Intelligent Recording not so intelligent?

[stanger89]

I'll start by saying I'm using the XMLTV plugin until SageTV service gets it's nationwide rollout in case that makes a difference.

I've been using Sage for quite a while now and I'm hooked, but I'm finding the Intelligent Recording feature to be about 50/50 cool/annoying. I really like it since it does a really good job picking out shows I forget to schedule/aren't favorites/don't feel like scheduling or making a favorite. On the other hand Sage seems to keep recording everything on a given channel until something's scheduled on a different channel.

To me, it looks like there are three kinds of programs Sage puts in the "Recording Schedule": favorites (white), manual (yellow), and Intelligent (no border). I go throught the Recording schedule every once in a while to weed out anything I don't want it to record before the fact, an from what I see in the schedule Sage has learned pretty well what I want recorded. But despite that, every day when I go into "Sage Recordings" there's a whole slew of things in there I don't want and weren't in the Scheduled Recordings.

It would be really nice if Sage didn't (or you could tell it not to) keep recording on a channel after something scheduled ends. I don't need Sage to keep recording 24/7 just for the sake of keeping programming fresh.

I'm not sure how well I explained that so let me know if I need to try again.

Thanks and keep up the great work.

Chad

[olyar15]

Personally, I keep IR off, as I have enough to watch with just my favourites. Just wondering if you are telling Sage that you don't like the shows that you don't want to watch? I believe this helps Sage determine what to record. However, it seems that it will always record something if you turn IR on.

If Sage continues to record on one channel, sounds like you still have Sage active. Try putting it to sleep. (Just don't do that in front of your dog )

[gplasky]

I'm finding the same thing. Used it for about 2 weeks. Everyday I'm going in there telling it what I don't like. (Not just deleting them) I watched a new program once. Now it's still trying to record every new station known to man. Don't get me wrong. It's picked up some movies I like. I picked an old Superman show on TVLAND. Brings back old memories. But then it tried recording just about every show on TVLAND. I told it I don't like the other ones so we'll see how it goes.

Gerry

[JasonJoel]

Although I like the IR, I decided I am not going to use it anymore until you can show them a little differently on the screen.

It is too hard to find what I really asked it to record with IR turned on since EVERYTHING it records is all lumped together. If they ever change the interface (maybe when skinning comes in?) then maybe I'll go back to using it.

Jason

Originally posted by olyar15
Personally, I keep IR off, as I have enough to watch with just my favourites. Just wondering if you are telling Sage that you don't like the shows that you don't want to watch? I believe this helps Sage determine what to record. However, it seems that it will always record something if you turn IR on.

If Sage continues to record on one channel, sounds like you still have Sage active. Try putting it to sleep. (Just don't do that in front of your dog )

[dkardatzke]

As a little preview, Jeff and I went through the new version (current name is SageTV Studio) that will allow complete customization of the UI on the fly while SageTV is running. Then you can save these customizations as skins and offer them up to other SageTV customers. The ultimate goal being that we let you the consumer decide what changes you want done to the UI and then share those changes with other customers. For those that don't want to play around with the Studio, will be able to install other user's skins to create a complete new look and feel to SageTV.

Here's two examples of what Jeff was able to do, over the course of a few minutes.

1. We added an album art preview for the entire music collection. Scroll through your music and the album art appears for the selected item.

2. We added a video preview window in the SageRecordings list. Highlight a show in the list and the preview window will play the recording.

All this was accomplished through a little drag and drop. Since your next question will be great, when can I get it, let me say that we are working on completing a full working version towards late-August, early-September and hope to begin getting the version in Customer's hands sometime in September.

Dan

[robertmcox]

I think the IR feature is one of Sage's best! You do need to get used to it, though.

In my setup, it took about a month for it to start 'intelligently' getting good shows for me and now after a few months it's getting everything right on target. I think the trick to IR is twofold:
1) teach it - go into recording schedule periodically and tell it the things you don't want it to record. whenever the new tv guide comes from the cable company, pick out some movies and go into the guide and schedule them. do some searches on your favorite actors.
2) get a large hdd - i have 190gb of storage. when i started out with only 40gb, Sage seemed to not record as much as it does now.

[stanger89]

olyar15,

Every day I go in and tell Sage I "Don't Like" 10-20 shows (that it only recorded because they were on the last channel) and every day I have to do it to the same shows usually. According to Sage the uptime has been 36 days and it long ago stopped putting all of those shows in the "Scheduled Recordings" but they get recorded anyway. Also I do put Sage to sleep when not in use.

gplasky,

Glad to see I'm not the only one who's noticed this.

robertmcox,

1) I think I've taught it pretty well. I go into the Schedule just about every day to clean out what I don't want and lately I haven't needed to clean much out of the schedule.

2) I've got 134Gb devoted to Sage, that comes out to be 3+ days of video content with my settings, I hope I don't need more, it can be hard as it is to scroll through everthing in the Recordings.

Dan,

Not to pick, the new Studio sounds cool and I look foreward to playing with it, but will it help with the "records everything on a channel" issue. I suppose the thread title is somewhat of a misnomer since the issue seems to be that Sage never stops recording, even if there's nothing scheduled and Sage is asleep (If it's in the tray Sage is asleep right? there's not another way to get sage into the tray, I'm using the SAGEPower command in the girder group, should I be using something different).

Also, just curious if my analysis is correct: Sage has 4 record modes, favorites, manuals, IRs, and record what's being watched. It seems like the record what's being watched is running out of control, it doesn't seem to stop recording when I put sage to sleep.

Thanks,

Chad

[stanger89]

From looking around it sounds like Sage should stop recording when asleep unless something is scheduled to be recorded, is this correct? If it is, then something is not right, as Sage on my PC is always recording something regardless of whether or not it is asleep. If Sage is supposed to record continuously while asleep maybe there could be some option to disable this behavior.

Thanks
Chad

[dkardatzke]

SageTV will only record constantly in sleep mode if you have intelligent recording enabled. If you have IR disabled then it would only record the shows specified as favorites or manual recordings.

[stanger89]

Dan,

So now that I understand it correctly (IR records 24/7 regardless).
As I look through my scheduled recordings I see programs that I didn't schedule, so I must assume that SageTV's intelligent recording scheduled them. These shows seem to be intelligently chosen, either I had watched them before (and not added them to my favorites) or they mach my viewing habits.

-----FEATURE REQUEST!!!
Add another level to the IR control (currently on or off). I would like to allow SageTV to continue scheduling and recording programs based on my viewing habits (The "Recording Schedule" indicates to me that Sage's IR is already very good at this) but stop it from recording everything.
-----

The problem I have now with IR enabled is that the blind 24/7 recording allows/causes Sage to record things I've marked as "Don't Like" including Paid Programming depending on the channel it gets left on.

I really like SageTV, I like the IR in general (it catches new shows that I hadn't noticed) but I could do without the blind recording (especially if that means recording something I've marked as "Don't Like". I already think Sage is the best PVR available, but don't let that stop you, it can be even better.

Thanks,

Chad

[mlbdude]

I have noticed that IR recordings that have been marked as "Don't Like" seem to go to the bottom of the delete queue (meaning they will be deleted first). However, I would love the option to tell Sage to "Never Record" a show.

[mogrinz]

I have to say, I had finally had to break down and turn off IR also.

For months, I've been saying I "don't like" Courage the Cowardly Dog, Days of Our Lives, Judge Joe Brown, and other garbage. But I still had my daily ritual where I deleted these shows over and over. Sure; Sage would probably have deleted them for me eventually anyway, but with a 200 gig drive, that's a lot of garbage piling up (worse when you get multiple shows in a folder b/c you can't delete the folder itself)

[justme]

I love IR myself even with all it's issues, but from reading the posts over the last 3 monthes it's obvious something has to change. I try to read all the new posts, and this plus the related buffer issue are probably the most talked about features. I think alot of it is because it is potentially so usefull, but often very frustrating. There is a similar discussion in this thread. I have posted some of my suggestions in the seventh post.

What do you guys think of something like these changes? If you like them or have suggestions, we should all get together. After we have a acceptable compromise for the majority of us, we can let Narflex know what we would like. Not that I doubt he hasn't heard alot of it before many many times. But to let him know how much we love SageTV, and that we feel this is one of the most important areas to improve now. It's particularly important for newer users, since they often don't even know why these features are there in the first place. I can think of 7 new users I've talked thru these issues in the last month.

[stanger89]

justme,

I think your ideas could work, they're a little more ambitious than mine but would be much more flexible. #1 (limit buffer size) would be enough for me, and 3 and 4 would be much less useful if 1 were implemented. I'm not sure what good 2 would do since if 1 > 2 then there would be stuff recorded that you couldn't watch so I'm not sure of the benefit. Of course I was thinking as I typed this and implementing 3 or 4 would solve most of the problems for me, since most networks have similar weekly schedules after a week or two of teaching Sage what to Never Record the 24/7 buffer probably wouldn't be a 24/7 buffer anymore.

I really like IR since I can train it to record things I kind of like but don't really care about and aren't worth making favorites or manually scheduling. I just don't like have 15-20hrs of crap (stuff I don't like, even Paid Programmin) every day that I tell it I don't like all over again. I turned off IR for now, we'll see how it goes without it.

[salsbst]

Personally, I tried IR and then turned it off... not because I wasn't willing to train it... I am. But I don't like having so many recorded programs that I can't find what I'm looking for.... grouping the same show (e.g. Law and Order) so that it appears only once in the Recordings list (and I can then dive into the episodes in a sub-screen) would solve this for me. I dearly hope that it will at least be possible once the Sage Studio is available.

[justme]

Thanks for the feedback.

stanger:I actually kind of thought most people would use the 1>2 combo. The #1+#2 combo is there so that you could have the buffer for timeshifting but hide it from the user. It would allow you to change channels and then come back to the same channel and then even record(as long as the buffer still has it) the show you were watching. My Tivo behaves something like this. You can record a show you've already watched up to 30 minutes of. This comes in handy if you're watching a movie and then decide you want to save it for yourself or your spouse. All #2 really does is allow you to set(by using #1) a realitivly large buffer, but not have all(or even any) of it show up in the guide. It would allow the buffer to be stealthed. Hiding away the portion the user doesn't want to see. While still allowing the full functionality of the buffer. I've noticed that alot of people's concerns have to do with the buffer shows adding perceived clutter to the guide. Setting 1>2 allows a buffer but stops the clutter that bothers some people.

salsbst:Does autocatogorization not work properly for you? It works great for me. At first it lumped together alot of different shows. Like all sitcoms or all anima on one channel ended up in one folder. But after it got to know me better(about 9 days after my recent reformat) all my shows now drop in to their own folder. I don't have a case of a single show sharing a folder with a different show now.

I agree about recording paid programming stinking. I recently accidently left Sage on while I watched some "real TV". Well the next 2 hours on the channel I left it on were paid programming. Intelligent recording then decided I liked these shows and started recording some. So I did the usual thing of show additional airings with the intention of training it with the don't like button. Unfortunately there were like 2,000+ future airings. I ended up writing a looping macro that pressed the down arrow then the "j"(don't like) key. I set it to run for 2,000 some odd times and when I came back in 25 minutes all of the future paid programming airings were maked don't like. Hopefully the weight of 2,000+ don't likes will keep Sage from ever recording paid programming again.

[salsbst]

Hmm... I think you've caught me, justme. I had set autocategorization a while back but then quickly uninstalled and reinstalled a newer version and I think I forgot reset it. Thanks!

[justme]

Great. I'm glad something in my long ramble actually helped someone.

[stanger89]

justme,

Actually I was assuming that the buffer would run while watching "Live TV" anyway, but I see what you mean with the 1+2 thing. Admittedly I don't really watch any live tv so I didn't have any reference for what you said. I tried a Tivo for a few days a while back, still not sure what I didn't like about it, I had my WinTV-PVR PCI (the original) at the time and guess I just liked recording on my computer better, now I get the best of both worlds, IR, favorites, EPG, and it's all usable with only my remote control. Hopefully some of these IR suggestions will make it into a future release (1.4.6 please). I know that probably won't happen, but hopefully with Sage Studio, that looks like it's going to be a lot of fun.

[justme]

but hopefully with Sage Studio, that looks like it's going to be a lot of fun.

Oh yeah 45 some odd days and counting til my early Christmas present.

As far as the Intelligent Recording change ideas go... We can hope. We just have to keep them on Jeff's radar. I always try to think of Tivo like features/functionality for SageTV, since I know a lot of Frey's customers will be coming from such a background. And even if they didn't own a Tivo they'll expect SageTV to be able to do everything a Tivo can since odds are they considered getting a Tivo but got SageTV instead. I'd love for Frey to land a major contract with a large computer maker. SageTv is way better than XP MCE and Jeff and Dan deserve to make it big for all their hard work.