Plugin: Sage Recording Extender (SRE)

[Slugger]

Originally Posted by rsagetv99

Wondering if this is expected behavior. What I would like, is for the extender to record my NFL game, plus 15 minutes for the closing commentary.

I have the default padding in SRE set to 15 minutes, but I also have "SRE Ends Recording Early" set to true. What I think should happen is once the game ends, whether it is before or after the 3 hour alloted time in the guide, SRE should end the recording 15 minutes later.

Instead, what happened was the game ended, and 4 minutes later the recording ended.

Also, does the padding in the favorite matter?

Thanks for your help.

The default padding is only used if SRE is unable to monitor the status of the game (due to an Internet outage, ESPN.com outage, etc.). Once SRE is able to successfully get the status of a game then the default padding is ignored for that recording.

Paddings for a favourite rule are also ignored by SRE since SRE turns all recordings it monitors into manual recordings - a side effect of modifiying recording times of an active recording in SageTV.

If you wanted, you could add a feature request to SRE in my bugzilla database and perhaps a future release will include the ability to pad the end of an event that SRE has identified as being over in order to get that desired 15 minutes of post game show.

[kevine]

Originally Posted by sakker

Sounds extremely useful in certain situations, I rarely record sports, usually watch them if I am interested. One thing I would suggest, only from experience with my dvr's that annoyed the hell out of me, the show right after a sporting event. If the event ran long and you were set to record that show, you record 20 minutes of the event, and 40 minutes of the show, missing the last 20.

I don't know if it's feasible, but try and include something like that that picks up recordings also affected by a long running show and extend those also?

my 2¢

Good luck with it.

Yeah, and if it could hook into the White House and let Sage know when the president is going to mess with your Fall scheduling would be great too! Why can't he choose to blabber in the summer?

Kidding aside, I would find this useful too.

[rsagetv99]

Originally Posted by Slugger

The default padding is only used if SRE is unable to monitor the status of the game (due to an Internet outage, ESPN.com outage, etc.). Once SRE is able to successfully get the status of a game then the default padding is ignored for that recording.

OK, it is a little confusing to me. When I had requested default padding, I was thinking of padding after the game was verified as being over.

I thought that enabling "Safety Net" would take care of any outages, and SRE would continue recording up to the "Max Extension Time" or until the outage was over and the game was verified as over, whichever came first.

For me at least there is no need for a "Max Extension Time" with no outages and a "Default Padding" during an outage, I will set these both to the same (2 hours) since whether there is an outage or not, the game should not go more than 2 hours past the scheduled time.

I will put in a feature request, but if you decide to add "my understanding" of what default padding is, and still leave the Safety Net padding, you should probably call the latter well, "Safety Net Padding" (I know, I'm a genius right.), and maybe even put it on the same line with the "Safety Net is Enabled" setting.

Thanks for listening and thanks for a great plugin!

[Slugger]

Originally Posted by rsagetv99

OK, it is a little confusing to me. When I had requested default padding, I was thinking of padding after the game was verified as being over.

I thought that enabling "Safety Net" would take care of any outages, and SRE would continue recording up to the "Max Extension Time" or until the outage was over and the game was verified as over, whichever came first.

For me at least there is no need for a "Max Extension Time" with no outages and a "Default Padding" during an outage, I will set these both to the same (2 hours) since whether there is an outage or not, the game should not go more than 2 hours past the scheduled time.

I will put in a feature request, but if you decide to add "my understanding" of what default padding is, and still leave the Safety Net padding, you should probably call the latter well, "Safety Net Padding" (I know, I'm a genius right.), and maybe even put it on the same line with the "Safety Net is Enabled" setting.

Thanks for listening and thanks for a great plugin!

I definitely need to be a little more verbose in the docs. This is why where I work the people who write the software very rarely write the end user documentation and why we pay the technical writers what we pay them.

Safety net extensions: If at some point SRE was able to monitor the status of the event successfully, but later on during the event SRE could not get a valid status then this feature tells SRE to consider the event as still-in-progress and proceed accordingly. This addresses the issue where 5 mins before the end of the game the ESPN site goes down and SRE can't determine the status of the game. Without this on, SRE would just do nothing and the recording would stop in 5 mins regardless. With this on, SRE assumes it's a temp outage at ESPN (or a temp outage with your Internet connection) and will assume the event is not over and extend it, if required. There are some issues that arise with this feature and they're described in the docs.

Default padding: If SRE is never able to get a valid monitor for your event then SRE will simply pad the end of your recording by this value. Once SRE is able to get a valid monitor for your event just once then this setting is ignored and the safety net extension setting applies.

Hopefully I'll have a few free hours sometime next week to move all the missing doc details added to this thread into the online doc.

[Sparhawk6]

SRE is doing some funny things. It's ending normally scheduled TV programs early. Why does it even monitor non-sporting events? Here is a line from my log:

SRE v1.4.0
Started: Sat Sep 22 20:05:00 MDT 2007

SRE: Found 3 active recordings.
College Football --> Too early to check status
No monitor due to orig air date violation
Original air date violation ignored for test monitor
Law & Order: Criminal Intent --> Event is over; recording stopped.
Saving Private Ryan --> Too early to check status

[Slugger]

Originally Posted by Sparhawk6

SRE is doing some funny things. It's ending normally scheduled TV programs early. Why does it even monitor non-sporting events? Here is a line from my log:

SRE v1.4.0
Started: Sat Sep 22 20:05:00 MDT 2007

SRE: Found 3 active recordings.
College Football --> Too early to check status
No monitor due to orig air date violation
Original air date violation ignored for test monitor
Law & Order: Criminal Intent --> Event is over; recording stopped.
Saving Private Ryan --> Too early to check status

You have managed to get SRE into test mode. If you have installed the servlet then load the servlet and disable test mode. If you don't have the servlet installed then stop all sage instances and edit the Sage.properties file and look for SRETestMode and set it to false then restart SageTV.

SRE only monitors non-sporting events if it's in test mode. In test mode, SRE "monitors" every single recording. This mode is there for ease of development.

SRE only modifies the recording times of arbitrary recordings when it's in test mode, I promise. So disable test mode and this problem will go away.

[Sparhawk6]

Yea, sorry, I read that earlier post and figured it out. Thanks.

[rsagetv99]

Originally Posted by Slugger

You have managed to get SRE into test mode. If you have installed the servlet then load the servlet and disable test mode. If you don't have the servlet installed then stop all sage instances and edit the Sage.properties file and look for SRETestMode and set it to false then restart SageTV.

SRE only monitors non-sporting events if it's in test mode. In test mode, SRE "monitors" every single recording. This mode is there for ease of development.

SRE only modifies the recording times of arbitrary recordings when it's in test mode, I promise. So disable test mode and this problem will go away.

Happened to me to. Could this be something in the latest download?

[Slugger]

Originally Posted by rsagetv99

Happened to me to. Could this be something in the latest download?

Indeed, it is a bug with the servlet. The servlet sets the default properties for SRE incorrectly on the first load of a fresh, non-upgraded install, which is why I never saw this issue. I've fixed the issue and have uploaded v1.4.1.

If you're running 1.4.0, have hit this error and already fixed it (by disabling test mode via the servlet) then you don't need to upgrade to v1.4.1 (though there's no harm in doing so). This was the only bug fixed in the 1.4.1 package.

[matt91]

Is there a way to get a log file of what is actually happening when SRE is monitoring a game?

I thought that I everything set up correctly, but found out that the recording of the baseball game last night ended right at 11, rather than going later as the game went into extra innings.

I probably didn't utilize the overrides to change from "ALCS Game 2" to "Red Sox vs Indians". But I'd like to be able to see what happened via a log file after the fact.

Thanks
Matt


(PS if there is no log file, is there a way to know that SRE actually deduced what the teams are, talked to ESPN.com, etc?)

[Slugger]

Originally Posted by matt91

Is there a way to get a log file of what is actually happening when SRE is monitoring a game?

I thought that I everything set up correctly, but found out that the recording of the baseball game last night ended right at 11, rather than going later as the game went into extra innings.

I probably didn't utilize the overrides to change from "ALCS Game 2" to "Red Sox vs Indians". But I'd like to be able to see what happened via a log file after the fact.

Thanks
Matt


(PS if there is no log file, is there a way to know that SRE actually deduced what the teams are, talked to ESPN.com, etc?)

There is a log file located in the base SageTV install directory called sre.runnable.log (for v1.4.1 or sre.log for older versions). This file shows the details for the last run of SRE and empties out on each run. I did this so as to not create a massively large log file over time that could cause problems if left unattended.

I took a look at the parser testing results from yesterday and everything looked good based on my EPG data (I use the SageTV EPG service from Z2I):

MLB Baseball Cleveland Indians at Boston Red Sox [8:00 PM E ]

In order for SRE to properly monitor the recording the title of the program must be 'MLB Baseball' and the subtitle must have the team names in it. If the subtitle was just 'ALCS Game 2' as you said above then SRE will not monitor the game and you would have to setup an override in the configuration servlet. If you create an override, you must use the cities in order for SRE to identify the teams. 'Indians at Red Sox' will not work. You must use 'Cleveland at Boston' or 'Cleveland Indians at Boston Red Sox'. The exception are cities with multiple teams - New York, Chicago and Los Angeles for baseball. In those cases, you must use the nicknames in order to avoid ambiguity.

To know if SRE is properly communicating with ESPN, look at the status of the monitor in the debug tab of the servlet. Ensure it's listed as 'VALID' and that the subtitle contains the teams in it. If both are true then SRE is communicating with ESPN. The next release of the plugin will be more descriptive on the debug tab, making it easier to identify that SRE is communicating with the status source properly.

[matt91]

Thanks for the reply. This is what my EPG shows for the game yesterday (I too use the Sage EPG data):

MLB Baseball

Episode: American League Championship Series, Game 2: Teams TBA

Aired: Oct 13, 2007 8:00 PM - 11:00 PM
Duration: 3h 0m
Channel: 25-WTTG
Category: Sports event/Baseball - First Run
Original Air Date: Saturday, October 13, 2007



Based on this, I would have needed to use the override, correct? Since the teams aren't listed? (not sure why the EPG doesn't have the team names for this game, it does for others. I refreshed the EPG a number of times hoping that I'd get the team names, but never did.)



Thanks
matt

[Slugger]

Originally Posted by matt91

Thanks for the reply. This is what my EPG shows for the game yesterday (I too use the Sage EPG data):

MLB Baseball

Episode: American League Championship Series, Game 2: Teams TBA

Aired: Oct 13, 2007 8:00 PM - 11:00 PM
Duration: 3h 0m
Channel: 25-WTTG
Category: Sports event/Baseball - First Run
Original Air Date: Saturday, October 13, 2007



Based on this, I would have needed to use the override, correct? Since the teams aren't listed? (not sure why the EPG doesn't have the team names for this game, it does for others. I refreshed the EPG a number of times hoping that I'd get the team names, but never did.)



Thanks
matt

Yes, you would have needed to use an override for this recording. The program title was fine, so you just needed to override the subtitle to include 'Cleveland at Boston'.

[Slugger]

Just in time for the start of the NCAA basketball season, SRE v1.5.0 is now available for download. Highlights of this release are support for NCAA Division I Men's basketball and improvements and additions to the configuration servlet. The full changelog is pasted below.

v1.4.1 -> v1.5.0
================

* Bug 18: Fix formatting/spacing of servlet buttons
* Bug 19: Cell editor doesn't submit on enter key
* Bug 21: Allow viewing of log files via servlet
* Bug 22: Clean up old overrides from data store
* Bug 24: Update online docs
* Bug 25: Upgrade YUI library
* Bug 26: Include monitor type in debug table
* Bug 27: Add support for NCAA basketball (Division I Men's only)
* Bug 29: Ensure overrides produce valid monitors
* Bug 31: Remove duplicate copies of API objects
* Bug 32: Correct typo in 'Columbus' identifier (NHL monitor)

[kevine]

Installed as to the instructions and am having problems. I hope you can help.

Webserver is up an running.

The servlet get installed to the webroot folder instead of webroot/Sage folder. Therefore the http://<hostname>/Sage/SRE does not work.

The change to the sage.properties file worked and the log said it was loaded but even when I go to run the servlet by typing in the correct path:
http://<hostname>/SRE/SRE.HTML
I get "AJAX call failed." error.
Could this be because the SRE folder needs to be moved down 1 level into the Sage folder?

I had no time to test this as primetime was about to start and I saw where other people had problems loosing recordings because of test mode. So I removed it from the sage.properties load statement and restarted.

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks

[Slugger]

Originally Posted by kevine

Installed as to the instructions and am having problems. I hope you can help.

Webserver is up an running.

The servlet get installed to the webroot folder instead of webroot/Sage folder. Therefore the http://<hostname>/Sage/SRE does not work.

The change to the sage.properties file worked and the log said it was loaded but even when I go to run the servlet by typing in the correct path:
http://<hostname>/SRE/SRE.HTML
I get "AJAX call failed." error.
Could this be because the SRE folder needs to be moved down 1 level into the Sage folder?

I had no time to test this as primetime was about to start and I saw where other people had problems loosing recordings because of test mode. So I removed it from the sage.properties load statement and restarted.

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks

This is where the files are suppose to be installed. The file paths are relative to the base installation directory of SageTV (usually C:\Program Files\SageTV\SageTV). So for example, all the jar files in the zip file should be installed to C:\Program Files\SageTV\SageTV\JARs\ and so on. Did you remember to maintain the directory structure when unzipping the zip file?

$ zipinfo sre-1.5.0.zip
-rw-r--r--  2.0 unx   520186 b- defN 21-Mar-07 18:31 JARs/gkusnick.sagetv.jar
-rw-r--r--  2.0 unx    43465 b- defN  8-Sep-07 14:39 JARs/json.jar
-rw-r--r--  2.0 unx    42719 b- defN  3-Nov-07 11:30 JARs/slugger_sage-recording-extender.jar
-rw-r--r--  2.0 unx   825271 b- defN 10-Sep-07 17:32 JARs/sqlitejdbc-nested.jar
-rw-r--r--  2.0 unx     4362 b- defN 12-Oct-07 17:23 webserver/webroot/sre/sre.html
-rw-r--r--  2.0 unx    13034 b- defN 23-Oct-07 15:01 webserver/webroot/sre/sre.js

The URL to load the config servlet is just http://host/Sage/SRE

What happens when you try that URL? The test mode bug was fixed in v1.4.1 and shouldn't be an issue, but let me know if it still is.

[kevine]

Originally Posted by Slugger

Did you remember to maintain the directory structure when unzipping the zip file?

yes

Originally Posted by Slugger

The URL to load the config servlet is just http://host/Sage/SRE

The zip file puts the SRE directory in the webroot directory. As it should given the zip file layout you show above. That gives it a url of http://host/SRE (in the same directory with the Sage directory).

Originally Posted by Slugger

What happens when you try that URL?

Like I said, "AJAX call failed." going to http://host/SRE

Thanks again.

[Slugger]

Originally Posted by kevine

yes


The zip file puts the SRE directory in the webroot directory. As it should given the zip file layout you show above. That gives it a url of http://host/SRE (in the same directory with the Sage directory).


Like I said, "AJAX call failed." going to http://host/SRE

Thanks again.

Go to http://host/Sage/SRE

The web server plugin's servlets are configured to be served from /Sage/<servlet_name>

I get the same AJAX error when I load /SRE. The AJAX error occurs because you haven't authenticated to get access to the servlet.

What happens when you go to /Sage/SRE? It should work as expected.

[kevine]

I got it to work but I had to hard code values into the properties file. I still cannot get the servlet to change the settings. And the default padding does not report the values I have set in the properties file. All changes were made to the server properties file. Any thoughts?

[Slugger]

Originally Posted by kevine

I got it to work but I had to hard code values into the properties file. I still cannot get the servlet to change the settings. And the default padding does not report the values I have set in the properties file. All changes were made to the server properties file. Any thoughts?

Without direct access to the system, I'd only be guessing. Do note, however, that changes to settings made via the servlet will not be reflected in the .properties file immediately. Sage won't dump the changed values until the next time it is stopped, but the changed values are reflected internally.

If you're able to load the servlet have a look at the log files. Are either dumping exceptions?

When you make changes to the settings (on the first tab) and you hit update do your changes get reset back to the original value? Do you get the confirmation dialog that the changes were applied? That tab loads the values as reflected on the server after an update so if the changes aren't actually being made then the form should be reset to the values prior to the update.

Are you able to edit the overrides table? Are your changes reflected on a reload of the servlet? If not, are there exceptions being dumped to the logs?

If you can't load the logs via the servlet, have a look at sre.runnable.log and sre.servlet.log in the base install directory of SageTV.

Also note that the various number values are stored as milliseconds in the .properties file, so if you're manually editing the values in the .properties then you need to store them as milliseconds. If you don't then the value is always going to be zero within the servlet form and if you've manually modified the run frequency and set it to something like 10 then you've told SRE to sleep 10ms before each run, effectively causing it to loop continuously, which is definitely not good for system performance.

And if all of this fails, enable debug logging in SageTV and look to see if there are any errors from the loading of the plugin class or if the web server is throwing an error from the loading of my servlet class.