV on a networked device, and stream to two other networked devices in real time. Apparently “mherce” is one of those people. I respect that – I don’t understand it, but I respect it.

For my part, I watch TV/videos and listen to music. I don’t watch user interfaces (and some would say clearly the SageTV development team does not watch user interfaces). I am a CenterSage user but quite frankly, though the stock interface is not the greatest, it would allow me to do all I need to access my media if there were no customization available. I do wish that studio was easier to use, but honestly, I do not think I would change much from CenterSage even if I could.

My decision to use SageTV came back in the early days of Sage not too long after the monthly fees were dropped (and that was a long time ago). If you think the user interface is bad now, you ain’t seen nothing till you look at that interface . But SageTV had intrinsic features (multiple tuners, tuners on remote computers, client/server setup) that just were not available anywhere that I found (and I had been looking for several years). The rest of the media was of some interest to me, but the reality was that the first time I networked my computers together; I had access to all my music and video files just by opening up Zoomplayer, WMP, ect. and the shared drive. Admittedly, not an arm chair interface but functionality was there without any other software. But the TV functionality, that was unique at that time. Though the years watching others try to develop the interface first and then the TV functionality, it seems to have been shown that getting the TV/PVR aspect to work properly is a non-trivial task (Meedio comes to mind here – that took longer than expected and though I have no first hand knowledge, my feeling reading their forums at the time was that it, the TV module, never reached to potential that was hoped for.) Some have had success, others not so much. To me SageTV focused on the meat and potatoes first, and then worried about the secondary features. I have looked around, but Sage does what I need it to. For others, the ability to customize is as much a core feature as the ability to “pause” live TV. As I said before, I respect that point of view, I just don’t get it - I watch TV not user interfaces.

[stuckless]

You'd almost think that we read two different main posts. I didn't see any indication that he was unhappy with sage purely form the "Look" of sage. You say that you don't watch User Interfaces, but yet you chose to use CenterSage I use the stock sage UI because I really don't care about the UI, but I do care about features, and I agree with the original poster, that Sage is far lacking in Media Center features. And yet, I agree with you that Sage is a great PVR.

I was very close to ditching Sage myself, for most of the same reasons as the original poster. But the reason why I chose sage was not because it's a great PVR, or it has a great UI, but because it's written mainly in java and it runs on linux, which I felt that I could "enhance" to be what I needed it to be. But, after I got the product, I realized that adding customizations (ie, adding new features, not just look and feel), was not very user friendly process. I have no issues adding new features using Java, but using Studio to do even the simplest tasks, takes way too much effort.

I really beleive that Sage could put more effort into the Media Center features, but I also realize that they are a small company, and they need to assign resources to bugs and prioritize the features that they add.

So while I watch TV and not user interfaces as wel I'd still be happy if the current User Interface contains more/better features

[ldavis]

Originally Posted by stuckless

I didn't see any indication that he was unhappy with sage purely form the "Look" of sage. You say that you don't watch User Interfaces, but yet you chose to use CenterSage

First, when talking about the interface I do not just mean the look but all the features thereof. Second, I did not say it did not care about them, just that they were very far from the top of my list. When I say I do not watch the UI, that does not mean that I do not look at them at all but is merely allegory to say that in my mind, the purpose of the UI is to facilitate access to media - The UI and its features are not an end into itself. For me outside of the PVR functionality, the media center is "see a file, play a file". That is all I really care about. For example, the MCE import for Videos that the OP gave a link to is quite a nice looking thing. I would love to have it. However, other than cover art and a rating (for parental controls) there is nothing that I really use for imported videos, and I can currently do that with Sage. Now, what would I have to give up in core PVR (and media center) functionality to ditch Sage and go to MCE or Media Portal.

However, I know people that live with serious problems in Sage to use a particular interface with certain features (not just the look and feel but the features of that interface) when it is possible to go to stock STV and maybe eliminate the problem, but they would rather live with the problems. I respect their choice, but I don't get it. In that case, I would ditch CenterSage for the stock STV in about 1/2 second. I prefer SageMC (CenterSage theme) because to me it offers better features with no percieved negatives. If there were any negatives (lack of stability, ect) SageMC (with its features) would be history for me.

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by mherce

So a couple days ago, our domestic staff spent time manually entering 50 movies into that terrible program, DVDprofiler, and importing it.

Sounds like you were manually entering data, is that true? Why did you not just search/download the info? That's the whole point of DVD Profiler, it's got about the most complete DVD database I've found.

For our experience with SageTV, there are two major problems. The first I think everyone would agree, is music needs to become a lot better. The list of things that need to become better for the music system in SageTV to come up to par with any of the other HTPCs platforms out there is quite long, but I can mention just one thing which will clearly make the case. There are dozens of high quality freeware visualizations and this company couldn't spend a bit of money to license one of them? The default one, besides being from 1990, doesn't even work half the time. Its hard to believe. Alternatively, why isn't the architecture plugin compatible with the hundreds (actually probably thousands) of WMP visualizations? Which leads to the very major problem SageTV has.

Basically, Sage is cross-platform, it runs on Windows, Linux, Mac, and even dedicated hardware (HD100 extender), and WMP visualizations wouldn't work on many of those.

And FWIW, after spending a good bit of time trying to improve Sage's music library a while ago, I realized that it was pointless, I never listen to music if I'm somewhere I can use Sage, ie with a TV on. If I want to listen to music I either don't have the TV on, or don't want it on, if I've got the TV on, I'm watching videos.

I personally think Audio and Video need totally different interfaces. Audio is served best with a simple device that doesn't require a additional display (Roku, Squeezebox, Sonos, etc), but video is best served by a graphic-intensive TV type display.

But that's just me.

The way SageTV works is just not platform building compatible. The big lesson I learned in going through HTPC apps, is that all of them are structured around building a platform for their users. I guess this is how they compete with MCE's ubiquity. SageTV's approach seems, to me, to limit their users as much as possible. The first problem is the database. Again, the list of problems is long but I can just mention 1 thing and make my case. Genre fields. Since when does a database limit the amount of data in a field which is normally populated by multiple entries? You have category and subcategory, 2 fields total for genre and it makes no sense. The whole approach to the database seems to be intended to limit the user. When it comes to what SageTV calls "imported media", limiting the user makes no sense. On top of that, users don't even have the ability to add useful new database fields to overcome shortcomings.

Most metadata formats I've used support a very limited set of Genres, ID3 has but a single field, DVD Profiler supports 3, there seems to be no conformity to support more than one genre.

The second problem is Studio. Frey created a proprietary system that is neither end user friendly nor is developer friendly. I know, I've only looked at studio for a few hours so sure, I am nowhere near fully versed. However, the fundamental fact is that it’s proprietary and not even a complete interface. Case in point, I want to make screens like My Movies. How do I use standard development skills to do that? I can't. To make screen changes I have to work within the widget system, yet there is no way to create field database calls to sort movies by movie rating. Just that alone brings to light so many different problems with the core way SageTV works: there is no ratings field, I cannot add one, I can't really do custom sorts (filters yes but not sorts), it goes on but you get the picture. Using the RWmetadata importer to map the existing parental ratings field (G,PG,R,etc) to IMDB's score one, and even that inbuilt field cannot be sorted.

You don't have to use the built-in database (though that is easiest).

This is just one example out of many, but in other words, My Movies or any decent movie viewing interface (e.g. coverflow), is impossible to do in SageTV.

Sorry, but that's just completely wrong, there is NOTHING preventing doing MyMovies or Coverflow in SageTV. MyMovies is a great example. Basesd on my limted understanding MyMovies completely ignores the MCE database in lieu of a custom SQL database. The exact same thing could be done in SageTV, and probaly would not be any more development effort (might even be less, I don't know).

Heck, I wanted to add a few fields to the music now playing to read from ID3 tags and I discovered how difficult that is. It should be just a matter of adding fields to a template. Its not even close to that. Then there is no way to read the lyrics tag consistently. I don't know if this is a problem with the music parser, the core, or something I am doing. Doesn't matter, I put 40 minutes into it and its just a simple read from an ID3 tag. This app is not developer friendly and not end user friendly, is the point.

Frankly, a "couple hours" is nowhere near enough to understand how to develop for Sage, or any other app. You should really look at what they've done in SageMC, I'm frankly blown away by what they've done, and the amount of configurability they've included.

In other HTPC apps, I was able to add fields in a few minutes. So for users, this means you can never easily customize what is displayed on your screen without requiring someone with skills to spend lots of time doing it for you for free (how often does that happen?).

What are you trying to add?

My family has decided to go with Media Portal, ending my MCE replacement search. Its TV server is running like a champ on my WHS machine and its plethora of features is astounding. One of which is a very complete movie system. Still not as good as My Movies overall, but it brings some features to the table that My Movies was lacking. This couple of months was a fun family activity which I recommend. It’s ironic that I have money to burn on this and am ending up with free software. Most of you probably have MCE somewhere on one of your computers right now. If so, I encourage you to install and setup My Movies (link) with a couple of titles to see what could be. Setup is super fast and easy and My Movies is free. Then return to SageTV and demand better from your chosen product.

You realize that MyMovies is a free, user-created addon, so it's not really "fair" complaining to SageTV about a feature added by a competitors, in fact, really all of your complaints are about user addons, and comparing them to user addons.

My Movies is awesome for sure, but not because of MS or MCE/VMC.

[Brent]

I agree with the original poster that the movies functionality needs to be improved on - would be nice to have a mass-import, automated IMDB search function.

I also agree that music in SageTV could be improved

BUT I also agree with Stanger89 that the OP seems to have missed the purpose and functionality (unless I'm misunderstanding the post) of DVDProfiler as all you need to do is type in the movie title and it imports the metadata for you - in a very detailed fashion.

[mikesm]

I think everyone here would agree that I am a huge Sage fan, and push it as a great solution on multiple forums. For me, the PVR capabilities of Sage, esp. coupled with an R5000-HD or HD-DVR are unmatched by any platform. Couple that with extenders, and it is the best platform for watching TV, bar none.

That said, I agree with the OP on most of his comments. The look and feel of the default UI is really bad IMO, but SageMC is a huge step forward, and the builtin functionality in SageMC is fantastic as well. Quite honestly, I don't understand why anyone would run Sage without SageMC.

That said, the ability to automatically "do the right thing" with ripped media is lacking. With work, you can get DVDprofiler to do a decent job, but the process is not that simple. I think XBMC and mediaportal do a much better job here, even if IMDB is the only source of data (and IMDB is very good). Most people would want the ability to tell Sage to regularly import ripped media as a constant process, and flag exceptions for ambiguous titles. If the media is ripped with the title as the name of the directly, mediaportal and XBMC do a very good job on it. And it's got better data for a lot of kids DVD's that dvdprofiler still seems to have holes for. Ideally, a solution that could use DVDprofiler and fill in gaps with IMDB or some set if tiered database preferences would be great.

Music is better, but again the tools in XBMC and mediaportal are easier and the experience is better. Some work here could make SageMC a much better media center platform.

Sage's strengths sometimes are the source of it's weaknesses. For example, to make sage be portable to multiple OS's, they use java which comes its own set of issues. But it also constrains the use of resources. For example, I don't think anyone is pleased with the wiz.bin database, and would prefer a real database that people can write straightforward SQL utilities to deal with import/export. But to pick a database that runs on all the different platforms is a challenge - maybe only mySQL would qualify.

This portability also constrains plugin development. Mymovies, a great plugin for VMC, is one of the only things I miss from my MCE/VMC days, only runs on windows, and takes advantage of windows only tools. Porting it so that it runs on any Sage platform would be a hard job. Maybe if it ran only on windows it would be worth it, but then certain Sage communities would not be able to enjoy it.

I do think that the look and feel needs some work. Making SageMC be officially supported would be a great first step. It would be great if the Sage team were to try it for a week. I bet they would be very impressed.

Longer term, something less esoteric than studio would be great. Maybe a translator from MCML to Studio or something along those lines would be helpful. Just being able to use mediaportal plugins would be great too.

It's a little bit of a chicken and egg thing. Studio gives you almost all the tools to implement the functionality that VMC and and Mediaportal and their associated plugins have. But developers wouldn't put resources into this unless the user community is much larger. But the community won't get much larger without the functionality and ease of use of some of the plugins that the other platforms have. So it's a bit of a catch-22.

I am hoping that the Fiji fiasco will cause a bunch of folks to migrate here from VMC, hopefully developer types who can move some of the functionality and plugins over as well. But some solution needs to be found here to really make it easy for folks to make the jump. Mymovies would be one of those core plugins, as a lot of people run VMC because of that application...

Very few people use VMC as a PVR. Understanding that is important if we want to make SageTV a competitive platform to VMC.

[stuckless]

mikesm, while I agree with some of you points, I don't think that sage's problem is that fact that it's a portable application, or that it's written in java (a lot of which is not java, but native code). In my oppinion that shows a lack of understanding of both java and the importance of portability. Contraining Sage to Windows is no more beneficial than contraining it to Linux or Mac.

As for Wiz.bin, I agree, get rid of it, and replace with embedded db, such as sqlite or derby (both of which are also portable)

As for making it more "MCE/VMC" like is something, I for one, am not intestered in. I may be the only one, but I prefer the stock sage UI over SageMC.

Personally the biggest the problem that afflicts Sage, in my oppinion, is the lack of a decent plugin development environment/tools. Studio was created because the the Sage STV is too hard to understand, and so the thought was, let's create a tool to manage that. The problem is that the the tool becomes too hard to understand. XMBC and MediaPortal are both open platforms with well established plugin interfaces. Also becuase they share the same parent, there is overlap in knowledge that is transferrable.

To make great plugins, you need a flexible UI framework, that is easy to learn. The backend code is usually not that hard to write. What becomes hard is trying to easily get that logic into a usable UI. I given it several tries to write STVs for Sage and each time, I've given up. I'm a fairly seasoned developer, but the STVs puzzle me.

What sage needs is an overlay model, similar to firefox plugins or eclipse extensions. Today whenever you upgrade to the next release of Sage, you have to re-import all the stvs for the plugins you want. This is a pain and not very plugin friendly. Using an overlay approach, the main STV would never be touched, and plugins could make contributions to the UI in a way that survives upgrades. But in addition to that, Sage needs to pull it's programming language out of it's UI, and treat the STVs are simply UIs, as Mediaportal and XBMC does. Unfortunately this mean totally retrofitting the STV model, so I doubt we'll ever see it happen.

[nielm]

Originally Posted by stuckless

Studio was created because the the Sage STV is too hard to understand, and so the thought was, let's create a tool to manage that.

Actually, Studio came first. the original 2.0 STV was created in studio, even if it was not public at the time...

[stuckless]

Actually, Studio came first. the original 2.0 STV was created in studio, even if it was not public at the time...

So the Studio product came before the actual STV??? I guess that sounds right, if the original "STV" wasn't a file format, but rather a memory format. Xml was just the persistence mechanism.... but it still goes to point that the STV (either is memory format or xml) is a hard thing to master, and without using Studio, it's even harder. I think that projects that are sucessful in getting people to write plugins, use a more flexible and understandable plugin model such as firefox, xbmc, mediaportal, mce, eclipse, etc. If MyMovies is wrtten using an html front-end, then I must say that I am really impressed with the flexibility of the MCE plugin model.

I should note that I consider you (nielm), flachbar, meinmaui, and others that actually create STVs to be freakin wizzards, or sage's even

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by stuckless

So the Studio product came before the actual STV??? I guess that sounds right, if the original "STV" wasn't a file format, but rather a memory format. Xml was just the persistence mechanism....

Ever wondered why they're called STVs? That was the original extension for SageTV application definition files, and originally they weren't XML. Originally STVs were a binary "compiled" format. As nielm mentioned, Studio was created, probably sometime during or before the development of V2.0 to create a foundation for buiding completely customizeable GUIs.

If you really look at it (and play with Java a bit) Studio is basically a Tree/Graphical Java GUI builder.

but it still goes to point that the STV (either is memory format or xml) is a hard thing to master, and without using Studio, it's even harder.

"STVs" were never meant to be edited without Studio. And as for difficulty, yes it's rather difficult, but it's actually quite a bit easier IMO, than pure Java GUI coding, and Studio is just about as powerful as strait Java. I think people somewhat misunderstand Studio, it's not a skinning tool, it's really an SDK for Sage.

I think that projects that are sucessful in getting people to write plugins, use a more flexible and understandable plugin model such as firefox, xbmc, mediaportal, mce, eclipse, etc. If MyMovies is wrtten using an html front-end, then I must say that I am really impressed with the flexibility of the MCE plugin model.

That is one thing some of us (I think even Jeff too perhaps) have been wanting for a long time, a better way to create "plugins" for Sage. Today we're basically limited to patches, rather intelligent ones, but patches none the less.

[nick_l]

Originally Posted by stuckless

mikesm, while I agree with some of you points, I don't think that sage's problem is that fact that it's a portable application, or that it's written in java (a lot of which is not java, but native code). In my oppinion that shows a lack of understanding of both java and the importance of portability. Contraining Sage to Windows is no more beneficial than constraining it to Linux or Mac.

Just to play devil's advocate, I wonder if that is acutally true. I wonder what the actual installed user base is on platforms other than windows. If, for instance, the windows user base is actually %85 or so, it might make sense to just focus development on the windows codebase, and perhaps try to optimize it for virtualization software for the other users.

Originally Posted by stuckless

As for Wiz.bin, I agree, get rid of it, and replace with embedded db, such as sqlite or derby (both of which are also portable)

Amen! (not that I'm actually familiar with either of those, but they couldnt be worse than the wiz).

Originally Posted by stuckless

To make great plugins, you need a flexible UI framework, that is easy to learn. The backend code is usually not that hard to write. What becomes hard is trying to easily get that logic into a usable UI. I given it several tries to write STVs for Sage and each time, I've given up. I'm a fairly seasoned developer, but the STVs puzzle me.

What sage needs is an overlay model, similar to firefox plugins or eclipse extensions. Today whenever you upgrade to the next release of Sage, you have to re-import all the stvs for the plugins you want. This is a pain and not very plugin friendly. Using an overlay approach, the main STV would never be touched, and plugins could make contributions to the UI in a way that survives upgrades. But in addition to that, Sage needs to pull it's programming language out of it's UI, and treat the STVs are simply UIs, as Mediaportal and XBMC does. Unfortunately this mean totally retrofitting the STV model, so I doubt we'll ever see it happen.

I agree! It's like you were inside my head reading my thoughts. I know that it might not win any friends initially, but the long term benefit to cleaning up the stv process would be SO wort it. The clearer and friendlier the process, the more contributors. We all win! Sage gets more users/customers and we get more functionality!


BTW, I love that these forums are a place where we can all acutally come and discuss these things and isn't just a place for veiled company propaganda. Sage is a great product and one that I know I will be using for many years to come!


Nick

[kevpriest]

I'm a big fan of Sage, but I agree with this post almost entirely. Very nicely done.

[stuckless]

Just to play devil's advocate, I wonder if that is acutally true. I wonder what the actual installed user base is on platforms other than windows. If, for instance, the windows user base is actually %85 or so, it might make sense to just focus development on the windows codebase, and perhaps try to optimize it for virtualization software for the other users.

Ok, just to play along Let's say you are right.... and that 85% is Windows (I would suspect it's higher though, more like 95%). My point about portability is really that it doesn't usually take that much effort to make portable aplications. It does require a little more forethought, but not much more development efforts. If there was a compelling reason to ONLY support Winodws because Sage needed some really import DRM feature that ONLY Windows could offer, then I could see a case to throw out portability. But, something like MyVideos doesn't require Windoes, it simply requires someone create the codebase (which isn't that hard) and then create the UI which is hardest part.

Just as a side note... I'd be happy to work with anyone that has Sage UI experience to create MyVideos clone for Sage. I can do the back end programming, but the frontend is truly left for the Sage Wizzards

But back to the other 15%.... Some of those 15% will leave sage. I only chose sage BECAUSE it runs on Linux. I didn't even consider, MCE, Beyond, MediaPortal, etc. So I had to choose between Sage and MythTV.... It was a hard choice. Sage is commercial, MythTV is open source, but in the end, I went with Sage because it has a better plugin model (believe or not ) Not all of the 15% will leave Sage, but some will, and that translates into market share loss overall.

I have a lot of respect for Sage for having the courage to create a great cross platform setup, in spite of the FUD surrounding portability It's too easy to just say.... Let's only do Windows because that would be easier. But to actually prove that it can be done, and done well... Kudos to their development team. Any issues that Sage may have, isn't related to it being a portable application.

[nick_l]

Originally Posted by stuckless

My point about portability is really that it doesn't usually take that much effort to make portable aplications. It does require a little more forethought, but not much more development efforts.
I have a lot of respect for Sage for having the courage to create a great cross platform setup, in spite of the FUD surrounding portability It's too easy to just say.... Let's only do Windows because that would be easier. But to actually prove that it can be done, and done well... Kudos to their development team. Any issues that Sage may have, isn't related to it being a portable application.

Ok, I can respect that opinion. I just thought I'd throw it out there as a point of discussion.

Nick

[mikejaner]

Originally Posted by stuckless

Just as a side note... I'd be happy to work with anyone that has Sage UI experience to create MyVideos clone for Sage. I can do the back end programming, but the front-end is truly left for the Sage Wizards

If I had these skills, I would jump on this with you right away. I looked at and played with Studio back in the day when it first came out, and lost time to mess with it. Unrelated to this post, but somewhat related to Stanger's post a while ago about trying to rewrite the music interface, I started thinking about opening it up again, and trying to learn it again so I could attempt to tweak the current Default STV to work better with DVD's. We definitely need an improved Movie Library. For example, the buttons on the left side of the screen in the Default STV for Movies, Music, and Pictures, seem to need work and possibly total revision.
stuckless- I think if you were to team up with Stanger, you guys might actually get something awesome done. Again, if I could help I totally would, but lack the skills to do so at this point, but hope to change that in the near future.

[stuckless]

As I said... I'm willing to team up with someone on the UI side, since i know nothing about how to create STVs.