Where to begin...

[Phydeaux]

Hi Folks,

Been a while since I've been on the site and there's been more than a few changes in what's hot at the moment - so I need some help. I have searched for this, by the way, but can't seem to find a definitive answer.

Currently running SageTV 6.x and SageMC on headless XP server via HDxx extenders. Am planning on new hardware for the server, so I plan to go Windows 7 and SageTV 7. Not a fan of the SageTV 7 interface, so it looks like Gemstone is the logical choice with active development and interest.

What are the prerequisites for Gemstone. I read Phoenix core, but what does that mean? Is there a separate install for Phoenix core as opposed to Phoenix in general? I see references to installation after Diamond, but do I need Diamond or Phoenix for that matter? I typically like things lean and mean and would prefer to install only what is required, so can anybody tell me the requirements prior to installing Gemstone - basically, after I install SageTV 7, whats next?

I don't see a comprehensive clean-installation instructions...

I appreciate any assistance...

RLW

[jusjoken]

Basically... install SageTV then install the Gemstone plugin and it will install ALL needed items to get you going.

The only addition I suggest is that you also install and setup BMT to manage fanart. This is not a specific requirement as some users use other methods to manage fanart and Gemstone will work with those but in my opinion BMT is the cats meow for fanart management and Gemstone is designed to integrate well with it.

Have fun and feel free to ask questions.

k

[silkshadow]

I just came back to SageTV after leaving it at v5. Here is what I just did, minus all the posting on here for help and the several missteps I made . This will be probably more than you need to do, as I was really starting from total scratch:

1) Installed SageTV 7
2) Installed cracked exe that Frey provided.
3) Registered it, took several tries but eventually worked.
4) Ran SageTV (service disabled to start). Went through the wizard.
5) Enabled unsupported extras, went through the settings (USBUirt blaster config, etc). Did NOT add my imports yet.
6) Verified everything worked (channel guide, channel changing, playback, etc)
7) Went to the plugins manager (and was floored how much simpler plugins were).
8) Installed BMT, web server and mobile web server. Just install from the plugin manager, it handles everything (amazing).
9) Configured web browser and BMT. Prepare a good evening for BMT config to test things to make sure your settings works.
10) Started my import. Left it over night (I have a ton of files).
11) Next day checked the import. Spend time fixing the things that didn't work and manually getting metadata for things that were missed.
12) Go back to Plugin manager install Gemstone first. Plugin manager will do everything. Install the optional weather backgrounds.
13) Go back into plugin manager, click all plugins and go through the list. Install plugins that you want and are compatible (it will say if its incompatible).

That is where I am, next for me is to configure all the plugins I installed, setup VFS, and create my dynamic menu and all the flows for Gemstone and test everything. This is my task for the week .

[Phydeaux]

Thanks guys, I really appreciate the guidance. I'll definitely search and/or pose questions here if I run into an issue, but it's nice to start off at least thinking I know what I'm doing!

Actually I do have one other question and its regarding the OS. My intention is Windows 7. Is there any benefit to 64-bit over 32-bit for a headless SageTV server, servicing 3-4 HDxx extenders? I know the 64-bit version can use more memory than the 32-bit one, but does that even benefit SageTV in any way? Is it basically immaterial or potentially more problematic with no benefit - or is it just a coin toss?

Again, thanks for the benefit of your experience.

RLW

[wayner]

I don't think there is any benefit unless you are using the server to re-encode with something like Handbrake that can use more memory. The real limitation is that the JVM is 32 bit and it seems that you can't use more than 1024 MB for I have 7 extenders and using more than about 4 simultaneously can cause problems.

There is one downside to 64 bit for some people - there are no firewire drivers for 64 bit versions of Windows. I only use firewire for changing channels but some people also use it for grabbing video, often with modded satellite boxes.

Some older Hauppauge cards also don't have 64 bit drivers like the PVR-150 and other cards of that vintage, but those are getting much rarer these days.

[jusjoken]

Originally Posted by silkshadow

13) Go back into plugin manager, click all plugins and go through the list. Install plugins that you want and are compatible (it will say if its incompatible).

Excellent step by step... thanks.

Note: for the above... incompatible in the plugin manager just means that the plugin was likely written for another STV like the Phoenix UI etc or needs another version of a library etc. Although Gemstone is basically the SageTV STV with MANY enhancements there is always a possibility that some of the plugins may not work well with Gemstone (or duplicate functionality already included).... if anyone finds ones like that and there is enough demand for it we will try to adjust to make Gemstone work with it.... if possible.

We are maintaining a FAQ list of compatible/noncompatible plugins in a sticky in the Gemstone forums.

k

[sacrament055]

Originally Posted by Phydeaux

Thanks guys, I really appreciate the guidance. I'll definitely search and/or pose questions here if I run into an issue, but it's nice to start off at least thinking I know what I'm doing!

Actually I do have one other question and its regarding the OS. My intention is Windows 7. Is there any benefit to 64-bit over 32-bit for a headless SageTV server, servicing 3-4 HDxx extenders? I know the 64-bit version can use more memory than the 32-bit one, but does that even benefit SageTV in any way? Is it basically immaterial or potentially more problematic with no benefit - or is it just a coin toss?

Again, thanks for the benefit of your experience.

RLW

I can tell you that the more memory you give 64 Bit windows 7 the more it will use for caching which obviously helps improve performance.

[Phydeaux]

OK, again, thanks for the input. In my case the only external device I have which requires a driver is my Nextcom R5000-HD - and it appears they have both 32 and 64 bit drivers for Vista/Win7. Pity that JAVA can't take advantage of some extra RAM, as I'm going to drop 8GB in the system. I realize that will be a complete waste for 32-bit and almost a complete waste for 64-bit doing almost nothing but recording TV... but RAM is cheap.

Thank you.
RLW

[BobbyDing]

On the subject of import/export...

Do user added backgrounds get saved with an ADM export?

If not, do the references to them get saved.. And I would need to have the images on any receiving system set up in the same directory structure to accommodate those references?

Or are backgrounds not included in the exports at all?

Thanks!

Bobby

[jusjoken]

The backgrounds themselves are not exported.

The path to each custom background is stored and exported for now with the menu exports... His may or may not change as we enhance the background manager.

If the background path is relative to the SageTV root then we save the path relative so on other clients they can be located even if the SageTV folder is in another drive...but the path from the root to the image needs to be the same...such as in the theme folder.

If the background path is not under the SageTV folder then the full path is stored and you need to ensure it is available on other clients or manually update the custom backgrounds after import.

k

[Phydeaux]

I guess I do need a little more assistance - or perhaps someone can point me to the information, as I'm sure I'm not the first to ask...

Background:
So I did a clean install of Windows 7 64-bit on a new system. Although I did say I wanted to do a clean install of SageTV, starting fresh and lean and mean... I realized I would lose out on some configuration I put effort into back in the v6 years. So I copied the entire SageTV folder, contents and subfolders etc from my existing v6 SageTV server onto the new server I'm building. I then did a v6 install right on top of that to insure registry settings etc, followed by a v7 install. Finally, I over-wrote the sagetv.exe file with the updated one to recognize my v6 license.

I installed my XMLTV grabber and updated the listings files in that and installed the XMLTV importer for SageTV. And I installed the drivers for my R5000-HD STB. I have not installed ANY plugins yet, nor obviously Gemstone or any of the suggested items from earlier in this thread (yet!). It all looks good and seems to work fine - I can watch live TV, so the capture is working well. And I can see TV listings.

Problems:
- Although I had just over 100 TV series marked to record in the old SageTV server, these somehow are not showing up in the new one. I REALLY don't want to have to recreate these - is there a way to copy them?
- Related to the above, I see no "Watched" markings on the TV listings and am concerned that if I am able to recreate the various series recordings, it will begin recording episodes I had already set to "Watched" in the old server.


Hint (maybe):
The only thing I can think of is that on my old server I used SageMC. When I copied my SageTV directory onto the new server, I removed the SageMC directory since it won't be needed anymore. Is this a clue to what happened to my series settings and watched status?

Thanks folks,
RLW



OK, now

[Fuzzy]

If you aren't using firewire for tuning/capture, then I see no reason to install Win7 32-bit. Stick yo 64, and put in more memory (8GB is minimum on a server, in my mind). I run FancyCache on my server, set to 4GB. This effectively caches all my fanart for the clients/extenders in RAM, making the entire UI fly. Memory is cheap, take advantage of it.

[Fuzzy]

Honestly, I would avoid moving anything over except the wiz.bin file, and take this chance to do a clean install/setup. About the only thing you'd lose that you will likely have to set up, is the channel list, but that changes so often, it's likely different than when you set it up last time anyways.

So, the order i'd recommend:
1. Fresh Windows install
2. Fresh SageTV install
3. Install R-5000HD software
4. Add R-5000HD lines to sage.properties
5. Setup SageTV Service
6. Start Service, and UI.
7. Go through wizard, configuring your source(s).
8. Check that guide data is coming in properly.
9. Shutdown sage ui and service
10. Copy in old wiz.bin
11. Restart service (will take a bit as it upgrades the wiz.bin to the current version)
12. Install plugins (Gemstone, Comskip Playback, Batch Metadata Tools)
13. Add in your import folders. The scan will pick them up, and a the same time, fire off the Phoenix API's fanart grabbing for the new finds.
14. The start tweaking the UI/menus/views as you like.

[Phydeaux]

Thanks Fuzzy. I did go with Windows 7 64-bit.

This may be worthwhile and I have no issue doing it... however I'm most concerned about my series recording list and the watched tags that I just posted about. Lacking these will really spoil my day... Any thoughts?

RLW

PS: I tried to buy you a beer, but no workie!

[Fuzzy]

Originally Posted by Phydeaux

Thanks Fuzzy. I did go with Windows 7 64-bit.

This may be worthwhile and I have no issue doing it... however I'm most concerned about my series recording list and the watched tags that I just posted about. Lacking these will really spoil my day... Any thoughts?

All of that information is stored in the wiz.bin file. It sounds like in your transition, it got screwed up somehow.

Originally Posted by Phydeaux

PS: I tried to buy you a beer, but no workie!

Yeah, it seems not enough people have sent me beer over the years, and the service has closed down just a couple months ago. I guess I should remove it from my signature...

[Phydeaux]

OK, I'll have a fresh start at it tonight. Thanks for the hint, I'll post how it turns out.

RLW

[Phydeaux]

This did not go well. I assume it's because I didn't follow your task list exactly, in that I didn't wipe the hard drive and install Windows 7 clean again. I had spent several hours personalizing it and organizing and thought I would just save the time. So I uninstalled both SageTV and R5000 drivers, then manually insured all folders/files were deleted. I also searched the registry and removed every trace of "Frey", "SageTV", "R5000-HD" etc and thought that would do the trick. Nope. Followed the rest of your task list to the tee and when I went to install the new capture device I ended up with 2 listed, then the next time I went in it added 2 more, then 2 more. Everytime I deleted one they all disappeared, but I was never able to add just one R5000 (I only have one). When it asks how to control the device it also kept coming up with additional USB ports (up to 12 at one point). Just a mess. Of course, there was a schedule for each one of these phantom capture boards... They must have been remnants of R5000 drivers somewhere, although I'm not sure why SageTV saw every USB port as having one!

So, I'll trash everything tonight and run Windows 7 setup again - making sure it formats the C: drive and is pristine.

You know, none of this stuff is hard, but all it takes is even a single thing not absolutely pristine and you're tearing down and rebuilding. Very frustrating.

Oh - one thing to note about your task list - you do have to start the SageTV service at least once briefly before adding the R5000 items to the sage.properties file, because if you don't then there is no sage.properties file to edit.... Although I guess you could add the lines to the default template from where the core entries are pulled.

Strictly speaking, this thread has become more of a SageTV 7 how-to install. Sorry - I hope to get to Gemstone sometime before all development and interest has dropped off.... ;-)

Thanks.
RLW

[Fuzzy]

Originally Posted by Phydeaux

This did not go well. I assume it's because I didn't follow your task list exactly, in that I didn't wipe the hard drive and install Windows 7 clean again. I had spent several hours personalizing it and organizing and thought I would just save the time. So I uninstalled both SageTV and R5000 drivers, then manually insured all folders/files were deleted. I also searched the registry and removed every trace of "Frey", "SageTV", "R5000-HD" etc and thought that would do the trick. Nope. Followed the rest of your task list to the tee and when I went to install the new capture device I ended up with 2 listed, then the next time I went in it added 2 more, then 2 more. Everytime I deleted one they all disappeared, but I was never able to add just one R5000 (I only have one). When it asks how to control the device it also kept coming up with additional USB ports (up to 12 at one point). Just a mess. Of course, there was a schedule for each one of these phantom capture boards... They must have been remnants of R5000 drivers somewhere, although I'm not sure why SageTV saw every USB port as having one!

So, I'll trash everything tonight and run Windows 7 setup again - making sure it formats the C: drive and is pristine.

You know, none of this stuff is hard, but all it takes is even a single thing not absolutely pristine and you're tearing down and rebuilding. Very frustrating.

Oh - one thing to note about your task list - you do have to start the SageTV service at least once briefly before adding the R5000 items to the sage.properties file, because if you don't then there is no sage.properties file to edit.... Although I guess you could add the lines to the default template from where the core entries are pulled.

Strictly speaking, this thread has become more of a SageTV 7 how-to install. Sorry - I hope to get to Gemstone sometime before all development and interest has dropped off.... ;-)

Thanks.
RLW

I'll have to do some searching. The multiple device results was a problem I got at one point, and I had to change one of the parameters for the R-5000HD in the sage.properties (something about the media type). It was a new issue with v7 I think. I'll search and get back to you. Either way, it doesn't affect operation, just clutters up the list.

[Phydeaux]

Hi Fuzzy,

Well the multiples did seem to affect the system since there were multiple schedules showing - bloody confusing!

Yes, I've been searching the forums for the multiples issue too, but if you've actually had this problem you'll likely find the history on it quicker than I will. I think you helped me out quite some time ago, and I do appreciate your helpfulness... much appreciated!

RLW

[Fuzzy]

Okay, had to look through my own properties file to remember, but the problem is with the way the examples are written on the R-5000HD site (wrongly, that is). The input lines had the wrong number for input type. This:

mmc/encoders/12346/1/0/available_channels=
mmc/encoders/12346/1/0/brightness=-1
mmc/encoders/12346/1/0/contrast=-1
mmc/encoders/12346/1/0/device_name=
mmc/encoders/12346/1/0/hue=-1
mmc/encoders/12346/1/0/last_channel=509
mmc/encoders/12346/1/0/provider_id=29436723217
mmc/encoders/12346/1/0/saturation=-1
mmc/encoders/12346/1/0/sharpness=-1
mmc/encoders/12346/1/0/tuning_mode=
mmc/encoders/12346/1/0/tuning_plugin=
mmc/encoders/12346/1/0/tuning_plugin_port=0
mmc/encoders/12346/1/0/video_crossbar_index=0
mmc/encoders/12346/1/0/video_crossbar_type=11
mmc/encoders/12346/audio_capture_device_name=
mmc/encoders/12346/audio_capture_device_num=0
mmc/encoders/12346/capture_config=2058
mmc/encoders/12346/default_device_quality=
mmc/encoders/12346/device_class=
mmc/encoders/12346/encoder_merit=0
mmc/encoders/12346/encoding_host=127.0.0.1\:6969
mmc/encoders/12346/encoding_host_login_md5=
mmc/encoders/12346/last_cross_index=0
mmc/encoders/12346/last_cross_type=11
mmc/encoders/12346/live_audio_input=
mmc/encoders/12346/multicast_host=
mmc/encoders/12346/never_stop_encoding=false
mmc/encoders/12346/video_capture_device_name=DTC100-100254C
mmc/encoders/12346/video_capture_device_num=0
mmc/encoders/12346/video_compressor=
mmc/encoders/12346/video_encoding_params=Best

should be this:

mmc/encoders/12346/11/0/available_channels=
mmc/encoders/12346/11/0/brightness=-1
mmc/encoders/12346/11/0/contrast=-1
mmc/encoders/12346/11/0/device_name=
mmc/encoders/12346/11/0/hue=-1
mmc/encoders/12346/11/0/last_channel=509
mmc/encoders/12346/11/0/provider_id=29436723217
mmc/encoders/12346/11/0/saturation=-1
mmc/encoders/12346/11/0/sharpness=-1
mmc/encoders/12346/11/0/tuning_mode=
mmc/encoders/12346/11/0/tuning_plugin=
mmc/encoders/12346/11/0/tuning_plugin_port=0
mmc/encoders/12346/11/0/video_crossbar_index=0
mmc/encoders/12346/11/0/video_crossbar_type=11
mmc/encoders/12346/audio_capture_device_name=
mmc/encoders/12346/audio_capture_device_num=0
mmc/encoders/12346/capture_config=2058
mmc/encoders/12346/default_device_quality=
mmc/encoders/12346/device_class=
mmc/encoders/12346/encoder_merit=0
mmc/encoders/12346/encoding_host=127.0.0.1\:6969
mmc/encoders/12346/encoding_host_login_md5=
mmc/encoders/12346/last_cross_index=0
mmc/encoders/12346/last_cross_type=11
mmc/encoders/12346/live_audio_input=
mmc/encoders/12346/multicast_host=
mmc/encoders/12346/never_stop_encoding=false
mmc/encoders/12346/video_capture_device_name=DTC100-100254C
mmc/encoders/12346/video_capture_device_num=0
mmc/encoders/12346/video_compressor=
mmc/encoders/12346/video_encoding_params=Best

Explanation: That number has to match the Crossbar type, other wise, sage tries to 'fix it' for you, resulting in the duplicating entries on every start. Just when you try it again tonight, when you put those lines in, make those 1's 11's, and it should be fine. I tried to get nextcom to change it on their site, but they are effectively nonexistant at this point.

Here was the source of the fix: http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=51168