Xcard plugin (alpha 0.0.8 - Jan 16)

[jughead]

hey stuntman, in the future any questions about my files should probably be asked in that thread just to keep things organized. if you only need to switch between sage & xmp and you don't care about relaunching sage to record, you can simplify the bat files A LOT. maybe i'll up a version like that too bc the install would be simplified too.

Originally Posted by Stuntman

is there anyway to modify your files so that it closes sage, launches xmp the autocloses xmp at the end of the file and fully reloads sageclient.

i don't think that's possible w/ my files. off the top of my head, i can't think of a way for anything to "know" when a file is finished playing in xmp to trigger something like autoclosing.

[zorro]

This is my first post.

I played with Xcard setup yesterday and noticed few things.

1. Mute
If I press the mute, sound stops and press the mute again I hear sound again as expected. But if I the press the mute and change the channel (up or down) and press mute again the red bar turns green, but no sound. I don't know why it is happening but it happens only when I use xcard for playback.

2. Remote response
Any plans of improving the remote response? I played with tvedia PVR software before and the remote response is very good on that.

[insomniac]

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...sPageName=WDVW

[bwgames]

Has there been any progress on this?
I'd really like to change to SageTV (from TVedia), but hows the DVD playback etc?

[jptaz]

DVD Playback is not yet available and the performance is significantly slower than TVedia, mained because they have created a 8bit native OSD and have made a very fast Dithering program.

John

[ErsatzTom]

I haven't had time to work on this at all lately. I'm hoping to dive back in soon.

tom

[whobday]

Hi All,

Just purchased an X-card for use with my HTPC. I'm running SageTV 2.2(the latest release version). I've installed the x-card and it works properly with the software included by Sigma. I have also installed the x-card plugin as directed: I unzipped the plugin files into my Sage directory and I'm made the changes to my sage.properties as outlined in the first post. The problem is I get absolutely nothing: No picture, no sound, no errors and no log file. I do have the option to select the Sigma decoder in the video portion of setup and thats it. I'm assuming that has more to do with the installation of the x-card drivers and not the plugin. I'm stumped - any ideas? Thanks.

[Opus4]

Did you make sure to modify the plugin lines while SageTV was not running at all? If not, the properties file changes will not stay there. Also, if you are using the service, be sure to edit SageClient.properties, as the plugin is for the UI, not the core.

And, did you make sure that the Xcard's own software is not running when you start SageTV?

- Andy

[bobmic]

whobday, I had the same problem when I first installed the XCar - you should download the newer driver version for the card from http://www.sigmadesigns.com/support/...win2000_xp.htm

[whobday]

Bingo. I didn't modify SageClient.Properties. Once the lines were added things worked like a charm. Thanks for the help.

[fieldeffect]

Why does the OSD have to be written to the card in 8 bit colour?

Is it some kind of special way of writing to the XCard that is easier than creating a MPEG stream?

[Opus4]

The 8bit/256 color OSD is just a limitation of the card.

I imagine that converting the UI to 256 colors and sending it via the overlay is a bit easier than decoding the video to be played, adding the OSD image, then re-encoding into MPG so that the Xcard can play it back. Actually, you could probably do that if there is no other video playing at the same time & it might be one way to enable full-color picture viewing.

- Andy

[fieldeffect]

Hang on... the card can only output 256 colour???? How does it manage good TV output on 256 colours?

[Opus4]

You're mixing up the 8 bit OSD limitation with its ability to play videos. They aren't related & video playback isn't limited to 256 colors.

- Andy

[fieldeffect]

Ok I took the plunge and got an XCard. Does anyone have PAL settings that work for the plugin? If I don't use the plugin I can get good fullscreen XCard output without OSD. When I added the sage.prop lines that enable the plugin I was getting the blue screen of death when I tried to start Sage.

I tracked this down to the line that I've always had as:

osd_rendering_height_pal=576

The only way to be able to start Sage with the XCard plugin and not crash is to set the value down to 480.

The trouble is that then whatever I do with the xcard/... settings only the top 480 lines of the TV are written to (including the non OSD video which works fine without the plugin). The whole display, OSD, everything is compressed into the top part of the screen with a solid black bar at the bottom.

It seems like I need to set the OSD rendering height back to 576, but then the plugin causes Windows to hang.

Little help? I take it people have XCards working with PAL?

Nick.

[aikon]

I also run PAL 576 and the plugin makes sage hang and also windows xp so I have to reset to have pc work again. I tried everything exept changing the display to 480.

But it seems the plugin have to be fixed for the pal 576 to vork then...

[ErsatzTom]

I'll try really hard to find some time to look at the PAL problems. I can't actually view PAL output but I should be able to reproduce the crash and hopefully fix it. I might have some time later this week.

tom

[fieldeffect]

It looks like what would happen if you were only allocating a 720x480 array for something then writing beyond it because of the larger than expected OSD size. That's wild speculation based on:

- Sometimes I can get it to work with weird numbers (550 lines was the one that last randomly worked), but not reliably. (when 550 did work it looked exactly like you would expect, filling all but the bottom few lines - makes the OSD display some funky artefacts sometimes at the bottom of screen, but basically it works). Having said that I just spent half an hour crashing and rebooting trying to get 576 to work just once so I could leave it that way, but with no success

- The variety of Windows hangs with exceptions on seemingly random devices seems almost exactly like what happens if you try to write into something elses memory space.

I'm a willing guinea pig for testing PAL. (and having to deal for a while with 480 line output is much better than cursing every time my PVR-350 crashes! )

Nick.

[spike5884]

Can't seem to get this to work. Clean install of sagetv 2.2.7 client on newly built pc. The xcard is out putting to the tv just fine. Can't get the osd on the screen though. Attached is the log file I am getting.



EDIT.. Nevermind. Did a re-boot and now it seems to be working fine.

[fieldeffect]

Remember when I said in March that living without the bottom section of the display in PAL for now was worth it to have the XCard OSD output? Well it's actually starting to get to be a bit of a pain in the ass.

I have this huge 42" TV and the bottom third of it is permanantly black

Don't suppose you've had a chance to look at it Tom?

Nick.