Plugin: Sage Recording Extender (SRE)

[Slugger]

Today's snapshot build 464 adds an auto substitution for the MLB parser that will automatically substitute "Oakland A's" for "Oakland Athletics". Seems the Sage EPG users the former while ESPN uses the latter. This fix means that users wishing to monitor games involving Oakland will not need to create an override for each game.

[Slugger]

SRE v2.1.3 is now available. With the warm weather finally arriving to the north, I expect this to be the last official release of SRE for some time (i.e. until the fall). However, please continue to add your bug and feature request issue tickets at the project web site. Major bugs, such as event monitor bugs, will be addressed throughout the summer as needed. Also, other issue tickets could be addressed and delivered as snapshot builds - as long as you create the tickets - as rainy days are sure to pop up throughout the summer.

Official v2.1.3 Builds Released

26 Apr 2009: The official v2.1.3 release of SRE is now posted for download. This release fixes issues with the MLB monitor. All users of SRE are encouraged to upgrade to this new version.

• Fix MLB monitor to automatically substitute "Oakland A's" with "Oakland Athletics"; this eliminates the need to create manual overrides to monitor games involving Oakland.
• Fix typo in MLB monitor that prevented proper monitoring of games involving the Arizona Diamondbacks

[Shield]

Just updated this, but:

2009-05-11 04:24:02 Unable to find status for Los Angeles Lakers at Houston Rockets 2009-05-11 04:24:02 NBA Basketball --> Invalid monitor; parser may be obsolete 2009-05-11 04:22:59 Found 1 active recordings.

[Slugger]

Originally Posted by Shield

Just updated this, but:

2009-05-11 04:24:02 Unable to find status for Los Angeles Lakers at Houston Rockets 2009-05-11 04:24:02 NBA Basketball --> Invalid monitor; parser may be obsolete 2009-05-11 04:22:59 Found 1 active recordings.

Were you recording a replay of the game that started early in the morning? SRE uses the airing start time to get the date for loading the ESPN scoreboard. So if you started recording a replay at like 1am this morning then SRE will get confused.

[Shield]

Originally Posted by Slugger

Were you recording a replay of the game that started early in the morning? SRE uses the airing start time to get the date for loading the ESPN scoreboard. So if you started recording a replay at like 1am this morning then SRE will get confused.

Thanks. Looks like it worked for the next NBA game. But it did NOT pad the recording for the Saturday Fox baseball game between The Indians and TB....

Log:

2009-05-16 19:07:00 Found 1 active recordings. 2009-05-16 19:07:00 Failure to Launch --> Too early to check status 2009-05-16 19:07:00 Unset manual recording flag for media file '5340284' 2009-05-16 19:02:00 No monitor due to orig air date violation 2009-05-16 19:02:00 Found 2 active recordings. 2009-05-16 19:02:00 MLB Baseball --> Event is not over; nothing to be done. 2009-05-16 19:02:00 Failure to Launch --> No monitor 2009-05-16 18:57:00 Found 2 active recordings. 2009-05-16 18:57:00 No monitor due to orig air date violation 2009-05-16 18:57:00 The King of Queens --> No monitor 2009-05-16 18:57:00 MLB Baseball --> Event is not over; nothing to be done.

[Slugger]

It's a little hard to follow along with the log when spaced like that. Next time surround the log with code tags.

Padding is only applied if the game data cannot be found or the game data is found and the recording needs to be extended.

[Shield]

Originally Posted by Slugger

It's a little hard to follow along with the log when spaced like that. Next time surround the log with code tags.

Padding is only applied if the game data cannot be found or the game data is found and the recording needs to be extended.

It was just the regular Fox Saturday baseball game - nationally broadcast - any idea why it wouldn't be found?

[Slugger]

Originally Posted by Shield

It was just the regular Fox Saturday baseball game - nationally broadcast - any idea why it wouldn't be found?

A few reasons:

• Temporary outage with your Internet connection and/or espn.com
• The EPG data listed the game as "Teams TBA", which can happen occasionally with national broadcasts (though rare during reg season)
• ESPN was fiddling with their web pages, which can cause parsing errors

The first two are the likely causes and the last one is far fetched, though not impossible. Though if it's an inet down kind of issue then SRE should just default to padding the recording based on your settings. The logs you pasted don't show that it couldn't find game data. When that happens, the logs show an error like:

"Unable to find status for 'Toronto Blue Jays at Boston Red Sox'; parser may be obsolete"

Did you find such errors in your logs?

[Slugger]

The NASCAR monitor is broken in all versions of SRE as ESPN.com is deciding not to update the web pages until after the race is over. I personally don't watch NASCAR so my motivation to fix it (if there is even a fix to be had, other than removing it) is low at this time. Is there anyone using it and needs it fixed (or removed if I can't fix it)? No replies means I'll probably just leave it broken until I get the urge to remove it at some point during the summer.

EDIT: Snapshot 478+ removes the NASCAR monitor from SRE and is available now.

[spacecadet]

Odd occurrence tonight... SRE stopped a recording before the game had ended. SRE had previously extended the recording by 15 minutes, but at approximately 10:15, SRE removed the manual recording flag and the recording was ended.

Here is the content from the SRE log (there was no data in the Sage Server log that looked to be of interest):

2009-06-23 22:20:59 No active recordings found. 
2009-06-23 22:16:20 Found 1 active recordings. 
2009-06-23 22:16:20 MLB Baseball --> Event is not over; recording extended. 
2009-06-23 22:16:20 Unset manual recording flag for media file '4836520' 
2009-06-23 22:09:12 Found 1 active recordings. 
2009-06-23 22:09:12 MLB Baseball --> Event is not over; recording extended.

Any thoughts as to what might have happened here? At 22:16:20, SRE decided to extended the recording, but then promptly unset the manual recording flag.

[Slugger]

I have an idea as to the problem, but not sure I'll have time to look at this for the rest of the week, maybe first thing in the morning if I get up early enough (I'm about to move out of city so this week is rather busy). I'll definitely try to fix it asap as it's a rather major issue. Can you open an issue ticket for this please? Doing so means you'll get a notice as soon as I check in the fix.

[Slugger]

Try snapshot 485, should fix the problem.

[spacecadet]

Originally Posted by Slugger

Try snapshot 485, should fix the problem.

You are fast! Thanks!

You fixed this before I had a chance to go in and log the issue. That's great service.

I'll let you know if I encounter any further issues.

[PiX64]

Hey Everyone.

I have never used this plugin as I am not an avid sports fan, but was wondering if there is any way to tweak this plugin to so that it will care for LIVE TV shows such as American Idol....

~Mike

[rmac321]

Originally Posted by PiX64

I have never used this plugin as I am not an avid sports fan, but was wondering if there is any way to tweak this plugin to so that it will care for LIVE TV shows such as American Idol....
~Mike

It would be really cool if there was a way for a plugin to be able to find out if an entire evenings lineup has been shifted due to a sporting event (or American Idol) that ran long earlier in the day and adjust/pad as appropriate.

A boy can dream...

[Slugger]

Originally Posted by PiX64

Hey Everyone.

I have never used this plugin as I am not an avid sports fan, but was wondering if there is any way to tweak this plugin to so that it will care for LIVE TV shows such as American Idol....

~Mike

Yes, it can, but only if you can find a (near) real time source on the web that reports when the show is definitely over and that source can be parsed (i.e. not flash based). If you can find that then adding the monitor for any live event is straightforward.

[Slugger]

Originally Posted by rmac321

It would be really cool if there was a way for a plugin to be able to find out if an entire evenings lineup has been shifted due to a sporting event (or American Idol) that ran long earlier in the day and adjust/pad as appropriate.

A boy can dream...

This post will tell you why this is not so easy and therefore why such functionality is not in this plugin.

[PiX64]

Is it possible to analyze the recording stream in order to look for identifiers which may allow the plugin to extend recording?

Not sure about broadcast streams, but i know with services such as AT&T Uverse there is GUID that is embedded in the packets which signifythe stream info. When that GUID is gone for x amount of time, new show has started...

[Slugger]

Originally Posted by PiX64

Is it possible to analyze the recording stream in order to look for identifiers which may allow the plugin to extend recording?

Not sure about broadcast streams, but i know with services such as AT&T Uverse there is GUID that is embedded in the packets which signifythe stream info. When that GUID is gone for x amount of time, new show has started...

Certainly not impossible, I suppose, but would require way more time and effort than I have available for hobby programming. (Now convince my employer this is a worthy cause and maybe we're on to something)

In all seriousness, dealing with the raw video stream and analyzing it doesn't even really interest me all that much so there's about a zero chance that'll ever happen. Again, find live, near real time sources of info on the web that can be parsed with relative ease and I'm more than willing to add such monitors to this plugin.

[PiX64]

Cool, was just curious. When i get some free time in the next few weeks here I will start looking into it. Ok for me to contact you to help me get started? I havent' done any development for SAGE yet...

This may be an over zealous place to start but meh....


:-)