STV: Cayars17 Ultimate STV (Release 17 - Jan 18)

[JasonJoel]

Not to nit pick... But, why are you not using this STV because you can't burn DVDs? You can't burn DVDs with any of the OTHER STVs either... So you might as well use this one if it has other features you want.

Jason

JUCCurrently, I am not using this STV because i cannot get the DVD burning to work.
JUC

[JUC]

WOW--some responses that I believe are completely unwarranted. My intent was solely to make sure my earlier posts didn't slip throught the cracks--which is possible given the 2000+ posts...especially since my first one was the last of a page and then the topic went in other directions on the following one. And you are right--Carlo has been on top of everything in unbelievably fast fashion furthering my belief that this one may have slipped by.
-Yes, this STV has tons of features that I want, but the DVD burning is really the only one that I find most useful to me (we all have our own needs/wants) and I personally like the look/feel of sagemc---BUT, once I can get this DVD burning to work (which I believe is completely due to a configuration issue on MY END-i am just not sure where) I do plan on switching...and the extra features will then be bonuses for me.
JUC

[pciccone]

Originally Posted by dvd_maniac

I just hope people understand that this is a man with a family and life and if we start pushing him more than his wife?

Geez, and no job either!!

Carlo, did you submit your resume at Frey yet !!!

All joking aside, I agree with dvd_maniac's statement. Who could ask for anything more? Carlo is a GREAT GUY.

[dvd_maniac]

Geez, and no job either!!

I didn't want to assume...

Carlo, did you submit your resume at Frey yet !!!

I already recommended to Frey to hire him...

Juc

WOW--some responses that I believe are completely unwarranted

Like I said, it "SEEMED" a little harsh. If I took it out of context then I am sorry. I have seen alot of people stop development of stuff because they didn't feel appreciated. It is usually the few that spoil it for the masses.
Again I am sorry if I took it wrong.

[JUC]

DVD Maniac--Actually, after I sent that post I was going to edit it to take out that first line. I reread your post and noticed the 'seemed' which made me rethink that first line I wrote. You all are just too quick to reply. So, if any apologies are in order they should be from me for being quick to post. Anyway, we all know Carlo is the most dedicated.........I don't even need to finish the line. Any help on my issue would be appreciated. I was thinking of just trying to delete Cayars' folder and reinstalling his STV--what is the best way of going about that?
thanks
JUC
JUC

[rsagetv99]

Originally Posted by abasu2003

Had this problem when trying to use the DVD Manager. It has never worked for me but I think that was because I was using an older version.

I get that error also, but usually only if I have gone over the maximum amount of recordings that DVDBurner.exe allows. I know Carlo said he was going to fix the restriction problem, but try simplifying the process by stripping your recording list down to one half-hour program. This usually works for me. I have not installed the 17TestA STV yet, but with 16 I could do about 5 shows without error, YMMV.

[pciccone]

Originally Posted by JUC

DVD Maniac--Actually, after I sent that post I was going to edit it to take out that first line. I reread your post and noticed the 'seemed' which made me rethink that first line I wrote. You all are just too quick to reply. So, if any apologies are in order they should be from me for being quick to post. Anyway, we all know Carlo is the most dedicated.........I don't even need to finish the line. Any help on my issue would be appreciated. I was thinking of just trying to delete Cayars' folder and reinstalling his STV--what is the best way of going about that?
thanks
JUC
JUC

The best way I have found to "clean-up" so to speak...

(Stop and shutdown everything)

1) I would backup your wiz.bin file someplace very very safe. Keep a copy of your sagetv.properties as well. If you are running sagetv as a service then grab sagetvclient.properties too.

2) Make a copy of your current SageTV folder and Common folder "just in case" you/we make things worse

3) Uninstall the Java runtime

4) Uninstall SageTV

5) Reboot (this is important)

6) Remove the "SageTV" and/or "Common" folders in the "frey technology" folders that were left behind after the uninstall. Also would remove the "Java" folder in "program files" directory that was left behind.

7) Re-install Java runtime

8) Re-install Sagetv to the same path.

9) Load SageTV just to verify your working correctly at this point, you can then shut it right back down.

10) Copy back your wiz.bin and your 1 (or 2) properties file to the sagetv folder. IF you run as a service I would recommend NOT copying back the sagetvclient.properties since this is where alll the cayars cusomizations are stored. Instead let sagetv recreate this file on 1st load and then just resetup your client-side defaults. You must restore the sagetv.properties no matter what since your EPG and tuner information "i.e. the system info" is stored in this file.

11) Re-install the Java libs to the new java runtime, the Base R2.zip file (on the 1st post of this thread) and then the cayars17a (or cayars16).

12) Start sagetv then switch back to cayars16(or 17a) in detailed setup -> advanced.

This should clean up everything, I have done it before after some corruption and it seems to have worked for me. Good luck

[rsagetv99]

Originally Posted by JUC

I do not have videoredo installed and have not selected that option either. What is the other option listed--i am not familiar with it.
Also, I hope that the reason my issue hasn't been addressed at all despite my two posts is not due to the fact that I have not donated anything at this time. Currently, I am not using this STV because i cannot get the DVD burning to work. Once I can, I plan on switching and of course donating.

Sorry if this sounds like a stupid question, but I have to ask. When you click View DVD Burn List you know that it does not list the shows in the initial screen right? Instead it brings you to a list of DVD burn lists.
Then you have to arrow to the right, highlight the DVD list and then click OK/Select to view the actual list.

[pciccone]

Originally Posted by rsagetv99

Sorry if this sounds like a stupid question, but I have to ask. When you click View DVD Burn List you know that it does not list the shows in the initial screen right? Instead it brings you to a list of DVD burn lists.
Then you have to arrow to the right, highlight the DVD list and then click OK/Select to view the actual list.

As far as I know that is by design. Either so you can have multiple lists down the road, or (guessing) you can rename burn lists after created to use later. It works the same way any other playlist works in SageTV.

[Cayars]

Originally Posted by mbrown3

I was just thinking about your great work here, and the nature of donations. I realized that, had you charged initially or asked for donations prior to distributing your STV, I wouldn't have been interested. But your generosity and hard work without expectation of payment (for the good of the community) prompted me to donate (and many other folks as well, it looks like!). Several folks even had to encourage you to set up Paypal to accept donations!

So, I just wanted to say "thanks" for your willingness to work so hard on this just because it benefited Sage users (and probably was fun along the way!) rather than trying to make a buck first and foremost...don't lose that mentality! I'm always willing to support folks who are generous and selfless, and never those who are greedy and money grubbing. So, kudos to you, and keep up the great work!

Nope, not money hungry although it helps right now being unimployed. Just to clarrify a couple things for others reading this. I made a change in the way I'm doing beta. The VIP list people will have access to all betas/test codes. I'll also probably start releasing these more often also.

When the beta is fixed enough to become a "release" (at least worth the upgrade with no major problems) it will be open to the public just as before and anyone can download it. This is for the STV itself.

External programs will be handled slightly different. Probably back around around page 75-80 of this thread I mentioned "charging" for external programs so this should be no surprise. We're not talking about simple things here, but development that takes a large amount of time to do. The DVDBurner will be the first of these types of programs.

Even with this "pay-for-play" applications I'm going to try and always have two "modes" to the software. For example (might change a little) the DVDBurner modes as coded now are:

FREE VERSION
Limited to up to 4.7GB size disc writers
No Compression of MPG files
1 or 2 Shows/Movies per disc
Menu creation for up to 2 shows.
Use of ONE drive as a working directory

PAID VERSION
No limited to disc size (4.7GB & 9.4GB)
Fully supports compression of of MPG files to fit on the disc
Up to 5 shows/movies per disc
Menu creation for up to 5 shows.
Support for Turbo Disk Mode. You setup two working directories on different hard drives and the application dynamically switches back and forth between these working directories to assure reads are done on one drive while writes are done on the other. This nearly doubles I/O throughput and makes things go much faster!
In Progress of coding/testing - Direct creation of VOB files without DeMux/Mux step if no compression is needed to fit files on disc.

BOTH VERSIONS
Support of VideoReDo (for now) for commercial cutting if ComSkip has been run on the shows previously. VideoReDo can also be used to demux the video and is faster then the freeware app included.

When people first started talking about added DVD Burning features to SageTV all anyone wanted was something simple to get the job done. The FREEWARE version of this does exactly this and a little more. I'll be continueing to work on this application and will probably replace much of the open source applicated called from it in the near future to reduce some of the problems encountered with certain files (it's kind of picky).

Here's a couple of questions I'm sure will come up so I'll answer them now. The DVDBurner upgrades may or may not coincide with STV releases in the future. Anyone will be able to d/l them at any time, but they will either run in the FREEWARE mode or REGISTERED mode.

Anyone who has already contributed/donated to the STV will be able to apply anything over $25 (VIP level) to the REGISTRATION of the DVDBurner application. No official price on this yet but I'm guessing the REGISTERED version will go for $25.

OTHER DEVELOPMENT EFFORTS
I've also been working pretty heavily on a transcoder which is why I haven't done much with FFMPEG. When I'm done with this, you'll be able to convert your MPGs to just about any format you have a codec on your machine. Most people will use it to convert MPGs to DivX or XviD. It will also be able to convert to another format so you can move videos over to a portable device too!

I'm not sure exactly how I'm going to release this one when it's done. At present I'm using a toolset (in trial mode) that won't allow me to compile to an EXE but works fine for development. The toolkit itself is semi-expensive so I don't know if I'll have a freeware version of this app or not. I'm sure there will be a trial version but we'll worry about this later.

In order to give you the most bang for the buck on the transcoder I'll have it do dual functions. It will be able to be used directly from the STV or from a queued batch (i.e. nighly processing). I'll also have a GUI on it so it will be very similar to Dr. DivX if you've ever used that before.

Enough of my ranting.

Carlo

[rsagetv99]

Originally Posted by pciccone

As far as I know that is by design. Either so you can have multiple lists down the road, or (guessing) you can rename burn lists after created to use later. It works the same way any other playlist works in SageTV.

Yeah, that's what I was thinking. The symbol was more me saying that it sounded confusing (a list of DVD Burn Lists).

[Cayars]

Originally Posted by JUC

-Lets try this one more time. Any thoughts????
-I do not have videoredo installed and have not selected that option either. What is the other option listed--i am not familiar with it.
Also, I hope that the reason my issue hasn't been addressed at all despite my two posts is not due to the fact that I have not donated anything at this time. Currently, I am not using this STV because i cannot get the DVD burning to work. Once I can, I plan on switching and of course donating.
Thanks
JUC

I wouldn't use or not use the STV because of the DVDBurner unless that is your only reason for wanting to use it.

The DVDBurner itself is still quite a work in progress so any feedback is noted even if I don't specifically reply. I just released a new DVDBurner with last nights STV (because it was easy to do). I'm planning on releasing another version of this later today and there will be a link to it in the first message of this thread along with a message in the thread itself letting you know there is a new version.

This will be available to anyone regardless of donations. Anyone/Everyone is welcome to use this STV regardless of making a donation!

[JUC]

confusing yes, but my list of DVD burn lists is empty--even after I have added a show to it.

Carlo, just wondering--when you get ready to charge for the DVD burner app, if i choose to donate the $25--will that be seperate from the VIP list? It seems like it will (which of course is fine), but how should we let you know which one we want?
thanks for the work
JUC

[Cayars]

Hey guys, chill out a little and let's keep it friendly.

I don't take offence to things. We're all human (well you guys anyway)

BTW, he was right, I did miss his post. This thread sometimes gets so many messages it's easy to miss one here and there. Besided it's easy to over react at times when you have high expectations(sp?) of a peice of software and it doesn't work or work the way you want it to.

Carlo

[Cayars]

Originally Posted by pciccone

<snip?
Carlo, did you submit your resume at Frey yet !!!
<snip>

Umm, NO, they know where to find me, but Jeff might get worried about his job with me around.

[Cayars]

Originally Posted by pciccone

As far as I know that is by design. Either so you can have multiple lists down the road, or (guessing) you can rename burn lists after created to use later. It works the same way any other playlist works in SageTV.

Yes, it is by design. I actually "piggy-backed" the playlists. I just filter out for anything starting with "DVD" for DVD use. You can go through your files and create DVD lists and then after building a few lists, you can sit down and burn them one after another.

[Cayars]

Originally Posted by JUC

confusing yes, but my list of DVD burn lists is empty--even after I have added a show to it.

Carlo, just wondering--when you get ready to charge for the DVD burner app, if i choose to donate the $25--will that be seperate from the VIP list? It seems like it will (which of course is fine), but how should we let you know which one we want?
thanks for the work
JUC

I'm sure I'll put up a seperate page for it. Probably using palpal but you'll know it's for the DVDBurner so it won't be confusing.

BTW, you don't have to be on the VIP list to register the DVDBurner as that wouldn't be right. They'll be two seperate things.

[mbrown3]

Originally Posted by Cayars

Nope, not money hungry although it helps right now being unimployed.

Yep, certainly understood the need to charge for more development-heavy stuff. I just want to applaud your efforts, even to this point, at keeping the basic STV stuff free to users. It's (in my opinion) the best addition to the Sage community to date. Thanks again!

[JUC]

Is there any other way of starting from scratch for this STV without uninstalling and resinstalling my whole sagetv application and java stuff (thanks pciccone for the instructions). I would prefer not to mess around with everything else if I don't have to.
JUC

[Cayars]

Originally Posted by mbrown3

Yep, certainly understood the need to charge for more development-heavy stuff. I just want to applaud your efforts, even to this point, at keeping the basic STV stuff free to users. It's (in my opinion) the best addition to the Sage community to date. Thanks again!

Thanks, but don't forget the STV isn't just my code. There are lots of parts that many other people have written! That's one reason in my mind why it will always be free to download released versions.