MlbDude2 - Whats Next?

[mlbdude]

Just wanted to get a feel from people as to what functionality they are looking for from Sage. In the poll I am listing some of the items I know I want to work on, but I want to get a feel and a list of other items people are looking for.

Please post some suggestions here.

If you vote for Other, please leave a post detailing what Other is .

Thanks!

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Thanks for all the great input. Keep them coming. Just wanted to put an update of the items that I will be working on in order so you know what to expect.

1. Folder based Music Library - Done for 1.8.6
2. Weather Module - Done 1.8.7
3. Data output so user created MVP client might be possible. - In process
4. MPEG4 compressor. - In process
5. Completely new menu interface designed for Video Background

I will update with more as I complete these items.

[Fluffdaddy]

PVR/DVR wise SageTv has everything I could ask for except a ReplayTV like Ad skip feature. But I finally got it through my head that, that feature will never be added.

I'm not a Big music or Video Library guy. Video Library is what DVD's are for. 79 DVD's an counting

So my vote is...............Weather module

[xzil]

A couple of other minor things....


1. On the upcomming / currently recorded viewer add the ability to see hard drive space.

2. On the 2 pane horizontal show recording menu. Change the color of the group title if it has new recordings. Also list the number of recordings in the group.

3. How about the ability to bring up a list of all show information for a favoriate. So you can go back through history and see what was recorded and watched. With ability to change its status also.

4. The ability to select an imprted video and "refresh" it. so that sage re reads all of it information. Help with the problem of people having to renem the file to ge sage to do this. This happens to me if sage reads a file when I am copying it, it then will not play correctly.

5. The option of listing a webpage with a favoriate, so you can open a web browser from sage to that page. Example would be gateworld.net for stargate. I think opera is a better browser for use on a htpc becuase of zooming.
This can open up a whole new feature arena as show portals like gateworld.net can include tagging and such that would be compatiable with HTPC. Show specific information could be brought up by episode ect ect. But that is beyond the scope of this post.

6. The ability to burn directly to dvd/cd. I think nero has a great API on this. Of course would require nero, but who wants to rewrite all the burning code.

To bad nero does not have an api yet on recode2, would make the recompressing eaiser, but would require nero again.

7. Not a commercial skip feature per say, but a way to add flags/bookmark sections to a show. Example - so I can mark the begining and end of a section. Enabling me to skip over that section when watching, or remove those section when reencoding. I imaging pressing a buttion on a remote to set the begining and end of these sections.

Ok well a few minor items turned into a wish list of sorts.

[meekell]

I would love to see a default/current playlist much like musicmatch where selecting songs queues them in the order of selection. I think this is an important feature that sage seems to be lacking.
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[mlbdude]

Originally posted by meekell
I would love to see a default/current playlist much like musicmatch where selecting songs queues them in the order of selection. I think this is an important feature that sage seems to be lacking.

This is what I am planning on. It would work just like the default Video Playlist I have setup in the Video Library.

[cgrey]

Most recently, the addition of .my file support is a huge one I was waiting for. I'd love to see it expanded in the following way:

I've got episodic TV shows saved on disk as follows:

SHOW (root folder)
SEASON 1 (sub folder)
episode1.avi
episode2.avi
SEASON 2 (sub folder)

etc...

I'd love to be able to assign a .my file to each of the existing episode.avi files, so I'm effectively using the STV menu to 'navigate' through my library (imported video files), and then when I select a show to get info for, read in the .my file. I could do this now with your existing setup, by creating a sub-folder for each episode, but it would be great to be able to keep my existing structure for ease of finding things in the file system, and have the STV recognize the multiple .my files in the same folder (maybe as long as the names match the AVI filenames: 0101.my would match up to 0101.avi).

Whether or not you implement this, thanks again for your GREAT work. With each new update, I'm losing interest in getting Studio, since you're adding all the features/tweaks I would be doing on my own!

[nielm]

Apart from the weather module (which would be great!)...

I would also like to suggest a generic external applications menu, allowing other apps to be started from Sage, with properties file settings defining the menu items, and the external apps:

ui/num_external_apps=5
ui/external_app_1/name=Web Browser
ui/external_app_1/path=C:\\Program Files\\Opera7\\Opera7.exe
ui/external_app_2/name=MyHTPC
ui/external_app_2/path=C:\\Program Files\\girder\\event.exe \-silent SwitchToMyHTPC
[etc]

Another suggestion...
Web bookmark browser: a generic file browser, pointed at the 'Faviourites' folder, displaying *.url files, grouped by folder, starting the (properties-file-defined) web browser when selected...
This could be used to start web-radio stations via the browser.


Personally, unless the recompresser leverages other more mature tools (such as AutoGK), I don't think it would be worth the effort... Even if it does, I find myself fine-tuning each recompression (removing top/bottom letterbox bars for wide-screen broadcasts etc), which would need user interaction.
I remember then Snapstream first started doing recompression, it did not work at all well with major audio/video sync issues

[GbrNole]

if anything i'd like to be able to expand the built-in dvd player functions just a little bit. add some presets to zoom windowed/letterboxed movies to fill screen if you feel so inclined and the ability to insert ffdshow independantly from the main application so i can get the benefit of ffdshow under dvd playback but revert to non ffdshow for tv playback.

ffdshow already inserts itself quite nicely when i playback xvid's through sage by the virtue of using *.avi preset selection inside ffdshow.

maybe selecting *.ifo will be sufficient to force ffdshow when playing back dvd's through sage?

as a side note i have no problem with folder.jpg format for both movies and music but my current stored images through MMJB don't show up right now for my mp3's. is this a limitation of your STV?

thanks for all the great work.

nick.

[mlbdude]

as a side note i have no problem with folder.jpg format for both movies and music but my current stored images through MMJB don't show up right now for my mp3's. is this a limitation of your STV?

I have not modified the music library so it should work if it works in OrigionalV2. If it only seems to not work in mine let me know.

I know the way Sage does the whole album cover thing now rarely works for me - hence the desire to do a new one. I also don't like to manage the mp3 tags on my files and generally setup my files using an organized file structure.

[DFranch]

Well since I've already added cover art to all of my mp3's, and I record the news to get the whether. I'll take divx recompression.

[kny3twalker]

I want separate video and video control for the library mcuh like DVD has
I want a wishlist, so shows that are coming up the fall I can add now since they are not being shown over the summer
I want MVP support
I would like to see better control of the video and audio decoders much like radlight has but intergrated
I would like to see the end of the properties file modifications and to be able to control all this in Sage
I want to get the music jukebox to work with more than just mp3 and do variable rate
I would rather see a DVD ripper added than a compresser but even that is not on the top of my list
but it would be very nice for pvr 350 users(they can still use their sound card for audio to get AC3 audio playback)

[sticky]

cover art Please oh please the folder structured library.... please oh please.....

[Brett]

I am sure you realize that if you did DiVX it would not work with 350s out there

[lovingHDTV]

I think feedback from Sage that I can then use to display on my PPC via Girder/Netremote and see what is playing. Maybe something simple to start with, like sending out the text that is currently highlighted in the Sage window. Then I can pick my music to play without turing on my projector to read what Sage says.

[justme]

While the .my support is cool. I'd love it if you'd add support for Malore's XML show metadada export file. I tend to edit and recompress many shows and then move them to the library. If you added these features from Malore's, or even just support his file format, it would make you library even better. IMO Right now I tend to use Malore for most normal SageTV duties and your STV for it's incredible library functions.

[mikejaner]

MlbDude,
Could we get you to add that little feature like laurenglenn did, where playback ends a couple of seconds early, so the 350output doesn't lockup on playback of recorded shows. This is the last bug I have on my system, and it would be greatly appreciated, cause I love your skin.

The symptom is very specific. Playback of recorded shows lockup if they run all the way to the very end. If I end them early, like a few seconds early, or I am watching Live TV, I have no problems whatsoever.

mikejaner

[mlbdude]

Originally posted by mikejaner
MlbDude,
Could we get you to add that little feature like laurenglenn did, where playback ends a couple of seconds early, so the 350output doesn't lockup on playback of recorded shows. This is the last bug I have on my system, and it would be greatly appreciated, cause I love your skin.

The symptom is very specific. Playback of recorded shows lockup if they run all the way to the very end. If I end them early, like a few seconds early, or I am watching Live TV, I have no problems whatsoever.

mikejaner

I checked with laurenglenn, he claims to no do anything special at the end of playback. I looked at his STV and don't see anything either.

While I don't want to put in a bunch of special 350 code that should become useless when the driver issue is nailed down in Sage, if you can get me a good list of actions that cause the lockup I will work with you to do some "trial and error" version to see if there is something that can be done.

[laurenglenn]

Originally posted by mikejaner
MlbDude,
Could we get you to add that little feature like laurenglenn did, where playback ends a couple of seconds early, so the 350output doesn't lockup on playback of recorded shows. This is the last bug I have on my system, and it would be greatly appreciated, cause I love your skin.

The symptom is very specific. Playback of recorded shows lockup if they run all the way to the very end. If I end them early, like a few seconds early, or I am watching Live TV, I have no problems whatsoever.

mikejaner

Actually, mine doesn't end playback a couple of seconds early. It tries to stop the OSD from Refreshing the time bar after a show ends. What I told Mlbdude was that there is no 350 specific code, but that the slight changes I made had to do with a remote possibility of a division-by-zero error.

The newest fix seems to check for this. It doesn't appear to be an EOF bug that's causing this. Mine hasn't locked up or slowed to a crawl after hitting the EOF. If the current fix starts doing that, then I will have to implement the pause before EOF.

Thanks,
Lauren

[laurenglenn]

Originally posted by mlbdude
I checked with laurenglenn, he claims to no do anything special at the end of playback. I looked at his STV and don't see anything either.

While I don't want to put in a bunch of special 350 code that should become useless when the driver issue is nailed down in Sage, if you can get me a good list of actions that cause the lockup I will work with you to do some "trial and error" version to see if there is something that can be done.

Actually, laurenglenn is a "she".....

There is no special code for 350UI, but you may want to look at the code for the TimeBar pointer's X-position. You may have taken care of this is since designing the one that comes with SageTV.....

Lauren

[meekell]

mlbdude, I just activated the custom2 button and the guide toggle works great! I think this "toggle" feature would work great for aspect ratios as well (at least between 4:3 and 16:9). We watch tv in 4:3 and have to switch to 16:9 to watch most of our movies. This would be nice to be able to toggle the ratios with the push of a button. By the way, is this right that I have to manually correct the aspect ratio, or am I missing a setting to have sage do this automatically.
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