STV Import: Multi-speed Continuous FF/REW

[grooves12]

I see some people got this to work fine with the nvidia decoders... however I have the most recent nvidia decoders and am getting very jumpy FF/RW using this plugin... maybe a new frame every couple of seconds.

Anything I should look at configuring to make it work better??

[zoundz]

I saw the same thing occur after installing the Win2k Rollup. Apparently something inside windows is making this occur. For me, at least, it did not appear to coincide with any particular Nvidia driver change and subsequent upgrades of the Nvidia drivers have not solved the problem.

I just gave up on the plugin.

[silkshadow]

Originally Posted by nielm

There is a play slower command in Sage (which is not mapped to a key by default, and I personally don't use), and Pause does something like frame advance, so a remote with an auto-repeating Pause key will give slow motion...

Slow motion reverse is very difficult to do in MPEG2 due to the way groups of frames are encoded, and a plugin to do slow motion forward in a similar way to this FF/REW plugin will be near-impossible given the API available. You will see that in this plugin 1x and 2x FF are not exactly smooth, so image 0.25x and 0.5x!

Ah, it was suggested to me in another thread that this plugin could be used for slow motion. I assume then that I was informed incorrectly? The play slower command does not work with the purevideo decoder and its really not that effective with a decoder that supports it (the sage one and winDVD version from a year ago), I am sorry to say. Its not really slow motion but, in fact, play slower . Meaning it goes too fast to see if a ref messed a call up or to enjoy the beauty of a Duane Wade slam in proper speed perspective.

Oh well, I will continue to use my girder slow motion script. If anyone is interested in that, feel free to PM me. But one caveat, its not that good due to the UI bars.

[jbarr]

This Plugin doesn't seem to work with V6 Beta. I enabled it, and it does display the speed indicator, but the picture just freezes and doesn't FF or REW. Pressing Play resumes play where I started.

[jryan15]

Originally Posted by jbarr

This Plugin doesn't seem to work with V6 Beta. I enabled it, and it does display the speed indicator, but the picture just freezes and doesn't FF or REW. Pressing Play resumes play where I started.

somewhat on the same note, how do you enable smooth ff and rr for 4x, 16x, 64x, etc playback? this is the first time i'm using vga output to my tv. i know it worked with the mvp...

[nielm]

Short answer, you cannot.

Longer answer: sometimes the 'play faster/slower' sagecommands work, but this is very decoder/system dependant.

(why did it work with MVP: because like dvd players, MVP's are designed to playback mpeg2 video near-perfectly)

[jryan15]

Originally Posted by nielm

Short answer, you cannot.

Longer answer: sometimes the 'play faster/slower' sagecommands work, but this is very decoder/system dependant.

(why did it work with MVP: because like dvd players, MVP's are designed to playback mpeg2 video near-perfectly)

thanks for the reply. A year ago when I was experimenting with sage on my older/slower computer, I remember from playing shows on the computer that I could smooth fast forward or rewind through various speeds. So this must have been due the decoders/system that I had (more luck than anything since I never really tried to improve the video system on the computer)?

So if I end up improving my mpeg2 playback, will the faster speeds starting working automatically? Right now it goes to 4x and will not increase. Should I be using the 'smooth ff or smooth rw' commands for forward and rewind to accomplish this?

So if the speed controlled ff/rw is not working for many people running straight off of the computer, what is everyone using to ff and rw? The time skip method?

One more thing, I am outputting straight vga to my tv, is this the recommended method, or should I change to component output? Thanks again for the help!

[nielm]

Originally Posted by jryan15

thanks for the reply. A year ago when I was experimenting with sage on my older/slower computer, I remember from playing shows on the computer that I could smooth fast forward or rewind through various speeds. So this must have been due the decoders/system that I had (more luck than anything since I never really tried to improve the video system on the computer)?

Dvd playbacksoftware (powerDVD/WinDVD etc) has full control over the entire playback/decoding sequence, and can do smooth FF/REW well because of this.

Sage and other has less control over the decoding/playback sequence, so may or may not be able to do this depending on the decoders used...

So if I end up improving my mpeg2 playback, will the faster speeds starting working automatically? Right now it goes to 4x and will not increase. Should I be using the 'smooth ff or smooth rw' commands for forward and rewind to accomplish this?

Maybe, maybe not. Video playback on windows appears to ve very fragile...
I have not yet played with Smooth FF/REW, so I have no idea how well they will work. The other commands that will only work for FF are 'Play Faster' and 'play slower'

Note that due to MPEG2 limitations, REW will almost never be smooth -- the video stream is designed to play forwards only!

So if the speed controlled ff/rw is not working for many people running straight off of the computer, what is everyone using to ff and rw? The time skip method?!

I made this plugin (that this thread deals with) do automatic repeated short time skips to simulate 'semi-smooth' FF/REW. It is very very decoder-dependant, and works OK with Sage decoder and MPEG2, works terribly on MPEG4.

At some point I intend to updated it so that at slow speeds it uses Play Faster/Slower, and at faster speeds it skips...

[jbarr]

Originally Posted by jryan15

So if the speed controlled ff/rw is not working for many people running straight off of the computer, what is everyone using to ff and rw? The time skip method?!

I assign the FF2 button to skip ahead 30 seconds, and the REW2 button to jump back 7 seconds mimicing the way ReplayTV handles it. I find this combination to be very, very useful. Tivo has different skip values, and if you use a Cable company-provided DVR like Moxi, the skip value can vary greatly depending on how the Cable company sets it.

As for the FF and REW buttons, I have them configured to skip forward 60 seconds and jump backwards 60 seconds.

In all cases, holding down the buttons "repeats" the skips, giving you choppy, but quite effective FF and REW navigation. I find the 60 second skip to be a good balance--I can power through a movie pretty quickly, yet still see what's happening.

[jryan15]

thanks for the feedback. i currently use the chapter fwd and chapter rwd button for commercial skipping (mapped to custom 4 and 5). i hoping to find a better solution to ff and rw using only those two buttons. i don't really need the smooth function, the multi-speed continuous would be great if i could get it to work on v6.

[nielm]

Posted a 1.4 version that works with the Sage v6 beta.

I also had a change to install the Nvidia decoder trial, but I could note get it to work so well: the Nvidia decoder takes so long to render a frame after a skip that you have to set the delay to huge values (1s)...

[davidk21770]

It seems to be working well with the beta, but when I went from 6.0.12 -> 6.0.14, the sound stopped unmuting.

[pmiller]

Just upgraded to v6 and decided to go with SageMC, I found some posts that indicated that the Multi-Speed FF/REW would work. I have gotten used to the functionality and would miss it if I can't get it to work.
Wanted to check to see if it should work or not ?

The first thing I see is that SageMC only seems to look for .xml to import and doesn't find the .stvi file at import time.

Thanks;

[artbatista]

same problem here. Sage TV does not see it at all. Looks for XML only...

Art

[MeInMaui]

Originally Posted by artbatista

same problem here. Sage TV does not see it at all. Looks for XML only...

Art

Just change the .stvi extension to .xml and you should be good to go. There is no difference in the actual files.

Aloha,
Mike

[LaoChe]

I might just be doing something wrong but this isn't working for me. It seems to be set up OK - when I enable it and press FF I see the 8X but it doesn't advance at all. When I hold down FF it scrolls through to 128X but still no movement. Stop & Play both work fine so the whole system's not locking up. I'm running Win2k on an AMD opteron 2GB ram latest java update. Any thoughts?

Thanks.

[nielm]

check whick version of the plugin and Sage that you have -- only certain plugin versions work with certain Sage versions...

[LaoChe]

i don't know if i'm just making this worse... I did have the wrong version so I added the new version. That didn't seem to work so I went into Sage Studio and deleted the earlier hook but still doesn't work. Unfortunately I made a bunch of other changes in studio at the same time so I don't want to go back to an earlier version. Is this fixable?

Thanks.

[skyw33]

I have SageTV 6.0.18, SageMC 6.3.2 and the plugin version 1.4. The import process went fine (I just renamed the stvi file to xml), and I can configure the options in the "Customize" section of the detailed setup. However, when I attempt to fast forward or rewind, there is no change from the default sagetv behavior. I.e. it's acting as though it's disabled even after enabling it. Any suggestions? By the way, the multi speed options window says that it is v1.2 even though I installed v1.4 and have never installed any other version.

[nielm]

Originally Posted by LaoChe

i don't know if i'm just making this worse... I did have the wrong version so I added the new version. That didn't seem to work so I went into Sage Studio and deleted the earlier hook but still doesn't work. Unfortunately I made a bunch of other changes in studio at the same time so I don't want to go back to an earlier version. Is this fixable?

As with all my imports, you cannot re-import over the top of an earlier version -- you need to start with an STV that does not have the import in it at all...

Fixable? uh... maybe... You need to go into studio and manually uninstall by deleting all widget trees beginning with:

Actions:
"Link to all listeners except play and pause and FF/REW"
"Link to Play and Pause listeners"
"Link to FF set DisplayTimeStatus when not time scrolling"
"Link to REW set DisplayTimeStatus when not time scrolling"
"Add to MediaPlayer OSD"

Attributes (children of MediaPlayerOSD)
MultiSpeedSkip
MultiSpeedSkipSeekStartTime
MultiSpeedSkipWasMuted
MultiSpeedSkipSeekTargetTime

You also need to delete the follow widget trees (including the hook itself)
MediaPlayerOSD/BeforeMenuUnload hook
MediaPlayerOSD/MediaPlayerSeekCompleted hook

And finally, delete
Panel MultiSpeedSkipOptions (and children) in detailed Setup.

Once this is done, save the STV as a different name (to be on the safe side) and re-import, and it should be working again.