Day one features

[valnar]

I should make this a poll, but I probably don't have all the top 10's from people.

We've been making a pretty good list of features to add once Sage gets open sourced, but I'd like to start a new thread on the most important fixes or features.

For the developers with the skills to handle it, I'd like to throw my hat in the ring for MKV subtitle support on the Sage Client. To me, this is the last remaining feature that sets it apart from the HD300's, except of course native output switching. It's also the feature that prevents me from using the Sage Client as my main viewing app on a NUC or similar. Seeing how HD300's are scarce and unlikely to return, bringing the feature parity of the Sage client up to date seems critical.

I assume fixing or updating things that are already present should be the low hanging fruit. I know the weather app was thrown about too.

What are your most important fixes?

[nyplayer]

Mine are adding MultiRecord and fixing the back to back padding on the same channel.... I believe adding MultiRecord to Sage fixes it ... also Picture in Picture.

[mechling-burgh]

I agree with nyplayer back to back padding and multi stream recordings. Individual client handling for the extenders to eliminate the java memory problems. Working with Hauppauge to see if they are willing to get 1340 MediaMVP-HD Digital Media Player working as and extender. I think it would be cool if we could get an extender to work with NPVR and Sage, more would be sold and more likely to have support for them from a company.

[valnar]

Originally Posted by mechling-burgh

Working with Hauppauge to see if they are willing to get 1340 MediaMVP-HD Digital Media Player working as and extender

I guess all Sigma based boxes aren't the same. Seems the reviews of that one are pretty bad. Do you have one now and like it? If we can't go to Sigma directly, I wonder if we'd have better luck working with a smaller company like Dune or Popcorn Hour (or whoever owns them these days)?

[mechling-burgh]

No I don't, I said that one because of the MVPs have been used in the past. I was also wondering if manufactures like Sigma Design have generic boxes they design then sell with your os installed on it by the company buying them. If so could we buy them and install the extender os on them.

[trk2]

Originally Posted by valnar

I guess all Sigma based boxes aren't the same. Seems the reviews of that one are pretty bad. Do you have one now and like it? If we can't go to Sigma directly, I wonder if we'd have better luck working with a smaller company like Dune or Popcorn Hour (or whoever owns them these days)?

I know there is ongoing development work with the Dune players and Kodi. I don't if that is with the support of Dune or not.

[reggie14]

I'll start with a relatively simple one: a webserver plugin with Java 8 support. I rebuilt my server today and found out about the Jetty incompatibility. I'm not entirely sure how much is broken under Java 8 (the regular webserver seemed to work, but the mobile one did not), but to get everything working I had to drop back to Java 7.

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by trk2

I know there is ongoing development work with the Dune players and Kodi. I don't if that is with the support of Dune or not.

Interesting, got any info on that?

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by reggie14

I'll start with a relatively simple one: a webserver plugin with Java 8 support. I rebuilt my server today and found out about the Jetty incompatibility. I'm not entirely sure how much is broken under Java 8 (the regular webserver seemed to work, but the mobile one did not), but to get everything working I had to drop back to Java 7.

Interestingly, enough, I noticed the same thing (on Linux with Java 8). This isn't a "sage" issue, but a plugin issue. I suspect that all is needed to update the Jetty Jars... it's bee a few years, since they've been updated.

[trk2]

Originally Posted by stanger89

Interesting, got any info on that?

So it looks like it's not actually Dune, but using the Dune hardware through a 3rd party vendor (Zappiti)? The Kodi forums seem to use the terms Dune and Zappiti interchangeably. Anyway the specifications for the media box may be found here. Long story short, it seems like an HD400 (4k, 3D, HD audio, H.265 etc...).

Integration is ongoing and it looks like it is supported by Zappiti. Here is their current bug list which also provides a good run down on the features.

[valnar]

Interesting. Well, we certainly don't need one with a hard drive. And from what I remember, many comparisons place Sigma better than Realtek. I always thought Dune/PcH used Sigma, but perhaps they changed.

[matterofrecord]

FYI:

Originally Posted by nyplayer

Mine are adding MultiRecord and fixing the back to back padding on the same channel.... I believe adding MultiRecord to Sage fixes it

I'm not sure if this is helpful but you can kind of do this with lmgestion lmdvb smart recorder ( at least for the UKs dvb-t and dvb-t2 signal). It allows you to multiply 1 physical tuner into multiple network tuners. The trade off is slow tuning, 1 physical tuner can still only tune to one frequency ( it's like having lots of tuners only tuned to one frequency) and not all tuners play nice with the system. My terratec and tbs tuners work but my hauppauge tuners don't.

Although having said that native would be better. You can add my vote for Native multirecord/" many channels for one tuner on one frequency" but I think this is probably past a "day one feature".

============================

FYI: My list of not really day one features

• Native support for XML EPG importing ( without 3rd party programs ).
• Fast forward Playback at greater that 1x times with audio like cyberlink powerdvd can.
• Slow Motion forward and reverse for sports programs (frame by frame would be good).
• Fully supported videoredo plugin ( trim, X265 encode, reimport and save Hard drive space ).
• User created categories selectable from the main recordings menu without going to "filtering" sub-menus.
• An update epg button that works ( it's not as petty as it sounds )
• Ability to select a custom thumbnail image for recordings and imports ( this is as petty as it sounds but it would be easy so hey why not )
• Send different channels/programs/favourites to different hard drives or folders.
• Export ALL your settings in an xml file so a re-install is simple.
• Make the "hidden unsupported features" supported default features.
• Simple Screenshots
• Ability to add labels to recordings
• Better detection of repeat favourites ( - allow for 5 minute difference either way in program length - allow for descriptions to be little bit off- things like "new" and "SL" ( for sign language ) are currently treated as different programs )
• Ability to preference HD versions of favourites when there is a choice.
• EPG can list a single channels epg data vertically to make it easier and quicker to scan through one channel.
• Better naming of recordings - ie move from "BBCNewsatTen-273037792.ts" to "BBCNewsatTen_2014-02-26-chnl-14.ts"
• Logo removal ie. Channel specific logo blurring

I think for most people "day one" features are going to be fixing out of date plugins, bugs, support for latest java and latest OS's ( MS 8.1 & 10 ). I have no idea how many of these plugins that people rely on daily are open source and I've yet to see nielm and some of the other heavy hitters make an appearance at the "Yeay, Sagetv is now open source" party.

I also think the majority of hardcore sagetv users are using sagetv via extenders. Compatible extenders are going to be a major issue for a lot of people. Sagetv can no longer dictate the hardware in the extender. The choice of available and viable extender replacements might place limitations on what is viable for sagetvs future development. Also a lot of time might be spent setting up a viable alternative extender ( getting the current extender software working with the available hardware). Extenders might be the first focus for a lot of people meaning there will be little time for features that require major rewrites or new components.

In short a lot of the day one updates might be just to get everything up to date and working with newer hardware and software. That's not to say there won't be innovations, there are a lot of smart people who are capable coders and they will undoubtedly add features but I think it will be the features they want.

EDIT:

More for the wishlist:

• Satellite tuning needs improvement. - In npvr you specify frequencies,fec,symbolrates it tunes to those, that's it. Simple. Trying to tune to UK Free satelite channels is just awful - it finds some channels 5 or 6 times over and some not at all. Changing the frequencies in the FRQ file doesn't seem to help. A Tuning process that works the same as it does for dvb-t would be good. Perhaps allowing for the import for King of Sat files might be good.
• The tuning data within the .FRQ files needs updating. Some sort of webscraping script for www.ukfree.tv might be the best way in the uk.
• A "Don't Record" button/checkbox.Useful when setting a program to "watched" would prevent it from being recorded later in the day/week/month when you do want it.

Edit 2: More Sagetv NOT day one improvements I'm just writing them all here in one place. Some of these are quite petty compared to the others.

• Bookmarks within recordings.
• Set favourites to ignore looking for duplicates and just record every instance regardless.
• Better management of keyword favorites. When Setting a favourite by a keyword "future airings" should be by keyword ability to group recordings by favourite keyword rather than title. (ie if you favourite an actor by keyword the films would be grouped by that actor in the "Sagetv recordings" and when looking for future airings you would see all the future films by that actor and not just duplicate of the film title )
• Ability to set an archive drive and archive sage recording from within sage itself.
• Archived recording often get the timeline wrong with start and end padding added to the beginning ( ie 5 Minute start and end padding = 10 minute beginning padding in archived recording )
• Advanced time scheduling like bittorrent's grid map scheduler.
• Tuners ordered in alphabetical order in the tuner setup screen.
• Error warnings numbered and individually delete-able.
• When sorting by channel maintain alphabetical order.
• See only radio recordings.
• Convert radio recordings to MP3 from within sagetv.
• x264/x265 custom conversion poss with handbrake cli.
• Fast forwarding through radio doesn't work well.
• Crowd fund a Full time developer if it's needed.

[blade]

Originally Posted by matterofrecord

Send different channels/programs/favourites to different hard drives. I know this is a leftfield one but if you give sagetv 2 recording drives it just uses whichever has most spare room. I'd like more control.

You actually currently have 2 options.
1) Uses the drive with the most free space for all recordings.
2) Uses the drive with the most free space for one recording and then if there are multiple recordings at once they're balanced between the various recording drives.

It's not as much control as you're asking for, but there is another option other than just the one with the most free space.

[matterofrecord]

Originally Posted by blade

You actually currently have 2 options.
.....<snip>...

Sorry blade I edited my post quite a bit but you are right. I record current affairs programs that have multiple duplicates and are often interrupted in favour of breaking news. Every week I have to go through them and delete the duplicates to free up recording space. I like having almost all my recordings on one drive as it's easier to archive the good stuff.

My choice would be put the current affairs on another drive so I could let them pile up. Radio could go on another drive/folder so that I could batch convert them to mp3s. I could have the commercial channels on one drive with comskip running and the BBC advert free channels on another drive without comskip. Another drive/folder for programs that I would want to convert and put on my phone so I can batch convert them and find them easily.

There's a lot that could be done if we could have the choice.

Also another wishlist not really "first day feature"

• Wiz.bin editor. My sagetv takes 5 minutes to start and it's something to do with my wiz.bin. Perhaps it's the massive amount of duplicate current affairs I recorded or perhaps it's the massive amount of network tuners I added using Lmdvd smart recorder. Whatever it is I could use a Wiz.bin editor to find out.

Edit: It turnouts you can dramatically increase startup times if you follow stangers instructions in this thread here. However it would still be good to speed things up further by getting rid of unnecessary recordings ( especially the current affairs stuff ) .

[mistergq]

Originally Posted by matterofrecord

• Wiz.bin editor. My sagetv takes 5 minutes to start and it's something to do with my wiz.bin. Perhaps it's the massive amount of duplicate current affairs I recorded or perhaps it's the massive amount of network tuners I added using Lmdvd smart recorder. Whatever it is I could use a Wiz.bin editor to find out.

You may want to shutdown sage and sage service, edit sage.properties, find disable_root_path_check=false to true.

[matterofrecord]

Originally Posted by mistergq

You may want to shutdown sage and sage service, edit sage.properties, find disable_root_path_check=false to true.

Thanks, however it gets stuck on:

profiler is initializing...XX%done

It's this part that takes 5 minutes ( 4m 45 sec )

what does "disable_root_path_check" do?

[stanger89]

Normally Sage will retain all media files it's seen when a path (ie network share) disappears, in case it was a temporary network issue. That setting tells it to clean out anything it can't see on the next startup. It's good if you've got a lot of cruft hanging around that isn't actually there anymore. Just be sure that all your network drives are available when you do it.

However what you might want to do is set "limited_carny_init" to true:
http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/show...ted_carny_init

It delays some processing until after startup. I believe the only (noticeable?) side effect is intelligent recordings aren't scheduled until a while after startup. At least that's all I've noticed. But it makes startup a lot faster.

[matterofrecord]

Originally Posted by stanger89

However what you might want to do is set "limited_carny_init" to true:
http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/show...ted_carny_init

WOW... FIXED. Thanks Stanger

A 5 minute start up is now 1 min 26 secs


If anyone else if having this problem there is a FAQ here:

http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/show...358#post273358

And a discussion thread here:

http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=31684

and yeah it's to do with intelligent record - a feature I have never even tried.

However I would still like a wiz.bin editor to rip out all the old recordings that don't need to analysed for any reason.

[Skirge01]

Should we put plugin fixes in here, with the hope that the devs may come back and fix them?

[pjpjpjpj]

Originally Posted by Skirge01

Should we put plugin fixes in here, with the hope that the devs may come back and fix them?

Like the PlayOn/youtube either/or issue?

Sure, why not?