WIZ.BIN 50MB? Tips to clean up years worth of data?

[waynedunham]

Originally Posted by Monedeath

Actually not in line with some of our experience. We actually saw some slight improvements in performance once we started breaking things into smaller (sub-directory//media import directory) containers as a precursor to moving it to Plex rather than maintaining the original flat file system Sage is setup to do on its own. Of course, that may have to do with the size of the hard drive being used and the number of files present as to when that quirk can start to crop up.

Performance wise, usually the deciding factor on that is more likely to be the networked computer/devices power saving settings in regards to Hard Drive sleep modes and how long it takes the drive to spin up. I know we have disks that are getting a little long in the tooth and are starting to report 11+ second spinup times on them, and they have been linked to a number of the spinning circle encounters we've had(the media we wanted to watch was on that drive), but as the other health indicators are fine they're simply being watched rather than replaced(that and replacing 3+TB drives isn't exactly cheap in either money or time taken to transition things across).

All I can say is what I have experienced. My main SageTV server virtually never threw spinning circles. The only time it would do that is if the machine (my main SageTV server is a Core 2 Quad 2.83Ghz with 4 Gigs Ram running WHS V1) was doing nightly maintenance, and/or backing up all my other machines on the wired lan. The only other time I saw spinning circles is if there was a bum recording somewhere in the mix and then only when starting or stopping a recorded show. That and early on I was watching folders on a couple other machines in my wired lan and I'd see them from time to time then, but I stopped doing that years ago.
When I added the Playon Plugin and pointed it to the recordings folder for PlayOn on my other machine that is when I started seeing frequent spinning circles. But even then it is only for a few seconds at its worst.

All of my power settings on all of my machines are basically set to "STFU and let my machine RUN". Hard drives never spin down, no CPU sleep, indexing turned OFF, no "Green" drives. Basically anything I can think of to eliminate slowdowns, spinup times, etc are set for speedy. The only thing I have with any power limits is my laptop and only when it is on battery, on AC it is back to "STFU Greenie" mode.

I record so much that sleep, idle, spindown etc would be pretty ineffective anyway. There is rarely more than a few hours in the wee hours of the morning that "something" isn't recording or I'm watching something. And I have all the system maintenance, chores, backups, etc set for like 3-5am.

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by KryptoNyte

1) If there is metadata attached to the file, how do I look at it?

I think you can just look at the file in a text editor, at the end.

[Monedeath]

Originally Posted by waynedunham

All of my power settings on all of my machines are basically set to "STFU and let my machine RUN". Hard drives never spin down, no CPU sleep, indexing turned OFF, no "Green" drives. Basically anything I can think of to eliminate slowdowns, spinup times, etc are set for speedy.

Well, that is part of why I qualified it as "usually" being the "more likely" cause for that kind of thing.

And for KryptoNyte, I believe Sage's more typical behavior is to generate a text file with recordingname.properties with the relevant meta-data from the program guide. Then again, that might be BMT doing that for me(as I also have recordingname.my text files floating around, and I know BMT creates one, edits the other, while SageTV will only create the one), I forget.

Anyhow, I don't recall SageTV having an implementation for either embedding it into the recordings themselves, or reading embedded metadata from a recording. I could be wrong on that however. I believe a large factor on that is that standards for doing such things haven't been around as long as SageTV has, and even then, implementation on the occasions that somebody has done so, has been anything but standardized(think web browser wars in the 1990's).

[gplasky]

Originally Posted by Monedeath

Anyhow, I don't recall SageTV having an implementation for either embedding it into the recordings themselves, or reading embedded metadata from a recording. I could be wrong on that however. I believe a large factor on that is that standards for doing such things haven't been around as long as SageTV has, and even then, implementation on the occasions that somebody has done so, has been anything but standardized(think web browser wars in the 1990's).

SageTV recordings now have their full metadata embedded into the video file instead of requiring a separate file to hold that metadata.

That was one of the features for SageTV when version 7 came out.

Gerry

[Monedeath]

Originally Posted by gplasky

SageTV recordings now have their full metadata embedded into the video file instead of requiring a separate file to hold that metadata.

That was one of the features for SageTV when version 7 came out.

Good to know.

[Tiki]

Originally Posted by gplasky

SageTV recordings now have their full metadata embedded into the video file instead of requiring a separate file to hold that metadata.

That was one of the features for SageTV when version 7 came out.

Gerry

Yes, Sage writes the metadata to the file and also to wiz.bin when the file is created.

I don't think additional metadata (from sources like BMT) gets added to the file, but depending on the plugin that is grabbing the extra metadata, it may added to wiz.bin or stored in separate .properties or .my files or some external database (or all of the above).

I believe Sage will scan the file for metadata if it can't find anything in wiz.bin (for example, if you move the file to a new PC, or if your wiz.bin gets deleted and re-created for some reason).

[KryptoNyte]

What program, specifically, would you folks recommend to read the metadata from any given Sage recording?

[MattHelm]

You can also set SageTV to create .property files (I forget what property turns this on and off). I do that for ALL my imported data (movies/TV from DVD). The only issue I have, is for recordings, the .property files aren't deleted with the show.

[gplasky]

If you use commercial skip then set the .properties extension to be cleaned up when the recording is deleted.