Install Instructions

[hedly]

I'm sure I missed it somewhere...but where's the directions on how to install. I saw the artwork of Gemstone and it looks spectacular. It has the ability to show the videos in the 3x3 matrix of nothing but the artwork.

It's been years since I fiddled with Sage. We've kept it to V3 UI because we like it simple. So forgive my naiveté, but where do I find the process to install it and get Sage to use is for the UI. From there I think I can figure out how to get it to look like I want.

Thanks for your time.

[jusjoken]

In the default STV go to plugins and find gemstone and select install. When it completes there should be a new menu item on the main menu for gemstone ...select load gemstone from there.

You can always return to the default or v3 from the detailed setup, advanced and load another stv.

k

[hedly]

Thank you.

I found it late last night as I was poking around V9. It's been so long since I messed around with that user interface I had forgotten about the plugin section (too long with v3 UI).

One more question if you'll humor me.
Is there a set of instructions on what all the settings do or what can be done?
- I know...I haven't even installed it yet and I'm asking this question. Maye it's all self explanatory in the package. But I like to get as much info ahead of time before I dive in. (too many stories of folks getting their necks cracked when diving in to waters head first without knowing what's just beneath the surface).

Thanks again for your time and all the work you do.

V/r,

[jusjoken]

Not really. The closest thing is the work I did to document its predecessor Diamond...here...

Its close but Gemstone has ADM built in for menu management and other things changed too.

k

[hedly]

Sorry for posting my reply in the wrong thread. Too many things going on at home. Sage, wife, kiddo.

Anyway,
Jusjoken,
Thanks again for the reply. Like in this post (which I also posted in)
https://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=64208
I'm not getting background images for menus (including weather).

Also, I can't seem to get the fanart to work either. For that matter, when I change the flow, I don't get any miages for the DVDs or BluRays.

For the V3UI, I had an image in each directory called folder.jpg. That image the UI used as the folder (yeah, I did it manually finding my own image).

I'm wondering if it being installed in 'C:\Program Files (x86)\SageTV\' instead of just 'C:\SageTV\' folder has something to do with it.

Also, in this post:
https://forums.sagetv.com/forums/sho...89&postcount=3
You mention cache-ing the fanart. How does one do that? Is there another plugin that I need to install that gets the fanart downloaded?
---------------
ETA:
So I fiddled some more. I found the place to update the cache and I found the folder in Pheonix. In there was only one folder, TV. It seems it's only cached the two recordings since I started up gemstone.

So I reran the cache and here's the result:
cache_results.jpg
You can see it skipped a bunch. Those appear to be some of the DVDs (of which we have 219) and Blu-rays (of which I have 42) that I've ripped from the disks I own. I kept them in their respective formats on the file server. The ones it processed appear to be only some mp4's that I ripped from old VHS tapes. But even those only seemed to have used the folder.jpg images. It didn't even pick up the folder.jpg images for all the DVDs and Blurays.

I found the background manager and there seems to be no backgrounds. I just don't get it.


Thanks again.

[trallyus]

Originally Posted by hedly

Sorry for posting my reply in the wrong thread. Too many things going on at home. Sage, wife, kiddo.

Anyway,
Jusjoken,
Thanks again for the reply. Like in this post (which I also posted in)
https://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=64208
I'm not getting background images for menus (including weather).

Also, I can't seem to get the fanart to work either. For that matter, when I change the flow, I don't get any miages for the DVDs or BluRays.

For the V3UI, I had an image in each directory called folder.jpg. That image the UI used as the folder (yeah, I did it manually finding my own image).

I'm wondering if it being installed in 'C:\Program Files (x86)\SageTV\' instead of just 'C:\SageTV\' folder has something to do with it.

Also, in this post:
https://forums.sagetv.com/forums/sho...89&postcount=3
You mention cache-ing the fanart. How does one do that? Is there another plugin that I need to install that gets the fanart downloaded?

Thanks again.

I just installed phoenix last night as it's another theme like Gemstone as I did try gemstone but it was pretty complicate for me as like you I have not messed with themes or stuff for ages and had the fant art problem you mentioned and found I had to installed BMT on Sage as a plugin and that is short for Batch Metadata Tools - Web Interface that is found in the General tab under all plugins.

When you first install it , it will pop up a menu saying you installed it and tell you there is a youtube channel for it that should help you.

Basically BMT is used to find the metadata and fan art for you old recording you may have made before you installed gemstone as gemstone only grabs fanart I believe for new recordings and if you want it looking like the pics in the gemstone thread you need to download BMT and add the fanart and metadata for old recordings.

It works great for movies and tv shows but one time broadcasts or weird named ones may give it problems in finding the right data.

Maybe after I get more experience tweaking Phoenix I will jump up to Gemstone and tweak the heck out of it but just at the moment not ready yet.

[Fuzzy]

Originally Posted by trallyus

I just installed phoenix last night as it's another theme like Gemstone as I did try gemstone but it was pretty complicate for me as like you I have not messed with themes or stuff for ages and had the fant art problem you mentioned and found I had to installed BMT on Sage as a plugin and that is short for Batch Metadata Tools - Web Interface that is found in the General tab under all plugins.

When you first install it , it will pop up a menu saying you installed it and tell you there is a youtube channel for it that should help you.

Basically BMT is used to find the metadata and fan art for you old recording you may have made before you installed gemstone as gemstone only grabs fanart I believe for new recordings and if you want it looking like the pics in the gemstone thread you need to download BMT and add the fanart and metadata for old recordings.

It works great for movies and tv shows but one time broadcasts or weird named ones may give it problems in finding the right data.

Maybe after I get more experience tweaking Phoenix I will jump up to Gemstone and tweak the heck out of it but just at the moment not ready yet.

For clarity, BMT is not what fetches the Metadata and fanart. Phoenix Core Services does that, which gets installed with BMT (as it is a prerequisite). BMT is more of a user interface for the Phoenix Core Services, and allows ou to manually tweak the metadata and fanart for items via web interface. There is also an in-sage interface for it called CMT (Comprehensive Metadata Tools, I think) that has some of the same capabilities. in either case, neither BMT or CMT are required for sage to grab extra metadata and fanart for recordings and imports - only the Phoenix Core Services is required for that.

[trallyus]

Thanks Fuzzy as my old pc would not allow me to use the themes so I kept it simple as I could so all this theme tweaking stuff to make it look like others pics they posted is new to me but I am slowly picking it up since I upgraded my pc and installed sagetv on the new pc.

Always appreciate learning new things that help me out.

[xjim1]

Can anyone comment on how memory hungry Gemstone is? I noticed upgrading from V6 a three-fold increase in physical memory. I'm a little concerned I won't have enough overhead to use it, and hang the darn thing.

Thanks.

[Tiki]

Gemstone is graphically intensive - the fan art does require a lot of memory.

[KarylFStein]

Originally Posted by xjim1

Can anyone comment on how memory hungry Gemstone is? I noticed upgrading from V6 a three-fold increase in physical memory. I'm a little concerned I won't have enough overhead to use it, and hang the darn thing.

Thanks.

The JVM memory usage is one thing that is not really important to track in most cases. I personnaly think that Gemstone in the current form has some memory leak issues though because when I was running it I had out of memory issues requiring reboots every few months/weeks that I did not have before adding it and have not had after removing it. I run Phoenix too through all this so I don't think the fanart is to blame except for if the path gets too long.