TiVo Like FF With Auto Stop?

[joe123]

I am not sure if I can describe this correctly, but I will try.

On my TiVo Series 2 box, when I hit the Fast Forward (FF) key to skip over recorded commercials, when I see the movie back on the TV, I hit the Play button and it always starts playing exactly where the movie starts and the commercial ended. In other words, when I hit Play, even though the movie shows several seconds/minutes into the Movie, it start playing at the start of that segment of the movie just before the last commercial ended.

Does SageTV do this? I tried FF over commercials and then hitting Play but it just starts playing right where I hit Play. Maybe I am missing something in my setup.

[Goodspike]

Originally Posted by joe123

Does SageTV do this? I tried FF over commercials and then hitting Play but it just starts playing right where I hit Play. Maybe I am missing something in my setup.

You're talking about what I call FF fallback. I'm not sure if Sage does that because I only have it set up to FF XX seconds per click.

[joe123]

Originally Posted by Goodspike

You're talking about what I call FF fallback. .

Yes, that sounds like it. Fast Forward then stop at the end of last commercial / start of movie.

Does SageTV have this feature or is there a plug-in for it?

I am not sure about you guys, but this is a vital feature needed if it's not available.

[MrApollinax]

If you use the 3rd party apps DirMon and ShowAnalyzer from DragonGlobal.org and import Malore's ComSkip mod you can completely skip commercials all together. For just about everyone it is the Commercial Skipping solution. Unfortunately I'm in the .01% of SageTV users who is having issues with the setup so I have yet to get it working perfectly.

[dbfresh23]

Heh, and this was my most hated feature about tivo! I think I was just more accurate then it was!

None the less, I know I've seen this asked before. You may want to locate that handy dandy search button and make use of it.

[joe123]

Originally Posted by dbfresh23

Heh, and this was my most hated feature about tivo! I think I was just more accurate then it was!

None the less, I know I've seen this asked before. You may want to locate that handy dandy search button and make use of it.

Not sure what you hated about FF fallback feature of Tivo?

So, for those who don't have the commercial skip software or who do have it but on the commercials it does record, how the heck to you skip to the start of the next movie segment? I mean, with 10 or 30 second skips, how do you fine tune it so that you can begin watching the movie segment at the very START of each segment?

[MrApollinax]

ShowAnalyzer will output a file that works with the ComSkip mod to flag the begining and end of comercial blocks. The ComSkip mod will then play to the end of the show block and automatically skip all the data between the flagged info and seamlessly start at the begining of the next show block.

[joe123]

Originally Posted by MrApollinax

ShowAnalyzer will output a file that works with the ComSkip mod to flag the begining and end of comercial blocks. The ComSkip mod will then play to the end of the show block and automatically skip all the data between the flagged info and seamlessly start at the begining of the next show block.

So for those of us who are new, what the hell are you saying? How does this work with FF on my remote?

Also, does this ShowAnalyzer program places a load on the Server? I see other posts where people are having frezees on their SageTV Media Extenders and the remedy was to stop the ShowAnalyzer from running.

[MrApollinax]

translation: You don't need to FF to skip commercials ever again. You will play the entire recording as if there were no commercials recorded.

From my experience so far I haven't seen too much strain on my server with SA installed nor have i seen any freezes with my MVP setup.

[joe123]

Originally Posted by MrApollinax

translation: You don't need to FF to skip commercials ever again. You will play the entire recording as if there were no commercials recorded.

Waoo - Amazing product! So it is 100% bullet proof? No commercials ever?

If not 100% acurate, again, what do you do to skip commercials?

[lovingHDTV]

I've found it to be ~90% accurate. I do not run it in "automatcally skip" mode. Instead I mapped my chapert forward/reverse keys to skip comercial forward/backward. Then when I get to a commercial, I hit the skip forward (next chapter key on my remote) and it skips the commercial.

There is a smooth fast forward plugin that Neilm wrote that is similar to the Tivo fastforward. The way it works, is to backup the video a certain amount of time after you hit play. It will backup further depending on your final ff speed. For example, 1x would not back up as much as 8x ff. This makes it appear that it is backing up to the commercial break as it offsets the delay it takes for you to see the commercial, hit the key, and the computer start playing.

[MrApollinax]

I haven't had much luck with it as of yet but again i'm in a very small minority. If not 100% accurate just use FF or REW to get to the point you need. For many on this forum it has worked like a charm "out of the box"

[blade]

It isn't 100% accurate, but on most shows it's dead on and the others are pretty darn close. You can create custom settings for individual shows and tweak them so that it's more accurate, although I haven't really figured out how to tweak SA yet.

I run SA on my Sage server which is a celeron 366 with 320 mb of ram and I let it use 100% of the free cycles and it's fast enough to process the commercials as I watch "liveTV". It also runs flawlessly on my XP1400 and XP3000 machines. IMO anyone experiencing lockups with SA probably doesn't have a 100% stable system in the first place or they are having some freak software conflict.

[mayamaniac]

Tivo and BeyondTV has that Fast Foward compensation feature, BTV even lets you set the number of seconds to compensate, default was 7 seconds. I was a Tivo and BTV user before, and I was used to that FF feature. When I switched to SageTV, I had to get used to the 10sec/150sec FF/RW method. At first, it seemed odd. But after using SageTV for a few weeks, like many other experienced SageTV users, I like the SageTV method more.

Most shows, I dare to say 90%, the commercial length is 150 secs, or 2.5 min. So when you see the commercial go on, you hit the 150 sec, and you should be very close to the mark where the shows is back on. And if it isn't, use the 10 sec button to adjust if needed.

As for the commercial detection softwares/plugins, they scan the movie for commercials and mark where they start and end in a text file. Then a "comskip" plugin allows the sageTV interface to read those text files and mark where the commercials are in the playback time line. And you can assign a button to the remote to skip commercials, back and forth. Also, there's an option to have SageTV to auto skip.

Commercial detection is a demanding chore for your computer and it will impact how your PC performs. You almost have to have a separate PC setup to do it, else it'll slow down your SageTV server down as the CPU is always pegged up at 100%.

My advice is get used to the SageTV 10sec/150sec buttons. its actually a well thought out feature, although I'm not sure why they have regular FF/RW on the MVP as default, but you can change it in Detailed settings.

[joe123]

Originally Posted by blade

I run SA on my Sage server which is a celeron 366 with 320 mb of ram and I let it use 100% of the free cycles and it's fast enough to process the commercials as I watch "liveTV"..

Ok, now you have me confused. Why use SA (Show Analyzer) on Live TV? I mean, what does it do? Do you get a blank screen until the show starts again?

[Pinan]

SA does nothing for Live TV. Recordings (finished) only. I use it with great success. Prime time OTA shows seem to have larger black gaps so it's about perfect for skipping. Some of the UHF stations have small black gaps so it's less than perfect. Still...a great program.

[lovingHDTV]

Originally Posted by joe123

Ok, now you have me confused. Why use SA (Show Analyzer) on Live TV? I mean, what does it do? Do you get a blank screen until the show starts again?

If you timeshift your liveTV you can have SA run in the background to mark the commercials real time. This can be used if you start watching your "liveTV" 15 min into the show. With the 15min head start SA can mark the commercials for you as you watch the show, allowing you to "automatically" skip the commercial on "liveTV".

The SageTV stvi import has to support this also so that Sage will continue looking at the skip file as it is being created.

[DFranch]

There is an import to give smooth FF http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=11060 I think this does what you want. I tried it out when it was first released, but I had become so used to the way sage works that I turned it off.

[blade]

Originally Posted by joe123

Ok, now you have me confused. Why use SA (Show Analyzer) on Live TV? I mean, what does it do? Do you get a blank screen until the show starts again?

What lovingHDTV said. It's not technically live TV but it's as close as you can get with commercials edited out. For example a 1 hr show is typically 42 minutes long without the commercials. If I want to watch something while it's still recording I simply start watching the show 15 minutes or so after it starts and Sage will automatically skip over all the commercials.

[blade]

Originally Posted by Pinan

SA does nothing for Live TV. Recordings (finished) only.

SA can process shows as they're being recorded and it does update the .txt file as it finds new commercials. So you don't have to wait until the recording is finished.