Commercial Advance Beta Release

[Jere_Jones]

malore,

I am extremely grateful for the now_playing_file property!!! I only have one question and one small request.

Question:
What is that character seperating the sections? Notepad shows it as an undisplayable character and Wordpad shows it as a new line character.

Request:
If there is nothing playing, can the now playing file be deleted?

BTW, THANK YOU!! This will look so cool on the LCD screen!!!

Jere

[stanger89]

malore,

I've been playing with your CA stv, and I must say I like it (For reasons other than CA as well) Forgive me if I missed it, but is there a way to have it automatically scan everything? I mean I figured out how to scan individual shows, and groups of shows, but I haven't figured out how or if you can set it to just go through everything, say overnight when nobody's using it.

[Jere_Jones]

stranger89,

If you go to Custom Menus and then Settings. There you will see Background Commercial Processing. Enable or Disable as you see fit. If it is enabled, it will process the files one at a time when ( ( (the screen saver is on) or (Sage is asleep) ) and ( no shows are scheduled in the next 15 minutes ) ). Bear in mind that the process can't be stopped mid show. So if you wake Sage up, the computer will continue to process whatever show it is working on.

malore,

When a commercial is autoskipped, the OSD showing file position is displayed and doesn't go away. Bug or feature?

[malore]

Jere_Jones
• Stopped showing the time bar after auto skipping, because it wouldn't auto close.
• Added carriage return to the line breaks of the now playing file.
• The now playing file is deleted after leaving SageTV's media player.

stanger89
You can enable background commercial processing like Jere_Jones said or you can use the options menu to change the grouping to a single group. Once everything is in one group, you can then run commercial detection on the entire group (note: once started the only way to stop it before all the files are processed would be to exit SageTV).

[stanger89]

Strange, I have background processing enabled, maybe I'm just not patient enough

I'm going to have to try your update since a CA indication was something I was going to ask about also, but you already did it.

[malore]

Background commercial processing:
· must be enabled in Custom Menus -> Settings
· If enabled, is started by the Main Menu.
· checks every 10 minutes if SageTV is either asleep or showing the screensaver and no programs are currently recording or scheduled to record in the next 15 minutes. Then it begins processing all unprocessed files, pausing for 5 seconds after each file and checks that the previous criteria is still met, before starting the next file.
· Currently, background processing is disabled on SageTV clients, because processing the files over the network doesn't seem like a good idea to me.

[littlerm]

Just curious, why is commercial processing not allowed to run automatically while something is being recorded or watched? Hardware encoders use very little resources, and playback can be the same, especially for those with beefy systems. I know Myth does commercial detection in the background regardless of what is going on, and BTV has an option to do it immediately after it is recorded. The option to begin commercial detection as soon as a recording is completed would be great. A lot of times I watch something just a few minutes after it has been recorded.

Thanks for this Sage addon, it is one of the 3 things (commercial skip, keyword wishlists, and smooth FF/RW) SageTV is missing to become the perfect PVR for me. Great job!

[JasonJoel]

Yeah... Maybe make 'always commercial detect' an option for people to try.

Running while not recording if fine for me (I have many hours during the day with no recordings). But for people that use IR, and a lot of tuners, the commercial detection may NEVER run if it is only during 'idle' time.

Would be nice to try it while recording to see how it works...

Jason

[Jere_Jones]

I've done a manual commercial detect while recording 3 shows and watching another. My CPU was at 60-65%. That's with a P4 3.0Ghz w/HT.

Of course I could hear the hard drive thrashing 2 states over.

Jere

[insomniac]

Same results for me.

Originally posted by Jere_Jones
I've done a manual commercial detect while recording 3 shows and watching another. My CPU was at 60-65%. That's with a P4 3.0Ghz w/HT.

Of course I could hear the hard drive thrashing 2 states over.

Jere

[Deadbolt]

Also, I think commerical detection via Sage Clients over a networkwork share would be great! My workstation running client can then help do some of the detection.

[Snuffy2]

Originally posted by malore
I have also implemented running commercial detection automatically when SageTV is asleep and no programs are scheduled to be recording in the next 15 minutes. This can be enabled on the Settings menu in the Customs Menu, but I haven’t had time to fully test it.
...
• Background commercial detection (if enabled) will also run when the screen saver is active.

When you say 'no programs scheduled to record' do you mean no favorites or Nothing at all scheduled? Because Intelligent Recording basically records on my computer 24/7 so that it'd never get a chance to commercial skip.

I'd second the idea to allow us to Commercial Skip immediately after a recording, or at all times (after it's done all the old ones, either option would function the same as far as I can discern)

Thanx for a great feature though. I'll report back if I have any problems.

[Opus4]

Regarding your switch to using UNC paths for your Video Directories to be able to use the CA feature...

Originally posted by JasonJoel
Tried that. It still didn't work. It doesn't mess anything up, exactly. Although it did make my used space/free space numbers incorrect.

Check out the latest FAQ entry and/or Incorrect drive space report for UNC video dirs. Basically: your space reporting problems should go away if you change to UNC and then restart SageTV server.

Edit: Also, the server restart will update where SageTV 'sees' the recording, so it will begin to access it via the UNC path instead of the "drive:\dir" path.

- Andy

[insomniac]

Works fine by UNC with my client. Presently I have my server and my client configured for commercial detection. Will it blow up? time will tell

I.

Originally posted by Deadbolt
Also, I think commerical detection via Sage Clients over a networkwork share would be great! My workstation running client can then help do some of the detection.

[JasonJoel]

It didn't for me. I did quit and restart SageTV server side (many times) after changing to UNC. Space was still reported incorrectly.

Jason

Originally posted by Opus4
Regarding your switch to using UNC paths for your Video Directories to be able to use the CA feature...
Check out the latest FAQ entry and/or Incorrect drive space report for UNC video dirs. Basically: your space reporting problems should go away if you change to UNC and then restart SageTV server.

Edit: Also, the server restart will update where SageTV 'sees' the recording, so it will begin to access it via the UNC path instead of the "drive:\dir" path.

- Andy

[Opus4]

I wonder if there is an OS difference, perhaps? I'm using XP Pro. You? I only had used space reported incorrectly, not available space.

After restarting, look at the recording details for a show in the UNC dir. Does it list the filename using the UNC path or the previous "drive:\path"?

How about trying a mapped network drive, instead? The thing I didn't lke about that, though, was the need to do the mapping on both the server & client systems.

- Andy

[IKK]

I was wondering if there was a way to set it up so that the CA would work automaticly without pressing a button.

That way while I am watching tv from a distance (say in the kitchen cooking, it would auto advance without me pressing any button.

I have been trying it out and it seems to be working great. This feature would be even better if you could choose in advance what recorded programs used this feature. (for ex. The CA feature may work on the Screen Savers and not on Stargate. So when I watch the Screen Saver the system would auto advance but on Stargate I would FFW myself.)

I don't want to seem that what you have currently done isnt enough. If you were to add no more features to CA it is still a great product.

Thank you for you hard work.

[dman]

[i]
I was wondering if there was a way to set it up so that the CA would work automaticly without pressing a button.

Try downloading the stv again. Malore's update on august 2nd added Auto Skip.

[dman]

I just started playing with Commercial Advance. Let me start by saying, malore, you’re my god. Others may bow down to other deity’s but for me it’s malore; alright enough with the a** kissing. I tried about 5-6 shows last evening and found that returning from a commercial seems to be bang on, however the initial commercial marker always seems to be about 4 seconds into the commercial period. Is this intentional? Also, I had a couple of shows where the first commercial would play, and then 4 seconds into the 2nd commercial the marker would hit. Is anybody else noticing this? I should mention, I’m up in Canada bur we’re NTSC up here too, so the only difference I can figure is that when the CRTC (Canadian Radio-television Telecommunications Commission) overlays commercials for Canadian content may affect things.

Dman

[IKK]

Thanks for the quick response Dman. I am currently at work with no ability to use sage. Could you tell me the location of the Auto Skip function so I can try it at soon as I get home.

Thanks Again