Evaluating Sage TV - Various Issues

[deria]

Hi,

I'm evaluating SageTV, but I've run into a few problems which I'm hoping that someone can comment on. My system is an Athlon 64 X 2 (dual-core) with 1gb of memory, ~500gb of hard disk space, running at a resolution of 1080i (component output to a tv). I have 3 PVR-250 (ancient) cards. The video card is an ATI All In Wonder 9800 PRO. My problems are:

1) Recording Qualities. I read in the user manual that I could add my own qualities, and I even managed to do so -- but it seems to be a VBR quality. Currently, with BTV, I'm using a constant bitrate recording at 12000000bps at 720x480. I would like to duplicate that configuration exactly (because I'm trying to compare the two).

EDIT: I think I figured out #1. Apparently reading is fundamental. I added the following line to sage.properties:

mmc/python2_encoding/QualityName=videobitrate=12000000|width=720|height=480|audiobitrate=384|vbr=0

That seems to have done the trick. At least I don't see any haze effect during scene transitions and the picture is close enough to what I expected to see that I'm guessing its the same and anything else is my imagination.

END EDIT

2) Wierd artifcating in overlay mode. I'm not sure what to make of this. One of the cores in my system was being maxed out by ShowAnalyzer, and the other was doing nothing. Basically the picture was flickery and square blocks kept appearing on it. I've never seen anything like that before.

3) Cover Art - According to the documentation I read, it said if I put a folder.jpg file in each of my music folders I would see cover art. I don't, though. I see wrong cover art (as in some Beastie Boys cover shows up on the visualizations screen no matter what song I play). I'm fairly sure I'm doing something wrong here, but I don't know what.

4) Is there a way to mount .ISO images automatically for playback? Or not so much? Its fine if theres not, I'm just curious.

5) Color Keying. Supposedly I should be seeing transparency on the overlay display. I'm not, though. If I switch to VMR, though, I do. I'm confuzzled on that one.

If anyone has any advice to offer, I'm all ears. So far I'm quite impressed with Sage.

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by deria

Hi,

I'm evaluating SageTV, but I've run into a few problems which I'm hoping that someone can comment on. My system is an Athlon 64 X 2 (dual-core) with 1gb of memory, ~500gb of hard disk space, running at a resolution of 1080i (component output to a tv). I have 3 PVR-250 (ancient) cards. The video card is an ATI All In Wonder 9800 PRO. My problems are:

1) Recording Qualities. I read in the user manual that I could add my own qualities, and I even managed to do so -- but it seems to be a VBR quality. Currently, with BTV, I'm using a constant bitrate recording at 12000000bps at 720x480. I would like to duplicate that configuration exactly (because I'm trying to compare the two).

MPEG-2 Max Quality should duplicate that config. Otherwise see here for info on recording qualities:
http://www.sagetv.com/2_papers/HPquality.txt

2) Wierd artifcating in overlay mode. I'm not sure what to make of this. One of the cores in my system was being maxed out by ShowAnalyzer, and the other was doing nothing. Basically the picture was flickery and square blocks kept appearing on it. I've never seen anything like that before.

Hm, that is odd, not sure. It sounds like the video was breaking up. Was SA hitting the HDD hard? Was it to a network drive?

3) Cover Art - According to the documentation I read, it said if I put a folder.jpg file in each of my music folders I would see cover art. I don't, though. I see wrong cover art (as in some Beastie Boys cover shows up on the visualizations screen no matter what song I play). I'm fairly sure I'm doing something wrong here, but I don't know what.

For music, I'm fairly certain it needs to be embedded in the file.

4) Is there a way to mount .ISO images automatically for playback? Or not so much? Its fine if theres not, I'm just curious.

Not that I'm aware of. Sage will play "file mode" DVDs just fine though. I think a couple of the custom STVs may have some ISO support.

5) Color Keying. Supposedly I should be seeing transparency on the overlay display. I'm not, though. If I switch to VMR, though, I do. I'm confuzzled on that one.

If you're talking semi-transparency (ie of the OSD) you need 3D accelleration turned OFF.

[deria]

Originally Posted by stanger89

MPEG-2 Max Quality should duplicate that config. Otherwise see here for info on recording qualities:
http://www.sagetv.com/2_papers/HPquality.txt

I didn't see a MPEG-2 Max Quality setting, but I did figure out how to add the quality line properly to get the configuration I wanted. I edited my post above, but I think you were replying at the time.

Originally Posted by stanger89

Hm, that is odd, not sure. It sounds like the video was breaking up. Was SA hitting the HDD hard? Was it to a network drive?

It didn't seem to be doing any disk access (but it would have been to a local drive if it was). When I looked at the file it was processing, it was some 64kb file that was left over on a failed recording attempt (from BTV). It seems to have caused ShowAnalyzer to just go insane. Still, everything seems fine now that I've terminated ShowAnalyzer, so I'm thinking that it was just a symptom of extremely high CPU usage.

Originally Posted by stanger89

For music, I'm fairly certain it needs to be embedded in the file.

Hmm... Any idea how I can embed the cover art in the file? I already have the images I want (basically I just use artist images; I don't group my music by album at all).

Originally Posted by stanger89

Not that I'm aware of. Sage will play "file mode" DVDs just fine though. I think a couple of the custom STVs may have some ISO support.

You mean rip the DVD to a folder instead of to a .ISO? I can do that, I suppose. At least then I can remove those very annoying probited-user-options.

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by deria

I didn't see a MPEG-2 Max Quality setting, but I did figure out how to add the quality line properly to get the configuration I wanted. I edited my post above, but I think you were replying at the time.

Cool...

It didn't seem to be doing any disk access (but it would have been to a local drive if it was). When I looked at the file it was processing, it was some 64kb file that was left over on a failed recording attempt (from BTV). It seems to have caused ShowAnalyzer to just go insane. Still, everything seems fine now that I've terminated ShowAnalyzer, so I'm thinking that it was just a symptom of extremely high CPU usage.

Yeah, if Sage and SA ended up on the same core, that would make sense. You might want to try playing with SA's CPU usage throttle if you run into it again.

Hmm... Any idea how I can embed the cover art in the file? I already have the images I want (basically I just use artist images; I don't group my music by album at all).

Not really, I know there have been a few threads though. I could be wrong on that though too.

You mean rip the DVD to a folder instead of to a .ISO? I can do that, I suppose. At least then I can remove those very annoying probited-user-options.

Yup, that's what I do, 260 DVDs and counting I rip all my movies movie-only also, to save space.

Oh, and you might want to check out the SageMC 169, and Meekell STVs, they've got some DVD Profiler support in them