SageTV Software...Can Only View Channel On Cable Box

[lestat1124]

Originally Posted by Tiki

I think you are confusing the IR Blaster and the IR Receiver...

An IR Receiver is a device that receives the commands sent from a remote control. There is an IR Receiver built into the front of the HD-PVR. There are also many other devices that come with some sort of IR Receiver. If you set things up properly, the IR Receiver plus a remote control can allow you to navigate the Sage TV screens so you don't need a keyboard or mouse. This of course assumes you are viewing Sage from a TV or monitor that is connected directly to your PC. If you are using an extender (like the HD200 that Sage sells), the extender has its own remote control and receiver.

An IR Blaster is a device that impersonates a remote control. You aim it at the front of your cable or satellite box and it sends signals to the box to change channels. Again, your HD-PVR comes with one (you have to plug it in - it looks like a little light bulb on the end of a long cable). You have to put the little bulb (emitter) right up against the cable box because they only have a range of a couple of inches.

The USBUIRT that some have mentioned can be used as both an IR Blaster and an IR Receiver. Many people have reported that it works more reliably than the IR Blaster/Receiver on the HD-PVR. There are some limitations to using the USBUIRT as both a blaster and a receiver if you are running Sage in Service mode and you are using Windows 7, but there is a new beta driver that is supposed to fix this limitation.

Firewire is another solution that can be used instead of an IR Blaster to change the channels on your cable box. However, not all cable boxes support firewire and if you are using a 64bit version of Windows there are no firewire drivers available, so you must use 32-bit windows if you want firewire.

Some cable boxes can also be controlled with a serial cable.

It is possible to mix and match (e.g. you can use the USBUIRT as an IR Blaster and use the HD-PVR as the IR Receiver).

To Tiki's response. First thanks for the info...the wonderful people here got me on the right page and I do have two firewire ports on my STB but I am also running Win7 64bit so I guess that would eliminate me from using that.

However after realizing that my fellow youtube posters and video guys had me believing that the HD PVR also came with a built in tuner which allowed me to watch whatever I wanted while setting the HD PVR to record a specific channel. I now know that this isnt the case, but now that I know, I think I can solve the problem by just setting up my cable dvr box to record whatever it is i want to record to the PC so the channel automatically switches incase I am not at the house.

[lestat1124]

Originally Posted by lestat1124

I have two IEEE 1394 firewire ports and one eSata port.

Quick question on a non-related subject. Can SageTv save in another format besides .TS? Im going thru the menu and can't seem to find where I can change the format to either .avi or mp4. Basically, I use Adobe Premiere Pro to do my video editing and it does not import .ts files and I would hate to have to convert 2gig files just to be able to edit them.

[Spectrum]

Originally Posted by lestat1124

Quick question on a non-related subject. Can SageTv save in another format besides .TS? Im going thru the menu and can't seem to find where I can change the format to either .avi or mp4. Basically, I use Adobe Premiere Pro to do my video editing and it does not import .ts files and I would hate to have to convert 2gig files just to be able to edit them.

The HDPVR supports recording to .TS and .M2TS containers but I've never seen any way to make Sage save to .M2TS. There is no need to transcode anything to get it into Premier though, you can use tsmuxer to extract the audio and video streams and you could work with them directly in Premier or you could mux them into an MKV using MKVtoolnix. Not sure about Premier's support of MKV though; Adobe usually doesn't like open source stuff

Saving to an mp4 directly is not an option because the MP4 container does natively not support AC3 audio. AVI and h.264 don't get along well either from what I've seen.

[lestat1124]

You are completely on point Spectrum!! Yeah I will have to have a 3rd party software to extract the audio and video streams which is ok. I love Adobe but the argument that they have with Apple about Flash and Apple relentless insistence on not playing well with others seems a bit disingenuous when you turn around and look at how they handle their video formats support (especially HD video) in Premiere! LOL Aww well maybe in a perfect world. Anythewho...I will take a look at the tsmuxer as a solution.

Here is a weird thing that I noticed with SageTv last night though. I set it up to record just a random show which lasted 30mins. It recorded that show fine however after the show was over, SageTV kept recording the next show after. Now it knew to cut the first video stream off and start a new one for the next show but it just kept recording even though I didnt have the next show set to record. I wasn't watching it live either. I stayed on the program guide and just minimized SageTv. I had to physically close SageTv to stop it from recording. It there a way to prevent this?

Originally Posted by Spectrum

The HDPVR supports recording to .TS and .M2TS containers but I've never seen any way to make Sage save to .M2TS. There is no need to transcode anything to get it into Premier though, you can use tsmuxer to extract the audio and video streams and you could work with them directly in Premier or you could mux them into an MKV using MKVtoolnix. Not sure about Premier's support of MKV though; Adobe usually doesn't like open source stuff

Saving to an mp4 directly is not an option because the MP4 container does natively not support AC3 audio. AVI and h.264 don't get along well either from what I've seen.

[graywolf]

Originally Posted by lestat1124

Here is a weird thing that I noticed with SageTv last night though. I set it up to record just a random show which lasted 30mins. It recorded that show fine however after the show was over, SageTV kept recording the next show after. Now it knew to cut the first video stream off and start a new one for the next show but it just kept recording even though I didnt have the next show set to record. I wasn't watching it live either. I stayed on the program guide and just minimized SageTv. I had to physically close SageTv to stop it from recording. It there a way to prevent this?

Question: At some point were you watching it LIVE?
If not, then I'm not sure what happened.
If so, then how did you "exit" the LIVE viewing? Did you hit the stop button or just hit guide or some other menu button? If you did that, it was still "playing" in the background.

I woke up one morning with the entire night worth of shows I didn't set at the beginning. Took a big WAF hit on that one.

There is a setting that will delete Live recordings at the end if you did not schedule or hit record. Forget exactly where it is but you might want to check that setting also.

[lestat1124]

Well I turned over the video preview in the program guide before I started the recording session. So when I was ready i just reopened the program guide...I already had the cable box set to the right channel. I click on the program I wanted to record and then hit record. Waited bout 10 mins and the SageTv started right on time. So I just hit minimize from SageTv and when the recording was over I opened it back up and saw that the next show now had the "REC" icon next to it. So I click on the name and looked to see if their was an option to stop recording but the weird thing is, the option was to begin recording. However it already was recording, so I couldn't stop it. Didn't know how.

So that is a long winded answer..but for show and sweet, I do not remember ever switching to live Tv first but it might have been a possibly early in the night when I was searching for file format options.

Originally Posted by graywolf

Question: At some point were you watching it LIVE?
If not, then I'm not sure what happened.
If so, then how did you "exit" the LIVE viewing? Did you hit the stop button or just hit guide or some other menu button? If you did that, it was still "playing" in the background.

I woke up one morning with the entire night worth of shows I didn't set at the beginning. Took a big WAF hit on that one.

There is a setting that will delete Live recordings at the end if you did not schedule or hit record. Forget exactly where it is but you might want to check that setting also.

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by lestat1124

However after realizing that my fellow youtube posters and video guys had me believing that the HD PVR also came with a built in tuner which allowed me to watch whatever I wanted while setting the HD PVR to record a specific channel.

Yeah, I think it's been sort of "bread into" a lot of people that a "TV card" or a "TV tuner" is what you need if you want to record external video on a PC, because for a long time that was really the only option. If you wanted to record video pretty much every device had a tuner built in.

The HD PVR is different, it still records video, but it doesn't have a tuner. That said, it is designed for recording TV, which is why it has an IR "blaster" (transmitter).

I now know that this isnt the case, but now that I know, I think I can solve the problem by just setting up my cable dvr box to record whatever it is i want to record to the PC so the channel automatically switches incase I am not at the house.

Not really, at least you don't want to do that, that's a huge kludge. The way it's supposed to work is you have the HD PVR and an IR blaster (either the one on the HD PVR, or something like a USB UIRT) connected to the PC, and the HD PVR connected to the cable box via component (plus audio of course).

Then you configure Sage to use the IR blaster for tuning. Then when you pick a channel in Sage to watch (or Sage picks one for a scheduled recoridng) Sage fires of the channel number through the IR blaster to cable box and changes the channel on the box. This takes the place of you hitting buttons on the cable box remote.

You should never have to use the cable remote for anything once you've got stuff set up right. Sage will control the box for you, via the IR blaster (or alternatively via firewire or serial).

[graywolf]

Originally Posted by lestat1124

when the recording was over I opened it back up and saw that the next show now had the "REC" icon next to it. So I click on the name and looked to see if their was an option to stop recording but the weird thing is, the option was to begin recording. However it already was recording, so I couldn't stop it. Didn't know how.

All indicates it was a LiveTV. LiveTV is "recorded/buffered" and therefore the REC icon. But it does not always get saved when the show finishes (depending upon configuration). If you had then gone to LiveTV and hit the STOP button, the REC would have gone away. If you hit Record, then it would save it from beginning just as if you had scheduled it.

[lestat1124]

Ahh Ok. I understand. You all have been soo damn helpful. I really appreciate all of your time! Huge Help!

Originally Posted by graywolf

All indicates it was a LiveTV. LiveTV is "recorded/buffered" and therefore the REC icon. But it does not always get saved when the show finishes (depending upon configuration). If you had then gone to LiveTV and hit the STOP button, the REC would have gone away. If you hit Record, then it would save it from beginning just as if you had scheduled it.

[lestat1124]

Hey Spectrum or whom ever else can answer this question. I am not able to import in AVCHD video into Premiere using tsMuxer to convert the .ts files. Is there certain specific settings that must be tweaked before muxing it to AVCHD? Adobe Premiere Pro CS4 natively edits AVCHD files or so they say but I am still trying to get it to work.

If I can not convert to AVCHD, then how do I just extract the audio and video streams using this tsMuxer app. Im looking thru it but obviously completely unfamiliar with it.

Thanks in advance.

Originally Posted by Spectrum

you can use tsmuxer to extract the audio and video streams and you could work with them directly in Premier

[lestat1124]

Im heavily considering just switching on to Sony Vegas Pro and save myself the headaches.

[Spectrum]

Originally Posted by lestat1124

Im heavily considering just switching on to Sony Vegas Pro and save myself the headaches.

Nah no need to learn a new program, and or spend hard earned $$ on it

Interestingly enough, I just tried to demux the streams with tsmuxer and it choked on the audio in the .TS files I have from my HDPVR soooooo it get's a touch more complicated if that happens but not too bad. I was able to remux into an M2TS container and Premiere seemed happy enough to import it.

I'll use an m2ts for in the example pic on remuxing because tsmuxer sees both streams then show you how to extract the audio if it chokes for you.

1. Open tsMuxeR GUI
2. Drag TS video file to tsMuxerGUI input files section
3. Set output to M2TS muxing, select output location and name, press Start Muxing (See img1)
4. Import AVCHD file into Premiere

If you get an unsupported format box when you drag the TS file to tsMuxerGui and it only recognizes the video (img2) you need to use tsMuxer to extract the video and dgavcindex to extract the audio.

1. You should already have the video stream recognized in tsMuxerGui
2. Set output location and options to demux and press start demuxing and note the <filename>.264 that it outputs, you will need that again
3. Open dgavcindex and drag the input TS file to it
4. Click Audio, then demux, then select the audio stream (there should only be one) like in img3, then click set, then done
5. Back in the main dgavcindex window click file save project and save it to the same location as the <filename>.264 from step 2. This will create a DGA file as well as demux the audio. Since all we want is the audio you can delete the DGA file once it is finished.
6. Now go back to tsMuxerGui and click remove a few times to clear everything out
7. Drag the <filename>.264 from earlier and the .ac3 audio file onto the input section, set output location and M2TS muxing, then click start muxing (img4) *** I forgot about this in the original post but you also need to address the audio delay. The .ac3 file will have a delay in the file name (in this case -18ms) Make sure you put that in the proper box before you start the muxing process or your audio will be out of sync. Take a look at im5. ***
8. You now have a proper AVCHD file that premier should like

It seems like a lot of steps but it's not bad for using free software If any of this is "as clear as mud" let me know and I'll try to explain better.

Of course if all you are doing is cutting commercials out, the beta version of Video Redo supports the HDPVR files and is cake simple to use