HDTV Firewire Support on The Mac

[guho]

Originally Posted by robbiecaesar

I'm REALLY excited about getting this to work. This is the exact solution I have been searching the web for.

I'm a pretty experienced MAC user. Most of the directions I understand. Except I have some questions about netinfo. Can someone look at this and let me know if this looks correct?




Or is Netinfo even neccessary when I am not setting up a server/client relationship?
Thanks!

Not necessary if SageTV and the firewire network encoder are on the same computer. The opts should be 'url==cifs://...' as mentioned on my page. Also you forgot to define dir.

[mohanman]

This is pretty crazy stuff. Has anyone gotten this to work with a comcast motorola box? And if so, does it work well?

Mo

[Diginerd]

I believe that it is only for the Scientific Atlantas at the moment, but as guho (The author of this fine tool) mentioned to get another brand of box running should anly be as hard as researching the command set for it.

[robbiecaesar]

Hey Guys,
So I also have the input up and working. I am using the 127.0.0.1 setup. I see the source but havent gotten the live TV showing yet.
I'm using the SA8300HD.

I'm seeing a "No Signal". Anything ideas?
Also my channel change isnt working. Is this because I'm using a SA8300 or because I'm not getting a video feed?

Thanks for the encoder!

[guho]

Originally Posted by robbiecaesar

Hey Guys,
So I also have the input up and working. I am using the 127.0.0.1 setup. I see the source but havent gotten the live TV showing yet.
I'm using the SA8300HD.

I'm seeing a "No Signal". Anything ideas?
Also my channel change isnt working. Is this because I'm using a SA8300 or because I'm not getting a video feed?

Thanks for the encoder!

SA8300HD does not pass live video over firewire. You can play back previously recorded shows over firewire. This is true for my SA8300HD. For anyone having trouble with a particular type of cable box and my encoder, try whether you can capture video with AVCVideoCap (comes with Apple's Firewire SDK) to a file. If that does not work it will not work with my firewire network encoder.

[robbiecaesar]

Originally Posted by guho

SA8300HD does not pass live video over firewire. You can play back previously recorded show over firewire. This is true for my SA8300HD. For anyone having trouble with a particular type of cable box and my encoder, try whether you can capture video with AVCVideoCap (comes with Apple's Firewire SDK) to a file. If that does not work it will not work with my firewire network encoder.

So I'm assuming this is a limitation of the box that this will be impossible to work around?

How do you see prerecorded shows? I've setup Sage to see change 690 (my DVR playback channel) but I'm not able to see a feed there either.

I might go and see if I can get a SA4200HD added to my account.

Thanks

[Diginerd]

Originally Posted by guho

SA8300HD does not pass live video over firewire. You can play back previously recorded show over firewire. This is true for my SA8300HD. For anyone having trouble with a particular type of cable box and my encoder, try whether you can capture video with AVCVideoCap (comes with Apple's Firewire SDK) to a file. If that does not work it will not work with my firewire network encoder.

That's intersting. My SA8300HD does the opposite, but only recently as before firewire was disabled on it. Now, Firewire is active for the live signal but not prerecorded... I chatted with a friendly tech about it and their view is that they only have to be able to provide A (as in singular) STB in their range to be compliant with the FCC. As the 8300 is a DVR their thought is that they're not obliged to, nor would they want to.

Not going to press it further at the moment as they're either ignoring or overlooking not applying 5c for now...

[robbiecaesar]

Originally Posted by Diginerd

That's intersting. My SA8300HD does the opposite, but only recently as before firewire was disabled on it. Now, Firewire is active for the live signal but not prerecorded... I chatted with a friendly tech about it and their view is that they only have to be able to provide A (as in singular) STB in their range to be compliant with the FCC. As the 8300 is a DVR their thought is that they're not obliged to, nor would they want to.

Not going to press it further at the moment as they're either ignoring or overlooking not applying 5c for now...

So are you saying that you enabled a firewire port setting and now you are able to see Live TV and not prerecorded shows?

If so could you explain how that was done?

[Diginerd]

i didn't the cable co did. It's a function of how they configure their STBs..

The 8300 is an oddball box, I'd strongly reccommend you go and pick up a 4200HD for this. most Cable cos have no contracts, so try it for a few days and see if it works for you..

[guho]

Originally Posted by Diginerd

I believe that it is only for the Scientific Atlantas at the moment, but as guho (The author of this fine tool) mentioned to get another brand of box running should anly be as hard as researching the command set for it.

It should work for any cable box that accepts the standard channel change commands over firewire. Scientific Atlanta has a slightly deviating command so I implemented a special case for it. Cable box must be able to pass live TV signal via firewire.

[Vaskill]

Guhu, after a few days of using your tool successfuly (thank you very, very much), I have an idea...

What do you think about passing the 5C flag (somehow) to SageTV and adding it to the metadata of the recording? As you may have noticed, some stations/content do not use the "Copy Freely" flag but instead use "Copy Never" or the "Copy Once" flag which cause the recording to fail.

[guho]

Originally Posted by Vaskill

Guhu, after a few days of using your tool successfuly (thank you very, very much), I have an idea...

What do you think about passing the 5C flag (somehow) to SageTV and adding it to the metadata of the recording? As you may have noticed, some stations/content do not use the "Copy Freely" flag but instead use "Copy Never" or the "Copy Once" flag which cause the recording to fail.

I should make it an option to only record 'copy freely' content. In SageTV, network encoders aren't asked to provide metadata or is it a file that sits alongside the recording? not familiar with metadata in SageTV.

[Vaskill]

Originally Posted by guho

I should make it an option to only record 'copy freely' content. In SageTV, network encoders aren't asked to provide metadata or is it a file that sits alongside the recording? not familiar with metadata in SageTV.

Sage stores metadata about a file it is recording in a database. It currently does not display anything about C5 but does about Closed Captioning, EPG data, etc. (The stuff you see when you look at the Detailed Information of a program recorded). I do not know how hard it is to add a field but I know some have developed XML importers for the WIZ DB. I like your idea of a setting to abort a capture of shows that are not "Copy Freely" and to add, if it does cancel to add a new recording of the same show (in HD) the next time the EPG says it is on (conflicts stop new manual recordings from being added and thus the "enhancement" would skip to the next non-conflicting time slot for the same show in HD).

"Sweet dreams are made of these..."

[oopsydaisy]

OK, so I'm back to report that ever since I got past the initial setup issues I was having, this solution has been flawless!!! If I had this running on an intel mac, it would be pure heaven. Right now I have to record on my ppc mac mini and transfer the files to my intel mac running parallels to remove commercials. I then run those files through visual hub to make great iphone compatible files. I love visual hub. Anyway, I'd like to say thanks a million to guho for this wonderful plugin! I don't even need USB-UIRT support! If it somehow came to support more STBs, the guys at Sage should definitely incorporate this into the next version for OSX.

[Diginerd]

I have posted over in the harware support / firewire thread about Multiple STBs and firewire. Easily tweaked for a Mac only environment.

Also go get iPodifier (www.ipodifier.com) and run under windows in parallels, if you have iTune 7.3 or greater on both then selecting specific shows and depth of queues for each is trivallail and automatic)

How to get Firewire Running on the Mac from a clean Install

Download the latest version of SageTV

Install SageTV

Launch SageTV and Run through the 1st Time setup Wizard

Download http://www.hugolyppens.com/docs/Sage...orkEncoder.zip

Install SageTV
Expand SageTVFirewireNetworkEncoder.ZIP and move to /Applications/ SageTVFirewireNetworkEncoder (ie drag the expanded folder to /Applications folder on your Primary Hard Disk)
Launch Sage and complete the setup wizard. Skip “Source Setup” at this time.
Once the wizard is completed you will be presented with the Sage Main menu.
From the Menu Bar (Assuming you’re not in full screen), Select SageTV > Preferences
Click on Startup, and then set the service to Manual and click on stop. The Sage window will post “Connection to server Lost” at this point.
Quit SageTv
Find /Library/Application Support/SageTV/Data/Sage.properties and double click in the finder. You’ll be prompted to choose an application to open the file with. Select TextEdit.
Right after the line
mmc/video_format_code=1
Paste the following:-

mmc/encoders/12348/100/0/available_channels=
mmc/encoders/12348/100/0/brightness=0
mmc/encoders/12348/100/0/contrast=0
mmc/encoders/12348/100/0/device_name=
mmc/encoders/12348/100/0/encode_digital_tv_as_program_stream=false
mmc/encoders/12348/100/0/hue=0
mmc/encoders/12348/100/0/last_channel=737
mmc/encoders/12348/100/0/provider_id=
mmc/encoders/12348/100/0/saturation=0
mmc/encoders/12348/100/0/sharpness=0
mmc/encoders/12348/100/0/tuning_mode=Cable
mmc/encoders/12348/100/0/tuning_plugin=
mmc/encoders/12348/100/0/tuning_plugin_port=0
mmc/encoders/12348/100/0/video_crossbar_index=0
mmc/encoders/12348/100/0/video_crossbar_type=100
mmc/encoders/12348/audio_capture_device_index=-1
mmc/encoders/12348/audio_capture_device_name=
mmc/encoders/12348/audio_capture_device_num=0
mmc/encoders/12348/audio_processor=
mmc/encoders/12348/broadcast_standard=ATSC
mmc/encoders/12348/capture_config=0
mmc/encoders/12348/default_device_quality=
mmc/encoders/12348/device_class=
mmc/encoders/12348/dshow_tv_type=
mmc/encoders/12348/encoder_merit=0
mmc/encoders/12348/encoding_host=127.0.0.1\:6969
mmc/encoders/12348/forced_video_storage_path_prefix=
mmc/encoders/12348/last_cross_index=0
mmc/encoders/12348/last_cross_type=100
mmc/encoders/12348/live_audio_input=
mmc/encoders/12348/multicast_host=
mmc/encoders/12348/never_stop_encoding=false
mmc/encoders/12348/video_capture_device_name=SA4200HD
mmc/encoders/12348/video_capture_device_num=0
mmc/encoders/12348/video_compressor=
mmc/encoders/12348/video_encoding_params=Best
mmc/encoders/12348/video_processor=
Save the file, and ignore any Warnings TextEdit gives you about file extensions, and tell it to “use /properties”
Open a Terminal Window (/Applications/Utilities/Terminal)
Enter:-
cd /Applications/SageTVFirewireNetworkEncoder
./MacOS/SageTVFirewireNetworkEncoder –list
Check that the cablebox is both seen and it is on ID 0, if for some reason it isn’t make a note of the number and follow the OPTIONAL instructions in the next step
Open /Applications/SageTVFirewireNetworkEncoder/config.txt
Amend the line:-
directoryprefixmap=E:|/Network/SAGETV0,F:|/Network/SAGETV1,G:|/Network/SAGETV2,J:|/Network/SAGETV3
so it looks like:-
directoryprefixmap=
OPTIONAL INSTRUCTION (In your device is not on ID0)
Amend the line:-
device=0
To be whatever you device number is.
Take a deep breath.
Showtime!
Back in Terminal enter:-
./MacOS/SageTVFirewireNetworkEncoder --configfile config.txt
You should see it sit with the final line reading:-
“Starting SageTVFirewireNetworkEncoder, listening for commands from SageTV.”
DON’T Close this window!
Launch Sage TV and you should pop straight into the Setupwizard asking you to setup your new source… 

Enjoy

[oopsydaisy]

Originally Posted by Diginerd

I have posted over in the harware support / firewire thread about Multiple STBs and firewire. Easily tweaked for a Mac only environment.

...

What I meant by other STBs was more models besides the 4200. I used the precursor to ipodifier on the PC when I was using Sage 4x, but I haven't checked out the development lately to see how it does with iphone video. I'll check it out.

[guho]

Originally Posted by oopsydaisy

What I meant by other STBs was more models besides the 4200. I used the precursor to ipodifier on the PC when I was using Sage 4x, but I haven't checked out the development lately to see how it does with iphone video. I'll check it out.

Should work for other cableboxes. It just so happened that I have an SA4200HD and tested it with that. Let's get some reports from others about experiences using other cable boxes.

[Diginerd]

I know it works with the 4250HD (I have two of these as well as SA4200s), from the old Timmmoore days when I used to use the 3250HD drivers with my boxes I'd hazard that those boxes will work with this too..

If the code is based off of Apple's I suspect that the Motos should be good too, but I can't confirm as my Cable Co is a Scientific Atlanta Shop only..

[soccerdad]

guho, you rock! This software just works.

[guho]

To those using my Mac firewire network encoder:
- The NetInfo manager has been deprecated so now I am not sure how to mount the recording directories as nicely as in 10.4.x
- SageTV placeshifter runs really poorly on my mac mini under Leopard. Full-screen 1920x1080p 60Hz is a slideshow and it freezes easily

Bottom line: recommended not to upgrade to Leopard until Apple releases a decent service pack.