My complete Sage settings, including merits, decoders, etc.

[Shield]

Well these boards have certainly assisted me a great deal over the past year so what I am going to do is give back!

I am going to take screen captures of all my DirectShow Merits, my SageClient.properties and sage.properties and put them into a zip file here.

This is honestly the best Sage has ever worked for me. Your mileage may vary, but I have put quite a bit of work into this.

With this setup I can play back HD-PVR files, 1080p mkv, 1080p.wmv, 1080p.avi, smooth motion mpeg-2 transport and program streams.

For now:

Hardware:
Asus P5k motherboard
Nvidia 8600 GT PCI-Express Forceware 175.19 drivers
Pentium 4 Dual Core Extreme Edition 2.93 (sometimes a 6600 Quad Core, either one is fine)
2 GB Corsair memory
LsiLogic 8308ELP Hardware Raid 5
4 x 750 GB for DVD's/mkv/Blu-Ray/avi/HD Home movies in a Raid5 set
6 x 300 GB (2 are mirrored for OS, 4 are stand-alone for Sage recordings.

All drives formatted with 64k clusters except the OS drive as nothing is recorded to it.

Big Chenbro server type case with hot-swap
650 watt PC Power & Cooling power supply.
Tuners:
Analog: Nvidia DualMCE (Dual NTSC tuner for basic cable channels)
Digital: 1 HDHomerun Dual Tuner. Firmware version: 20070914
Digital: 1 HD-PVR Rev 2C

Software installed:
Windows XP Pro SP2
Complete ArcSoft Suite
Sage 6.4.4 beta
Media Player classic .09
Media Player 11

Decoders/Filters
Divx H264 Beta 2 (Used for 720p/1080p .mkv and wmvhd playback)
ArcSoft Video Decoder
FFShow for .mp3 and .avi play
Ac3 Filter
CoreAVC Professional 1.65 (not used currently)
Cyberlink 8.0 (not used currently)
Intervideo/Corel 9.0 (not used currently)
CoreAAC decoder (don't use Monogram AAC it lowers the pitch of voices)

Sage add-ons:
Sage MC latest version
IMBD plugin
Sage Recording Extender plugin
Sage Web Interface
Movie Times plugin (use mplayer2.exe to play these files externally with the /fullscreen /close switches - it's in your media player directory in program files)
Dirmon2 and Showanalyzer for commercial skipping (Best $10 ever spent)

Once I get everything backed up tonight I will attach a .zip file that includes quite a few screen captures.

I've worked so long to get to this point if I can save someone else from spending as much time as I did then it'll all be worth it.

Good luck!
Shawn

[Shield]

Some notes:

Sage settings:

6.4.4.172
Java Version: 1.6.0_07
SageMC STV Version: 6.3.7a-fix
SageMC JAR Version: 6.3.7a

Detailed Setup:

Video/Audio

Video Renderer - Overlay
Mpeg2 Video Decoder Filter - ArcSoft Video Decoder
Mpeg4 Playback - DirectShow (default)
DXVA Mpeg Mode - Default (default)
Dxva Deinterlacing - Default (default)
DScaler Deinterlacing - Disabled (default)
Audio Renderer - Default Direct Sound
Mpeg2 Audio Decoder - Ac3Filter
Audio Playback Delay - 0 (default)

DVD
DVD-Rom Drive - Yes
DVD Video Renderer - Overlay
Default
Default
Default
DVD Audio Renderer - Default Direct Sound
DVD Audio Decoder Filter - AC3Filter

Other settings:
Remote - MCE remote
Server - Enabled
Placeshifter/Extender - Disabled
3d Accelerator - Disabled
Overlay Color Keying - Enabled
User Interface - Standard 1080iHD
Power Management - Disabled

ArcSoft Setup
-Installed complete package
-In the Media player I disabled Hardware Acceleration
-Currently using the Hauppage IR blaster that came with the PVR:
If you are running Sage server and you get the error message "Cannot find the blaster" close the Blaster config and stop the SageService, and relaunch it.
-I was able to find codes for my Directv box by having it "Scan all codes" and I made note of when it shut off my Directv receiver (Code 125 for me)

[Shield]

Here's the zip file with the decoder merits and my sage.properties and sageclient.properties:


http://www.goldcomics.com/images/MySageSetup.zip



Keep in mind I can play any file, audio and video, and my DTS and Dolby Digital lights "light up" on my receiver.
With these settings I can playback 1080p .mkv, 1080p .wmv, 1080p.avi, etc.
Plus the H264/AVC ArcSoft files.


Let me know if you would like to see anything else, like some Graphedit stuff.

[Brent]

Would be nice if there were a single executable or built in program that could dump all of this information into a txt file. That way you could submit that file to SageTV any time you submit a support ticket and could attach it to your post if someone needed that information to help troubleshoot.

BeyondTV has something like this and it is very useful.

[Shield]

Originally Posted by Brent

Would be nice if there were a single executable or built in program that could dump all of this information into a txt file. That way you could submit that file to SageTV any time you submit a support ticket and could attach it to your post if someone needed that information to help troubleshoot.

BeyondTV has something like this and it is very useful.

Yes I was thinking the same thing when I was putting this together! Maybe in .xml format or something.

[Brent]

Along those same lines, it would be nice to have access to the logs via the web interface - this is another thing I miss from BeyondTV.