Watched Flag - being set too soon! 33% through a show

[Fastrack]

Hey.

Long time user! Still on 7.1.9. I'll probably upgrade to v9 one of these days.

But this has been really annoying. Watching a 2hr show, stopping it about 50% through it's marked as watched!

Well I did some testing and it seems around 40 minutes into the 2hr show (give or take) it's marked as watched!

Is there a way to stop this? I've searched found and found some 10 year old posts requesting a feature of say 85-90% marked as watched, but nothing since.

I've looked through the property files and do not see a setting.

Let me know,

Ben

[waynedunham]

I saw it on V7 and still see it on V9. 40 minutes into a 1 hour show it will mark it as watched. It sure would be nice to see a setting for that in properties.
I'm not sure how it would be computed. Straight up recordings would be pretty easy to do a percentage of the filesize, but if you pad things a lot it would be more difficult.
For instance sports I pad by an hour up to 2 hours. The STUPID networks have been airing sports for decades yet insist on scheduling timeslots that were too short 10 years ago. When was the last time you say an NFL, or MLB game last 3 hours?
I also pad favorites that air on NFL, MLB, NHL, NBA, etc networks to make sure I get all of the recordings.

Can you tell that is a pet peeve with me?

[Fastrack]

Originally Posted by waynedunham

I saw it on V7 and still see it on V9. 40 minutes into a 1 hour show it will mark it as watched. It sure would be nice to see a setting for that in properties.
I'm not sure how it would be computed. Straight up recordings would be pretty easy to do a percentage of the filesize, but if you pad things a lot it would be more difficult.
For instance sports I pad by an hour up to 2 hours. The STUPID networks have been airing sports for decades yet insist on scheduling timeslots that were too short 10 years ago. When was the last time you say an NFL, or MLB game last 3 hours?
I also pad favorites that air on NFL, MLB, NHL, NBA, etc networks to make sure I get all of the recordings.

Can you tell that is a pet peeve with me?

HA. Yeah I don't watch many sports. But I try to watch shows after NFL. LOL I never see them.

This is 40 minutes into a 2hr show! Even worse. Makes zero sense. I don't watch many 1hr shows half way, but 2hrs I do. And I don't remember this in the past.

Ben

[KarylFStein]

Originally Posted by waynedunham

I saw it on V7 and still see it on V9. 40 minutes into a 1 hour show it will mark it as watched. It sure would be nice to see a setting for that in properties.
I'm not sure how it would be computed. Straight up recordings would be pretty easy to do a percentage of the filesize, but if you pad things a lot it would be more difficult.
For instance sports I pad by an hour up to 2 hours. The STUPID networks have been airing sports for decades yet insist on scheduling timeslots that were too short 10 years ago. When was the last time you say an NFL, or MLB game last 3 hours?
I also pad favorites that air on NFL, MLB, NHL, NBA, etc networks to make sure I get all of the recordings.

Can you tell that is a pet peeve with me?

You should try SRE (Sage Recording Extender). It will monitor many live sports and automatically extend the recording. It's a great tool .

It would be nice if it would adjust favorites airing after sports too. I too have missed a show because it aired right after a game and started late.

[wnjj]

Originally Posted by Fastrack

HA. Yeah I don't watch many sports. But I try to watch shows after NFL. LOL I never see them.

This is 40 minutes into a 2hr show! Even worse. Makes zero sense. I don't watch many 1hr shows half way, but 2hrs I do. And I don't remember this in the past.

Ben

In BigBrother.java, the watched threshold is a constant set to 66% (at least in V9). In your case the system must have that show as 1 hour in duration for some odd reason.

[wayner]

Originally Posted by waynedunham

I saw it on V7 and still see it on V9. 40 minutes into a 1 hour show it will mark it as watched. It sure would be nice to see a setting for that in properties.
I'm not sure how it would be computed. Straight up recordings would be pretty easy to do a percentage of the filesize, but if you pad things a lot it would be more difficult.
For instance sports I pad by an hour up to 2 hours. The STUPID networks have been airing sports for decades yet insist on scheduling timeslots that were too short 10 years ago. When was the last time you say an NFL, or MLB game last 3 hours?
I also pad favorites that air on NFL, MLB, NHL, NBA, etc networks to make sure I get all of the recordings.

Can you tell that is a pet peeve with me?

I agree with your pet peeve. I find it totally annoying if I stop a show that is in the padding time and then go to watch it again. Sage resets to the beginning. Totally annoying!

[Fastrack]

Originally Posted by wnjj

In BigBrother.java, the watched threshold is a constant set to 66% (at least in V9). In your case the system must have that show as 1 hour in duration for some odd reason.

Yeah I dono. It was a 2 hour show, they are not padded either. I guess I'll update to v9 and see if it fixes it.

[Taddeusz]

Originally Posted by Fastrack

Yeah I dono. It was a 2 hour show, they are not padded either. I guess I'll update to v9 and see if it fixes it.

Not saying you shouldn't upgrade, because you should. However, upgrading to v9 won't help with this problem. I've seen this problem myself. Not sure why it happens to the extent that it does. I've not tried to find the code that determines when to set watched status. It's not as much of a problem on 30min or 1hr shows but when you get to 2 hours and beyond the point at which it decides to set watched status changes to sooner in the recording.

From previous discussions I've had concerning this problem I've been told that it works off a percentage. Of course if you're using a fixed percentage the longer the recording the more time is covered by a 1% segment and you would get the results that we are seeing.

It would be more accurate to calculate based on time from the end but I'm not sure how easy that would be with the SageTV API.

This is definitely a usability problem that should be investigated.

[Fastrack]

Originally Posted by Taddeusz

Not saying you shouldn't upgrade, because you should. However, upgrading to v9 won't help with this problem. I've seen this problem myself. Not sure why it happens to the extent that it does. I've not tried to find the code that determines when to set watched status. It's not as much of a problem on 30min or 1hr shows but when you get to 2 hours and beyond the point at which it decides to set watched status changes to sooner in the recording.

From previous discussions I've had concerning this problem I've been told that it works off a percentage. Of course if you're using a fixed percentage the longer the recording the more time is covered by a 1% segment and you would get the results that we are seeing.

It would be more accurate to calculate based on time from the end but I'm not sure how easy that would be with the SageTV API.

This is definitely a usability problem that should be investigated.

Well still 66% would be 1hr 19 minutes into a 2hr show. So something doesn't add up. It shouldn't be marking it watched 40 mins into it, which is 33%. At least if I upgrade I can modify the code . Well maybe I can. I haven't coded java in many years. Lol

Ben

[Narflex]

It's not 66% explicitly. There's 2 requirements:

1. You must have watched at least 66% of it
2. There must be no more than 5 minutes left in it for non-movies, and 10 minutes left for movies.

In addition to that, it uses the running time of movies (Show duration) when that exists rather than the actual duration of the Airing.

So I have no idea how you're seeing it marked watched 40% of the way in unless you're using some other guide data source that has bad running time information being populated in the Show object (or you're using .properties metadata files for these which are modifying the internal Show duration).

[wayner]

Originally Posted by Narflex

It's not 66% explicitly. There's 2 requirements:

1. You must have watched at least 66% of it
2. There must be no more than 5 minutes left in it for non-movies, and 10 minutes left for movies.

Is there any way we can turn this off? As I mention in another thread this wreaks havoc when you have temporarily stopped shows that have end time padding and then you go back to watch them and Sage starts the show from the beginning because it thinks you watched the whole show. That is very annoying for 3 hour long sports events since it takes a while to get back to the 3 hour and 5 minute mark pressing SkipFwdx2 of a 3 hour (scheduled) recording with an hour of padding. Especially bad for NHL playoff games that go to OT.

[peternm22]

Originally Posted by Narflex

In addition to that, it uses the running time of movies (Show duration) when that exists rather than the actual duration of the Airing.

Is using the the running time of a movie the best idea though? When a movie airs on a channel that has commercials, the running time is listed as the length of the movie assuming no commercials.

I just checked a few movies in my guide, one of them has a running time of 1 hour 53 minutes. The channel the movie is on has commercials, so the duration of the recording will be 2 hours and 30 minutes.

[Opus4]

The run time was probably really short compared to the airing time.

But this has an update in v9.

Andy

[Tiki]

Originally Posted by wayner

Is there any way we can turn this off? As I mention in another thread this wreaks havoc when you have temporarily stopped shows that have end time padding and then you go back to watch them and Sage starts the show from the beginning because it thinks you watched the whole show. That is very annoying for 3 hour long sports events since it takes a while to get back to the 3 hour and 5 minute mark pressing SkipFwdx2 of a 3 hour (scheduled) recording with an hour of padding. Especially bad for NHL playoff games that go to OT.

I'm not home right now, but nearly certain there is a setup for whether to always restart previously watched shows from beginning (don't remember the exact name - probably in the advanced settings menu). Setting this to false let's you resume from where you left off even if show is marked watched.

[wayner]

Originally Posted by Tiki

I'm not home right now, but nearly certain there is a setup for whether to always restart previously watched shows from beginning (don't remember the exact name - probably in the advanced settings menu). Setting this to false let's you resume from where you left off even if show is marked watched.

Awesome - I think I found it Detailed Setup | Customize | Reset watched shows when played again

Hopefully that does it.

[Fastrack]

Originally Posted by Narflex

It's not 66% explicitly. There's 2 requirements:

1. You must have watched at least 66% of it
2. There must be no more than 5 minutes left in it for non-movies, and 10 minutes left for movies.

In addition to that, it uses the running time of movies (Show duration) when that exists rather than the actual duration of the Airing.

So I have no idea how you're seeing it marked watched 40% of the way in unless you're using some other guide data source that has bad running time information being populated in the Show object (or you're using .properties metadata files for these which are modifying the internal Show duration).

Dang of course it took a genius to figure this out I looked at the .properties file and it's 2700000ms which is 45 minutes! For both the shows that I recently had issues with.

I see:
ScrapedBy=Phoenix

I have properties files being created by Batch media Tools. I remember installing this for Fan Art. Does this affect the "watched" flag? Or is the Run-time it outputs from the guide data? I'm using the Zap2It service as I paid for my SageTV license.

EDIT: When I view the show using the web server I see "Duration: 2h 1m" (which of course is the recording length). I also see "Run Time: 45 minutes"

The show in question is the Voice.

Originally Posted by Opus4

The run time was probably really short compared to the airing time.

But this has an update in v9.

Andy

Of course you two guys would know the answer I was pulling my hair out, as I'd never seen this before!

See above, I remember way back to enable the property files, in case of a corrupt wiz db. But I've never had a corrupt one. And I do a daily backup anyway. So that's a non issue.

Sounds like v9 will fix this. I guess I gotta install it I gotta read up on what I need to do first before I do that

[wnjj]

Originally Posted by Fastrack

Sounds like v9 will fix this. I guess I gotta install it I gotta read up on what I need to do first before I do that

You'll also need V9 soon enough anyway (by 7/1) to switch over to SD EPG.

[Fastrack]

Originally Posted by wnjj

You'll also need V9 soon enough anyway (by 7/1) to switch over to SD EPG.

Well it's a good thing I had this "issue". As SageTV has just worked, so I haven't been around here much. I saw v9 was out (early in the process) and decided to wait!

I read the above about this being fixed in v9. Was this just for Movies or all recorded items? I read over the discussion on the "bug", but it wasn't clear.

[Taddeusz]

Originally Posted by Fastrack

Well it's a good thing I had this "issue". As SageTV has just worked, so I haven't been around here much. I saw v9 was out (early in the process) and decided to wait!

I read the above about this being fixed in v9. Was this just for Movies or all recorded items? I read over the discussion on the "bug", but it wasn't clear.

I generally keep a pretty good eye on commits to the SageTV source and I hadn't caught that this had been addressed.

[Fastrack]

Originally Posted by Taddeusz

I generally keep a pretty good eye on commits to the SageTV source and I hadn't caught that this had been addressed.

Andy posted above
https://github.com/google/sagetv/issues/242