Padding Issue

[Steve52]

Is there a way to make shows start at the beginning of the padding at the start of a program and not at the time the guide says they start? Networks are really starting to move the program start and stop times away from when the EPG guide says they start and stop. Two and a Half Men is in reruns on Fox and CW and one of these channels, I don't know which, is starting the show 3 to 4 minutes early. I have adjusted my padding to 3 minutes (need to change to 4) on the start but when I start playback the show starts at the regulary scheduled time and not at the start of the padding. Can this be adjusted? Seems to me you would want any show with start padding to start at the time the padding starts and not when the show was scheduled to start, but maybe I am missing something.

[Steve52]

I posted this question a few days ago, but no one replied. Probably means I didn't state the question clearly enough. Anyway I'll try again.
Lets say the timeline of a 1 hr show starts at 0:00:00 and ends at 1:00:00. If you add 1 minute of padding at the start of this show then the show starts recording at -00:01:00. This 1 minute of padding will show up in the timeline to the left of the mark on the timeline indicating the scheduled start of the program. When you start playing the program however, Sage does not start the video at -00:01:00 it starts at 00:00:00. If you went to all the trouble to add padding to your program you probably want it to start at the time you told Sage to start recording at, not at 0:00:00. I have not found anything in setup that would let the user change this. Maybe I missed it or maybe there is some reason you wouldn't want it to do this I don't know. I just know that I have to add padding to almost all of my shows because the networks are really playing around with the start and stop times as releated to the EPG start and stop time and I have to hit the skip back button everytime I start a show. This is really apparent on reruns on some networks.

[ke6guj]

I understand what you are asking. I just don't think that Sage has a easily configured setting to tell it to start at the beginning of the padding.

YOu may be able to use Studio to modify Sage to start at the beginning of the recording, -00:01:00 and play the padding, instead of start playing at 00:00:00

I wouldn't want them to change te default behavior since I occasionally use padding on a couple shows as "insurance". If the playback starts in the middle of the show, I know I can hop back into the padding if I need to. I don't want it to always play the padding every time.

[GKusnick]

Here's another vote for leaving it the way it is. I have padding on all my recordings. 90% of the time it's not needed, and when it is, it's easy to hit Skip Back a couple of times to find the actual start of the program.

[Khristopher]

My vote is to leave it as is too. Padding is nice to have, but I don't always want to have to watch/skip through it.

[pseudonym]

Hi Steve,

See this customization by Nielm to add default padding:
http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=18877

I'm using it with SageTV Media Center 6.3.5 (current version). Note that it automatically adds default padding to any NEW favorites or manual recordings created after installing the customization. Existing Favs and scheduled manual recordings still need to have the padding added by hand.

Hope this helps,
--pseudonym

[Opus4]

Originally Posted by pseudonym

See this customization by Nielm to add default padding:
http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=18877

I'm using it with SageTV Media Center 6.3.5 (current version). Note that it automatically adds default padding to any NEW favorites or manual recordings created after installing the customization. Existing Favs and scheduled manual recordings still need to have the padding added by hand.

The latest test version of the hidden features also has the ability to set some default MR & Fav options, including padding & other settings, but what he was asking for here was a way to have playback automatically start at the beginning of the padded area rather than at the show's scheduled start time. Just like what others have posted above, I don't know of a way to do that, but using REW or REW2 a couple times solves it for me if the show happens to start early.

- Andy

[pseudonym]

Thanks Andy, I *did* misunderstand what he was asking.

I'll check out the latest test of 'unofficial extras' too, thanks for the link. I have those features enabled and really like the additional menus.

Thanks and regards,
--pseudonym