MCEBuddy Sage Plex Roku

[massmanjr]

Over the past few weeks I've been using MCEBuddy to monitor my SageTV recordings and convert the files to MP4, for playback by Plex via Roku 3. The process has been near flawless. I've been very impressed with MCEBuddy, which properly renames the files, so that Plex can pick them up with their standard scanner/agent (Plex Series Scanner/TVDB agent). I had previously tried the SageTV scanner/BMT Agent but had limited/poor results. Plex does not 'play nicely' with MPG files and has to 'transcode on the fly' in order to play back the files. I had mixed results playing MPG files and using Plex's 'transcode on the fly' option. By converting to MP4, Plex can play the file via direct play, and start/fast-forward/rewind are near-instant. Plus MCEBuddy has 'comskip', stripping the commercials from the file, thereby reducing the final file size. For the first time, I feel like I have a viable 'post-SageTV' solution when my HD300s crap-out. It's sad that 2015 is a couple days away and a true SageTV competitor/solution isn't out there yet. Granted, I haven't tried TabloTV, which I've read some good things about.

The main drawback to the MCEBuddy route is the 'wait time' to allow the file to be transcoded. This mainly impacts me with sporting events, as all other TV shows are generally watched by the family at least a day after the live/original show. I let MCEBuddy run through the night, so today's shows are available tomorrow for viewing.

[nyplayer]

There are other Options.. SageTV is the worst media player out there not keeping up with the new codecs etc.. not sure if it will even play H265. I replaced all my clients with Raspberry PI's and use Openelec Kodi... With any PVR to your liking WMC NEXTPVR, Mediaportal as a back end.. they all natively support HD Homerun Primes... I only have SageTV running on a test machine because some of my PC customers still have HD300 and use SageTV.

[IVB]

that is a cool solution, i'm also using Roku on the head-end, with SageTV only running on the server.

Originally Posted by massmanjr

Over the past few weeks I've been using MCEBuddy to monitor my SageTV recordings and convert the files to MP4, for playback by Plex via Roku 3. The process has been near flawless. I've been very impressed with MCEBuddy, which properly renames the files, so that Plex can pick them up with their standard scanner/agent (Plex Series Scanner/TVDB agent). I had previously tried the SageTV scanner/BMT Agent but had limited/poor results. Plex does not 'play nicely' with MPG files and has to 'transcode on the fly' in order to play back the files. I had mixed results playing MPG files and using Plex's 'transcode on the fly' option. By converting to MP4, Plex can play the file via direct play, and start/fast-forward/rewind are near-instant. Plus MCEBuddy has 'comskip', stripping the commercials from the file, thereby reducing the final file size. For the first time, I feel like I have a viable 'post-SageTV' solution when my HD300s crap-out. It's sad that 2015 is a couple days away and a true SageTV competitor/solution isn't out there yet. Granted, I haven't tried TabloTV, which I've read some good things about.

The main drawback to the MCEBuddy route is the 'wait time' to allow the file to be transcoded. This mainly impacts me with sporting events, as all other TV shows are generally watched by the family at least a day after the live/original show. I let MCEBuddy run through the night, so today's shows are available tomorrow for viewing.

fyi, i literally just found out today about some apps that in theory allow live viewing of HD Homerun streams direct, aka allocate one to live TV if desired. I'm going to look into that more over the next few days/week.

[pjpjpjpj]

Just curious, are you aware that Sage has a native conversion feature that allows you to convert to an array of file types, have them saved to a specific folder you specify, and even delete the original afterwards?

Maybe you are and it doesn't work for what you are doing (specifically, I don't know if Sage's comskip works on converted files, and you can't have them renamed)... but it sounds like you simply might be aware that conversion is available natively in Sage?

[massmanjr]

Thanks pjpjpjpj. Perhaps I've overlooked this in the Sage setup. Does the Sage GUI support converting directly to MP4?

[wayner]

Originally Posted by massmanjr

Thanks pjpjpjpj. Perhaps I've overlooked this in the Sage setup. Does the Sage GUI support converting directly to MP4?

yes it does. I wrote my own process in SJQ to do all of this via Handbrake. But I agree with you that Plex is very good, except at playing back SageTV Recordings. And it isn't just MPEG files, it also chokes on HD-PVR .ts files which are encoded in H.264.

[wayner]

Originally Posted by nyplayer

There are other Options.. SageTV is the worst media player out there not keeping up with the new codecs etc.. not sure if it will even play H265. I replaced all my clients with Raspberry PI's and use Openelec Kodi...

How is that working - do you it's the client-server aspect of Sage or is that not an issue?

I am playing around with Plex, including RasPlex on the RPi, and it is a great platform for me as it is easy to add additional clients, works well on iPads and iPhones, but it struggles with skipfwd in SageTV recordings in either MPEG-2 or h.264 files from the HD-PVR and that is a must for me for watching sports. And you can't really wait until the encoding is done with sports.

[IVB]

Originally Posted by wayner

yes it does. I wrote my own process in SJQ to do all of this via Handbrake. But I agree with you that Plex is very good, except at playing back SageTV Recordings. And it isn't just MPEG files, it also chokes on HD-PVR .ts files which are encoded in H.264.

works fine with my HDHR .ts files, not sure how they're encoded though.

[Taddeusz]

Originally Posted by wayner

yes it does. I wrote my own process in SJQ to do all of this via Handbrake. But I agree with you that Plex is very good, except at playing back SageTV Recordings. And it isn't just MPEG files, it also chokes on HD-PVR .ts files which are encoded in H.264.

I've never had a problem with my recordings on Plex other than that it doesn't seem to do de-interlacing of 480i or 1080i content. Might it be the playback device's ability to directly play MPEG2 or HD-PVR recordings?

Some time ago a purchased a Raspberry Pi for the intended purpose of using it for Plex playback. It works ok, but not great. The deal breaker was that I discovered that the Pi is not able to play my ripped Blu-ray movies. Just wasn't worth having to transcode all those movies.

[wayner]

Can you guys skip as well. Basic playback generally works for me although I have some sync problems. Once I start skipping it goes haywire, and not just on Rasplex, that is also the case with PHT on a fast PC.

[massmanjr]

Skip works great on Plex for me via the Roku 3, as long as the Sage files are 1st encoded as MP4s, with stereo audio. If I pass multi-channel audio, then Plex is unable to use 'direct play' and has to transcode the audio 'on the fly' which introduces some FF/skip delays.

[wayner]

These files aren't usually stereo and some are MPEG-2, others are h.264 .ts files.