STV Import: Media Player Custom Skip Forward/Back

[BobPhoenix]

This plugin will allow you to specify the amount of the skip either forward or backward in your videos by a time increment. It uses the Time Scroll command to provide this functionality. After installing this plugin your on screen display will change slightly to display the current value to skip ahead or back. It does not however enable any type of smooth FF/REW that you may be used to with NIELM's plugin or a VCR. You can however specify the exact time you want to skip to in your video or a relative amount based on the current position.

The following graphic shows what the on screen display looks like after pressing the Time Scroll command button on your remote:

Note the upper left corner of the bottom section. Instead of displaying the channel number (like it would with LiveTV) it shows the current Time Jump amount (zero on this display because I haven't typed anything yet). At this point I can type any value I want to skip in Hrs:Min format (Note that is configurable so that seconds are available as well display would then be 0:00:00). The default configuration value for the time display is Hrs:Min.

Another configurable option is the ability to jump immediately after pressing the FF/REW buttons or only jumping after pressing the Time Scroll button a second time. The default configuration it to jump immediately after pressing FF/REW. The reason the other option exists is so that you have an the ability to change your mind about which direction you want to go before committing to the change. The following graphic shows how the OSD changes when you press the FF button with the second option:

Note how the display changes to have a '+' in front of the number to indicate a positive skip toward the end of the video. If I had pressed REW it would have changed to a '-' to indicate that it would skip back towards the begining of the video.

One last special feature of the plugin is the ability to remember a custom skip amount and how long it is kept. You can set this up by pressing Select after entering a skip amount. The length of time the skip amount is remembered is configurable to the following values. Temporary means that the value will last as long as the current video file is being played back before it is cleared. Persistent means the value entered will be remembered as long as the SageTV GUI is running. The last option is Permanent and this value is specified in the configuration screen in Detailed Setup > Customize. This value is written to the properties file and will remain until a new value is written to the properties file. The default for this is the Persistent option so that the Jump value is remembered as long as SageTV GUI is running.

The configuration screen is displayed below with only the Permanent option changed from the default values:


The download for this is located here. Current version is 0.5.

One last thing to note the default functionality of the Time Scroll command remains as long as you have not typed in a value to skip. Once you type some numbers on your remote you turn of this default functionality and the only way to get it back is to make the OSD disappear and bring it back up.

Please post any problems/suggestions on this thread and I will see what I can do to resolve them.

BobP.

I would like to thank Wayne Dunham for his helpfull suggestions and testing on earlier version of this plugin.

[waynedunham]

I would like to thank Bob for writing this import.

I finally got a chance to download his latest version and try it out yesterday. It works great!!

Finally I've got a major feature that I used all the time on my ReplayTV's in SageTV.

With this I can move forward, backward, or to a specific spot in the recording as I'm playing it.

So when comskip/showanalyzer completely messes up or miisses a commercial break you aren't forced to hit the RW/RW2 buttons umpty-bazillion tmes to get back to where you need to be.
Fell asleep about 20 minutes into a recording, no problem, just hit time scroll, 20 (if you have it set for only using hrs/mins, or 20:00 if you have it set to use hrs/mins/secs) and press time scroll again.

Thanks again Bob!!

[owilsky]

Wow.... so little posts for such a great extension....

Originally Posted by BobPhoenix

The following graphic shows what the on screen display looks like after pressing the Time Scroll command button on your remote:

I need your help: I don't get it to work, I imported the stvi and configured it under advanced options. But what is the Time Scroll command button? I have only a 34 button Hauppauge Remote. Which is the keyboard equivalent?

Maybe you can write a little step-by-step guide?

Thanks,
Oliver

[BobPhoenix]

Originally Posted by owilsky

Wow.... so little posts for such a great extension....



I need your help: I don't get it to work, I imported the stvi and configured it under advanced options. But what is the Time Scroll command button? I have only a 34 button Hauppauge Remote. Which is the keyboard equivalent?

Maybe you can write a little step-by-step guide?

Thanks,
Oliver

The TimeScroll command has to be programmed on your remote. What I do is reprogram the play button to be Play/Pause and then program the Pause button to be the TimeScroll command. All of this is done in Detailed setup > Commands > Link Infrared/Keystroke to SageTV Command. If you still need help let me know.

BobP.

[owilsky]

Originally Posted by BobPhoenix

What I do is reprogram the play button to be Play/Pause and then program the Pause button to be the TimeScroll command

Hey, that is really a great idea! Will try to do this.

Thanks a lot!

[waynedunham]

Originally Posted by owilsky

Wow.... so little posts for such a great extension....

Agreed! This has actually made Sage work the way I'm used to and prefer it to work.

Many thanks to Bob for writing this module!

[owilsky]

Originally Posted by owilsky

Hey, that is really a great idea! Will try to do this.

Yepp, everything is fine now Thanks!

[owilsky]

It seems that not many are using this great plugin. I like it a lot but unfortunately it seems it does not work properly with the new
v6 beta.
Can anybody confirm this and will there be a fix?

Oliver

[BobPhoenix]

I'll try it out tonight and see if it works for me. You don't by chance have the miniguide plugin installed do you? If so and you installed the miniguide before this plugin then that is the problem. I've just never gotten around to fixing that. The solution for this particular issue is to install this plugin first then the miniguide. I haven't installed this on my V6 installs yet so I guess I'll find out shortly.

BobP.

[BobPhoenix]

OK I have found a problem and I'll see what I can do to fix it. A link point in the STV has changed so some of my code doesn't get imported properly. It also looks like Sage has changed what is displayed in the bottom panel. You no longer get the chanel display down there so even if I fix this import problem it would only display for LiveTV - SO I'm going to have to figure something else out for this. One thing to note however it does still work you just have to blindly change values as the part that isn't installing correctly only affects the display not the actual functionality. As far as I can tell anyway.

BobP.

[owilsky]

Cool... yes I have the Miniguide plugin installed and even before the MPTimeJump plugin (I use the Plugin Importer STVi). I changed the order in my plugin.cfg, I will see how it works...
Thanks for your efforts.

[waynedunham]

Originally Posted by BobPhoenix

OK I have found a problem and I'll see what I can do to fix it. A link point in the STV has changed so some of my code doesn't get imported properly. It also looks like Sage has changed what is displayed in the bottom panel. You no longer get the chanel display down there so even if I fix this import problem it would only display for LiveTV - SO I'm going to have to figure something else out for this. One thing to note however it does still work you just have to blindly change values as the part that isn't installing correctly only affects the display not the actual functionality. As far as I can tell anyway.

BobP.

Any update on this Bob? I just installed V6 and was going to try and import the previous version, but I see it has some issues.

[BobPhoenix]

Originally Posted by waynedunham

Any update on this Bob? I just installed V6 and was going to try and import the previous version, but I see it has some issues.

Sorry no. I had an OS meltdown on my development box over the weekend and I'm just getting everything back to normal. Maybe this coming weekend tho.

BobP.

[waynedunham]

Originally Posted by BobPhoenix

Sorry no. I had an OS meltdown on my development box over the weekend and I'm just getting everything back to normal. Maybe this coming weekend tho.

BobP.

No sweat Bob, sorry to hear about the meltdown. I am keeping my fingers crossed on my main machine (thankfully not the Sage machine) which has had OS hiccups for a LONG time now. Things that should show up in the taskbar disappear randomly even though they are running their icons disappear from the taskbar no matter what the setting for them is set to. Then they'll magically reappear if I uninstall some other program. I know it's something wonky in the registry somewhere.
I've got to re-install it's just such a pain to go through installing all my apps and data again.

Just keep us loyal few MPTimeJump fans in mind.

[BobPhoenix]

Originally Posted by waynedunham

No sweat Bob, sorry to hear about the meltdown. I am keeping my fingers crossed on my main machine (thankfully not the Sage machine) which has had OS hiccups for a LONG time now. Things that should show up in the taskbar disappear randomly even though they are running their icons disappear from the taskbar no matter what the setting for them is set to. Then they'll magically reappear if I uninstall some other program. I know it's something wonky in the registry somewhere.
I've got to re-install it's just such a pain to go through installing all my apps and data again.

Just keep us loyal few MPTimeJump fans in mind.

Not a problem - it shouldn't take too long just have to find a good alternate location for the display since the channel number isn't displayed all the time anymore.

I should have reinstalled 6mos to a year ago I just didn't reallize how easy it was to carry over Firefox passwords and Bookmarks. Found out last weekend and now realize I'm about 6mos late on the OS reinstall.

My symtoms were somewhat similar to yours. Real slow startup - Friday it reached an alltime slow bootup of 20 minutes - so I tried some more Reg changes and file cleanups which caused a no boot at all. Then tried a repair install but that locked up when it asked for my Acronis True Image driver files and that's when I realized I needed a format and install. Another problem was that I had to logoff and back on to get all of my system tray icons to come up before this happened. This then made the total bootup time around 40 minutes (20 initial + 20 more for relogin) I decided to tinker and caused my no boot at all problem - got tired after waiting an hour to boot up after my tinkering. After the reinstall I'm back to what I had maybe a year ago and I was able to copy the files Firefox needed so I'm happy now.

BobP.

[waynedunham]

Originally Posted by BobPhoenix

Not a problem - it shouldn't take too long just have to find a good alternate location for the display since the channel number isn't displayed all the time anymore.

Sounds good Bob. This is also my first foray into using the Sage Media Extender. I've been using SageMVP since I got my MVP. Two things I can see right away. I've got to go into the properties file for the Media Extender and bump up some font sizes. The listings in the recordings menu are just about impossible to read on my crappy TV in the bedroom.(I had done that with SageMVP when I first started using that)
The 2nd thing is I'm going to have to go through the remote settings. They moved some stuff around, or I had moved them around on my old SageMVP setup. So I don't know where anything is now.

I finally turned comskip on (I've been having Dirmon/SA write the EDL files for a while now). Not bad, but I may have to massage the delays going in/out a bit. It's either VERY accurate (i.e. 0 frames of commercial before/after skip), or else I'm missing a few frames on either end. I may have to play around with some of the other ocmskip settings too. I"m new to it.

Originally Posted by BobPhoenix

My symtoms were somewhat similar to yours. Real slow startup - Friday it reached an alltime slow bootup of 20 minutes - so I tried some more Reg changes and file cleanups which caused a no boot at all. Then tried a repair install but that locked up when it asked for my Acronis True Image driver files and that's when I realized I needed a format and install. Another problem was that I had to logoff and back on to get all of my system tray icons to come up before this happened. This then made the total bootup time around 40 minutes (20 initial + 20 more for relogin) I decided to tinker and caused my no boot at all problem - got tired after waiting an hour to boot up after my tinkering. After the reinstall I'm back to what I had maybe a year ago and I was able to copy the files Firefox needed so I'm happy now.

BobP.

Now I'm scared. My bootups are fine, except every once in a while (maybe 25% of boots) Nothing I click on will do anything for several minutes. Then suddenly all the movement/mouseclicks fire off. Everything in the boot/startup fires off normally, it's only when I get to the desktop.

Oh, one other thing is that randomly Windows Updates can't install a fix/update. The couple times It's happened I've had to dl the fix/update/patch manually and install it from "Safe Mode".
I HATE Micro$oft!!!

[BobPhoenix]

Originally Posted by waynedunham

I finally turned comskip on (I've been having Dirmon/SA write the EDL files for a while now). Not bad, but I may have to massage the delays going in/out a bit. It's either VERY accurate (i.e. 0 frames of commercial before/after skip), or else I'm missing a few frames on either end. I may have to play around with some of the other ocmskip settings too. I"m new to it.

I'm working on another plugin that will help this out some. I've got to wait for the next SageTV Beta however for a fix to make it work the way I want. You will be able to edit a txt or edl file from within SageTV and with marginal functionality on a MVP. You will also be able to call VideoReDo to remove the cuts - without having the window show up on screen. And if I can get the code to work it can replace the original file. I also want to enable calling the SageTV transcoder to compress the file.

Originally Posted by waynedunham

Now I'm scared. My bootups are fine, except every once in a while (maybe 25% of boots) Nothing I click on will do anything for several minutes. Then suddenly all the movement/mouseclicks fire off. Everything in the boot/startup fires off normally, it's only when I get to the desktop.

Oh, one other thing is that randomly Windows Updates can't install a fix/update. The couple times It's happened I've had to dl the fix/update/patch manually and install it from "Safe Mode".
I HATE Micro$oft!!!

Most of my problems are usually just me. They won't let us install anything or even edit the registry at work and it has been working for 2+ years without any real problem for me. At home if I would just wait and let things finish and if I would not try to tinker I probably wouldn't have had the problem in the first place.

Now back to MPTimeJump:
I have figured out what I need to do to fix this I just have to figure out how to code the changes into the import. So don't think it will be a problem for this weekend now. I didn't have to change the display like I thought. I just got confused with the new playlist functionality that was added. I also want to make sure I haven't affect the playlist functionality - tomorrow nights project before I change the import code. Maybe by Saturday definately by Sunday anyway.

BobP.

[owilsky]

Originally Posted by BobPhoenix

You will also be able to call VideoReDo to remove the cuts - without having the window show up on screen. And if I can get the code to work it can replace the original file.

Wohooooo.....

[BobPhoenix]

OK I have uploaded version 0.6 which should make it compatible with SageTV 6.0.15+. It should also still be compatible with V5.0.4 as well so if you have problems let me know. Version 5 users if this is a problem I will include a previous version of the plugin to support SageTV 5.0.4. I no longer have Version 5 installed anywhere so I could not test this.

Note1: you still need to install this plugin before the MiniGuide I did not do anything to specificly improve compatibility with the MiniGuide so if you are having problems with this and you have the MiniGuide installed - try installing this plugin first please.

Note2: the look of this remains the same I didn't have to change anything like I originally thought I was going to need to do.

BobP.

[waynedunham]

Thanks Bob, I'll download and give it a try!