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

[bgorrell]

I am trying to setup compression and have read past posts for the last half hour trying to figure it out. First and foremost, the ffmpeg_convert application does absolutely nothing. I tried running it from a prompt and it doesn't even give an error. I have the jobs folder setup as a c:\program files\frey technologies\compressor\jobs. Selecting compress in Cayars menu creates an xml file in there just fine. Do I need to pass some parameters to ffmpeg_convert?

I read one post that using Java v1.5 will break compression. Has anyone else experienced this? I settled on 1.5 after stuttering and lockups under various 1.4 versions. I hate to go back to 1.4.x and have it break something else on me.

Thanks.

P.S. Carlos mentioned working on an integrated transcoder a while back. Any news on this? I would be willing to pay for such a feature, but he's been so quite lately that I am hesitant untill I know he is commited to following through on these things.

[kerryp24]

Cayars

I know you've had some, hardware, problems.
Also, your PM box here is FULL and cannot accept anymore emails.
A few weeks ago, I sent you a donation and just want to make sure my name doesn't get passed by (I've been drooling to play with 18D for weeks ;-)).
So, hurry up and read your, hundreds, of emails and get me added onto that donation list. <g>

Kerry

[insomniac]

Ditto!

I.

Originally Posted by kerryp24

Cayars

I know you've had some, hardware, problems.
Also, your PM box here is FULL and cannot accept anymore emails.
A few weeks ago, I sent you a donation and just want to make sure my name doesn't get passed by (I've been drooling to play with 18D for weeks ;-)).
So, hurry up and read your, hundreds, of emails and get me added onto that donation list. <g>

Kerry

[mbrown3]

Originally Posted by insomniac

Ditto!

I.

Triplo (or whatever you say for "I third that"!)

[Alig Proudblade]

Quadrillio! (Err that goes for me too)

Tho I fully apprecaite other things may be going on in your life which must take priority..... but we cant wait to see the next installation of your excellent work!

Chris.

[gplasky]

Originally Posted by Alig Proudblade

Quadrillio! (Err that goes for me too)

Tho I fully apprecaite other things may be going on in your life which must take priority..... but we cant wait to see the next installation of your excellent work!

Chris.

Count me in on this vote too.

Gerry

[Opus4]

Before we get too many more "me too" comments, I thought I would say that we are trying to find out what the status is. The last I recall was that Cayars had some PC issues that perhaps haven't gotten resolved, but who knows what else might have happened in the meantime. Hopefully, everything is OK out his way, or soon will be.

- Andy

[insomniac]

From posts by other people, I had heard that he was taking a "break". I hope thats all that this time gap was. Hopefully nothing bad has happened on the home front!

I was under the assumption that most of the people in the background knew of his whereabouts...

I.

Originally Posted by Opus4

Before we get too many more "me too" comments, I thought I would say that we are trying to find out what the status is. The last I recall was that Cayars had some PC issues that perhaps haven't gotten resolved, but who knows what else might have happened in the meantime. Hopefully, everything is OK out his way, or soon will be.

- Andy

[ajuhawk]

Originally Posted by bgorrell

I am trying to setup compression and have read past posts for the last half hour trying to figure it out. First and foremost, the ffmpeg_convert application does absolutely nothing. I tried running it from a prompt and it doesn't even give an error. I have the jobs folder setup as a c:\program files\frey technologies\compressor\jobs. Selecting compress in Cayars menu creates an xml file in there just fine. Do I need to pass some parameters to ffmpeg_convert?

I read one post that using Java v1.5 will break compression. Has anyone else experienced this? I settled on 1.5 after stuttering and lockups under various 1.4 versions. I hate to go back to 1.4.x and have it break something else on me.

Thanks.

P.S. Carlos mentioned working on an integrated transcoder a while back. Any news on this? I would be willing to pay for such a feature, but he's been so quite lately that I am hesitant untill I know he is commited to following through on these things.

Did you edit properties.xml to reflect the jobs directory? there's a line

<Pickup_Location>r:\tv\jobs</Pickup_Location>

that needs to be edited so that it knows where to find the .xml job files.

Guess I need to update the documentation to reflect this

[mbrown3]

Originally Posted by insomniac

From posts by other people, I had heard that he was taking a "break". I hope thats all that this time gap was. Hopefully nothing bad has happened on the home front!

I was under the assumption that most of the people in the background knew of his whereabouts...

I.

This is the first I've heard about it. I just wish someone could send me the link to the 18 info, I'm jonesing for it. I upped my donation just to get it, but that's been over 2 weeks now. Cayars has been working hard, so a well-needed break is deserved. But I just wish I could get the link and start trying 18.

[bgorrell]

Originally Posted by ajuhawk

Did you edit properties.xml to reflect the jobs directory? there's a line

<Pickup_Location>r:\tv\jobs</Pickup_Location>

that needs to be edited so that it knows where to find the .xml job files.

Guess I need to update the documentation to reflect this

I just tried that. Unfortunately, it still isn't working. I don't have much time to play with it since I'm working 12-hour shifts this week, but I will try downgrading Java this weekend. Hate to do it, but I'm running out of disk space. How foolish of me to think 750MB would be enough! Time to figure out compression!

BTW, I don't get why Cayar's STV lets me set these directories if it isn't actually affecting the necessary files? Am I missing something here?

EDIT: I meant to say 750GB 750MB really would be foolish...

[WarlordBB]

Before we get too many more "me too" comments, I thought I would say that we are trying to find out what the status is. The last I recall was that Cayars had some PC issues that perhaps haven't gotten resolved, but who knows what else might have happened in the meantime. Hopefully, everything is OK out his way, or soon will be.

Today is the first I've heard of Cayars STV. I've been using SageTV for about a year and a half.

So what should someone do that is interested right now in Cayars and would like to donate?

Donate and use ver. 17 until Cayars resurfaces?

Use ver. 17 until Cayars resurfaces and then donate?

Donate and wait for Cayars to resurface, then evaluate ver. 18? <- this is the one I'm leaning towards.

TIA

[kerryp24]

Warlord...

Try 17 (you won't be dissappointed).
If (if??) you like it... donate.
Wait for Cayars to resurface (no pun intended, since I believe he had a disk problem ;-)) and get your hands on 18.

That was/is my game plan.
As much as I want 18... I'd rather know that Cayars isn't having any personal issues.

[mbrown3]

Originally Posted by kerryp24

Warlord...

Try 17 (you won't be dissappointed).
If (if??) you like it... donate.
Wait for Cayars to resurface (no pun intended, since I believe he had a disk problem ;-)) and get your hands on 18.

Good advice. 17 is worth trying, and it will give you a good feel for the STV. Then 18 will only add some things that will be sort of an "added bonus". This STV is the best thing to happen to Sage other than comskip, IMO.

[ajuhawk]

Originally Posted by bgorrell

I just tried that. Unfortunately, it still isn't working. I don't have much time to play with it since I'm working 12-hour shifts this week, but I will try downgrading Java this weekend. Hate to do it, but I'm running out of disk space. How foolish of me to think 750MB would be enough! Time to figure out compression!

BTW, I don't get why Cayar's STV lets me set these directories if it isn't actually affecting the necessary files? Am I missing something here?

I'm not sure what you mean by Cayar's STV lets you see the directories... When you have more time, let me know and I'll try to help you out further if I can.

-AJ

[dvd_maniac]

I was wondering about the xml file produced in version 18D. I have not tried to get compression to work with the STV, however, I use AutoGK to compress my recordings and like the results. I was wondering how I could use the xml file to keep the info with my manual compression method?

[bgorrell]

Originally Posted by ajuhawk

I'm not sure what you mean by Cayar's STV lets you see the directories... When you have more time, let me know and I'll try to help you out further if I can.

-AJ

I mean that I can go into the Detailed Setup/External Setup/Compress menu and set Target and Job folders. Are you saying I still have to mess with the properties.xml file as well? I tried that, but it made no difference.

Also, what directory is the "current" directory if I use the ".\jobs" and ".\target" defaults? My hope would be that it would make those directories under the appropriate video directory for the show I want to compress. My guess is that it does not do that. For example, I have \Video directories on three drives, so ideally it would create the following structures:

E:\Video
-- E:\Video\Jobs
-- E:\Video\Target

F:\Video
-- F:\Video\Jobs
-- F:\Video\Target

G:\Video
-- G:\Video\Jobs
-- G:\Video\Target

In case that is not how it works, I also tried specifying both folders specifically by full path to the G: drive.

I guess I will try downgrading my Java from 1.5 again and see if that is causing my problem. I'll post back here when I've tried it.

[CyRex]

I don't think that Java is your problem, I think it is how you are setting up your directories. The "jobs" and "compressed" directories will not appear in your "Videos" folder unless you explicitly designate that folder as the location. When you select "Compress" for a recording, all it does is create an XML file in whatever "Jobs" directory you have specified through the Detailed setup menu. That being the case, your first test should be to select Compress on a recording and then locate the XML file that is created.

The "Compressed" directory AFAIK will be a single directory (ie not created on multiple drives in the Video directory) on one of your drives. It is not at all dependant upon the location of the original (uncompressed) video file. I think this directory path is simply outputted to the XML file for use by the compression app, but am not positive.

So once you have the STV outputting to the desired "Jobs" folder, you need to edit the properties.xml and set the pickup location to the corresponding directory. Once you have this configured, when you run the compression application, it should process through the XML files in the Jobs folder and compress them all. You can either run the compression app manually, or set it to run as a scheduled task.

Thats about it I think... Hope that helps!

-Dan

[bgorrell]

Originally Posted by CyRex

I don't think that Java is your problem, I think it is how you are setting up your directories. The "jobs" and "compressed" directories will not appear in your "Videos" folder unless you explicitly designate that folder as the location. When you select "Compress" for a recording, all it does is create an XML file in whatever "Jobs" directory you have specified through the Detailed setup menu. That being the case, your first test should be to select Compress on a recording and then locate the XML file that is created.

The "Compressed" directory AFAIK will be a single directory (ie not created on multiple drives in the Video directory) on one of your drives. It is not at all dependant upon the location of the original (uncompressed) video file. I think this directory path is simply outputted to the XML file for use by the compression app, but am not positive.

So once you have the STV outputting to the desired "Jobs" folder, you need to edit the properties.xml and set the pickup location to the corresponding directory. Once you have this configured, when you run the compression application, it should process through the XML files in the Jobs folder and compress them all. You can either run the compression app manually, or set it to run as a scheduled task.

Thats about it I think... Hope that helps!

-Dan

Thanks, that does clear up my questions about directories (although I wish it was smarter about them). I went ahead and made sure my directories were explicitly set, but was still having the problem of ffmpeg_convert not doing anything. So, I went ahead and uninstalled Java 1.5 and re-installed 1.4.07 and it suddenly started working like a champ! I guess Java 1.5 breaks the pickup program. I just hope going back to 1.4.07 doesn't break anything in Sage for me (it was running pretty smooth under 1.5).

Anyone know who developed the pickup program? Can it be upgraded to work with the new Java? If not, you may want to add this to the documentation untill Cayars comes up with an integrated solution.

Now that I can compress my files, the question becomes: Is there a way to make Sage recognize the compressed file in place of the original one and still have it show up in the normal (non-library) recordings with all show information and commercial breaks (detected before compression)? If not, hopefully someone is working on this. I know Sage supports DivX hardware encoders now, so it seems like I should be able to fool it into treating these files as native recordings somehow.

Thanks again, Dan, for your help.

[CyRex]

Glad to hear you got it working! I had a bit of trouble getting mine setup as well. Just for reference, I am running the latest version of Java (I can check which version when I get home) and I experience no problems with compression.

As for the second part of your post, AFIAK there isn't a way to make Sage recognize it as the original. I would love it if that was the case, but as for now I have to live with them being under imported videos.

Now that you are successfully compressing, what do compressed video lenghts show up as in Sage? My 30 minute recordings all show up as like 1 hour 17 minutes or something like that. They play back fine, and the position bar in Sage works fine, but it thinks the videos are longer than they are...

-Dan