Migration to Sage -- Can BTV Recordings be Imported?

[garyc]

A few months ago I experimented with Sage, and was reasonably impressed, although there were a few issues with captions (the main reason I'm looking at it).

I understand from some of the current posts that captions are working quite well in v7, and plan to experiment with it again, with the likely outcome that I'll want to migrate our home setup to Sage from Beyond TV. BTV works GREAT (my BTV server can record 8 channels at once and has 6TB of storage) ... but (a) it doesn't support captions; and (b) SnapStream has essentially abandoned the product ... with very slow support and NO plans to add captions (let alone any other features). If BTV supported captions it'd be nearly perfect for our needs ... but the simple fact is it doesn't and won't.

I know there are quite a few "BTV migrators" on this forum who have switched to Sage from BTV ... so my question is primarily directed at those with that experience (but anyone who knows the answer feel free to chime in).

My question is simple: ==> Can Beyond TV recordings be imported to Sage?

Assuming I decide to switch, I'll want to simply reload my main HTPC server with Sage instead of BTV. HOWEVER ... we have over 1,000 hours of recordings I certainly don't want to lose. I could, of course, simply make an entirely separate Sage server, but the main box has 8 tuners, 6TB of storage, etc. that I'd just as soon not have to duplicate

Ideally, I'd just like to import the BTV Recording folders into Sage.

Thiere are several detailed aspects of this question:

(a) Can you import the SD recordings that are in MPEG format?
(b) Can you import recordings that have been "ShowSqueezed" into WMV?
(c) Can you import HD recordings in TS format?
(d) Does ANY of the BTV "SmartSkip" info migrate? (commercial markings)
(e) Does any metadata migrate? (time/date/channel of the recordings)

As long as the answers to a, b, and c are yes, then I'm reasonably happy.

If the answer to c is no, then I could always run a massive Showsqueeze operation for a few days and get anything my wife wants to keep in .WMV format.

(d) and (e) would be nice, but aren't a major concern.

[bcjenkins]

Like this one? http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=29582

[gambitpvr]

Since I was in a similar situation a few months ago when I migrated from BTV to Sage, I'll add my $0.02 too.

(a) Can you import the SD recordings that are in MPEG format?

Yes. Over half of my BTV recordings were MPEG when I migrated. They all play fine.

(b) Can you import recordings that have been "ShowSqueezed" into WMV?

Haven't tested this personally (I showsqueezed to AVI files) but, they should work

(c) Can you import HD recordings in TS format?

Yes. I had an HD-PVR and HDHomerun boxes, in addition to my WinTV500. All recording came over fine

(d) Does ANY of the BTV "SmartSkip" info migrate? (commercial markings)

No. SmartSkip is not supported. Sage has a free Commercial detection plugin that uses Comskip. You will need to re-run it on all your recordings. Personally, I didn't bother with my old recordings. Just keep in mind that the default Comskip has some limitations on h.264 files. You may need to upgrade to the 'donator' version of comskip. You can decide how much you want to pay, but it's well worth it.

(e) Does any metadata migrate? (time/date/channel of the recordings)

Yes, the show metadata will migrate, if the instructions on bcjenkins' link works for you. Users have had mixed luck getting the xml file to import. Personally, I couldn't get the import to work. So, if the import doesn't work, there is a manual way to import shows. It's a pain to do but, it does work:

• Rename all your video files with the season and episode as part of the name, in the format 'Showname - S00E00 - Episode name'. For example, The 3rd episode of season 1 of Smallville is named 'HotHead'. BTV would name the file something like: 'smallville - [Hothead] - 20011030000.mpg'. Change the filename to 'Smallville - S01E03 - Hothead.mpg'. Show/episode number information can be found on www.tv.com for most shows.

• Next, install the 'Batch Meta Tools' (BMT) plugin for SageTV

• Tell Sage to re-scan it's import folders. BMT should automatically locate and download the metadata for all your shows. This includes show name, episode name, original airing data and a ton of cast/crew information (far more that BTV has).

• Use the BMT web interface to do final tweaking, such as moving the files to the 'TV Recording' section of Sage (by default, they will be in the import section ..aka 'movies') or manually edit/rescan any shows with bad or missing metadata.

BMT will let you perform the operations in batches so, you can move entire folders at a time. The interface isn't as slick as the BTV web interface but, once you get used to it, it's functional enough.

Hope that helps.

[garyc]

Thanks to both of you -- not sure how I missed that thread, but I DID do a search for "migration from Beyond TV" before starting this thread, and it didn't come up.

It'll be a week or so until I have the time to do this -- the WAF has to be preserved while I'm "playing" and switching ==> but the fact it's relatively easy to migrate all the BTV recordings makes this much more doable.

I'd be interesting in your comments r.e. how much you like the Sage interface after having used it for a while -- I must confess I like BTV's UI much better ==> but that may simply be due to familiarity. A new learning curve for the UI is a small tradeoff to move to a system that is actually supported by its developers AND provides the captions that my wife has been saying we needed for over a year.

Also, were there any "gotchas" that you encountered as you made the switch? Any notable difference in recording quality, stability, etc.?

[eric3a]

On the UI, I too much prefer the BTV one. I still find the SageTV one much too complicated and unintuitive.

I have been running SageTV with the SageMC interface though. Unfortunately SageMC isn't supported anymore, though it does work under V7. You just have to install it manually.
SageMC can be configured to look very much like BTV (There's even a BTV skin for it I think somewhere), but more so it can be configured to be a lot more intuitive for us ex-BTV users.

I know that I'd have 0 WAF with the standard SageTV interface (even version 7), while I have great WAF with SageMC.

There are other options out there. Diamond is one of them and others are in the works. I am staying with SageMC until a fully developed alternative comes up.
Eric

[garyc]

Appreciate the feedback. I had noticed that MC doesn't have a v7 release, but it's nice to know it can work with v7 -- I'll have to search the forums for info on how to install it. Especially if it can be set up with a near-clone of BTV !!

Just curious -- do you use captions? [This is the ONLY reason I plan to migrate, so I'm definitely interested in how well they work ... I'll know in a couple weeks when I can set up a test sever, but I'm interested in feedback from those who have already done this.]

... if not, WHY did you switch?

From the research/playing I've done, there are only two technical advantages of Sage vs. BTV:

(1) Caption support
(2) The ability (in v7) to set Sage to use multiple hard drives for performance reasons vs. picking a hard drive based on available space. This should make large numbers of simultaneous recordings much less likely to encounter issues. Note you can effectively do this in BTV ... if you ensure all your recording drives have essentially the same amount of free space, then it will distribute future recordings across the drives. But as you watch/delete recordings, this mix can change, so it's not nearly as reliable as a built-in setting that ensures multiple drives will be used.

If you switched for some other eason, I'd be interested in knowing what that was.

[gambitpvr]

Personally, I like the Sage v7 interface better than BTV. I'll admit that it took a little learning at first but, for some reason, I just liked it better. I'm keeping an eye on the Diamond interface stuff, it looks like it will be really good once it's ready. I looked at Sage v6 but hated it's interface so, I didn't really look at Sage seriously until the late stages of the v7 beta was ready.

Sage really doesn't have anything that compares to the BTV web interface. There's a web interface plugin and BMT but, they are no where near as nice. However, they are functional for the few times I needed them.

The submenus in Sage make it a bit more complicated than BTV but just keep in mind that you can skip the sub menus for many everyday usage scenerios. Clicking 'select' on the 'TV' menu will take you directly into the last Recordings view that you were using. The only time I use the sub menu is if I need to use the Program guide or edit my Favorites.

The default 'Movies' interface sucks, IMO. However, I installed the 'MyMovies Collection Manager' and put all my ripped movies into it. Sage has a really nice 'Sage MyMovies' plugin that will pull cover art, descriptions, etc from MM into the Sage interface that totally replaces the default 'Movies' section.

Another nice thing is if you have a PlayOn server on your network (or installed on your Sage box), there's a plugin to integrate with it as well. I use this to stream web shows, YouTube, Netflix, Hulu, etc. through the Sage interface.

Personally, I never use captions so, I can't really comment on how well they work.

The main reason I switched from BeyondTV to Sage was stability. My standard def recordings were fine but, I had increasingly frequent issues with my HD recordings (especially my HD-PVR). If my HD-PVR hung, it could not record anything until I did a power cycle. Under Sage, it rarely has issues and the few times it did, it has auto-recovered fairly well.

After I made the switch, I found a few other things that worked better than expected.

• The Online section is nice for watching podcasts, etc on a big screen but it really becomes useful if you have PlayOn.

• The HD300 extenders totally rock ! For $150 you get a small box that is dead silent and can stream anything from the Sage server, without having to install codecs. It's the hardware equivalent of the Client software. You can set it to auto-connect to the Sage server and the interface is exactly the same.

• The Placeshifter software works great while travelling. The server will transcode your shows so you can connect to the server and watch TV while travelling. It works far better than the streaming that is built into the BTV web interface. The downside is that you have to purchase/install the Placeshifter client.

• I just started playing with this but, so far it looks good: "Install as a Service". By default, the Sage server runs an an application (just like BTV). If you close the GUI, you stop the recording function. However, you can configure the Sage server to run as a 'service'. This basically splits the recording and GUI into separate pieces. The recording engine auto-loads at system startup and can be set to auto-recover if it crashes. The GUI is then run as a separate application that you can launch / exit without disrupting your recordings.

[eric3a]

I switched mainly because SageTV proved more stable than BTV with my HDPVRs and now is rock stable with them.

Also it can play more video formats natively.
Last the extenders are a lot easier and less costly to maintain then having to have many client computers around the house.

I don't use Captions but just tested them now within SageMC and they work.

Eric

[garyc]

Interesting that neither of you switched for the caption support.

My BTV server is TOTALLY rock-solid ... perhaps it's because I don't use HDHomeRuns -- I've got 4 2250's installed.

There WAS an issue when I installed the 2250's -- the most current Hauppauge driver had an issue that caused corrupted timestamps on the recordings, so recordings would only play for ~ 3 minutes (although the actual recorded file was okay). SnapStream sent me a different driver to try -- and that fixed it perfectly. That was last summer ... and it's worked perfectly ever since. Ran for months without a reboot ... I only had to reboot when I moved it from XP to Windows 7 and added some additional drives.

The HD300 extenders sound neat -- do they use the identical Sage 7 interface? (For some reason I thought they had the v6 interface)

... however, since I already have a bunch of client PCs (Acer Revo's -- NEAT little PCs that only consume 20 watts) I'm not likely to need many HD300's [may have to buy one just to "play" with ]

I'm looking forward to experimenting with Sage ... but will likely wait until early April when my wife's going to be gone for two weeks (easier to find time to "mess" with the main system).

[gambitpvr]

I actually had a couple of Acer Revo's as well but replaced them with HD300s because they played back videos better. I wasn't planning on doing that, I just bought one to play with and liked it so much that I just replaced both of my Acers.

Using the Acers with the Sage client loaded had a few downsides.

• Each PC had to load the Sage plugins that I was using. Everytime a needed to update a plugin, I had to do it on all the boxes individually. With the HD300s, I just update the plugin on the server.

• When I switched to the newest version of Handbrake for ripping my DVDs, it no longer supports AVI files. I now rip my movies to .mkv files. The Acers would play them but it just wasn't as smooth. I couldn't find a codec that worked as well as I liked. The HD300s played the files right out of the box.

• The Acers would sometimes lockup or have a java or application error that required a reboot. Not a big deal but, it always seemed to happen at the worst time.

• Some of the plugins acted a bit...odd, especially when dealing with files on a shared drive. Some plugins need to be able to reach the files from the client, which can cause issues, depending on how things are setup. There were always work arounds in the forums but, the HD300s don't suffer from that problem.

The HD300 actually have two modes.

The 'standalone' mode doesn't need a Sage server and lets you stream online videos or play files from your network or a usb drive. It's interface is fairly basic and is what you see in the screenshots on the product page.

When you have the HD300 connect to your Sage v7 server, it then loads the Sage v7 interface. Any plugins that you have loaded on the server are available on the HD300 interface and you can disable/enable/configure them individually.

[jeep07]

I went through the migration 3-4 months ago so I'll chime in.

The install and setup are easy and you can leave BTV on your box just turn it off while Sage is running.

For me one big thing to get used to was how things are stored differently in sage. The TV section is for shows recorded via sage or viewing live tv and the channel guide. The Video section is where media that is scanned/imported shows up like DVD rips, home videos, videos or content you might have downloaded. That is different from BTV.

Sage is so much better than BTV now its ridiculous. I was devoted to BTV for years (since 2000ish) but sage just takes the cake. The HD300's are nice and work great and I just ordered another for the main TV in the living room so all my TV's have sage as their primary interface.

For my migration I decided to leave the old BTV content out of sage to see what I "missed" having available to watch. I ended up not missing any of it and just deleted all the old content and let sage record new. But using this method you can be selective of the shows you want to bring into sage.

Recording schedule wise I setup all new stuff.

Overall I'm very pleased with sage and the HD300's and its night and day between sage and BTV.

[garyc]

Sounds like the HD300's may be the "icing on the cake" with Sage.

... with one BIG "gotcha" ==> In addition to BTV (or, if I switch, Sage), I also run DVD Profiler with a plugin that lets any DVD be played with a single mouse-click. I have a LOT of DVDs on my main media server ... and certainly don't want to lose this capability.

I believe SageMC can import a DVD collection from Profiler ... BUT it's not clear whether this will work with v7 (since MC hasn't been updated) AND I'm not sure if this will work through an HD300. Clearly I've got some "playing" to do once I set up a test server ... and if it does work it'll cost me an HD300 to really confirm that it all works. Has anyone already done this with SageMC running on Sage v7?

[Trepidati0n]

Don't have experience with profiler. If you are willing to make the move to MyMovies...the plucky plugin does a very nice (aka seemless) job.

[garyc]

The problem with a migration to ANYTHING that can't import the movies from DVD Profiler is simply the time to do the switch.

At one minute per movie (and I suspect it would take longer) it would take over 50 hours to set up a new movie database -- at 5 minutes/movie that would be over 250 hours !!

[gplasky]

BMT will accept a DVD Profiler export and use the metadata from DVD Profiler fpr SageTV v7. All you need to do is export the xml file and give it the path to it in BMT. Many people use DVD Profiler for that in SageTV v7. Or just use BMT and have it scan your existing DVDs.

Gerry

[garyc]

What's the best download link to use for BMT? I tried the link at the beginning of the BMT thread, but it results in a Google message that says the link's no good.

[graywolf]

Install it via the plug in system.

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