SageMC Feature Requests

[gveres]

Originally Posted by MeInMaui

That's supposed to be what it does now. If you are having issues with it, start a new thread with all of the relevent details and maybe a debug log.

Aloha,
Mike

Thanks Mike.

I tried it again today and sure enough it worked. I don't get it because I am positive it wasn't working before. I upgraded to 6.4 a couple nights ago. Maybe that "fixed" something.

Anyway, it works as expected.

Greg

[tedson]

Two more things that would be nice...

* Be able to specify first air date as the trigger for a recording (i.e. only record it on the first day it airs rather than using the firstrun flag)

* A setting to automatically mark an item as watched before deleting it.

[MeInMaui]

Originally Posted by tedson

Two more things that would be nice...

* Be able to specify first air date as the trigger for a recording (i.e. only record it on the first day it airs rather than using the firstrun flag)

This is something that would probably require changes to the SageTV core. I would even know how to begin mucking around with SageTV's scheduling algorithms.

* A setting to automatically mark an item as watched before deleting it.

I think if you use the stop pop-up, one of the options is to 'Set Watched and Delete'.

Aloha,
Mike

[MeInMaui]

Originally Posted by gveres

Hi Mike - here are my thoughts on this. Take it or leave it.

Hmmm I don't know what percentage based means. If I know that I want to jump to 47 minutes into the show, what percentage is that? I can see that doing that is easy to do because you just have to capture 1 key and act on it but I don't see that its overly useful. I guess the point is that it gets you close and then you use the skip forward and back from there?

Having the numbers change channel is a good thing, but only when you are watching live tv. It doesn't make any sense when you are watching a recorded show.

My $.02
Greg

I like the % approach because I never know the exact minute I'm looking for anyway, and it only requires the single press. I usually just want to jump the the beginning (press 0) or to the middle (press 5), etc.

However, it probably wouldn't be too difficult to add the functionality that you are describing as well. I could just add an option to select between the % or time based jump method in OSD Screen Specific Settings. In either case, you will have to bring up the time bar first (you can do this by just pressing play, for example) and then do the numeric entry.

I'll see what I can do.

Aloha,
Mike

[MeInMaui]

Quick follow-up question. For jump-to times greater than an hour, would it make more sense to enter the time (for example 2hrs 7min) in minutes (i.e. 127) or hours and minutes (i.e. 207)? Minutes would be easier to code, but which is more intuitive? Thanks.

Aloha,
Mike

[mickp]

Minutes would make more sense to me.

Mick.

[MeInMaui]

Thanks to a great suggestion by Andy , there will be a second time jump mode available in which you enter the time to jump to in minutes and then press FF or REW to execute the jump. This can be done at any time during playback and will not require the time bar to be visible. If a time beyond the end of the media file is entered, it will jump to 1 minute before the end of the file. This mode will be the default setting. The 'Percent' mode will also still be available as previously described.

Aloha,
Mike

[ke6guj]

I would like to see complete path listings for my recordings and imported videos like I can with the defaultUI. I have my stuff spread over seven drives, so if want to find something outside of sage, I have to search through many drives before I find it.

[jaminben]

I'm proberly going to get flamed to bits for saying this but here goes anyway.

I've just installed Media Portal's newly released RC3 and I have to say "WOW". The UI looks so much better than Sagemc & VMC (IMO) and I'd love to see some of those features built into Sagemc or the default UI.

I know I'm being very shallow about the cosmetic looks of the application and I should be content that I have a completly solid setup at the moment something that I could never achieve with MP when I first tried it. However this doesnt take away the fact that I'd still like to see Sage's UI or Sagemc move in this direction.

Anyway if your wondering what I'm talking about go and install MP and take a look for yourself, I'd especially recommend looking at the My Videos display and the TV series add-in.

Ok, Flame away

[gveres]

Originally Posted by MeInMaui

I like the % approach because I never know the exact minute I'm looking for anyway, and it only requires the single press. I usually just want to jump the the beginning (press 0) or to the middle (press 5), etc.

However, it probably wouldn't be too difficult to add the functionality that you are describing as well. I could just add an option to select between the % or time based jump method in OSD Screen Specific Settings. In either case, you will have to bring up the time bar first (you can do this by just pressing play, for example) and then do the numeric entry.

I'll see what I can do.

Aloha,
Mike

I can see your point. Completely different use cases and I see your use case - you don't really know where you want to be. In my use case I do know exactly where I want to go.

Your suggestion would be great.

Greg

[gveres]

Originally Posted by MeInMaui

Thanks to a great suggestion by Andy , there will be a second time jump mode available in which you enter the time to jump to in minutes and then press FF or REW to execute the jump. This can be done at any time during playback and will not require the time bar to be visible. If a time beyond the end of the media file is entered, it will jump to 1 minute before the end of the file. This mode will be the default setting. The 'Percent' mode will also still be available as previously described.

Aloha,
Mike

I am trying to understand what you are implementing.

Are you saying that while I am watching the movie, without the time bar up, I hit 2 and then 3. At this point, it starts to look like I am changing channels but then I either hit FF to jump forward 23 minutes or I use REW to jump backwards 23 minutes?

If I had hit the Enter button, then it would have changed channels?

Greg

[MeInMaui]

Originally Posted by gveres

I am trying to understand what you are implementing.

Are you saying that while I am watching the movie, without the time bar up, I hit 2 and then 3. At this point, it starts to look like I am changing channels but then I either hit FF to jump forward 23 minutes or I use REW to jump backwards 23 minutes?

If I had hit the Enter button, then it would have changed channels?

Greg

If you hit 2 and 3 and then press either FF or REW (doesn't matter which), it will jump to the 23 minute point in the timeline. If you don't press FF or REW before the numbers time out, it will behave just as it does now. This will work whether the time bar is visible or not.

If you press enter instead, it will change channels where appropriate just like it does now.

Aloha,
Mike

[gveres]

Ok, here is another one. Due to the way that Sage treats padding as extending the show and not something that can be ignored for back to back shows, I spent about 10 minutes with my wife this morning trying to figure out we we all of a sudden had a bunch of conflicts.

This showed me how difficult it is to use the Schedule (Conflicts) screen to see what the heck is going to be recorded.

I have an idea on how this screen could be more usable.

Right now I have 4 conflicts. They are all Kim Possible (yes I have kids ). I have the first item selected and the text on the bottom of the screen shows the details of the episode that will not be recorded. This is great and useful information. But what would have helped even more is to show me the list of shows that are going to be recorded instead of this show and the time range of that show. This way I don't have to go into the particular episode to figure out what is going to be recorded.

I can see two ways of doing this. I can see toggling back and forth with Ctrl-I (right now it turns on and off the HD space bar). The other way is to make the list of conflicts shorter to make room for this extra info. I don't think I need to see a huge list of conflicts, the other info is more important.

Now having said that, I would rather see neilm add a new conflict / upcoming recording screen to his webserver. Recently BTV added a really great view that shows two weeks of a calendar and lays out the upcoming shows on the calendar. When there are conflicts it shows those on there too. This makes it very easy to see visually what the problem is.

Greg

[MeInMaui]

@gveres

FYI, you can disable padding on back-to-back favorites in Detailed Setup.

Aloha,
Mike

[gveres]

Originally Posted by MeInMaui

If you hit 2 and 3 and then press either FF or REW (doesn't matter which), it will jump to the 23 minute point in the timeline. If you don't press FF or REW before the numbers time out, it will behave just as it does now. This will work whether the time bar is visible or not.

If you press enter instead, it will change channels where appropriate just like it does now.

Aloha,
Mike

that sounds great.

Greg

[gveres]

Originally Posted by MeInMaui

@gveres

FYI, you can disable padding on back-to-back favorites in Detailed Setup.

Aloha,
Mike

Yes but that only works on recordings on the same channel. Back to back recordings are rarely on the same channel.

Greg

[MeInMaui]

Originally Posted by gveres

Yes but that only works on recordings on the same channel. Back to back recordings are rarely on the same channel.

Greg

Good point.

[gveres]

Ok, I have another one.

First, is there a way to say that I want to record a movie and have the scheduler pick the best airing of that movie? I have the TMN in canada and they air the movies many times during the month. I would like to say "record Iron Man whenever you can fit it in"

I can't seem to do that on SageMC. Based on Mike's suggestion of using Search to record movies, I find that I do the following:

select search
select title
type in the title
select the entry in the list to the right.

at this point it gives me a list of airings. I have to select one of those airings and then I can select record.

There are two problems with this workflow.
1) it forces me to select one of the particular airings. I don't have the recording schedule in my head so I have no idea which one I should pick.
2) when I go to select one of these airings, I don't see what shows are airing at that time.

So I guess I have two feature requests:
1) is it possible to add a movie to the scheduler without telling it which specific airing I want to record
2) when looking at a particular airing, is it possible to show what will be recording at that time. It would be great if the bottom of the screen shows me the series information and a line with the name of the show that will be recorded at that time. It has to be visible in the list of airings screen because I need to scroll down the list of airings and pick the one that doesn't conflict with any other recordings. It would be impossible to use if I had to select the airing to go into a screen for that particular airing to get the information.

Thanks
Greg

[setherd]

if it hasn't been asked yet.... I love the
"play all" feature in the basic STV. I use it to playy all the videos in a folder i.e. all the futurama episodes I have saved.

my #1 request.... a release date!

[mikesm]

Originally Posted by jaminben

I'm proberly going to get flamed to bits for saying this but here goes anyway.

I've just installed Media Portal's newly released RC3 and I have to say "WOW". The UI looks so much better than Sagemc & VMC (IMO) and I'd love to see some of those features built into Sagemc or the default UI.

I know I'm being very shallow about the cosmetic looks of the application and I should be content that I have a completly solid setup at the moment something that I could never achieve with MP when I first tried it. However this doesnt take away the fact that I'd still like to see Sage's UI or Sagemc move in this direction.

Anyway if your wondering what I'm talking about go and install MP and take a look for yourself, I'd especially recommend looking at the My Videos display and the TV series add-in.

Ok, Flame away

I'm trying to understand exactly what features you are dso impressed by. Is it the integration of fanart so that the backgrounds switch around to something "sexy" specific to the artist or movie of TV series when you go into a submenu?

Or is it how graphics are used in the main display of the menu - all the 3D tiling of covers or episodes, etc...?

One thing that I personally think would improve the usability of SageMC is to automatically partition recordings into TV series vs Movies, and have them stored in two separate menus. Right now, my TV recordings menu is very cluttered, as it has both TV series in it (which is hierarchical in display, first you select the series folder, and then you get a display of the eipisodes), vs movies which have no hierarchy. I think it should be possible to od this partitioning based on the metadata stored for the program. TV specials and other one offs might be a problem - maybe unless they are explicitly defined as a movie they stay in the TV recordings file.

I have about 9 TB of storage for Sage, and about 2400 recordings, so trying to keep the primary UI's de-cluttered takes some work. I can manually move movie recordings to a folder that's indexed under Videos, but then I have to change the name of the recording to break the link to the movie's metadata, because if I fail to do that, then it still shows up in the recordings folder. But once I do that, I them have to manually scan it against IMDB to restore the metadata that I wiped out by changing the name. So it would be nice to get this cleaned up...

My apologies if I missed something and am doing things the hard way.

Oh yes, one other point. Mediaportal has a nice standalone utility to grab artist pictures (as opposed to album covers) from audioscrobbler and last.fm, which could be integrated to run against the Sage database instead of the MP one. You can read about that here: http://forum.team-mediaportal.com/li...ailable-29263/. It would be handy to be able to generate a picture of the artist in the music library when a sort by artist view is selected.

thx
mike