Utility: Web Radio and TV Encoder

[kha]

Originally Posted by michaeldjcox

Hi,

KissFM105 has revised its web pages and made the schedule flash driven.

Flash seems to be the kiss of death for html scraping code :-(

However, HeartFM is also an example of generic grabber as is WMNF in the channels/samples directory

Regards,

Michael

Hi Michael,

Thank you. I'll take a look at these two stations.

My biggest problem, however, still remains playback sluttering on the SageTV server. I noticed that the sluttering happens only if I play back Live TV or a recording that is still in progress. I would appreciate if you could take a look at this problem.

Regards,
Michael K.

[michaeldjcox]

Yes have been looking at this.

No progress yet.

Its something to do with codecs or possibly version of windows.

Its a problem on my windows XP server with SageTV 6.4.8.184.

Its not a problem for my vista laptop with the same version of SageTV.

I also notice that if you press pause for a while you get a short period of less stutter.

I've also tried letting a huge mpeg recording build up before telling SageTV the recording has stated. But this makes no difference.

The resulting mpg file plays fine in SageTV after recording.

I've tried messing around with all the SageTV Audio/Video settings and got nowhere.

I believe there is a way of working out which codecs are likely to be used so I'm investigating that.

Will keep trying - this is probably the biggest remaining issue.

Michael

[kha]

Originally Posted by michaeldjcox

Yes have been looking at this.

No progress yet.

Its something to do with codecs or possibly version of windows.

Its a problem on my windows XP server with SageTV 6.4.8.184.

Its not a problem for my vista laptop with the same version of SageTV.

I also notice that if you press pause for a while you get a short period of less stutter.

I've also tried letting a huge mpeg recording build up before telling SageTV the recording has stated. But this makes no difference.

The resulting mpg file plays fine in SageTV after recording.

I've tried messing around with all the SageTV Audio/Video settings and got nowhere.

I believe there is a way of working out which codecs are likely to be used so I'm investigating that.

Will keep trying - this is probably the biggest remaining issue.

Michael

Hi Michael,

Thank you for looking into this. If there is any diagnostics you would like me to run on my side, please let me know and I'll be glad to do it. Your observations so far are identical to mine.

Regards,
Michael K.

[michaeldjcox]

Originally Posted by kha

Hi Michael,

Thank you for looking into this. If there is any diagnostics you would like me to run on my side, please let me know and I'll be glad to do it. Ypur observations so far are identical to mine.

Regards,
Michael K.

I seemed to get longer periods of sound when I changed the vb=4000 down to vb=4 in the tune.radio.windows.command file.

This implies possibly not enough CPU power.

Another theory I'm considering is that on my laptop I don't run a SageTV server - only a client. Perhaps its a server/client issue.

Tried to test that today but I seem to have screwed up my live sagetv setup - none of the extenders will boot up since I turned the server back on :-(

Michael

[kha]

Originally Posted by michaeldjcox

I seemed to get longer periods of sound when I changed the vb=4000 down to vb=4 in the tune.radio.windows.command file.

This implies possibly not enough CPU power.

Another theory I'm considering is that on my laptop I don't run a SageTV server - only a client. Perhaps its a server/client issue.

Tried to test that today but I seem to have screwed up my live sagetv setup - none of the extenders will boot up since I turned the server back on :-(

Michael

I'll try to experiment with vb parameter. However, I did monitor CPU power and never got it anywhere close to maximum for my system. Total memory does not seem to be an issue either, but is it possible that memory sharing within Java causes an issue given that both your program and SageTV share the allocated memory?

Regards,
Michael K

[michaeldjcox]

Originally Posted by kha

but is it possible that memory sharing within Java causes an issue given that both your program and SageTV share the allocated memory?

There is no sharing of heap space between seperate JVM instances.

All windows processes are competing for available phyiscal memory.

I have 4GB so I would hopes its not a problem (and my latop only has 2Gb)

I'm still thinking codecs or something to do with running a SageTV server.

Michael

[kha]

Originally Posted by michaeldjcox

There is no sharing of heap space between seperate JVM instances.

All windows processes are competing for available phyiscal memory.

I have 4GB so I would hopes its not a problem (and my latop only has 2Gb)

I'm still thinking codecs or something to do with running a SageTV server.

Michael

I see. Can the problem be related to non-constant read access to the file being written?

Regards,
Michael K.

[michaeldjcox]

Originally Posted by kha

I see. Can the problem be related to non-constant read access to the file being written?

Not sure what you mean by that terminology.

Can you explain pls.

Thanks,

Michael

[kha]

Originally Posted by michaeldjcox

Not sure what you mean by that terminology.

Can you explain pls.

Thanks,

Michael

Sorry for not being clear.

My line of thinking is the following: the problem shows up only when a recording is in progress, i.e., when a file is being written to. Does VLC provide read access to the file as it's being written to? If one tries to play the file with Windows Palyer, one gets an error that the file is in use. VLC can play it, but I noticed that sluttering happens even when I try to play the file on a different machine using VLC with SageTV server hard drive mapped to it. This makes me think that there may be a problem with uninterrupted access of the file for playback. If this is the case, adding more caching in VLC may help with playback - I still need to try this. If this turns out to be the case, then one would need to look for a similar caching solution for SageTV/network encoder.

Regards,
Michael K.

[kha]

Originally Posted by michaeldjcox

Hi,

KissFM105 has revised its web pages and made the schedule flash driven.

Flash seems to be the kiss of death for html scraping code :-(

However, HeartFM is also an example of generic grabber as is WMNF in the channels/samples directory

Regards,

Michael

Hi Michael,

Does the grabber require having a program description field. I am trying to grab the schedule that has only time and title. However, if I skip descstart.0 and descstop fileds in the channel props file parsing gets completely messed up.

This is also a problem for the schedules that have descriptions for only some programs. In that case the grabber skips all programs without a description.

Please advise.

Regards,
Michael K.

[michaeldjcox]

The description should default to be the same as the title if no description is present.

I'll check the code and get back to you - could be a bug.

If you want to just get it working you could consider defining a desc start and stop that work for the html file but when applied would return an empy string.

Michael

[kha]

Originally Posted by michaeldjcox

The description should default to be the same as the title if no description is present.

I'll check the code and get back to you - could be a bug.
Michael

Thank you.

Originally Posted by michaeldjcox

If you want to just get it working you could consider defining a desc start and stop that work for the html file but when applied would return an empy string.
Michael

Let me make sure I understand your point. If in the html code I have, say, <br><div> and define desc start as <br> and desc stop as <div>, should desc be an empty string? I tried this and for some reason this did not work for me. I can send an example if necessary.

Regards,
Michael K.

[michaeldjcox]

Originally Posted by kha

Let me make sure I understand your point. If in the html code I have, say, <br><div> and define desc start as <br> and desc stop as <div>, should desc be an empty string? I tried this and for some reason this did not work for me. I can send an example if necessary.

Yes this should work.

One thing though: the grabber goes through the html from top to bottom.

The grabber does not do multiple passes through an html file so you must take care that the description for one program does not overtake the title or time details of the next program.

Please send me your channel properties.

I will set up my test rig with your channel.

This will help me isolate the bug to fix for the next release and perfect the work around for you.

Regards,

Michael

[michaeldjcox]

Originally Posted by kha

Let me make sure I understand your point. If in the html code I have, say, <br><div> and define desc start as <br> and desc stop as <div>, should desc be an empty string? I tried this and for some reason this did not work for me. I can send an example if necessary.

Thanks for sending your channel props.

Here is a revised channel props in the zip file called Channel1.props.

This includes automatic date substitution so you don't get the same 7 days of EPG each time.

But I had to fix that so there is a patch grabber.jar to put in the libs directory.

I notice your tuning URL is aaa.aaa.aaa. Surely not correct - or are you only using the grabber and not the encoder?

Regards,

Michael

[jc8367]

Where is the .zip file with app and instructions to install?

[michaeldjcox]

Originally Posted by jc8367

Where is the .zip file with app and instructions to install?

http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/down...do=file&id=314

[jc8367]

Running the encoder
As a service in windows

In the scripts directory is a script(whats the path) installServiceNT.bat. Run this to install the encoder as a windows service.

[michaeldjcox]

Originally Posted by jc8367

Running the encoder
As a service in windows

In the scripts directory is a script(whats the path) installServiceNT.bat. Run this to install the encoder as a windows service.

So you have the zip file.

You have unzipped it somewhere

it will have created a directory "webfeedencoder"

Find that directory in windows explorer

Descend into the scripts sub directory

Double click on installServiceNT.bat file

This should add the encoder as a windows service on windows boxes.

You can check this by going to control panel->Administration tools->Services

You should see "Web Feed Encoder" as a service - you may need to start it.

Does this help at all? May be I misunderstood the issue.

Michael

[jc8367]

Thx for the quick reply.

No scripts directory, I found under wrapper instead.

[michaeldjcox]

Originally Posted by jc8367

Thx for the quick reply.

No scripts directory, I found under wrapper instead.

d'oh. I will update the instructions

(although the next version has an installshield type installer that does all this stuff)

Michael