Commercial Advance Beta Release

[malore]

Originally posted by krutaw
Does this mean that any newly recorded shows will be automatically scanned?

I've changed my statement to read, while recording another show.
It works the same as before, checking every 10 minutes, but now you can enable it to start processing a show, that has completed recording, while SageTV is awake or a different show is recording.

[White94Cobra]

I haven't tried this yet (waiting for it to be implemented in maldude's STV - my wife likes the look of that one with custom graphics posted by Gerry), but is there a way to set it to only run during certain times of the day? I'd prefer to schedule it to only run from midnight until 7 am so I don't hear the hard drives thrashing in my living room during the day. I say this only because someone mentioned that they could really hear their drives while running CA detection. Thanks... I can't wait to give it a try.

[BerrantRyke]

Originally posted by White94Cobra
waiting for it to be implemented in maldude's STV

I thought about waiting as well, since I use MlbDude2 1.8.7. But believe me, its worth the loss of the graphics and weather module. The one this I really miss is the way MlbDude2 1.8.7 organizes the recordings.

however, this feature is worth the small sacrafices.

[malore]

Originally posted by White94Cobra
I'd prefer to schedule it to only run from midnight until 7 am so I don't hear the hard drives thrashing in my living room during the day. I say this only because someone mentioned that they could really hear their drives while running CA detection. Thanks... I can't wait to give it a try.

The hard drive thrashing he mentioned was because he was recording 3 shows when he manually started commercial detection. By default, automatic detection doesn't run when something is recording, so when it does run you shouldn't notice it unless you have a really noisy drive, because there won't be the jumping around the disk that causes most of the noise.

[littlerm]

Thanks for the requested update, malore! Great job! This was the deciding factor for me to go with Sage over Myth and BTV, I purchased Sage this morning. Now I can't wait for Sage Studio!

[White94Cobra]

Well I just ran comskip on my server manually and I could barely hear the drive... so that won't be an issue. It ran at around 240 FPS (3 GHz P4). From reading this thread, it seems that I can test the results by using this STV on one of my clients(?). I switched to UNC paths on my server since that seemed to be a requirement.

[stanger89]

Out of curiosity, any way you could print the FPS when you pop up the "Scanning done in X min Y sec" box, or print a log file of stats?

[White94Cobra]

Hmmm... Do you have to have this STV installed on the server to use it on a client? I ran comskip manually on one of my files, it created a .txt file with three lines in it containing rather large numbers. However, if I try to play the file on my client (with this STV installed) I do not see the commercial breaks in the OSD and it is not skipping over the commercials. I did switch to UNC mappings on my server and can type in the exact path on my client to reach the files. Any ideas?

[sub]

Hi Malore, do have any objections if I also make comskip available to my GB-PVR users? Also, since this is covered by GPL, can I please have a copy of the source code.

I've been keen to provide this sort of functionality in GB-PVR, but havn't been able to find the time to implement it. This looks like it goes a long way towards what I'd need.

cheers
sub

[malore]

White94Cobra, I've never used the SageTV client so I can't give any first hand knowledge. Did you do the manual commercial detection on the server or the client? Because, if you did it the client, then I don't know why playing isn't working. The commercial advance feature in the SageTV media player works by opening a .txt file with the same name and path as the .mpg file. So, check to see that the file path listed on the last line of the Recording Detail screen uses the UNC path. (You can get the the Recording Detail screen either with the options menu in SageTV's media player, or by right arrowing on the show listing.) If the path isn't right you might try shuting down both the server and client, then restart the server and then the client.

You didn't by any chance start watching the show and then run commercial detection on it? At the moment you have to switch to another show and back to get it to load/reload the commercial detection .txt file.

[White94Cobra]

malore - the path still shows the drive letter mapping (D:\TVCapture\filename instead of \\media-pc\Video1 (D)\TVCapture\filename). I tried restarting the server, but it didn't update it. Since I just switched to UNC mappings this morning, I'll record something new and run commercial detection on it.

To run commercial detection I am just dragging the file onto the comskip.exe file on the server (it only took 7 minutes on a 1 hour show). If I start it via the client, I only get 5-20 FPS. For now the WAF of the interface using the maldude's STV is overriding the wow factor of CA. For some strange reason she doesn't realize how huge this is

[malore]

Originally posted by sub
Hi Malore, do have any objections if I also make comskip available to my GB-PVR users?

The more the merrier. I would hope that you'll return the favor, if there is a project you can help me or another forum member with.

[Opus4]

Originally posted by White94Cobra
the path still shows the drive letter mapping (D:\TVCapture\filename instead of \\media-pc\Video1 (D)\TVCapture\filename). I tried restarting the server, but it didn't update it.

Did you click on "Save Changes" after changing the directory path? I made that mistake a couple times. Go back to your video directories & see how they are listed. If they are listed as UNC there, perhaps wait a little while or force an EPG update to see if that updates the filename reference.

Originally posted by White94Cobra
For now the WAF of the interface using the maldude's STV is overriding the wow factor of CA.

And, unfortunately for MalDude, I'm in the middle of a project right now that doesn't leave me much time to edit that STV.

- Andy

[sub]

Originally posted by malore
The more the merrier. I would hope that you'll return the favor, if there is a project you can help me or another forum member with.

Yes, within reason.

[insomniac]

I love that! I use both products at the time. Win win!

Originally posted by sub
Yes, within reason.

[Opus4]

Sorry for going a bit OT here...

Originally posted by sub
Yes, within reason.

OK, so before malore or someone else jumps in with a request... I'll ask for help dealing with the Xcard so I (or someone) can look into sending the SageTV UI image as an overlay to the Xcard.

That sure would help out a LOT of SageTV users...

- Andy

[sub]

OK, maybe I should set some expectations first. Decoder support for XCard, MVP, PVR350 is out bounds - sorry. Commerical skip would be nice to have, but not that important me.

XCard, PVR350 and MVP support are much more vital to the life of my project, and are really the only features that really help me stay competitive...but I am talking to Narflex, so you *may* see some of features in future. Nothing concrete at this stage.

[White94Cobra]

Opus4 - I did save the changes, and restarted the PC but all old recordings still point to the drive mappings. New recordings are pointing to the UNC path correctly. I just installed this STV on my server. Unfortunately I prefer the Sage default recordings listing and the CA options aren't listed. Plus, I'm assuming if I use the default listing and delete a file it won't remove the .txt file. I'll play with it a bit but I really miss the look and feel of maldude's interface. Regular Sage seems so blah now.

[Opus4]

Originally posted by sub
XCard, PVR350 and MVP support are much more vital to the life of my project, and are really the only features that really help me stay competitive.

No offense intended... but I thought you were giving the product away, so I'm not sure with whom you are competing. And, if you plan to switch to selling it at some point, would the inclusion of GPL code (CA) throw some sort of wrench into that? Anyway: I don't intend this to come across as hassling you. The 'competitive' comment just seemed strange. I recognize that it is your code & your choice as to what to do with it.

Regarding switching to UNC Video Directory paths for CA to work: has anyone switched to UNC and had their old files updated to reflect the new path style? Or, has everyone who recently switched had the same results as White94Cobra & JasonJoel (old recordings kept the old dir path; new recordings used UNC)?

- Andy

[sub]

No offense intended... but I thought you were giving the product away, so I'm not sure with whom you are competing. And, if you plan to switch to selling it at some point, would the inclusion of GPL code (CA) throw some sort of wrench into that? Anyway: I don't intend this to come across as hassling you. The 'competitive' comment just seemed strange. I recognize that it is your code & your choice as to what to do with it.

Ok, 'competitive' probably isn't the right word. My support for the XCard/PVR350/MVP devices gives users 'a good reason to use GB-PVR rather than other applications' such as GOTTVPVR etc. If GB-PVR provided no unique features, why would anyone use it...

I wont be selling GB-PVR in the future.

I have no intention to include any GPL code in my project. I'm just intending to implement support for running configurable post processing jobs (transcode, comskip.exe, or anything other thing the user chooses). I'll change my playback engine to support the same text file of commercial break points that is generated by comskip.

Comskip.exe would be a separate application, in exactly the same way it is being using by you guys with SageTV. Inline with GPL requirements, the source code of this would be available if any asks for it.