EPG color configuration

[ToonGal]

Working with the color definitions for the EPG to be more relevant for me (mostly for kids TV), and figured out most of it. However, it also brought up interesting questions.

Example (from Sage.properties):
epg/category_colors/children=215,19,194
epg/category_colors/movie=194,194,58
epg/category_colors/news=220,0,220
epg/category_colors/sports=0,0,225

1) To verify, the order is "red,blue,green" as opposed to the more standard RGB (like in web color codes)?

2) The default color for all non-categorized shows is "blue" (which codes?). Is this configurable? Is the EPG background configurable?

3) How is focus color (i.e. highlighted selection) done? By hue, saturation, brightness? Configurable, and by each category?

4) Category/Subcategory. I added the "children" line, and it found "Children", "Children/Animated", but NOT "Children-music". This is easy enough to add in this case, but what is paradigm for the programming logic here? It looks for case-insensitive pattern match with a potential "/" separator, or other? It will help plan future additions.

5) While "children" did show up as I added, it turned out to be the exact same color on display as "news". They are generally orange and yellow, respectively, as defined, but both have a gold display color. Is there a limited pallette of colors available? If so, what are they?

6) [--edited in--] The categories "adult","movie","news", and "sports" all seem to be "statically defined", in that whenever I change them to ANY other values, even swapping them amongst themselves (to ensure 'valid' colors), they always reverted to their original color definitions. I'm positive the SageTV process wasn't running, and I even copied the .prop files to the autobackup to ensure it wasn't retrieving it from there. Why have config properties that can't be redefined, or am I doing something wrong?

Thanks for the help. I plan on documenting EVERYTHING about Sage configurations, so any detail appreciated.

[justme]

I'm lowsy at graphics but I can try to give a partial answer, based on my limited experience. Sage seems to not really use absolute values for many settings. It appears to take that attribute's colors and blend them with the underlying color, this causes things to often look very different than you planned. The same method seems to be used for highlighting, though I don't know enough about graphics to say which of the values, you suggest, is being used/altered.

The simple answer is that the UI was always Sage1.4's weak spot and editting it was not really all that easily.IMO The Studio changes all that and I think that you'll have no problems doing what you want under Sage2(once the Studio is released). Since the Studio is designed to be a realtime editor you can see your changes acyually take place on the UI, as you make them. This should allow you to get the exact color you're after easily.

I'm sorry I can't give you better answers and believe me I'm not trying to say "just buy Sage2 and you'll be fine". Still many of the issues you mention were part of the reasons for Sage2/Studio's creation. I think the reason that you didn't get any answer till now is that many here(like me) gave up on any serious changes to the 1.4 UI, so I don't know if anyone here but Jeff could answer all your questions. Still since you haven't gotten any response(I read you beta post) I wanted to try to give you some info. I hope it helps.

Best of luck

PS:Have you treid to make any of these changes under Sage1.4 limited editor. It doen't reaaly give any realtime feedback about the final color that appears in the 1.4 UI, but for someone with your knowledge it should help you figure out exactly how Sage1.4 is calculating the different colors used in the 1.4 UI. You'll have to forgive me I can't remember exactly where the editor is under the 1.4 UI, I've been using Sage2 for too long. Still I'm pretty sure it's under one of the detailed setup tabs.

[ToonGal]

Here's some answer to my own questions, given more time involved in figuring things out, to those who are interested:

1) Yes, RBG instead of RGB in the listing. Well tested at this point.

2) Blue, fixed, from what I see. No config possibilities.

3) Here's the surprising part. The focus color IS what is defined in the sage.properties file. It's the GENERAL color that gets a resultant color I can't calculate. Absolutely NO math seems to be relevant for this one. The biggest suprise since my last post.

4) "/" seems to be a delimiter. Not enough listings with other "Children-X" etc. to find differently, but adding extra sage.properties lines did the trick easily enough as a quick-fix. Still interseted to know the algorithm tho.

5) As stated in 3, I'm DYING of curiousity to know how general EPG colors are calculated. I plan on making one more mathematical correlation, just because I "need to know". LOL

6) Definately fixed; not configurable. Hopefully not in v2. Want to set up all colors so that they match the local TV guide channel to make it spouse compatible. (I just can NOT use that WAF acronym. Male spouses can be non-technical too...!)

@justme:
- Thanks for the response. It is appreciated. I think v2 is now just a matter of time, mostly because of the responses to my posts and user enthusiasm.
- Can someone post some (ANY?) pix of studio in the v2beta thread? Everyone TALKS about v2 and studio, but heaven help anyone SEEING anything about it unless in the beta test. Just have to make sure the HAF (not WAF) is 100% there, otherwise I have to get nagged about the $60+$30+$20 spent on it.
- Sage v1.4 limited editor VERY limited. Let's just say I've played around, and know why v2.0 looks the likely solution.

[Opus4]

Originally posted by ToonGal
- Can someone post some (ANY?) pix of studio in the v2beta thread? Everyone TALKS about v2 and studio, but heaven help anyone SEEING anything about it unless in the beta test.

Studio is not currently part of the beta, so very few people have seen it.

- Andy

[DFranch]

Toongal,

I think you may have the basis for a sexual harassment case about the WAF acronym. Johnny Cochrane could get you millions. It's good to see a woman embracing her inner Geek.

[justme]

Yeah I remember the first time me wife looked over my shoulder and saw "WAF". She asked if it was an acronym about Wi-Fi because it didn't make sense in the sentence structure. The fact that she asked if it was related to Wi-Fi tells you how much I brainwashed her over 9 years of marriage. When I told her what it really meant she just laughed. I love my wife, and no she's not watching me type this.

[Demideus]

Can someone please tell me how to turn guide coloring on?

I can't seem to get the configured colors to work. The guide does have category information, obtained from xmltv.

Example:

<programme start="20040603070000 +0200" stop="20040603071000 +0200" channel="ned1">
<title>NOS-Journaal</title>
<credits>
<adapter>NOS</adapter>
</credits>
<category>Nieuws</category>
<category>Actualiteiten</category>
<url>http://www.nosnieuws.nl</url>
</programme>

The XMLTVImportPlugin correctly inserts the categories into SageTV.

I've set up the following configuration lines to try to get the color to show up.

epg/category_colors/Nieuws=220,0,220
epg/category_colors/Nieuws/Actualiteiten=220,0,220
epg/category_colors/nieuws=220,0,220
epg/category_colors/nieuws/actualiteiten=220,0,220

I've even tried feeding SageTV lower case categories.

I'm using the transparent OSD on a PVR-350.
Anyone have any ideas?

L8r, D

[justme]

The obvious thing is that your categories are not in english. Sage would not even check the properties values you've added if I remember it's behavior, correctly. I'd have to check the original STV to be sure. Your best bet for immediate success is to edit you XMLTV file so that the category names are in english for the show. If that works and I'm pretty sure it will, as long as you still have the english version of your properties settings in the properties file. You can easily automate this process with a VBscipt or whatever.

You could try contacting Frey but I'm not sure on their stance on non US customers. I'm pretty sure this is something that would need to be changed by Frey, with an updated STV, or by someone with access to Studio.

[Demideus]

I just did a quick check by replacing the "Nieuws" categories by "News" and it works.
I'm amazed that they hardcoded the category names.

Thanks, I would never have been able to come up with that.

As to Frey's position, they clearly state that they do not support the XMLTV plugin, so in that respect i18n is a non-issue for them. Though they do seem to support the Data Direct plugin for Canada. I wonder if it translates french categories to the english counterparts? Or maybe they have been hardcoded in SageTV to the english categories?

I'll see if I can whip up a patch on the XMLTVImportPlugin so you can configure it to translate categories.

Maybe a xmltv.properties file with properties like this:

translate.category.Nieuws=News

L8r, D

[justme]

I'll see if I can whip up a patch on the XMLTVImportPlugin so you can configure it to translate categories.

Maybe a xmltv.properties file with properties like this:

translate.category.Nieuws=News

L8r, D

That would be great. Please let us know if you succeed in this. Simply post to this thread, PM me, or make a post to the SageTV FAQ thread. I'm pretty sure I'm still subscibed to most of the old XMLTV howto threads, so I'd notice a post there too. Still, I personally think something like this would be cool and want to make sure everyone could find you app.

Best of luck,
/justme

[Demideus]

Ok, here it is.

Before you unzip the zipfile in the SageTV directory, make a backup of the current xmltv subdirectory
After unzipping, restart SageTV, this will reload the classes.

The translation of categories happens just before the show is committed to SageTV. This makes it possible to translate category combinations rather than just single categories (also handy if you want to reverse the categories).

If the category combination is not configured the categories will be translated seperately.
Only the first two resulting categories will be used (any single category can be translated to a category combination).
I try to avoid ending up with the same category being specified twice, but I think I'd better rewrite part of that function so it will be more consistent.

It seems that only shows have not yet been started are updated. Shows that already have started, or are in the past, are not updated.

On my machine only the News and the Movie colors seem to be working. Also the cursor remains bright blue even when the show is colored purple without the cursor.
Any ideas on why that is?

I've gone a little bit further and decided to add the credits to the show as well. This is of course configurable as well.

The configuration file "xmltv.properties" has the following options:

translate.category.<category>[/<subCategory>] = [<newCategory>[/<newSubCategory]]
# Yes, you can remove categories

credits.<tagname> = <rolename>
# Adds the name in the credits tag to the assigned role

For those interested in the source: The testcases in the Eclipse project use a mock object generated by MockCreator (http://mockcreator.sourceforge.net/).

Tell me what you think,
L8r, D

Update 28-11-2004

• Bugfix: Import crashed when processing show with single resulting category (Sage was Ok, EPG was merely not updated from that point onward).
• Added exception handling. Separate exception log: "xmltv.exceptions.log".
• Added run.before setting to xmltv.properties. It is now possible to run your favourite xmltv generator just prior to importing it's result. Doesn't seem to work in server mode.
• Captured console output to "xmltv.console.log".

Update 7-12-2004

• The presence of a previously-shown element now indicates a rerun.
• Episode numbers are now added to the detail screen and the episode name (after calculating the show ID).
• The episode number is now used in the show ID:
  • If an episode name is present, the show ID will be generated from the title and the episode name (unchanged).
  • If no episode name is present but an episode number is, the show ID will be generated from the title and the episode number.
  • If no episode name and no episode number is present, the show ID will be generated from the title and the start time (unchanged).

Update 5-1-2005

• Removed the show description from the show ID calculation. It caused same shows to show up with different ID's simply because the description wasn't the same. (I really should have had this update out earlier...)
• Added dot behind the episode number in the episode name (it just didn't look right without it).
• Redone the show ID generation. All text-items are now processed in lowercase. The initial letter in the ID now indicates the algorithm used in calculating the ID.
  'T': Title + start-time. (used when no episode or year information is available).
  'E': Title + episode name + episode number.
  'M': Title + year. (only used for category "Movie") .
• If a movie ID is started multiple times on a single channel within four hours it is assumed to be a split-up movie and the second ID will receive a sequence number.
• Shows that have already started will not be added to the EPG. This should prevent recorded shows to lose their title and other information simply because the shows information has changed.

Update 8-1-2005

• New configuration option: inputstream.filter.
  Setting this to true will remove any invalid XML characters between 0x0 and 0x1f in an 8-bit encoded epgdata.xml.

28-8-2005: Moved to new thread: XMLTVImportPlugin: Demideus

[jan smit]

Demideus:
Your importplugin (translator) works rather well for me. I do have a small problem though: I am getting a few (4) unwanted categories. They are not in the epg.xml file and I do not have them in xmltv.properties.

Any idea how I get rid of them?

Thanks and regards, jan

[Demideus]

Glad to hear that someone is finally using the thing. I hope you didn't get put off by the bug that was still in there.

As to the unwanted categories. I'm afraid that Sage has the mind of an elephant. It remembers literally every category it has ever seen. It will also happily mix audio and picture categories in with your video categories.
The only way I know off how to get rid of them is by erasing the history. I thought I'd seen some option for that in one thread or other. If not you might have to rename the wiz.bin file, though that seems like overkill to me.

I wouldn't mind having a reliable option to remove single categories from the system or even reassign them to other categories.

L8r, D

[jan smit]

Demideus,
For some reason I have lost 1 of the unwanted ones, so there are only 3 left.
Mixing audio and video categories happened to me in the original stv, but not in SageMC, which I am using (only now).
I am very happy with your little program.

Regards, jan

[nielm]

(i posted this elsewhere, but it seems to be relevant here!)

The hard-coded category names that SageTV uses for EPG background highlighting are (case sensitive):

• Movie
• News
• Sports event
• Sports non-event
• Sports talk

The Upcoming Movies screen (in some custom STVs) does a search for the category named "Movie" (again, case sensitive).

[holozaen]

the importer seems to be working as it should ... translating my categories to "Movie", "News" etc., and I am very happy that my "upcomming movies" works now...but I still don't manage to get some other colors than the usual blue to the tv-guide...

...sagetv is case sensitive...do I have to set the first letter of my categories to lower case? Or are the capitals ok?

...any other suggestions?

thanks for help

[Demideus]

Since your upcoming movies seems to work you should at least be able to see those entries in purple.

• Movies = purple
• News = dark yellow
• Sports event, Sports non-event and Sports talk = green

The categories and colors appear to be hard-coded. The colors are only triggered by the primary category, not by the secondary.

My own category translations (as of this afternoon (thanks for the info Nielm!)) are as follows:

translate.category.Film		= Movie
# Abuse the News category to colorize series
translate.category.Animatie	= News/Animatie
translate.category.Soap		= News/Soap
translate.category.SF/Soap	= News/SF-Soap
translate.category.Serie	= News/Serie
translate.category.Serie/Soap	= News/Serie-Soap
translate.category.Comedy	= News/Comedy
translate.category.SF/Jeugd	= News/SF-Jeugd
translate.category.Misdaad	= News/Misdaad
# Abuse the Sports event category to colorize documentaries
translate.category.Wetenschap	= Sports event/Wetenschap
translate.category.Documentaire	= Sports event/Documentaire
translate.category.Informatief	= Sports event/Informatief
translate.category.Natuur	= Sports event/Natuur

The slash in these settings is actually meant to specify both the primary and the secondary category.

Sage is case sensitive in this.

Hope this helps...

[holozaen]

Thanks very much...moving "Movie" from second to first in the row of categories helped! ...nice purple color on movies now!

[nielm]

Originally Posted by Demideus

I don't think Sage is case sensitive in this.

I am afraid it definately is!
The categories have to be exactly as I have listed above, and yes the category names and colours are hard-coded in sageTV 2.x

[Methius]

Isn't there anyway we could have our own categories via the conf file?
(So I could use my dutch categories and still see them coloured)

Or is isn't this possible, even with Studio?