Plugin: Sage Recording Extender (SREv3)

[ptzink]

Very nice! Thanks!

[cat6man]

well, it's opening day and time for my annual "thank you!" to slugger for the great plug-in!

also, now that MLB extra innings has the games showing up in the EPG, i see that games into next week are already flagged (green check mark) by SRE, so i guess this year's version (haven't used SRE since the end of baseball in2010) has eliminated the old issue with only being able to verfiy SRE capture of an event 24 into the future.........very nice

edit: on last point, just caught up with thread and note that you posted about just this aspect.

[Slugger]

Originally Posted by cat6man

well, it's opening day and time for my annual "thank you!" to slugger for the great plug-in!

also, now that MLB extra innings has the games showing up in the EPG, i see that games into next week are already flagged (green check mark) by SRE, so i guess this year's version (haven't used SRE since the end of baseball in2010) has eliminated the old issue with only being able to verfiy SRE capture of an event 24 into the future.........very nice

Yeah, livepvrdata.com moved away from the ESPN Bottom Line feeds so now future lookups are possible.

I've also got a few big enhancements planned, just need to find the time to implement them. The biggest being that in the Sage 7.1.5 beta (and beyond), I now can distinguish between live airings of events and tape delays/replays and will be configuring SRE to only monitor live airings of events and ignore tape delays/replays. This will allow for the additional support of preseason games. I'm also hoping to get PGA Tour monitoring in place before the Masters, but there are some logistical problems with that so I don't think that will happen. If someone wants to assist with some research on PGA Tour support then let me know - I need the research done before I can try to write the code for the monitor. With that said, I've got 3 other Sage projects sucking up my Sage time right now, so neither of these features are likely to get done for some time, but for sure the live/replay airing detection is coming at some point.

[cat6man]

hi slugger,

i noticed that last night's red sox game recorded quite a bit past the end of the game.......i have the setting for 45 minutes default if server can't be reached, so perhaps that was the cause? i haven't had that happen in the past that i can remember

[Slugger]

Originally Posted by cat6man

hi slugger,

i noticed that last night's red sox game recorded quite a bit past the end of the game.......i have the setting for 45 minutes default if server can't be reached, so perhaps that was the cause? i haven't had that happen in the past that i can remember

Yeah, last night's Jays game went about 32 minutes too long for me. The logs show it was espn.com being slow about updating the status to "Final", which is what SRE looks for. I think it said "End 9th" for about 30 mins before they finally changed it. I haven't watched today's game yet, but the recording ended 4 mins early so I'll report back what I find out after I watch the game. For now, seems to be just an espn.com hiccup yesterday.

[Slugger]

Looks like it took ESPN.com about 18 minutes to update the status of the Jays game to finished today. I'll monitor this situation over the next few days and see if it improves. If not, I'll try to convince livepvrdata.com to move to mlb.com or something (or more likely will have to write an mlb.com monitor myself and hope they switch to it).

[Slugger]

Originally Posted by Slugger

Looks like it took ESPN.com about 18 minutes to update the status of the Jays game to finished today. I'll monitor this situation over the next few days and see if it improves. If not, I'll try to convince livepvrdata.com to move to mlb.com or something (or more likely will have to write an mlb.com monitor myself and hope they switch to it).

It's definitely a problem with espn.com... sometimes (more often than not right now) when you request the scoreboard page you get the start of day page where no games have started. espn.com then uses ajax to connect and update to the current status (when viewed in a browser, of course). Eventually, the current status is delivered in the base page, but is usually delayed. I've seen this before on espn.com, but usually it fixes itself. I'm going to give it a day or two and hopefully it does, if not then I'll start looking elsewhere for MLB monitoring.

[cat6man]

thanks for digging into to this for us!

[Slugger]

Today's Jays game looked much better for me (less the result ). The game ended at 16:05 and recorded until 16:12. It usually takes at least 2-3 minutes for espn.com to update after a game completes plus the local caching done by livepvrdata.com so anything within 5-10 minutes is definitely acceptable to me. If anyone else is seeing extensions beyond that range then please let me know so I can investigate.

Thanks.

[cat6man]

both saturday and sunday sox games looked fine for ending, with saturday extending the game beyond 3 hours and sunday terminating early......i didn't check the exact timing but both were close to the end of the game.
i guess friday was opening day jitters

[cat6man]

hi slugger,

since i went to 7.1.7 beta of sageTV, SRE hasn't worked.
it stills shows green check marks to indicate that games are being
monitored, but no games are being extended.

did something in 7.1.7 disable it?

thanks

[Slugger]

Nope, should be working. Will need to see sre.log.

[aweber1nj]

I'm just setting-up my first STV (7.1.x) system and think this sounds like an awesome plug-in.

I can't find the "users guide" (though I did find one for v2, I think). Specifically, I have one functionality question (for now )...

Is there a feature/option to also shift the start/end times for other recordings that are following a sporting event? For example, when the 4PM NFL game on CBS runs over on the east coast, they typically play "60 Minutes" in its entirety, and thus everything else for prime time gets pushed back by the same number of minutes.

If SRE could optionally adjust all start/end times following a sporting event to compensate (I guess the duration of the adjusted shows can be configurable or just default to midnight of that day), it would be the biggest WAF win I can think of!

If it could do it for ALL sporting events (regardless of whether they're configured to be recorded in the first place)....wow...brilliant...

[Slugger]

Originally Posted by aweber1nj

I'm just setting-up my first STV (7.1.x) system and think this sounds like an awesome plug-in.

I can't find the "users guide" (though I did find one for v2, I think). Specifically, I have one functionality question (for now )...

Is there a feature/option to also shift the start/end times for other recordings that are following a sporting event? For example, when the 4PM NFL game on CBS runs over on the east coast, they typically play "60 Minutes" in its entirety, and thus everything else for prime time gets pushed back by the same number of minutes.

If SRE could optionally adjust all start/end times following a sporting event to compensate (I guess the duration of the adjusted shows can be configurable or just default to midnight of that day), it would be the biggest WAF win I can think of!

If it could do it for ALL sporting events (regardless of whether they're configured to be recorded in the first place)....wow...brilliant...

A popular, but unfeasible request. See that link for details as to why.

[aweber1nj]

I was sure I wasn't the only one to think or ask of it...

But if it's "configurable" (to turn on or off for the remainder of the day on that station), and you just start and stop the scheduled recordings with that offset plus/minus a little "slop", then I can let Comskip bail me out the rest of the way.

So if NFL ran 20 over, then re-schedule the rest of the night's schedule to start +15min and run-over +25min? "Disk is cheap" so I wouldn't worry about that, and especially with comskip working to cut-out the deadwood. The biggest hassle I could see with that approach is if you end-up with recording conflicts due to the rescheduling that you normally wouldn't have. I don't know how you resolve that.

[Slugger]

Originally Posted by aweber1nj

The biggest hassle I could see with that approach is if you end-up with recording conflicts due to the rescheduling that you normally wouldn't have. I don't know how you resolve that.

Neither do I.

What would happen, if I did that, would be that all recordings on after the game would become manual recordings and would basically chew up a tuner. Conflicts might arise, but not with these rescheduled recordings (unless other manual recordings already existed). There are just too many questions (i.e. config options) to handle for this that it's just way too much of a headache to even try to implement. On top of all of those headaches, what happens when you go and cancel one of the rescheduled recordings? SRE isn't going to be monitoring your rescheduled lineup to handle that. It's a mess, so much so that anything I'd do is no better than the results of doing nothing, most of the time. Therefore, I stay away from it.

Then there's the case of adjusting times for games that aren't even being recorded. Should SRE notice there's a football game on at 4pm and even if you're not recording it, monitor it anyway to adjust any recordings that might be scheduled for that channel after the game? Again, headaches (I think we're at a migraine level headache now ). It's not really that an algorithm couldn't be devised to do this kind of thing, it's that no algorithm (that I could ever imagine/implement) is going to satisfy everyone. Someone will miss a recording when they think they shouldn't have and then you've got to try and tweak it to handle whatever edge case that user has uncovered.

What I personally do: First, I don't record any CBS shows on Sunday nights so personally, I'm not really affected by this. Second, to be safe, I modify my Fox favs for Sunday nights to only record from the west coast feeds and therefore I eliminate this problem altogether. I've never had a partial recording from the west coast Fox channels because no football game on Fox ever goes to 11pm ET. If you're OTA or don't have west coast feeds then this is no good obviously, but trust me when I say neither is anything I might be able to whip up in the SRE code.

Monitoring the sports event is sooooo much easier and straight forward. Extend it while it's still in progress, stop it when it's over. Nice and simple.

[aweber1nj]

Don't get me wrong...this is a fantastic set of work! I'm just trying to think OOTB here.

I doubt I can get the west coast network feeds on FiOS. I will have to check on that, but I highly doubt it. I'm guessing you're using a sat feed. Good idea, though.

Frankly, I think it's usefulness would far outweigh the "restrictions". Your example of "what happens if you go cancel one of the rescheduled recordings?" Tough luck. It's meant to CYA if a sporting event would have screwed-up your series recording. Delete the recording you no longer want tomorrow.

As for your second paragraph. Uh, Yes! Exactly! All my guide data appears to know whether a program is a Sporting Event. And it probably also knows if it's a "Live" sporting event. So you'd need to configure a "window" ahead of any scheduled recordings on that channel. If a recording is schedule < 8hrs after a live sporting event, add that sporting event to the list to monitor and use the adjustments for any scheduled recordings...

I'll admit, I don't know the APIs to schedule or re-schedule recordings, but you already have most of the pieces to do the hard work and the data to detect if games run long. The logic is pretty straight-forward, and it would be optional...if people don't like it and think their recordings got screwed up that night, turn it OFF!

[Slugger]

The tone of this reply may look like a nasty, condescending reply, but it is NOT (I read it over once before submitting and I could see how one might think I'm being confrontational, that's not my intent here). I welcome the discussion on this issue and trust me when I say I have no problems addressing it. Someone may just provide the magic bullet someday on this. The problems I raise are just food for thought. I'm not trying to be nasty, just stating my thoughts on your thoughts.

Originally Posted by aweber1nj

Don't get me wrong...this is a fantastic set of work! I'm just trying to think OOTB here.

Always good when we revisit this every few months with a fresh perspective.

I doubt I can get the west coast network feeds on FiOS. I will have to check on that, but I highly doubt it. I'm guessing you're using a sat feed. Good idea, though.

Yeah, I'm on a sat feed, east coast, west coast and every time zone in between (plus the Atlantic time zone) is available to me.

Frankly, I think it's usefulness would far outweigh the "restrictions".

But you don't have to maintain the code when it's not working like people want it to. Once you give them a taste, they always want more!

Your example of "what happens if you go cancel one of the rescheduled recordings?" Tough luck. It's meant to CYA if a sporting event would have screwed-up your series recording. Delete the recording you no longer want tomorrow.

True, for this case. After I wrote that I thought about it some more and realized this particular case really isn't an issue.

As for your second paragraph. Uh, Yes! Exactly! All my guide data appears to know whether a program is a Sporting Event. And it probably also knows if it's a "Live" sporting event. So you'd need to configure a "window" ahead of any scheduled recordings on that channel. If a recording is schedule < 8hrs after a live sporting event, add that sporting event to the list to monitor and use the adjustments for any scheduled recordings...

So many problems...

1) SRE doesn't know what can or can't be monitored. I suppose I could change that slightly. Actually, let's say I can, for argument's sake. So the first thing SRE would have to do is:

A) Every minute, scan the EPG and look for airings that have just started that can be monitored. So every minute I'm scanning hundreds or thousands of airings looking for ones that can be monitored.

Problem: This operation alone is taxing enough on one's system, especially because it has to be done every minute since airings are capable of starting every minute in the EPG. I would not want some thread searching through my EPG every minute looking for new things to monitor.

B) For each one found, start monitoring that event. Monitor until it's over.

C) When a monitor detects the game is over, determine if it ran long...

Problem: What's long? Let's say a ball game is in the EPG from 19:00-22:00. The game ends at 21:57. Well, the game didn't go long, but is the airing going to go long? In other words, is there going to be a post game show that runs to say 22:15 or 22:30, or even 22:05? Who knows? SRE will never know because that kind of info isn't available from the monitoring service (it only monitors the game status). So what do you do? Always pad 15 mins on the end of the game? But not if it ended more than 15 mins before the scheduled end of the EPG listing? Maybe 10 mins before? 30 mins before? Configurable? Yucky.

Problem: The EPG lists 19:00-22:00. The game ends at 22:18. Just how long do we extend out the other recordings? 18 minutes? Probably not enough. There's always at least some commercials and usually a post game/wrap up show/segment. 20 minutes? 25? 30? Who knows? SRE can't know - again the web service used has no knowledge of this type of info. This is the major reason I don't touch this request. If I extend the recordings 18 mins (or 20 or 30) for this example, inevitably it's never enough and you end up with a partial recording anyway, but now you have all the side effects of the recoding schedule mangling I've just done to try and fix your recordings, which didn't work anyway. This is, by far, the #1 reason I stay away from this.

D) Let's say we solve the issue in C, we know what "ran long" means. Now what? Let's find any scheduled recordings on this channel and delay the start and extend the ending of them by X minutes.

Problem: How far out do we extend recordings? You say 8 hours. Why 8? That's probably way too long, or is it? What if there's another event in between? Then what do we do? Extend all recordings until you find one that is also a monitored event then stop? This would arise if there's a ball game on at 1pm then another at 7pm. Might be rare, but day/night doubleheaders happen. Usually, the schedule is back in place in time for the news (the news always starts at 11pm, well usually). But what if it's a channel like ESPN. Maybe they never catch up until the morning SportsCentre loop (then 8 hours isn't enough). Do we really need to do this thing for specialty channels? No? Great, what's a specialty channel? ESPN? NESN? FSN? Others? Configurable? Yucky!

EDIT: New Problem: What happens if a new recording is scheduled after the monitor has already done its thing for an event? So it monitored the 4pm game on Fox. It ran to 8:15. SRE noticed there were no recordings scheduled for that channel after the game so it changed nothing. At 8:25 you see that you want to record "The Cleveland Show" at 8:30 because you just do so you schedule it to record. Well, SRE isn't going to be fixing that recording for you because it's already processed that game monitor. Or is it suppose to keep that monitor alive and handle this? Yucky.

I'll admit, I don't know the APIs to schedule or re-schedule recordings, but you already have most of the pieces to do the hard work and the data to detect if games run long. The logic is pretty straight-forward, and it would be optional...if people don't like it and think their recordings got screwed up that night, turn it OFF!

For all the info I have, there's WAY too much I don't have and can never get. The problems I highlight are just scratching the surface. It's way more complicated than it looks and wish such an exercise on no one, especially myself.

The ultimate solution is an online web service of some kind that can be queried to ask the networks, "hey, are you airing what you say you're airing right now? If not, give me your updated schedule." With that kind of info, I can implement it all. Without that kind of definitive info, I choose not to lose my sanity trying to implement it.

[aweber1nj]

I didn't find this "nasty" in any way. I was doing exactly what you surmised I was doing...trying to bring a fresh voice to the possibilities.

I'm always up for a honest, open discussion. No sense mincing words and dancing around topics if there's facts at hand. You've obviously put a lot of thought into it already, I fully respect that and all of your points are well founded and well stated.

I still don't understand some of the points, but as I said, it seems you have thought this through quite a bit, so I'll "sit down and shut up" now.

I said it before, and I'll say it again, this is a great plug-in and I appreciate the hard work you've put into it.

-AJ

[cat6man]

Originally Posted by cat6man

hi slugger,

since i went to 7.1.7 beta of sageTV, SRE hasn't worked.
it stills shows green check marks to indicate that games are being
monitored, but no games are being extended.

did something in 7.1.7 disable it?

thanks

update:

slugger looked at the log and something was not working with H2.
i had already set to port to 9093 (so it wouldn't conflict with squeezebox)
and it had been working great but all of a sudden, around the time i upgraded to 7.1.7, it started to fail. note that i am running as a service and only watch programs via hd300/hd200 extenders.

i tried restarting sagetv (and the entire pc), but no solution there.
i also noted that i seemed to get java heap warnings (from java heap monitor plugin) associated with the H2 failures (java mentioned in sre.log), so i assume those are related.

slugger suggested that i try stop/restart SRE but since i had done complete pc reboot, i didn't do that.

the, i went into H2 plugin and changed port from 9093 to 9094, then stop/restarted SRE and things have been working fine ever since.

i'm not sure which of the 2 changes i made actually helped but i thought i would post my experience in case anyone else sees something similar.