Frustrated beyond belief!

[heffneil]

You know what I find super frustrating about sage tv? Well I don't understand why on one of my clients I would be able to delete movies. Also I don't know why on clients I can add and remove video sources. I really don't want those options in the setup menu. What prompted this rant is that my client on my Mac still plays certain videos in spanish! I was looking through the setup menu and still can't find if or where I would change this!!!

Not to mention I still have videos that in their info show 0 seconds yet they play just fine as long as I don't stop and try to restart or fast forward or rewind. Things no one ever does (read sarcasm). I hate to use the B word and throw away my investment in two HD100's and software licenses but I can't get support from Sage TV directly and I am too stupid to get answers from this forum to my questions...

Neil

[Brent]

Somewhere in there there must be a question you are wanting answered.

Let us know what you want help with specifically and I'm sure your fellow SageTV users will attempt to help. Also, you said you couldn't get help from SageTV support - what did you ask of them?

[freedml]

Yes, it's true, remote clients can do almost anything that the client on the server can do. There's no structure for different permission levels.


I've had the timeline problem you mentioned and it could be the quality of the signal and/or tuner. I'm using OTA and there's one channel in particular that's still iffy. The others are reliable now that I have enough amplification on the antenna feed.


One problem I had for a long time was not formatting my recording partition with 64k clusters. Another was using MVPs which caused the server to have to transcode everything.


My major advice to a new SageTV user would be to get it working reliably on one machine with one tuner before adding more hardware or any customizations, then add one thing at a time and be darn sure there aren't any problems before you add the next thing.


Unfortunately, SageTV is pretty much a DIY project. It may work flawlessly out of the box for a select few, but it's a long haul for the rest of us.

[toricred]

One thing you can try with the recordings with strange timelines is to run it through VideoRedo's tool for Quickstream fix. If that resolves the problem then there might be a setting that needs to be made for your tuner card in the registry. What tuner card(s) are you using?

[heffneil]

Brent,

Thanks for the reply I am a huge fan. I subscribe to your site and you were someone who I read all of his posts when starting out.

I adopted your single click bat program using DVD Decrypt. I ripped about 130 of my DVD's now. I really only use Sage for now as a on demand type system. Most (90%) of my movies all say they have 0 length when I look at their info. When I play them I can not see progress on the track bar. I re-initialized my library via instruction from SageTv (George).

It actually made things worse. Show that were working properly are not now.

One particular video I think I found something but it is an exception. When I play the movie in VLC and get towards the end there is another clip from the original DVD and sage is showing it's time. But it starts the movie from the beginning and that clip is only 5 minutes long so I only get 5 minutes out of the original movie. I tried converting it with handbrake and haven't tested it yet.

My other issue is the default language on my mac client I have been testing with. How the heck do I change it to english?! The same movie playing through HD100 plays in english! I prefer english since I don't know spanish or french

Thanks,

Neil

p.s. I just realized that I was punny and used "Beyond" in my title. It wasn't intentional! Really...

[Brent]

Originally Posted by heffneil

I adopted your single click bat program using DVD Decrypt. I ripped about 130 of my DVD's now. I really only use Sage for now as a on demand type system. Most (90%) of my movies all say they have 0 length when I look at their info. When I play them I can not see progress on the track bar.

Can you play those movie files using any other video player? It almost sounds like the rips didn't work properly. And when you were talking about getting the incorrect audio (spanish for instance) I wonder if you ripped only the spanish audio instead of the english by accident?

I re-initialized my library via instruction from SageTv (George).

Not sure what you mean by re-initialize.

It actually made things worse. Show that were working properly are not now.[/quote]
What shows are not working now? Provide more detail on this if possible.

My other issue is the default language on my mac client I have been testing with. How the heck do I change it to english?! The same movie playing through HD100 plays in english

During DVD Playback, hit the options button on your remote or escape on a keyboard or right-click with the mouse to get options. Then select "audio language" to toggle between any available audio tracks. Note that if there is only one audio track it of course won't be able to switch.

It sounds like (correct me if I have this wrong) most of your issues are related to playback of DVD ripped files. If so, I would try to play back these files in VLC and make sure the playback works fine there first (make sure it includes the proper english audio track and plays bak okay)- then test those same files in SageTV.

Other suggestions:
Make sure you are using the very latest HD100 beta firmware - they just released a new one last week.
Let us know which types of video files your having trouble fast forwarding or rewinding. You shouldn't have any trouble with this on your HTPC server or HD100s as long as your dealing with standard video files.

[heffneil]

Those movies (all which are issues) work fine in VLC.

All I am using sage for right now is a media library. I haven't even begun to be frustrated with live tv

There is an option that George had me change in the SageTV.properties which cleared the library information and reimport it. I was asking how to do this. Someone suggested that since I was ripping dvd's right in to the media directory that sage might have processed it before it was complete.

Thanks,

Neil

[heffneil]

When I right click while watching a movie in spanish I see nothing that says audio options. What am I missing here?

Neil

[stanger89]

I'm not familiar with Brent's bat file, but are your DVDs structuredly the SageTV manual describes?

FWIW, DVDs (if ripped per the manual) will show up with zero length IIRC, but that's because they don't have a true "length", DVDs are a collection of various titles/menus/logic that have no defined length. However once you actually play the main movie the timebar works fine.

[Brent]

Are you using SageTV's default STV or SageMC?

also, what is the file structure of those ripped DVDS? Is it a single .mpg file or a single .vob file or multiple files?

[heffneil]

I am using SageMC for the one HD100 and regular sage for the other clients. The mac client (In spanish) is plain jane SageTV.

[heffneil]

Originally Posted by stanger89

I'm not familiar with Brent's bat file, but are your DVDs structuredly the SageTV manual describes?

FWIW, DVDs (if ripped per the manual) will show up with zero length IIRC, but that's because they don't have a true "length", DVDs are a collection of various titles/menus/logic that have no defined length. However once you actually play the main movie the timebar works fine.

Using DVD Decrypt. They are mpg files. Those that do work properly show the proper length in info. The ones that do not work show a zero (0) length when looking at their info. I can watch some of the shows that have 0 length but the trackbar just will not work. Some of them have the wrong length and it only plays a portion of the movie.

Neil

[freedml]

Originally Posted by heffneil

I can't get support from Sage TV directly

So, just to set the record straight, you got support directly from SageTV but it didn't help you solve the problem.

[Brent]

Originally Posted by heffneil

Using DVD Decrypt. They are mpg files. Those that do work properly show the proper length in info. The ones that do not work show a zero (0) length when looking at their info. I can watch some of the shows that have 0 length but the trackbar just will not work. Some of them have the wrong length and it only plays a portion of the movie.

Neil

Neil,
I'm not positive on this but it sure sounds like something went wrong with the DVD Decrypter rip. If you still have the original DVDs could you try re-ripping a few of the same ones that are causing you trouble - but use the DVD Decrypter gui instead of a cl script? Then see if SageTV recognizes them with the timeline and correct audio track.

For the record, I no longer use that script mostly because I'm not purchasing many DVDs any longer, but I do remember it occasionally choosing the incorrect audio track so I checked each resulting rip afterwards just to be safe.

[stanger89]

It's also a reason why I always recommend against the DVD->1 VOB->rename to mpg. VOBs are basically MPEG PS, but not quite, it's not unheard of for players to not like monolithic VOBs.

[heffneil]

Yes you are right I did get a response. I usually get one response from George at 10 pm every night. So debugging this issue and getting to the bottom of it is nearly impossible and lengthy. I respond almost instantaneously however a response doesn't come until around the same time the next day or maybe not until the next day after that!

It is frustrating and now he wants a file to test with. Problem is the files are 4 gigs in size and there is no easy way to get it to him...

Neil

[sandor]

so if you change the name of one of the "zero length" videos, say, add an "a" at the end of it...then if you let Sage rescan the imports folder... does it show up with the correct length??

it sounds like you are ripping right into the import directory, so when Sage rescans imports in the middle of a rip, it picks up "zero length". to troubleshoot, try ripping a movie manually into a directory one level higher, and then simply moving the file into your imports directory. see what the length comes up as.

[heatvent]

Originally Posted by freedml

Unfortunately, SageTV is pretty much a DIY project. It may work flawlessly out of the box for a select few, but it's a long haul for the rest of us.

I couldnt agree more with this comment. I am new to Sage and I have Vista Premium on my HTPC. I don't really like the Vista experience and was drawn to Sage which for some reason gives a much better picture that VMC (at least for me it's clearer and brighter). On the flipside, Getting Sage working has been a chore. VMC I just plugged in the TV card did the setup wizard and boom, I had a correct EPG and TV working perfectly, no screen size adjustments, no stuttering and low CPU usage. I just didn't care for the picture quality (looked too softened) and there is no way to tweak the deinterlacing or anything.

SageTV, however, used a lot of CPU and the video stuttered and had a white line accross the top. It took me hours of plugging in this, trying that, adjusting this, unistalling that to get it where I wanted. It now works but at a price and a couple of outstanding issues to track down the fix (EPG shows no data for digital channels more often than not and the NBC HD station sometimes tunes in NBC but other times FOX HD instead?).

In summary, I agree that SageTV is not a plug-n-play product and requires a "system administrator" of sorts.

[tahoetim]

I disagree. I am just a "consumer" and know very little about programming but I can follow instructions. When I bought Sage a few years ago, I tried to set it up on a single HTPC and tried a wireless MVP and even client pc's. I put it aside because I couldn't hard wire my house and do it right.

I am currently building a dedicated theater room in my basement. This time I built a server with WHS following the guide. I'm running my old cards; a pvr150 and a pvr500. No stability issues at all. I bought three Sage media extenders, plugged them in and viola! I am really enjoying the system and the family loves it too. I have moved on to ripping my library of DVD's and home movies. I also had two old placeshifter licenses. They work great on our laptops.


From an average Joe Consumer's perspective:

1. NEVER try to watch Sage through a PC.

2. Spend the $99 and set up a server with WHS and use 64 k packets

3. Get a laptop and do your admin through it. I rip dvds each evening from my laptop to the server folder wirelessly while I watch tv. I reboot, install apps, etc from the laptop.

4. Run new Cat5 wire and new coax from the drop at the street

5. Get a good 1 gig router


I read posts here daily and I see a lot of issues point back to users trying to take shortcuts or trying to use goofy parts or OS's. I just don't understand why anyone would use anything besides WHS; for $100 it's a bargain and rock solid. The Sage HD-200's are so simple. I wouldn't dream of trying to setup noisy pc's all over the house again. Been there, done that.

[QueOnda]

Originally Posted by tahoetim

I just don't understand why anyone would use anything besides WHS; for $100 it's a bargain and rock solid.

I've been seeing WHS posted all over this forum. I guess I need to look into it more. Do you know if they have a demo to try out? Can you use on a desktop computer (aka XP replacement?)?