STV Import: Multi-speed Continuous FF/REW

nielm · #1 04-12-2005, 07:26 AM

Yep, thats a VCR - style FF/REW function for SageTV

With this import, the FF/REW buttons in the full-screen video page become more like VCR FF/REW buttons, giving continuous FF/REW functionality, with speeds varying from 2x to 128x.

In FF mode, each press of FF increases speed, while REW decreases it. (of course they do the opposite in REW mode!) Any other command cancels FF/REW mode.

Pressing Play/Pause to cancel FF/REW also has a 'reaction time compensation', which automatically jumps in the opposite direction a bit to compensate for delayed reactions!

Starting speed, position of the speed indicator, Jumpback size, and some other options are settable in Detailed Setup/Enhancements.

It works by pausing playback then seeking forward (or back) to a specific position in the MPEG file, then waiting for the seek to compelete, then waiting for a customisable interval to allow the frame to be displayed before seeking again -- the size of the seek is dependant on the speed, and the interval (which determines smoothness) is settable in the options.

This is a bit of a hack, but the best I can do -- I have spent a lot of time tuning it! I don't have direct access to the MPG file, so I cannot do something clever like only playback the keyframes...

IMPORTANT
This function depends greatly on many factors -- the MPEG2 decoder, the power of your CPU, whether running on the server or on a client.

I have found that it works well with the Sage MPEG2 decoder, on both client and server in a wired network.

It does not work well with the Cyberlink PowerDVD XP v4 decoder, nor with the Nvidia PureVideo decoder (unless the interval is set very large: of the order of 1s), and it did not work well on a client on my (unreliable) wireless network!

It also did not work so well with Xvid MPEGs, probably related to the very large keyframe intervals used.

It is likely to put more load than normal on your system, so may introduce instability!

If you don't like it, just disable it in the options screen and your are back to the traditional 10 second skip!

For download/installation instructions see the install page on the Sage Wiki.

History

v1.5 11-April-2007 -- Support for SageTV v6.1.8
v1.4 12-Nov-2006 -- Support for SageTV v6
v1.3 20-Aug-2005 -- Support for SageTV v3,v4 and v5
v1.2 14-Apr-2005 -- Fixed Auto-Mute option, added handling of Play/Pause command
v1.1 14-Apr-2005 -- Modified to support SageMC, and Cayars17_import.stv (see install page), added Auto-Mute option.
v1.0 12-Apr-2005 v1.0 - first version

heffe2001 · #2 04-12-2005, 07:42 AM

Will have to try this out, but might get a negative WAF, since she's now so dependent on hitting the large skip, and a couple small skips to get by commercials

.

JUC · #3 04-12-2005, 11:31 AM

This looks so promising. Thank you so much!!
JUC

kayoti · #4 04-12-2005, 11:47 AM

Very nice. I am excited to try this out tonight. Thanks a lot!

Drazi · #5 04-12-2005, 04:59 PM

Very nice, working well here with the nvidia decoder. Couple of things:

I am not having any problems with Xvid as you described.

Would it be possible to mute the audio while FF/REW? The short audio blips are a little annoying. Note this is only with TV recordings, the audio is muted with xvid.

Other than that it's working great.

Bohica · #6 04-12-2005, 05:28 PM

Why dont you make a series of progressivly higher double beeps? Or did I see / hear that somewhere else?

JUC · #7 04-12-2005, 06:41 PM

Everything works great on the original.stv. Love it. For some reason though, its not working with sagemc. I can import it but nothing really happens. Hopefully someone working with that can incorporate this.
Thanks
JUC

wbarber69 · #8 04-12-2005, 07:37 PM

ditto juc, the menu item in settings is there and it seems to be enabled but nothing happens when hitting ff or rw or -> or <-

nielm · #9 04-13-2005, 02:14 AM

JUC: I only tested with OrigV2 based STV's... Will have a look at why the import fails on SageMC tomorrow -- probably something simple to change...

Drazi: I pause playback before FF to prevent this happening and it works well with the 3 audio decoders I tested, but it looks like your audio decoder filter is not respecting the Pause instruction. (which one are you using?). Try changing your Audio decoder in detailed setup. I would prefer not to auto- mute but may include it as a workaround.

nielm · #10 04-13-2005, 02:41 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bohica

Why dont you make a series of progressivly higher double beeps? Or did I see / hear that somewhere else?

What do you mean? Audio feedback of the FF/REW speed when a button is pressed?

Never tried making Sage beep, will have to look into that...

David Lawrance · #11 04-13-2005, 05:41 AM

I don't see anything no matter what STV I try. Perhaps I have some STV settings in my configuration file that are getting in the way?

JUC · #12 04-13-2005, 06:51 AM

David, make sure you extraced it into the right directory. Also, remember you have to import the plugin in the Detailed setup--->advanced section

ukmgranger · #13 04-13-2005, 07:30 AM

I can confirm that it doesn't work with SageMC_169.STV.

I got it working fine with the original STV.

Good work nielm!

Drazi · #14 04-13-2005, 07:57 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by nielm

Drazi: I pause playback before FF to prevent this happening and it works well with the 3 audio decoders I tested, but it looks like your audio decoder filter is not respecting the Pause instruction. (which one are you using?). Try changing your Audio decoder in detailed setup. I would prefer not to auto- mute but may include it as a workaround.

The default is the nvidia audio decoder. I just tried SageTV MPEG audio decoder, MPEG audio decoder and Intervideo NonCSS audio decoder and they are all the same.

Would the fact my audio is being passed to the S/PDIF out have anything to do with this?

nielm · #15 04-13-2005, 09:19 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Drazi

The default is the nvidia audio decoder. I just tried SageTV MPEG audio decoder, MPEG audio decoder and Intervideo NonCSS audio decoder and they are all the same.

Would the fact my audio is being passed to the S/PDIF out have anything to do with this?

possibly... in which case does muting in Sage (clicking on the speaker icon in the OSD) actually mute the S/PDIF output?

Drazi · #16 04-13-2005, 10:27 AM

I'll check tonight. I don't normally use the Sage mute/volume controls.

JUC · #17 04-13-2005, 10:47 AM

nielm, you are probably already aware of this, but I asked mlbdude why it wasn't working in sagemc and he replied:

"Nielm just needs to make sure it works with the SageMC full screen video menu and it should be fine."

I would love to get this working on sagemc!
Thanks
JUC

Ryokurin · #18 04-13-2005, 11:20 AM

well done man! I was sitting here last week saying that reaction time fastforward and reverse would be killer. This seriously made my day!

Wheemer · #19 04-13-2005, 11:31 AM

No kidding, this works really well... Thank You!

Frey should comission you to continually pump these great changes out. Maybe if you were part of the company they'd be coming even faster, not that I'm complaining!

Drazi · #20 04-13-2005, 05:39 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by nielm

possibly... in which case does muting in Sage (clicking on the speaker icon in the OSD) actually mute the S/PDIF output?

Well this is strange. Mute only works if I use the Cayars STV. In Original, Maldude2 or SageMC 16x9 mute doesn't work at all.

Since Cayars doesn't allow stv imports I was using Maldude2 for testing.

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