Plugin: Sage Recording Extender (SRE)

[spacecadet]

Originally Posted by Slugger

For those wishing to monitor the Pro Bowl tonight, you will need an override. I won't be around at noon today to see what the actual values will be, but you will need a subtitle in the form of "AFC vs. NFC". Check the NFL feed at sre-maps.appspot.com after noon EST today to see just what the team names are going to be.

As of 3:15 EST, I'm not seeing anything on the NFL data feed on sre-maps.appsot.com:

Current day's events for 'nfl' unless it's before noon ET then this will be yesterday's events.
No events of this type found for today!

I'll keep checking...

[Slugger]

As of right now (19:00 EST), the ESPN feed is not including the Pro Bowl, so there's really nothing I can do - the game simply isn't available to be monitored by SRE. The game might show up on the feed after it starts. A few minutes after the game starts, you can try to add an override - my best guess is to use "NFC vs. AFC" as the subtitle. Unfortunately, everything on sre-maps is now cached for the day - if I'm around I'll wipe the cache around 19:30-20:00, but otherwise you'll just have to try some variation of the override to see if it'll work.

You can also load this url:

http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/bottomline/scores

If the game shows up there then it can be monitored by SRE. sre-maps.appspot.com is just a pretty printer for this raw data feed from ESPN.

[Slugger]

After last week's episode with ESPN not providing the game data for the Pro Bowl, I've taken the precautionary step of coding up a patch for SRE that uses a different source for the NFL game data feed (nfl.com).

Unfortunately, I can't be 100% sure my patch is correct until nfl.com changes the current week's scoreboard from the Pro Bowl to the Super Bowl so I don't want to release the patch too early and tell everyone to upgrade.

I post this now as a warning that if you intend to monitor the Super Bowl to ensure a single, complete recording then an upgrade might be required. Of course, if ESPN adds the SB game to its data feed then all current 2.4.x versions should work as well. I'll post more info as I get it all figured out.

[Slugger]

Looks like ESPN has added the SB game to its NFL feed for this week so all 2.4.x users should be good to go for Sunday (just ensure your EPG data includes something like "Indianapolis Colts vs. New Orleans Saints"). If it says teams TBA then you will need an override (my EPG from Z2I already has the team names specified).

[Slugger]

I am working on providing an event monitor for the Men's hockey tournament. Seems the official Vancouver 2010 web site is providing JSON feeds for all events. Based on the fields in the feeds, they look to be live feeds (or at least live enough to be useful as recording monitors). I won't know for sure until some of the events start up, but for now I'm assuming they are going to be live.

Assuming these feeds are live, then I hope to release a version with Olympic ice hockey support in time for the opening of the men's tournament. As a way to test everything, there will also be support for the women's ice hockey tournament since the data feeds are the same and the women start before the men, it will give me a chance to do some much needed testing.

A quick look at the rest of the feeds seems to suggest they're all about the same so it provides an opportunity to perhaps provide event monitors for any and all events. I say "perhaps" because I definitely don't have the time to create them all, but should enough interest arise, I could be convinced to maybe tackle a couple extra ones. But with that said, there's not even a guarantee I'll be able to finish the men's hockey monitor in time (all depends on how the testing goes).

So would anyone else be interested in the hockey monitors for the Olympics? Any other events?

[Sparhawk6]

Wow Slugger, you are amazing. You just don't quit!

[wayner]

Certainly all of us Canadians would be keen for this but will the TV show name say anything about the game or will it just say something like "Winter Olympics". And don't forget that NBC usually doesn't show much content live, unlike Canadian broadcasters.

[Slugger]

Originally Posted by wayner

Certainly all of us Canadians would be keen for this but will the TV show name say anything about the game or will it just say something like "Winter Olympics". And don't forget that NBC usually doesn't show much content live, unlike Canadian broadcasters.

You will have to override each event to tell SRE exactly which event it's to be monitoring. (i.e. Olympic Men's Hockey).

[vividweb]

If you are with Bell in Canada they have channels that are going to air Olympic coverage 24/7. To get the channels you need to order it like PPV, but it is $0. On Bell's site they have good Guide data for these channels, but Zap2It has nothing on their site. Anyone have any suggestions on how to get the guide data into Sage for these channels (995-999)? Hopefully if we can get the guide data that will help with getting these events recorded.

[Slugger]

An initial snapshot build with Olympic Women's Ice Hockey support is now available (snapshot 773). It may or may not properly monitor the women's ice hockey events - I'll know more tomorrow night when I test it out during the Canada/Slovakia game.

I make this build available now for those who wish to help test and/or want to monitor the women's games starting tomorrow. I will say I'd be quite (pleasantly) surprised if this current snapshot actually works since I'm not sure what values the json feeds are putting in to denote a completed event, but I took a guess based on an hypothesis so we'll see what happens.

Here's what you need to know about these Olympic monitors:

1. Support will only be added to SRE for men's and women's ice hockey - this is going to chew up enough of my weekend testing hockey support and all I really want is men's hockey. The women's hockey is a bonus addon since it allows me to pre-test the men's monitor
2. All hockey events to be monitored will require a special override title (see below). This is to ensure that you and SRE know exactly which event it is you want to be monitoring.
3. Team names for games are abbreviated in the json feed from the Van2010 web site so be sure to visit http://sre-maps.appspot.com each day to see how teams should be identified in your overrides (example below); you can add a global override as well (see example)

Required Override Titles

For Men's Ice Hockey: Olympic Men's Ice Hockey
For Women's Ice Hockey: Olympic Women's Ice Hockey

The subtitle must look like:

CAN vs. SVK

Where CAN = Canada and SVK = Slovakia, in this example. Where did CAN and SVK come from? That's how these countries are being abbreviated in the data feed from the Van2010 web site. Visit http://sre-maps.appspot.com each day and view the Olympic data feed to see how teams are being identified. When I created the above override, I added a mapping to the global override map and mapped "CAN" to "Canada" and "SVK" to "Slovakia", which means for the rest of the Olympics I can also use Canada and Slovakia as team names for both men's and women's events (since both come from the same data feed).

Other notes of interest:

Seems all the listings (both for Canadian channels and the NBC listings I get up here) are just big blocks of 4, 6, 8+ hours of general Olympic coverage where the listings read something like, "Continuing coverage from Vancouver; ski jumping; downhill skiing; hockey, women's: Canada vs. Slovakia, ..."

So what I'm personally doing is creating timed recordings for the 2.5 hours of the hockey game then going into the SRE GUI and creating the appropriate override as described above to ensure the event is being monitored. This is extra work, but the use of special, specific event titles accomplishes a couple things:

1. If you just want to record the entire block of the Olympic coverage then SRE will not interfere at all with the recording (you will have to create an override for SRE to monitor anything related to the Olympics)
2. If you end up recording a tape delayed hockey game then you will not want SRE trying to monitor it and as long as you don't create the override then SRE will not interfere with the recording

I think this will provide the best of both worlds. Men's tournament starts on Tue so if anyone thinks of any problems with this strategy or has other improvements then I'm willing to listen.

NOTE: If you do decide to test this build along with me then please be aware that if my hypothesis is wrong then SRE may detect games as never ending with this build and will end up doing a lot of extra recording. Keep that in mind and keep a close eye on any monitored women's games with this build. I will post an update with the test results before the end of the weekend.

[Slugger]

Do NOT bother creating Olympic overrides in the global map with snapshot 773, there is a bug, which will be fixed in the next build. All other global maps still work properly.

[Slugger]

Build 774, now labelled official v2.4.1 release of SRE, contains the final fixes for support of Olympic hockey monitoring.

[Slugger]

Based on the lack of posts, it appears no one else joined me in testing out 774 with Olympic hockey last night? If you did and you're just being polite or you're still trying to figure out why you have a 10.5 hour recording, I apologize for the nasty little bug that would have kept the Canada/Slovakia game recording indefinitely. I woke up to a solid 10.5 hour recording myself this morning.

I failed to account for the fact that Google's app engine servers run with their time zone set to UTC, which is 8 hours ahead of Vancouver time so when the Canada game started at 17:00 Vancouver time (PST, 20:00 EST) last night, it was actually 01:00 Feb 14 UTC, meaning I was caching and using the next day's scoreboard and therefore the game was never properly found.

I have fixed this on the app engine side and this fix will address all events that complete before midnight local time on the SRE host. However, since there are hockey games that start at 21:00 PST, a fix will be needed in SRE to address the times when events cross over into the next day, local time on the SRE host. I have created the fix and will be testing it tonight. I won't post it until that testing is complete.

v2.4.1.774 still works perfectly fine for all other sports. Only Olympic hockey is affected by this bug.

Damn you time zones, damn you!

[vividweb]

Hey slugger

I attempted to use the new version, but could not get it to update to the new version while Sage was running. Going to try it with the server down today and see if SRE will update. If I create a timed recording, can I put an override on it?

[Slugger]

Originally Posted by vividweb

If I create a timed recording, can I put an override on it?

Yes. This is exactly how I'm recording Olympic hockey games. Create a timed recording for 2.5 hours then go to SRE GUI and add override for the game.

[Slugger]

Seems ESPN is not including the all-star game in its live data feed, which means SRE is unable to monitor the game. I don't watch the NBA and won't be rushing for an alternative, sorry.

Older versions of SRE v2.2.x and v2.3.x may or may not work with an appropriate override. Again, I don't watch it so I'm not going to be experimenting.

[Slugger]

v2.4.2 is now available. It contains what I hope will be the final fixes for the Olympic hockey monitors. All testing has been successful over the last couple days so I'm fairly confident in this version. All users are encouraged to upgrade to v2.4.2.

FIXES:

• Fix various time zone issues with the Vancouver 2010 Olympic ice hockey monitors

[cat6man]

thanks once again for the great work slugger...............just updated SRE for the 1st time since the fall and it seems to work fine.............put in a dummy game just to see if it got picked up and all looks good............i can go back to hibernating for another month or so...........

any idea when the 1st baseball game of the year will be broadcast from spring training? i don't care who is playing, i just need to see someone playing ball on real grass in sunshine!

cheers

[Slugger]

Originally Posted by cat6man

thanks once again for the great work slugger...............just updated SRE for the 1st time since the fall and it seems to work fine.............put in a dummy game just to see if it got picked up and all looks good............i can go back to hibernating for another month or so...........

any idea when the 1st baseball game of the year will be broadcast from spring training? i don't care who is playing, i just need to see someone playing ball on real grass in sunshine!

cheers

Not sure if you're in the US or not, but up here in Canada we may get 2 or 3 spring training games broadcast - maybe. And if we do, they're all Blue Jays games and I'm still protesting the Doc trade. Not so much the trade, but the fact that they dumped Doc for prospects and yet they deem it acceptable to keep that massive contract of The Slug (not "Slugger", but slug b/c that's all he is, a.k.a. Vernon Wells) on the payroll. Why trade for the future as long as you're paying that slug to show up every day? Here's hoping he finds a way to hit .300 and have 15-18 HR by the all star break and the Jays have enough sense to trade him while he's got some trade value, of which he has none right now. But knowing the Jays, if he does manage to hit well this year then the Jays won't have the common sense to trade him while someone will give you more than a bucket of BP balls for him and a 50th round pick in the amateur draft (btw, if someone were to make that offer right now, I'd jump all over it).

[cat6man]

i'm just glad Doc isn't in NY (and Wells is one of the worst contracts on earth).

in the US (i'm a red sox fan living in enemy territory just outside of NY), we have MLB extra innings which carries all games (and some pre-season) and just recently added the MLB Network which i'm sure will carry some pre-season stuff.

i don't follow any other sports anymore, so i'm sitting around the hot stove (and it is snowing again here) waiting for the sounds of spring (training).