change rewind/fastforward behavior?

[berfsicle]

is there any way to use the rewind and fastforward similar to the way tivo and btv do it? (like 3 levels of speed)...and if not possible for 3 different speeds, is it at least possible to have it where it keeps going when u push the button once, not have to press it repeatedly to get thru a whole commercial break?

[falchulk]

You can map ff2 and rw2. These give 2:30 second jumps. You can then make up the rest of the break with just a few FF pushes.

[jglev]

Originally posted by berfsicle
is there any way to use the rewind and fastforward similar to the way tivo and btv do it? (like 3 levels of speed)...and if not possible for 3 different speeds, is it at least possible to have it where it keeps going when u push the button once, not have to press it repeatedly to get thru a whole commercial break?

Unfortunately, the answer is no. This is a much requested feature, but for some reason it has not been added. You can only do blind jumps and not true FF and REW.

[kny3twalker]

you can do it with girder
many times I have seen it posted with how to do it
but I have not tried yet, maybe when footbal season gets closer

[xlr8shun]

this is about as close as you'll get, and yes, you'll need to use girder too

http://forums.freytechnologies.com/f...&threadid=5142

[weeeg]

Originally posted by jglev
Unfortunately, the answer is no. This is a much requested feature, but for some reason it has not been added. You can only do blind jumps and not true FF and REW.

Are you serious?!? There's really no FF & REW? I'm sorry, but that's probably going to be a dealbreaker for me. I was all set to build a few HTPCs and buy Sage 2.0 and now I'm going to have to reconsider. I've got two ReplayTVs right now and am *WAY* too used to being able to FF & REW.

[Opus4]

Originally posted by weeeg
There's really no FF & REW?

It all depends on what your definition of "FF & REW" is...

What SageTV does NOT have is smooth ff & rew where you see the video played but at a fast forward speed or fast rewind speed.

What SageTV DOES have is ff & rew settings that jump forward/back discrete amounts of time. By default: ff/rew move fwd/back by 10 second jumps; ff2/rew2 move fwd/back by 2.5 minute jumps; and time scroll moves fwd/back by (I think) 2.5 minute jumps. There is also a time scroll mode that now jumps directly to the start or end of a video.

ff/rew/ff2/rew2 are all individually configurable in the properties file. Time scroll is also configurable, but the one value affects both its fwd and back jumps.

I know some people want smooth ff/rew, but I really like the instant jumps -- I don't even see any part of the commercials I skip.

- Andy

[mlbdude]

The smooth FF/REW is good for scanning to find something but poor usage for skipping commercials. Even BTV users generally don't use it and use th e 30 second skip instead.

[nielm]

in countries that have non-standard commercial break lengths (of between 30 seconds and 5 minutes in my case!), continuous FF/REW is a necessity for skipping commercials...

The way I do it at the moment is hold down FF until the program re-starts, then REW a couple of times back...

[john f]

This feature NEEDS to be in Sage. Period..............

All of the people I have seen making excuses for the current setup have probably never used a Tivo for long. That ff/rw is MUCH better than what Sage offers.


Jeff............Why not give your customers a fature they are asking for??? Is there some limitation in your program code that would prevent this from being implemented????



John

[weeeg]

Does anyone know if BeyondTV has smooth FF/REW?

[mlbdude]

As stated above it does. However, most users don't use it unless they are scanning for something in particular. It is too slow for commercial skip.

[weeeg]

Originally posted by mlbdude
As stated above it does. However, most users don't use it unless they are scanning for something in particular. It is too slow for commercial skip.

Do you happen to know how fast it is? Do they have several different speeds (like ReplayTV & Tivo)?

[mlbdude]

They have 3 speeds but even the fastest is not fast at all. Good for scanning but I can use the 30 second skip much faster.

I have TheaterTek and it has variable 8x FF. Even that is not fast enough but better.

This is definitely a feature I would like to see as I am sometimes scanning for something myself, but at the same time I would hate to see the dev cycles be taken away from some with broader appeal.

[Hercules]

Another bump for this idea... I'm amazed that Sage has such a great piece of software but their user interface is still total crap.

[falchulk]

Originally posted by Hercules
Another bump for this idea... I'm amazed that Sage has such a great piece of software but their user interface is still total crap.

WHAT?? the FF is not the user interface first of all. Even if you considerd it to be the UI, its a tiny part. Not to mention the fact that no one said EVERYBODY wanted the type of FF and rw that you do. FYI, I personally think that 2.0 has the best UI of any PVR.

That being said, the smooth ff and rw should be an option for users that want it......if it does not break the engine. Narflex has stated before that such a ff and rw makes it unstable.

[jd2k1]

SageTV is the only PVR that doesn't have this feature. BeyondTV, MCE, MythTV, ReplayTV, TIVO, etc. all have it. Does that make them unstable? Sounds like it's a problem with SageTV engine or with java itself.

I need this feature mainly just for sports events. Sometimes, I just want to be able to fast forward 1x,2x,3x when the players are coming out of a timeout, preparing for a timeout, or just not being active. With the blind skip, I can't see if all of this happening. A timeout can be called but the network might choose to stay with the game instead of going to a commercial. Now I have no way of knowing that if I just use the blind skip. If the skip length is less then it will require more keypresses in an event that it does go to a commercial. With true FF/RW, 1-3 keypresses from 1:00min timeframe to 1:30min. With SageTV blind skip, it will require 3keypresses with default 10sec/skip. 10keypresses with 3sec/skip, and 30keypresses for 1sec/skip. Not to mention more keypresses if in an event that commercial ended early. More keypresses = more battery usage, more wear to the remote. I don't mind much about the battery usage but the number of keypresses is the most annoying part with blind skip.

I'm just puzzled on why this feature was omitted in the beginning. A PC-PVR is supposed to be an advanced VCR yet SageTV can't do a simple VCR task such as FF/RW.

[nielm]

I suspect it might be related to the client-server architecture... Streaming the video at mutiple times the normal frame rate might cause some interesting issues that may not be work-aroundable...

It would be nice if there was a definitive statement on this from Dan/Jeff (ie planned, not planned etc. (I can't recall one in the past)

[ruel]

Originally posted by falchulk
You can map ff2 and rw2. These give 2:30 second jumps. You can then make up the rest of the break with just a few FF pushes.

I can map ff2 and rw2 to the regular remote for my card. But are there also any keyboard shortcuts for ff2 and rw2? I recently got a Firefly remote and would like to fix Firefly's profile for SageTV to also be able to do ff2 and rw2 by mapping the appropriate keyboard shortcuts to the Firefly remote. I don't know if there is any other way to do that without having to resort to having to use Girder. (Sorry, I've never gotten the hang of using Girder.)

BTW, I'm currently using SageTV 2.0 and BeyondTV 3.4.4 side by side on my system plus also Showshifter. And the Firefly remote, at least after I figured out that I could make the Firefly button on the remote be the TV button also makes it easier for me to go from one TV software to another. Specifically, on the Firefly remote, the Info button, the Firefly button, and the Option button are kind of like in the same row on the remote and I have customized the Info button to be for activating SageTV, the Firefly button for turning on BeyondTV, and the Option button for turning on Showshifter. When you go in the TV sofware then the commands for the buttons change to be specific for whatever TV software you are in. Etc. Etc. Etc. I've been customizing and doing a little rearranging of button functionality on the Firefly as to how I want the remote to work with the different TV software.

Why use both SageTV and BeyondTV? Don't get me wrong, I really do like SageTV, but I like BeyondTV also. For me, I primarily use BeyondTV to record in WMV and because it works with my ATI TV Wonder PCI (stereo) card. I also like the video recordings playback in BeyondTV because it has both the three-speed FF/RW and the FF/RW skip. The three-speed FF/RW is a must-have feature if you are watching sports, but you can do the pause button frame-by-frame thing in SageTV. Also I know SageTV is for the folks who really like to skip. Also SageTV works with my Creative card and BeyondTV doesn't. (I have to put my other Creative card in the PC to see if SageTV 2.0 can work with two Creative cards at the same time - SageTV 1.4 kinda choked on using both.) And I have BeyondTV configured to find the SageTV video folder but that can be a little clumsy because I have to scroll through all the BeyondTV recordings before getting to the SageTV files where you see the filenames of the SageTV files with no spaces between the words in the filenames. Going between SageTV and BeyondTV, you can also see what are apparently the divergent philosophies between the two such as whether to have a real FF or a skipping FF, whether to allow the software to start minimized or not when booting up the PC. Etc. Etc. Etc. In comparison, Showshifter has to play a lot of catch-up it seems to me although Showshifter has a much better picture if you are only after PQ for absolutely live TV with no PVR delays. (Of course, there's the Dscaler software but I haven't assigned a button on the remote to that yet.) I hope to put up new reviews for how I'm using SageTV, BeyondTV, Showshifter, etc. on my site sometime soon or hopefully after I finish up a project I'm working on.

Anyways, getting back to my original question: Are there any keyboard shortcuts for ff2 and rw2? If so, what are they? Thanks.

ruel

[Opus4]

Originally posted by ruel
Are there any keyboard shortcuts for ff2 and rw2? If so, what are they?

Not by default, but you can go to Setup -> Detailed Setup -> Commands -> "Link...Command", scroll until you find ff2 & rew2, then assign any keys to those commands that you want to.

- Andy