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SageTV Software Discussion related to the SageTV application produced by SageTV. Questions, issues, problems, suggestions, etc. relating to the SageTV software application should be posted here. (Check the descriptions of the other forums; all hardware related questions go in the Hardware Support forum, etc. And, post in the customizations forum instead if any customizations are active.) |
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SageTV 3 -- required core features
The overwhelming usage of tuner cards is to watch TV on one’s PC (not on a TV set). This is the core usage of these cards, although such people may not be the loud hobbyists one finds on many public forums.
Some of the functionality that Beyond TV 4 needs to implement and which FusionHDTV uses are awaiting: I just received the FusionHDTV5 card (in California, USA) and was hoping to use it to replace my ATI All In Wonder 9600 with digital HDTV capability. However, I found some problems which need to be fixed in future software: 1) there appears to be only limited Closed captions capability in the software provided with this card and the software provided with it, which is a major omission. a) Even for those who are not deaf, but are listening to sound over the PC speakers, often the CC text of the dialogue in the Closed Captions is important to understand or confirm the words uttered. Sometimes the words need to be translated manually from some other language to english, which requires the use of Closed Captions. If you have ever downloaded a movie in .mpg or .avi form from the Internet, you will usually find that the closed captions are available from the same source with an extension like .SRT. This is an extremely important feature and I hope this functionality either exists now or is intended in the next software release. ATI uses the extension .CC. b) The realtime display of Closed Caption text should be able to be Copied and Pasted from its window by the user dynamically in order to facilitate functions like language translation. Thus, as in ATI, the user should be able to select the option of Closed Captions being displayed in a separate external window from the video. c) inside the FusionHDTV5 .CC file, there should be implemented a feature comparable to the Mark capability in VCRs, which allows the user to identify certain times within the recording as being important, for easy access when the playback is performed under the control of a FusionHDTV playback application. (i.e. while recording the user, when he sees something significant could use the mouse to click on the Mark icon and that action would insert a line or notation within the .CC at that point for later access, such as %Mark1% %Mark2% %Mark3% etc. d) In playback the user would then be able to select “Play” or “Play From Mark #…” Playback should start from a point maybe 5 second earlier than when the Mark mouse click occurred, allowing for the time it takes for the user to manually mouse click the Mark icon. e) There should be a .CC Export Text function, which allows the text of the .CC file to be saved to a .TXT file with the relative time synchronization lines stripped out. 2) Recording Scheduler needs to implement the concept of “Every Weekday”, as a record frequency Cycle selection. Most networks have a different schedule for their weekday programming from their weekend programming. 3) The Right Click menu should implement the a) “Record For…” a number of minutes or hours and minutes, and b) “Record Until…” a certain time of day, c) “Record” indefinitely, options. 4) It should be possible to have multiple TV cards pictures in multiple windows on the Windows desktop. 9) The Volume setting in the FusionHDTV5 control panel should be decoupled from the Windows XP Pro Volume Control/Master Volume applet settings, so that when the user changes the FusionHDTV Volume setting it performs adjustable pre-amp capability to the Windows XP Wave audio mixer input and does not directly affect it. i.e. do Volume setting the way ATI does it. Currently, FusionHDTV5 volume setting directly changes the Windows XP Wave volume setting which prevents the user from controlling the relative volume of the FusionHDTV, relative to other Windows XP Wave inputs like MP3 players, game software etc. Currently FusionHDTV is too loud, relative to other Wave inputs like MP3 player MusicMatch. 10) The default size of the FusionHDTV5 recorded file is 3 times (3X) the size of the .mpg file I normally save to my PC under ATI. I normally configure the ATI recording disk consumption to generate 4 selectable levels of precision which range between 300 MBytes and 530 MBytes per hour, all 4 of them at 640x480 video resolution and 128 kbit/second Audio. Converting large files after they have been saved is likely a slow process. I find the operation of such applications like Windows Movie Maker to be painfully slow. 11) Sometimes if a dormant hard disk spins up and temporarily hangs the Windows XP operating system for a few seconds, the video and sound displayed by FusionHDTV5 can become slightly out of synchronization, with the video appear about half a second before the sound (I noticed this in the middle of an hour record to a disk which was not dormant). 12) A few keyboard intuitive usability issues (or, why make the product harder to use than necessary) : Up Arrow should increase channel by one Down Arrow should decrease channel by one Left Arrow should decrease Volume Right Arrow should increase Volume Backspace should switch channel to the previous channel user selected “F” should cycle in circular fashion through Favorites channels Shift-F should cycle through Favorite channels in reverse order Ctrl-F Full Screen to Window alternate toggle Ctrl-M Mute alternate toggle Ctrl-C should display the Configuration menu. Ctrl-E should end a recording. Ctrl-R should start recording. Ctrl-D sets configuration settings back to defaults Ctrl-H should display a list of these keyboard accelerators, amongst other help information. ESC should be a reliable retreat from any command entry sequence. 13) FusionHDTV should be able to identify call letters of all channels (e.g. ESPN, WABC, TMC) from the EPG information downloaded from whatever zip code based EPG site FusionHDTV uses and should display that name when the channel is switched. I hope FusionHDTV developers will focus on these core functionalities before doing anything else to the current code base. ============================= 21) the Audio generated by the FusionHDTV5 card is incompatible with other software packages like SageTV, BeyondTV, Got All Media etc. This means that the user cannot use these other existing applications to perform complex functions like Closed Captions, pre-amped Audio Volume Control, and EPG. The quickest workaround to solve these huge problems is for FusionHDTV to deliver a modified Audio driver which will emulate some other well known card’s Audio (e.g. ATI or Hauppauge) driver, so that your customers can use one of these 3rd party software applications. 22) FusionHDTV5 Control Panel has disappeared from the windowed mode and now is only available when in the user puts FusionHDTV5 into full screen mode and then mouse left clicks. Using the V command or the right click and then Show Controller has no effect; the FusionHDTV5 Control Panel remains hidden. The FusionHDTV5 Control Panel did display when the software was first installed but disappeared permanently after a day of use. =================================== 31) Programs set by the user for scheduled record should have a Scheduling Priority assigned to them. Thus, if a user has only one tuner card input to the PC, and wants to record the 30 minute news show on different channel which occurs in the middle of the 3 hour baseball game, he should be able to assign the news show High priority and assign the baseball game Normal priority. In this simple example, the result should be 3 files: the first part of the baseball game file, the news show file, and the second part of the baseball game file with the baseball show filename postpended with "002". 32) The user who has 2 Tuner card inputs to the PC should either have a Recording Scheduler separately for each one or should be allowed in the Scheduler menu to select which Tuner card input will be utilized for each programming recording scheduled. 33) It should be possible to record two different programs from two different channels from 2 different tuner card inputs simultaneously with this software. 34) When the Recording Scheduler ends a scheduled recording it should save the current file, then immediately the scheduler should check to see if other recordings which may have overlapped with the current recording are already ongoing. If any other recordings are already in progress, it should start record the tail end of that recording. 35) The user, when present while recording, should not be prevented from changing the channel while the recording is in progress. The recorded file should simply contain anything that the user was watching while the recording was in progress. Aeneas |
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Interesting read... but it sounds like you want to totally redesign somthing that's mostly working right as is...
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============================= 21) the Audio generated by the FusionHDTV5 card is incompatible with other software packages like SageTV, BeyondTV, Got All Media etc. This means that the user cannot use these other existing applications to perform complex functions like Closed Captions, pre-amped Audio Volume Control, and EPG. The quickest workaround to solve these huge problems is for FusionHDTV to deliver a modified Audio driver which will emulate some other well known card’s Audio (e.g. ATI or Hauppauge) driver, so that your customers can use one of these 3rd party software applications. 22) FusionHDTV5 Control Panel has disappeared from the windowed mode and now is only available when in the user puts FusionHDTV5 into full screen mode and then mouse left clicks. Using the V command or the right click and then Show Controller has no effect; the FusionHDTV5 Control Panel remains hidden. The FusionHDTV5 Control Panel did display when the software was first installed but disappeared permanently after a day of use.[/QUOTE] I have no idea how the Fusion software is supposed to work. Quote:
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#5
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I'm surprised that link hasn't been posted more often...
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Dan Kardatzke, Co-Founder SageTV, LLC |
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2) Carrying the Closed Caption information in the MPEG stream is a separate issue. All I am interested in is ensuring the software application interfacing with the Tuner card and its drivers is capable of receiving the stream of Closed Captions generated by the card and writing them on the fly to a separate window on the Windows desktop and simultaneously saving that Closed Caption data to a separate file. If the Closed Caption data can also be encoded in the Mpeg file and displayed optionally by any run of the mill mpeg player, then so much the better. 3) That is a redefinition of the Favorites term, which is something which creates ambiguities and confusion and turns off customers. One of those reasons why Windows is so much more popular than Unix/Linux. Favorites, as defined by existing TV and VCR equipment allows the user to define a set of channels which he can quickly flip through in a quick rotation with the touch of one button on the handset. My guess is that those recording definitions are based on the Gem Guide Plus ratings that allow definitions of a program with a specific code by a centralized body, and scheduling of all subsequent iterations of it. Whenever a software developer needlessly causes this kind of confusion, it indicates there may well be sloppiness and disdain for the user throughout the product. It is a bad sign. I have not used Sage enough (past 2 days) to know exactly to what you refer. 4) That sounds like the raw data output. It is crazy for any software to save data to the user's hard disk at that rate. Besides, 640x480 has plenty of definition for my usage. In strict terms, I believe NTSC is 720x480. I save a max of around 550 MBytes per hour when I want good NTSC resolution with the ATI product (e.g. for sports events). Even with the tremendous performance of the Hard Disk industry over the past 8 years, that is still overly consumptive. With NTSC, if I deem it important enough, I could see going to maybe 800 MBytes per hour (i.e. if I want to study the quality of Miss America's skin pores). The software should be performing compression of the saved data on the fly prior to saving it on the hard disk. The ATI product performs this compression adequately, and I am surprised that this is something not done by other software suppliers to the same degree. The ATI product even allows you to configure the filters which are performed on the data before it is saved. 5) Remappability of the keyboard keys is a good feature, especially when the developer has no concern for the importance of intuitive ease of use of the user interface. 6) Not sure I understand this "most successful" recording algorithm. 7) I stated that when the user has "2 different tuner card inputs" the software should be able to record from each one, simultaneously. With multiple hardware there is no hardware limitation to this functionality. 8) I believe that SageTV does have a recording scheduler. 9) SageTV, while the user is recording and chooses to change channels and see what is on on a variety of channels should not create a new file automatically. Perhaps it might be an idea to enter a Mark (as described here earlier) into the .CC file. However, the user should be able to channel surf and record everything he sees, manually Marking when necessary. If a new file is to be created, the user can Stop Recording then start Record again. 10) The FusionHDTV5 included software is weak and needs to be replaced. They appear to be one of the strongest TV Tuner cards which contains an HDTV and Digital Channel capability. Aeneas Last edited by Aeneas; 10-31-2005 at 06:29 AM. |
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I would suggest you get more familiar with SageTV before trying to explain what you think it ought to do. Asking questions regarding what happens in some situation would probably go along ways towards your understanding of how SageTV functions. - Andy
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SageTV Open Source v9 is available. - Read the SageTV FAQ. Older PDF User's Guides mostly still apply: SageTV V7.0 & SageTV Studio v7.1. - Hauppauge remote help: 1) Basics/Extending it 2) Replace it 3) Use it w/o needing focus - HD Extenders: A) FAQs B) URC MX-700 remote setup Note: This is a users' forum; see the Rules. For official tech support fill out a Support Request. |
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SageTV supports an arbitrary number of tuner cards, and can record simulaneously from all of them. Quote:
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All I know is I'm totally confused (as you appear to be) about what app you're actually using, and what app you're complaining about. |
#9
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Aeneas |
#10
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You know what you want, there's nothing wrong with that. The problem is the way you've come at this.
First, it's obvious you don't know how SageTV works (2, 3, 13, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35) . Second, it appears you from many of your questions/statements that you aren't even using (2, 3, 9, 10, 13, 21, 22, 31-35 all seem to relate to the Fusion software NOT SageTV). Third, you obviously haven't even bothered to do a search, as many of your issues (1, 4, 9) have been discussed in detail already. Then there's this comment: Quote:
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And I hate to bandwagon, but : Quote:
http://forums.sage.tv/forums/showthr...hlight=display As Opus4 commented, if you had come at this with a "Is this possible or could this stuff be added" instead of your "thou shalt add these features", high and mighty "I know, you don't" attitude, you'd get a much better reponse. Last edited by stanger89; 10-29-2005 at 04:38 PM. |
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Sage has designed their product with a certain customer base in mind. If you don't like the software don't use it. I highly doubt Sage is going to modify their product to satisfy one person who's used the product for all of 2 days. |
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Such arrogance, indolence, and brashness has gotten you far more support and attention than you deserve. A shame the world still rewards such rude people as yourself. As a 'fellow customer', I know I'm right to say good riddance to you and your kind. |
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this is infinitly amusing
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__________________
Intel Core Duo 2.5mhz, 2gb RAM Windows Home Server, Sage 7 beta 2 Hauppauge PVR-250, 1 PVR-500 MCE 1 HDHomeRun 4TB Storage, GB Network 2 MVPs, 1 HD100 & 1 HD300 |
#15
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Hell, I'm one of the more vocal people when it comes to how I think a few features in sage should work and even I'm not as %$#$@ than thou as this guy is. At least I bought sage for the product it reports itself to be before voicing my opinions too... Gads.
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