Major changes in Studio for v6.4

[Opus4]

There are some major changes to the SageTV Studio for v6.4 that I would like to point out:

• All edits in Studio are much faster due to a major performance optimization that allows the Studio window to refresh much quicker. Moving widgets up/down, adding them, etc. operate MUCH more quickly now.
  
  
• Primary widget references are now persistent -- if you save an STV, exit SageTV, restart SageTV, then reload the STV, all primary references will still be where you left them.
  
  
• All widgets have a UID and a UID prefix. All newly added widgets will use the current prefix for their assigned 'prefix-UID' identification. The prefix is customizable via the "Tools -> Edit Widget UID Prefix..." menu item -- use the prefix to set your own ID so you can easily tell which widgets you have added.
  
  And, how do you tell which ones you have added, or which ones were added by someone else? Use the new "Tools -> Display Widget UIDs" menu item to see all the UIDs.
  
  
• There is a new STV difference option: "Tools -> STV UID File Difference...". This tool will create a complete difference between two STV files, which is much more thorough than the old difference tool.
  
  What is this good for? The UID difference results window has a "Generate STVI" button, which will automatically create an STVi file that can be imported into the old STV file to update it to match the newer STV currently loaded in Studio. You can create patches and updates for other users or a co-developer much more easily this way.
  
  BTW: the "Tools -> STV Lexical File Difference..." menu item is the same as the older difference tool.

There are quite a few additional Studio changes in the v6.4 release notes, but I couldn't resist bringing extra attention to the ones above.

See the release notes for many new or updated API calls & other changes.


- Andy

[jusjoken]

Wow. The new studio function worked great for my first simple STVI that I created after a fairly minimal change to the color of the OSD widgets. The import of the STVI also worked great.

However, I ran into an issue with an update I was making to sections of my STV that had been previously imported (they were in the Dynamic Menu import menus). The STVI imported without a problem on the Client with the same STV where I had imported the Dynamic Menus. However, on the server, where I also had the same Dynamic Menu imported, this newly created STVI would not import. By looking at the STVI and the STV it would seem this is because the UID for the Dynamic Menus are different between the 2 STVs where the Dynamic Menus were imported, and therefore the new STVI could not find a match during import.

Is this expected, or am I missing something. If this is the default behaviour, then only changes to the CORE STV could work for this STVI generator.

Ken

[Opus4]

I'll ask about that since that made me curious too... but it sounds expected if the previous import process had created different UIDs on each system & those imported widgets were the ones you were basing your modifications on. I'll have to see if there is anything to be done in that case.

- Andy

[Opus4]

BTW: I've heard that if the custom import has been saved with the latest version of SageTV, then its UIDs would get updated and should work with the new auto-import generation.

You could try simply opening & saving the custom import in Studio, then import it into your STV & make your changes.

In the future, it would probably help for authors to save the imports in v6.4 in order to have the permanent UIDs assigned in them, then re-upload them for others to use.

- Andy

[JREkiwi]

Originally Posted by Opus4

BTW: I've heard that if the custom import has been saved with the latest version of SageTV, then its UIDs would get updated and should work with the new auto-import generation.

That certainly appears to be true. The imports I've tried all maintain their UIDs independent of the import method used. Of course they need to have had a UID in order to maintain it, which is where the next bit comes in.

Originally Posted by Opus4

In the future, it would probably help for authors to save the imports in v6.4 in order to have the permanent UIDs assigned in them, then re-upload them for others to use.

Just need to be aware if an author is wanting to maintain consistency that the generated UID Prefix is a properties value, so by default is different if switching between service and non-service mode or between machines.

John

[jusjoken]

I retested my STVI creation given this new infomation.

- I first opened the Dynamic Menu in studio and saved it as a different name
- I then imported the new Dynamic Menu STVI on my client
- I then made my modifications and created an STVI using the new UID differences
- I was then able to repeat the process of importing the new Dynamic Menu STVI and my update STVI on my server without any issues

Great new feature

Ken

[Opus4]

BTW: The v6.4 Studio manual can be downloaded here (right click & choose "Save Target As..."):

SageTV Studio v6.4 Manual, revision C

Chapter 1 contains info about the changes for this manual.

- Andy