[XBMC addon] SageTV

[LehighBri]

Originally Posted by drewg

To be clear, the issue is due to the linux server. A windows xbmc install had the exact same problem talking to my server.

I have no idea if its possible, but it might be handy to have some kind of popup appear when you cannot access the file that the sagex api call returned. Something like "Your SageTV server told me to play back D:\VIDEOS\SHOW.MPG, but I don't have a mapping for that. And take them to a config screen with a pre-filled in D:\VIDEOS for the recording path.

Just an idea..

Drew

I hear ya, but probably not likely to be included since there could be a large # of reasons why playback fails. I'd prefer the current approach where logs are sent and we'll address... not sure what we can do that's more sophisticated than that for now.

[odledm]

LeHighBri,

Since you asked earlier about added features, I thought I would throw something out there. I played around this weekend with the browse current channel listings (I think that is what it is called, sorry not at home to get the specific title) which allows you to browse what's coming up on each channel. This is great because it allows you to tune into a live tv show from xbmc that you didn't currently have set to record. It was a little slow to get started but that could just be my setup (Raspberry Pi running openelec 3.2.3 (xbmc 12 for those that don't know)). I realize that there is a lot going on to get it to work at all so I am not really concerned about the speed. What would be nice is if you could browse by time and not just channel, so that I could see what is currently playing on each channel without having to go into that separate channel's listing. I know at this point we are getting a little closer to the functionality of a pvr addon, which you may be a route you don't want to go down, but it seems like the data is already there it is just a matter of formatting to sort them by time rather than channel. What do you think? Again, great job with the addon, it is a great addition that any user of sagetv and xbmc should add to their xbmc setup.

[LehighBri]

Originally Posted by odledm

LeHighBri,

Since you asked earlier about added features, I thought I would throw something out there. I played around this weekend with the browse current channel listings (I think that is what it is called, sorry not at home to get the specific title) which allows you to browse what's coming up on each channel. This is great because it allows you to tune into a live tv show from xbmc that you didn't currently have set to record. It was a little slow to get started but that could just be my setup (Raspberry Pi running openelec 3.2.3 (xbmc 12 for those that don't know)). I realize that there is a lot going on to get it to work at all so I am not really concerned about the speed. What would be nice is if you could browse by time and not just channel, so that I could see what is currently playing on each channel without having to go into that separate channel's listing. I know at this point we are getting a little closer to the functionality of a pvr addon, which you may be a route you don't want to go down, but it seems like the data is already there it is just a matter of formatting to sort them by time rather than channel. What do you think? Again, great job with the addon, it is a great addition that any user of sagetv and xbmc should add to their xbmc setup.

Sure thing. Will look into it. I added a new issue to git here to track this: https://github.com/kricker/plugin.vi...getv/issues/19

So to clarify design, thoughts on the following?
1. The main menu would have two options: "Browse Airings (by time)" and would rename "Browse Channel Listings" to "Browse Airings (by channel)"

2. When you click "Browse Airings (by time)", the listings that appear would be similar to the format you see for "View Upcoming Recordings"; only change would be that I would do it on 60 minute chunks; so if it's currently 9:07AM, you would see something like:
Mon May 12 @ 9:00-10:00
Mon May 12 @ 10:00-11:00
Mon May 12 @ 11:00-12:00
Mon May 12 @ 12:00-13:00
Mon May 12 @ 13:00-14:00
Mon May 12 @ 14:00-15:00
etc...

3. And when you click one of the slots above, a new screen would appear with the channel number/name followed by the name of the airing (and then you action upon it from the context menu like you do today); so something like:
167-DIY: Airing name #1
503-KYWDT: Airing name #2
510-WPVIDT: Airing name #3
etc...

Thoughts? Anything I missed? Good news is most of this code already exists, so it shouldn't be too tough. Just want to finalize the approach above first, with the main goal being to stay consistent with how other aspects of the addon work.

[odledm]

Originally Posted by LehighBri

Sure thing. Will look into it. I added a new issue to git here to track this: https://github.com/kricker/plugin.vi...getv/issues/19

So to clarify design, thoughts on the following?
1. The main menu would have two options: "Browse Airings (by time)" and would rename "Browse Channel Listings" to "Browse Airings (by channel)"

2. When you click "Browse Airings (by time)", the listings that appear would be similar to the format you see for "View Upcoming Recordings"; only change would be that I would do it on 60 minute chunks; so if it's currently 9:07AM, you would see something like:
Mon May 12 @ 9:00-10:00
Mon May 12 @ 10:00-11:00
Mon May 12 @ 11:00-12:00
Mon May 12 @ 12:00-13:00
Mon May 12 @ 13:00-14:00
Mon May 12 @ 14:00-15:00
etc...

3. And when you click one of the slots above, a new screen would appear with the channel number/name followed by the name of the airing (and then you action upon it from the context menu like you do today); so something like:
167-DIY: Airing name #1
503-KYWDT: Airing name #2
510-WPVIDT: Airing name #3
etc...

Thoughts? Anything I missed? Good news is most of this code already exists, so it shouldn't be too tough. Just want to finalize the approach above first, with the main goal being to stay consistent with how other aspects of the addon work.

That's exactly what I was thinking. I'm definitely in favor of having both options, because I suspect there are times when you may want to setup a recording and you know the channel but you can't quite remember the time. I think your biggest "issue" to overcome will be what you do with the items that cross multiple boundaries. For example if something were to start at 9:30 and end at 11:00, where would it go? (9-10, 10-11, or both) Personally, I would think both would be the route to go so as the 9-10 block drops off you still have the 10-11 block available unchanged, but I suppose it depends on how you implement it and whether or not you want multiple entries for the same show.

Thanks for adding the feature. I think it gets me one step closer on the WAF for swapping in an xbmc box where there used to be an extender.

[LehighBri]

Originally Posted by odledm

That's exactly what I was thinking. I'm definitely in favor of having both options, because I suspect there are times when you may want to setup a recording and you know the channel but you can't quite remember the time. I think your biggest "issue" to overcome will be what you do with the items that cross multiple boundaries. For example if something were to start at 9:30 and end at 11:00, where would it go? (9-10, 10-11, or both) Personally, I would think both would be the route to go so as the 9-10 block drops off you still have the 10-11 block available unchanged, but I suppose it depends on how you implement it and whether or not you want multiple entries for the same show.

Thanks for adding the feature. I think it gets me one step closer on the WAF for swapping in an xbmc box where there used to be an extender.

Crossing multiple boundaries actually didn't end up being an issue at all... SageTV's API can support both ways (meaning, for a specific time slot, you can have it only return shows that start in that time slot OR you can say to have it return any show period that is during that time slot even if it didn't start then). So I implemented the latter.

With that said, I have a decent starting point for this that is ready for you to try out. Can you play around with the attached (just backup your current addon folder and replace it with the attached folder in the zip file) and really kick the tires and see if the two options work as you would expect? There's one bug related to UTF encoding which I can't seem to figure out (when a show's title has a special character in it), but it works other than that.

[odledm]

Thanks, I may be able to give it a try tonight, but if not tonight, definitely tomorrow night. Is there any specific debug logging that you want me to turn on in case there are errors?

[LehighBri]

Originally Posted by odledm

Thanks, I may be able to give it a try tonight, but if not tonight, definitely tomorrow night. Is there any specific debug logging that you want me to turn on in case there are errors?

Normal debug logging is fine. I mainly would need the xbmc.log like you normally do.

[odledm]

So, I only got a few minutes to test it out last night, but here are some initial thoughts:

1.)Hour sorting: So it may be something I could change in my setup so it doesn't default to alphabetical sorting (I'm not exactly sure), but since the listing starts with the day of the week first, things are not in chronological order. I believe the same problem exists in the view by channel view. For example, the alphabetical order is Fri, Mon, Sat, Sun, Thur, Tues, Wed. The day of the week is nice to have but I think if you drop the day of the week or move it to the end, it will start to work until the month changes. You may have to use numerical representation to get it really sorted out...05-15 instead of May 15.

2.)Playing from the time view didn't seem to work. I'll get some more information and logs tonight on this. But when I selected watch, it said it was attempting to get it started (in the bottom) but I never saw the "working" wheel and it didn't come up. I did attempt to watch something from the channel view and that did appear to still work. Like I said I'll get you some more info tonight on that.

3.)Default action when selecting "ok"/"enter" in the views. I don't know if this is intentional or what, but I don't know what the default behavior is supposed to be when you press "enter" or click "ok" from a remote when you have the show selected. I initially thought it was to watch the video, but I think it may be doing something else. To watch the show, I have been pressing "c" to bring up the context menu and selecting watch. Being fairly new to xbmc, I don't know if there are any design guidelines for expected behavior, or even what you would want for the expected behavior. For what it is worth, my opinion would be to bring up the context menu when you select a show and press "enter"

Thanks again for getting such a quick drop of the code to me, and I'll try to get you some more useful information after additional testing tonight. Again for the reference, my setup is Sagetv 7 server running on Vista, with xbmc running on a raspberry pi with Openelec 3.2.3 (XBMC Frodo). I do plan on upgrading to openelec 4.0 (XBMC Gotham) in the near future possibly this weekend unless you need me to keep this current setup running.

[odledm]

so regarding item 2 from my previous post. I have attached a log file. And this time I just stayed in the view by time menu. The first show I attempted to play worked (Hells Kitchen) so I don't know what my problem was yesterday. The next show did not work (This Old House). Here is the sequence of events:
1.)enable Debugging
2.)start sagetv addon
3.) Browse by time
4.) Scroll to current time
5.) Context select Hells Kitchen
6.)Choose Watch Now
7.) Wait and then watch (event message at the bottom said attemping to watch live tv, followed by working wheel, then eventually the show started
8.)Watch the show for a few minutes. then pressed stop
9.) Scroll down to This Old House and attempt to start it (I may have clicked ok the first time instead of going to the context menu, but I definitely went back to context menu and selected watch now after that)
10.)Waited and saw the event notifier come up, but no working wheel
11.) Waited...nothing
12.) Attempted to select watch now again for the show
13.) Same behavior

Attached is a excerpt from the log file. It looks like this old house is recording as well as Hells Kitchen (which I suppose makes sense, is there a way to stop it from recording via the addon?). Let me know if you need more info or questions. One thing I left out of my last post is that my setup has 4 tuners, but at 8 on Thursday nights some of those would have been in use.

Thanks,

Dave

[LehighBri]

Not sure what the deal is. Can you client access the locations below? It is trying to playback the following:

smb://smbshare/Videos/TheThisOldHouseHour-DrasticMeasuresAskThisOldHouseBuildingaGardenBedinNewMexicoRepairingaLeakyToilet-1698434-0.mpg

smb://smbshare/Videos/HellsKitchen-11ChefsCompete-1697646-0.mpg

If you're trying to play back live TV, definitely upgrade to OpenELEC 4.0 / Gotham. Frodo is way behind, and there are tons of playback enhancements plus speed improvements. RPi on Gotham is amazing.

I'll look into your other feedback in the coming hours/days, but I definitely have some ideas.

[LehighBri]

OK... I have a new version for you to try out. See below for some responses to your comments (thanks again for testing). Keep me posted on how the new version works for you.

Originally Posted by odledm

1.)Hour sorting: So it may be something I could change in my setup so it doesn't default to alphabetical sorting (I'm not exactly sure), but since the listing starts with the day of the week first, things are not in chronological order. I believe the same problem exists in the view by channel view. For example, the alphabetical order is Fri, Mon, Sat, Sun, Thur, Tues, Wed. The day of the week is nice to have but I think if you drop the day of the week or move it to the end, it will start to work until the month changes. You may have to use numerical representation to get it really sorted out...05-15 instead of May 15.

I replaced the words with numbers so that it sorts alphabetically correctly per your suggestion. And I made the same change on the sub-menu to browse by channel to be consistent.

Originally Posted by odledm

2.)Playing from the time view didn't seem to work. I'll get some more information and logs tonight on this. But when I selected watch, it said it was attempting to get it started (in the bottom) but I never saw the "working" wheel and it didn't come up. I did attempt to watch something from the channel view and that did appear to still work. Like I said I'll get you some more info tonight on that.

See my other post above. I highly encourage you upgrade to Gotham and try it again.

Originally Posted by odledm

3.)Default action when selecting "ok"/"enter" in the views. I don't know if this is intentional or what, but I don't know what the default behavior is supposed to be when you press "enter" or click "ok" from a remote when you have the show selected. I initially thought it was to watch the video, but I think it may be doing something else. To watch the show, I have been pressing "c" to bring up the context menu and selecting watch. Being fairly new to xbmc, I don't know if there are any design guidelines for expected behavior, or even what you would want for the expected behavior. For what it is worth, my opinion would be to bring up the context menu when you select a show and press "enter"

The default playback behavior is specified in the System Settings -> Video -> File lists -> Default select action. This drives what happens when you click a video. Once you set that, to access the SageTV specific menu, yes, that's a context menu, and the only way to get there is to right-click or press 'c' on a video.

[odledm]

I tried out the updated pluggin this weekend, but didn't play too much with it. I also updated to openelec 4.0.1 (Gotham) which definitely seems to be running better than it was with 3.2.3 (Frodo) (Thanks for the recommendation) The video and audio sync are even better which surprised me given that I thought it should have been using hardware acceleration the whole time. I also changed up my default behavior for the click (thanks for that recommendation as well).

I did get a script error when I tried looking at the listings from the current time. I tried this multiple times for the same hour slot and each time it failed, but I didn't have time to wait for the hour to change before retrying. The shows for the next hour slot showed up just fine (but not the current slot). I wasn't able to grab a log at the time. I'll try to give another test this evening and see if it repeats. I liked how you changed the numbering as it made it easy to find the current time right away. One weird thing I noticed, the listing by channels appears to have the shows listed in reverse order (current time last), but the listings by time appears in the order I would expect (current time first). I'll reply separately to your other post regarding my previous playback issue so it doesn't get mixed with this one.

Thanks

[odledm]

Originally Posted by LehighBri

Not sure what the deal is. Can you client access the locations below? It is trying to playback the following:

smb://smbshare/Videos/TheThisOldHouseHour-DrasticMeasuresAskThisOldHouseBuildingaGardenBedinNewMexicoRepairingaLeakyToilet-1698434-0.mpg

smb://smbshare/Videos/HellsKitchen-11ChefsCompete-1697646-0.mpg

If you're trying to play back live TV, definitely upgrade to OpenELEC 4.0 / Gotham. Frodo is way behind, and there are tons of playback enhancements plus speed improvements. RPi on Gotham is amazing.

I'll look into your other feedback in the coming hours/days, but I definitely have some ideas.

The clients can access the share as the HellsKitchen one worked without a problem. It was just the second one that didn't work (This Old House). And as I mentioned above, Thanks for the Gotham encouragement, it really does make a difference. If anyone is considering making the jump, go for it (just be warned that some addons do not yet work with Gotham, but if you have the SageTV addon why would you need anything else )

[LehighBri]

Originally Posted by odledm

I tried out the updated pluggin this weekend, but didn't play too much with it. I also updated to openelec 4.0.1 (Gotham) which definitely seems to be running better than it was with 3.2.3 (Frodo) (Thanks for the recommendation) The video and audio sync are even better which surprised me given that I thought it should have been using hardware acceleration the whole time. I also changed up my default behavior for the click (thanks for that recommendation as well).

I did get a script error when I tried looking at the listings from the current time. I tried this multiple times for the same hour slot and each time it failed, but I didn't have time to wait for the hour to change before retrying. The shows for the next hour slot showed up just fine (but not the current slot). I wasn't able to grab a log at the time. I'll try to give another test this evening and see if it repeats. I liked how you changed the numbering as it made it easy to find the current time right away. One weird thing I noticed, the listing by channels appears to have the shows listed in reverse order (current time last), but the listings by time appears in the order I would expect (current time first). I'll reply separately to your other post regarding my previous playback issue so it doesn't get mixed with this one.

Thanks

Great. And for the script error, please send your xbmc.log and I'll see what's going on. The only known issue like I mentioned above is related to unicode when shows have special characters. Other than that it was working fine for me.

[LehighBri]

Originally Posted by odledm

The clients can access the share as the HellsKitchen one worked without a problem. It was just the second one that didn't work (This Old House). And as I mentioned above, Thanks for the Gotham encouragement, it really does make a difference. If anyone is considering making the jump, go for it (just be warned that some addons do not yet work with Gotham, but if you have the SageTV addon why would you need anything else )

Ha nice. So not sure what the deal was before then. Let me know if you see any playback issues going forward in Gotham, but there's nothing fancy I'm doing there in the addon and thus anything playback related (assuming you can access the share from your client) would be an issue with the core XBMC product.

[odledm]

More test results on your 5-15 version.

1.) Viewing the shows in the current time worked last night. I'll see if the debug log from the other day was archived so maybe we can know for sure, but I am thinking the script error was due to some funny title name with the unicode issue you are already aware of.

2.) I am still seeing unreliable behavior related to starting a live show. The recording is being started, but the actual viewing of the show on the xbmc box does not immediately work. Sometimes if I go to the Watch Recordings menu and click on the show that is being recorded it will start playing. The first show almost always works, after that, (like I mentioned above) the recording starts but even going to the Watch Recordings menu doesn't work. I have found that if I start another older recording (it plays just fine) and then stop the playing video and try to start viewing the show that is currently being recorded the show, the currently recording show will start playing. I'm sorry if this sounds confusing, it sounds confusing to me as I am typing it. I am wondering if there is some kind of limit on the sage side for what you can command it at a time. I only have one client license (which I never really use as it is on my server machine). I primarily use extenders which don't require licenses. Alternatively I wondered if more of the video needed to be buffered before you could start viewing it with a file that is continuously growing

3.) There doesn't seem to be an easy way to view any shows that are currently being recorded. I tried going into the upcoming recordings menu which shows the ones currently being recorded, but it didn't look like you could play the video from there. Does it make sense to add that option there?

[LehighBri]

Originally Posted by odledm

More test results on your 5-15 version.

1.) Viewing the shows in the current time worked last night. I'll see if the debug log from the other day was archived so maybe we can know for sure, but I am thinking the script error was due to some funny title name with the unicode issue you are already aware of.

Yes, that's the same issue I get. If it happens again, pass along the debug log and I'll try to look into it some more.

Originally Posted by odledm

2.) I am still seeing unreliable behavior related to starting a live show. The recording is being started, but the actual viewing of the show on the xbmc box does not immediately work. Sometimes if I go to the Watch Recordings menu and click on the show that is being recorded it will start playing. The first show almost always works, after that, (like I mentioned above) the recording starts but even going to the Watch Recordings menu doesn't work. I have found that if I start another older recording (it plays just fine) and then stop the playing video and try to start viewing the show that is currently being recorded the show, the currently recording show will start playing. I'm sorry if this sounds confusing, it sounds confusing to me as I am typing it. I am wondering if there is some kind of limit on the sage side for what you can command it at a time. I only have one client license (which I never really use as it is on my server machine). I primarily use extenders which don't require licenses. Alternatively I wondered if more of the video needed to be buffered before you could start viewing it with a file that is continuously growing

Not sure, but it's not a licensing issue. Live TV has honestly always been finicky for me, so I've tried to avoid it where possible (and I haven't played too too much with it). If you want, feel free to play around with the buffer size and see if you get any better results. Definitely pass along a xbmc.log file for this as I have some good debugging there to see what's going on. Additionally, open the contextmenuactions.py file, and feel free to adjust either the line that says "minSizeNeededToStartPlaybackInBytes = 1000000" or the line that says "maxTries = 10". Increase either and see what happens (along with the xbmc.log file to see what's going on).

Originally Posted by odledm

3.) There doesn't seem to be an easy way to view any shows that are currently being recorded. I tried going into the upcoming recordings menu which shows the ones currently being recorded, but it didn't look like you could play the video from there. Does it make sense to add that option there?

Currently recording shows are not in the upcoming recordings menu (I'm sure I could put them there eventually). Until then, all recordings regardless of complete or in-flight are found in the Watch Recordings menu.

[LehighBri]

odledm - checking back in here. Any final thoughts on this before I end up publishing it to the XBMC addon repository? I haven't played around any more with live TV, and I still can't figure out this unicode/special character issue. So I'm hoping to publish it and see if any debug logs/reports come in.

[odledm]

Honestly, I haven't had much time to play around with it. (Summer has hit) I qwould say go ahead and push it out there and see what happens. I probably won't get a chance to do much testing for a couple of weeks. Sorry I've been slacking on my part.

[LehighBri]

Originally Posted by odledm

Honestly, I haven't had much time to play around with it. (Summer has hit) I qwould say go ahead and push it out there and see what happens. I probably won't get a chance to do much testing for a couple of weeks. Sorry I've been slacking on my part.

Sounds good. I'll commit the last version I sent you and it should get into the XBMC repo within the next couple days. Thanks again and let's keep the dialog open for future enhancements and issues... appreciate all your input!