Plex Scanner and BMT Agent for SageTV

[PiX64]

I have been testing the new supported app with what we built, and I must say it is an even more attractive solution as a sage extension. Its super fast ui, and the bugs which were present in the betas of unsupported aps sem to be gone. HD plays back like a champ, and I am seriously impressed.

The plex scanners and agent are working wonderfully. I will be updating the code for the movie scanner with similiar code that i put in the tv scanner which allows for mutliple files for the same show created by sage to be in one container and presented as 1 element in plex.

seriously...check out the new supported ap.

[darcilicious]

NICE! I love it!

And looking forward to the updated movie scanner too

[PiX64]

I made a short demo video for kricker and put it on youtube. here is the link.. IT shows the speed and what info is pulled from bmt via our integration. It does not show how to set it up or anythinging like that.

I had a lot of things going on to the speed isn't a true comparion.. VPN for work, etc.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TutRH7H4neE

[wayner]

Any issues with playback on Plex on Roku for any types of files - do HD-PVR, MPEG-2 HD (From OTA), MPEG-2 SD, MKV etc all play back on this device.

Is the Roku now a better device for using Plex than an ATV2?

[PiX64]

Originally Posted by wayner

Any issues with playback on Plex on Roku for any types of files - do HD-PVR, MPEG-2 HD (From OTA), MPEG-2 SD, MKV etc all play back on this device.

Is the Roku now a better device for using Plex than an ATV2?

Only issue i have had is with full 1080P MKV bluray rips. All my sage recordings wich are full 1080i or 720p OTA HD are perfectly fine. Darci has been successful with hdpvr playback as well. I don't have any, but she did send me a 20 second or so full hd clip from an HDPVR recording which played back on my system perfectly fine.

I still like the roku solution because i don't have to hack anything. atv2 you have to jailbreak it and go from there. roku just works. Especially now with the support roky channel app for plex its a cleaner solution in my mind.

That being said i much prefer the plex atv2 interface. its slick, uses much more metadata and fanart/backgrounds, and it just prettier :-)

[darcilicious]

Originally Posted by wayner

Any issues with playback on Plex on Roku for any types of files - do HD-PVR, MPEG-2 HD (From OTA), MPEG-2 SD, MKV etc all play back on this device.

Playback is great but stuff will get transcoded as needed based on your Roku client. The Roku XS does "Video: MP4 (H.264) MKV (H.264)" from USB so I'm assuming those formats play without transcoding.

You can also set the playback controls as well from the Roku Plex client which includes an option for Direct Stream. I haven't done a lot of testing but it is possible to playback 1080i (with 5.1 audio) HD-PVR recordings from my AMD quadcore server where PMS is installed.

It seems kind of hard to determine the exact spes for file formats supported (without transcoding) with the Roku / Plex combination just now though...

[PiX64]

Originally Posted by darcilicious

Playback is great but stuff will get transcoded as needed based on your Roku client. The Roku XS does "Video: MP4 (H.264) MKV (H.264)" from USB so I'm assuming those formats play without transcoding.

You can also set the playback controls as well from the Roku Plex client which includes an option for Direct Stream. I haven't done a lot of testing but it is possible to playback 1080i (with 5.1 audio) HD-PVR recordings from my AMD quadcore server where PMS is installed.

It seems kind of hard to determine the exact spes for file formats supported (without transcoding) with the Roku / Plex combination just now though...

I should have mentioned also that you can do direct play and direct stream, and a few other options now directly from the playback screen ont he roky app. before you had to setup it globally and if something didn't work you had to exit out and go to global settings, then back into the video, etc.

see the very crude (sorry for that) youtube video i posted above. 3/4 of the way through it shows the options for transcoding and direct play/ direct stream.

[wayner]

Is there any difference between an ATV and a Roku in terms of ability to playback files and/or skip fwd, etc? I am thinking about buying an ATV, either a 2 or 3, as I think the AirPlay functionality would be useful as we have several iPads in the house.

[PiX64]

Originally Posted by wayner

Is there any difference between an ATV and a Roku in terms of ability to playback files and/or skip fwd, etc? I am thinking about buying an ATV, either a 2 or 3, as I think the AirPlay functionality would be useful as we have several iPads in the house.

Not that I am aware of. Both require your content to be transcoded on the fly for the most part. word of caution with the ATV3 is that it has not yet been jailbroken. I believe this is the longest it has taken the collective genius minds out there to jailbreak it.

Airplay is super nice and i def. understand why you would like to utlize that.

[PiX64]

I installed plex on my ubuntu64 bit machine yesterday and when putting the scanner and agent into action I uncovered a small bug with the agent. It was not forumlating the URL to sagex correctly. Brian quickly fixed this and it is currently running perfectly on my machine. Once i finish my testing ill make another build with the new code and put it out on the google code repos.

~Mike

[PiX64]

I just wanted to post that i changed my playback settings on the roky to DiretPlay w/Fallback. This is much less CPU intensive, and I am happy to report that with VPN for work going, wife and kiddo streaming stuff off of sage server, downloads going, ROKU connected via wifi, i have been smoothly streaming a full 1080p bluray to the roky.

WOOT!

[darcilicious]

Originally Posted by PiX64

I just wanted to post that i changed my playback settings on the roky to DiretPlay w/Fallback. This is much less CPU intensive [...] i have been smoothly streaming a full 1080p bluray to the roky.

WOOT!

Nice! What audio/video formats are your blurays encoded with and what container is being used?

I've been meaning to play around with the settings soon -- there's a poll going on over at the Plex forums in the Roku section regarding what the default action for transcoding should be for x264/mkv files should be. And I will mention that I played the first x264/mkv file (40mins) fine but the second crashed the Roku in about 5 minutes into playback (using the default transcode settings in the Roku Plex app).

[PiX64]

Originally Posted by darcilicious

Nice! What audio/video formats are your blurays encoded with and what container is being used?

I've been meaning to play around with the settings soon -- there's a poll going on over at the Plex forums in the Roku section regarding what the default action for transcoding should be for x264/mkv files should be. And I will mention that I played the first x264/mkv file (40mins) fine but the second crashed the Roku in about 5 minutes into playback (using the default transcode settings in the Roku Plex app).

bluray rip via AnyDvdHD and mkv container via MakeMKV.

Sorry forgot

its a Amd phenom II x4 965 with 4GB of DDR 3 running Ubuntu 11.10 64 bit

[kricker]

Originally Posted by PiX64

.....
Airplay is super nice and i def. understand why you would like to utlize that.

Or some awesome guy could port this over to XBMC as well which does have airplay support (nudge, nudge)

[PiX64]

Originally Posted by kricker

Or some awesome guy could port this over to XBMC as well which does have airplay support (nudge, nudge)

ha. xbmc doesn't run on roku, xbmc does run on atv2 but from my experience lackluster at best, and thats all i got :-)

I will try and find time to look into the xbmc port of this code.

Brian you wanna help :-)

[kricker]

Originally Posted by PiX64

ha. xbmc doesn't run on roku, xbmc does run on atv2 but from my experience lackluster at best, and thats all i got :-)

touché. But there is something very cool coming, but I can not discuss it at this moment. And I do not know how long out it is.

[PiX64]

Originally Posted by kricker

touché. But there is something very cool coming, but I can not discuss it at this moment. And I do not know how long out it is.

Man you kinda sound like Narflex and the other Sage Googlers...somethin gAWESOME is coming, but i won't tell you what

:-)

you working for google now too?

[kricker]

Originally Posted by PiX64

Man you kinda sound like Narflex and the other Sage Googlers...somethin gAWESOME is coming, but i won't tell you what

:-)

you working for google now too?

Nope. I'm not speaking about Sage and Google. I'm talking about something else I mentioned above

[PiX64]

Instead of doing a full release for this minor linux code update, we are just doing a patch which basically consits of this:

1) Go to google code site
2) Download __init__.py for BMTAgent
3) replace existing bmtagent init.py with the new one
4) restart plex
5) done and done.

[tsitalon1]

Pix,

I need a little troubleshooting help.

I've installed all required components and have it all partially working.

I say partially because Plex media manager is able to see all my video's in the video import directory. It assumes it's all movies, but I don't care.

My problem is when I create the "recorded tv" library and configure it to point to my sagetv recorded tv directory, it scans it for like 10 seconds and reports no files. I can assure you there is over 500gb of video files in there.

Can you tell me where to look?

I do have that library set to use the Sagetv Scanner and BMT agent.

Thanks for your help!