Sage just lost record of all my shows! And keeps zooming in on the screen!

[Rurik]

New user, just bought Sage this week, and am very put off by some issue that I'm having now.

For one, my htpc has two hard drives in it. The PS drive (40GB) held nothing but recorded shows, but was way too small. I just got in a 320GB drive today to replace it with. I swapped out the two, hooked up the old drive to a USB enclosure, and copied all my shows over. Well, come to find out that the new drive is screwed and is causing STOP bsod's during writes. I put the old hard drive back in, and now SageTV says I have no recorded shows. I can see the files, they're all still on the hard drive, but Sage can't. ARGH!

Secondly, during trial, I had a slight issue where randomly Sage would "zoom" in on the screen. I'm running on a 27" CRT at 800x600. But, Sage would zoom in so that the outer 1" of the screen would be cut off. During Windows it would be , but as soon as I watched a show in Sage, it would zoom in and stay zoomed in until I quit Sage. Now, after purchasing Sage, it is ALWAYS zoomed in. Even when Sage isn't running, it's zoomed in. So, I only see the top 3 pixels of my task bar, and nothing of the outer edges of my screen. For example,with Firefox maximized, the left side of the screen starts in "Edit" pull down, and the right ends right after the magnifying glass for the Firefox search bar. ARGH!

[Opus4]

Originally Posted by Rurik

For one, my htpc has two hard drives in it. The PS drive (40GB) held nothing but recorded shows, but was way too small. I just got in a 320GB drive today to replace it with. I swapped out the two, hooked up the old drive to a USB enclosure, and copied all my shows over. Well, come to find out that the new drive is screwed and is causing STOP bsod's during writes. I put the old hard drive back in, and now SageTV says I have no recorded shows. I can see the files, they're all still on the hard drive, but Sage can't.

SageTV expects to see recordings in the locations where it last saw them. If that drive no longer exists, then it doesn't release them in its database from the old location markers because the drive might just be temporarily unavailable. If the old drive letter for the recording drive does not exist, then map an empty dir to that drive letter & run SageTV in non-service mode so that it can see that the recordings are not in the old location.

If, instead, your old SageTV installation directory is gone, then so is your original wiz.bin database file, where all the info for those old recordings were stored. In this case, you would need to use a backup copy of wiz.bin for it to recognize those old recordings because a newly created wiz.bin won't know anything about them.

- Andy

[stevech]

be sure to format the for-video-recordings partition on your new drive with 64K blocks.

[stevech]

Originally Posted by Rurik

Even when Sage isn't running, it's zoomed in. ARGH!

would this be a Sage issue or your Windows/Driver/BIOS?

[rickgillyon]

Originally Posted by Rurik

I put the old hard drive back in, and now SageTV says I have no recorded shows. I can see the files, they're all still on the hard drive, but Sage can't.

If it's the same hard drive and you have the same WIZ.BIN (i.e. you didn't delete your old install), are you sure that the disk isn't on a different drive letter that isn't currently set as a Recording folder in Sage?

[sakker]

Originally Posted by stevech

would this be a Sage issue or your Windows/Driver/BIOS?

It sounds like that's the case, maybe update the video driver, or maybe it's a graphics card issue itself.

If it were just zoomed in on Sage then you would change your overscan settings to make it fit, but it doesn't sound like that's the case.

For your recorded shows, if the drive letter and path it set up correctly, I am assuming you mean recorded tv shows and not imported movies, then check your media center/imported videos screen you will probably find them there. Which means that it couldn't find the videos, so cleared the info from your wiz.bin, then when it did find them the info wasn't in wiz.bin so it imported them as regular videos not tv shows with all the information.

[Rurik]

There is a back up of the Wiz.bin (Wiz.bak) that is 5700kb. I stopped the service and closed the app and overwrite Wiz.bin with this file. But, as soon as I started up the service, the file decreased down to 4500kb.

It's the same exact drive that went back in, on the same exact drive letter. I do have the setting enabled to automatically scan directories for updates. Maybe during a time when the drive wasn't attached, Sage did a scan and removed all of the shows (about 40 of them) from the list? Its a huge annoyance, but at least the shows are still there, and I can import them.

Maybe Sage should have the ability to see files in the recorded directory, recognize that they're Sage recordings, see that they're not in the database, and add them? Coding wise, not too difficult. Just parse out the names from the file name and search through the EPG for the instance.


As far as the video issue, I will try another set of video drivers. I assumed it to be a Sage issue because it only occurred when I was using Sage. I shall test that out and report back, though.

[bcjenkins]

Alrighty, let's see if we can get this party started!

Need name rank and serial number?

Rats.. Wrong forum..

How about:

CPU
RAM
Video Card
Video Decoder used
Sage Version
Java Version
Running in service mode?
Anything else?

B

[sakker]

I'm fairly new to Sage myself. One thing I have found so far is Sage does NOT like change.

Change directories, change drivers, change tuners, add this or that, it doesn't like it and I end up having problems.

I end up wiping sage, re-installing, and then everything works perfect. Literally deleting the directories and re-installing, not just re-installing as it ends up grabbing old settings in old files in my experience.

Now I know this isn't the ideal situation, but I've found it works for me. I just need to get better about not screwing with something that works and learn to leave well enough alone.

So that may or may not be an option for you. You would have to make sure you don't delete your recordings, and have them imported in the media center, not as recordings once you reinstall, but I'd be willing to bet it would work fine for you if it was working fine for you before.

[Opus4]

Originally Posted by Rurik

Maybe Sage should have the ability to see files in the recorded directory, recognize that they're Sage recordings, see that they're not in the database, and add them? Coding wise, not too difficult. Just parse out the names from the file name and search through the EPG for the instance.

It does match recordings to existing data in the database, when possible. But, if you've started with a fresh database file, there will be nothing to match with because the file IDs are not the same.

What version of SageTV are you using? In v6.1, it now won't remove the airing details for any show that has been recorded, so as long as you are using the same wiz.bin, it should be able to match files to shows. But, in pre-v6.1 versions, it could dump old info if it determined that the recordings no longer existed.

Originally Posted by sakker

I'm fairly new to Sage myself. One thing I have found so far is Sage does NOT like change.

Change directories, change drivers, change tuners, add this or that, it doesn't like it and I end up having problems.

I end up wiping sage, re-installing, and then everything works perfect. Literally deleting the directories and re-installing, not just re-installing as it ends up grabbing old settings in old files in my experience.

It isn't normal to have to wipe & reinstall after making some changes, so it sounds like something isn't working right somewhere on your system. But, if you do need to reset your configuration, the config details are in sage.properties. That is the file to delete to reconfigure SageTV. Wiz.bin contains your database of show info, EPG data, recordings, imports, etc. You shouldn't have to get rid of that to reconfigure from scratch.

- Andy

[stevech]

Originally Posted by Opus4

In v6.1, it now won't remove the airing details for any show that has been recorded, so as long as you are using the same wiz.bin, it should be able to match files to shows. But, in pre-v6.1 versions, it could dump old info if it determined that the recordings no longer existed

- Andy

If I upgrade from v5 to v6, and keep the same wiz.bin, will 6.1 have the behavior that you describe above- retain airing/watching details even if the file is absent? (even if the file is temporarily absent?)

[Opus4]

I would think so.

- Andy

[Rurik]

Originally Posted by bcjenkins

How about:

CPU
RAM
Video Card
Video Decoder used
Sage Version
Java Version
Running in service mode?
Anything else?

I'll see if I can get the entire picture out there. I apologize again for the quick blurps; here I am acting the newbie out of frustration. Long story behind that, but I'm now 5 months into building my HTPC, with constant high blood pressure the whole time

Motherboard/CPU: Gigabyte GA-8IRXP, Intel chipset / Intel P4 1.8Ghz
RAM: 512MB Crucial
Video card: Geforce FX 5900 w/ TV-out (128MB) Running Forceware 91.47 (have to change this to find a more compatible one, 93.71 was really screwy)
Tuner: PVR-150MCE
Remote: USB DVico FusionRemote
Hard drives: Seagate Barracuda 40GB (system), Seagate Barracuda 80GB (data for now), trying to install Seagate Barracuda 320GB (have to RMO it)
Case: Ahanix D.VINE5, black with VfD (which is a whole other issue )
OS: XP Pro w/ SP2, fresh wipe and install a month ago just for Sage
Sage: 6.0.19.120, with the Sage Service running by default
Java: JRE 1.5.0_11

With the reset issue, I'm not sure there's much I can do. Next time I'll backup my wiz.* files before changing the hard drive out, just in case. It just stinks losing all those shows, since my wife hates the "imported video" area.

[rickgillyon]

Originally Posted by Rurik

Long story behind that, but I'm now 5 months into building my HTPC, with constant high blood pressure the whole time

I can relate to that!!

[sakker]

Originally Posted by Rurik

It just stinks losing all those shows, since my wife hates the "imported video" area.

I thought so too, that's one of the benefits of SageMC, you can change the name of things. Mine are now "Recordings". I believe the Custom menus add on gives the same functionality with the standard ui.

[bcjenkins]

Okay, based on your system config info, you might want to try:

Nvidia drivers 84.21
java 1.6
make sure your video drive is formatted 64k blocks

what decoder are you using?