Commercial Advance Beta Release

[samson]

I tried the malore350.zip today and everythig seemed find till I found a possible bug. Everytime I press pause when I hit play again sage locks up and needs a restart. I reverted back to malorebeta-1.zip and now I only get the random loss of my onscreen display. I thought it was locking up but when I vnc in it turns out that somehow it went to sleep when I wake it up I have no on screen display

[krutaw]

Originally posted by samson
I tried the malore350.zip today and everythig seemed find till I found a possible bug. Everytime I press pause when I hit play again sage locks up and needs a restart. I reverted back to malorebeta-1.zip and now I only get the random loss of my onscreen display. I thought it was locking up but when I vnc in it turns out that somehow it went to sleep when I wake it up I have no on screen display

Is it just me, or do the lockups seem to happen randomly, and almost never directly during the commercial advance?

[samson]

I can not find a pattern for the lockups with the malorebeta-1.zip but the malore350.zip locked up like clock work when for me when I hit pause.

[Deadbolt]

I also did not have definite patten to my loss of display (with malarebeta-1.zip...I have not tried malore350.zip)...it was not specific to comerial advance, but seemed to happen more often when lots of disk/cpu was being used - as in comskip processing, recording shows, and watching.

I have since rolled back to the latest release Malore stv and have stability again. Loosing my screen twice in a one hour show (average) was too high a cost for commercial advance.

[Hector]

I've tried everything, play pause RW FF as fast as I can. I've got about 12 hours with malore350 and I can't get the pvr-350 to lock up at all. CS works just fine.

BTW I don't know if it matters but I am using the .ini file that malore said was tweaked (before this 350 stuff came up).

peace . . .


verbose=0
fps=29.97
border=10
max_brightness=100
test_brightness=60
max_avg_brightness=15
max_commercialbreak=300
min_commercialbreak=70
max_commercial_size=150
min_commercial_size=4
require_div5=0

Originally posted by Deadbolt
I also did not have definite patten to my loss of display (with malarebeta-1.zip...I have not tried malore350.zip)...it was not specific to comerial advance, but seemed to happen more often when lots of disk/cpu was being used - as in comskip processing, recording shows, and watching.

I have since rolled back to the latest release Malore stv and have stability again. Loosing my screen twice in a one hour show (average) was too high a cost for commercial advance.

[Deadbolt]

Hector,

Anymore reboots?

Thanks for being the point man!

[Hector]

No its been perfect, probably just lucky.

Even back when I used the stock STV I had an occasional reboot and the end of show lock up I desribed earlier. I haven't noticed any difference in that regard regardless of the STV I've been using but I haven't really been paying attention.

So far tho its been rock solid since even before the 350 STV. I know that is just bad (heh) luck because I usually get the regular old 350 lockup at least once a day during a FF/RW regardless of which STV I use.

Later tonight I'm going to really stress test it somehow.

Anyone feel free to let me know if there is anything I can try that might help.

peace . . .

Originally posted by Deadbolt
Hector,

Anymore reboots?

Thanks for being the point man!

[Deadbolt]

Sounds good Hector! Maybe I'll give it another shot!

Thanks Hector, and thanks to Malore for such timely reponse and troubleshooting help.

Commerical advance really is a killer feature for PVR apps.

Malore, any idea when malore350.zip will be reposted?

Thanks again!

[thomaszoo]

Originally posted by malore
thomaszoo, sorry to hear about your troubles. I'll definitely take another look through the code to see if I can spot any potential problems. I've been running the 350 update myself without any problems, but then I don't have a pvr-350.

krutaw, I suggest you wait until I've had a chance to look through the 350 code before updating. I've pulled the update off my site.

I wanted to update everyone on where I am with my recovery after trying malore350.stv. Last night I went back in and had to re-setup my channels and reconfigure Sage with my preferences (detailed setup). Everything else seems to be ok at this point, although I have not yet been able to get commercial advance to work again (although it does show where the commercials are on the OSD and it is definitely using malore.stv). I still don't know for sure where the problem originated; it could have been from the update or just a coincidence. I think Malore did the right thing pulling malore350.stv, but unless he can see something obvious in the code or unless others who have tried it have also had similar problems, maybe it would be worth reposting (perhaps with a caution to back up those critical files).

Once again, I want to thank Malore for the great work he has done on this enhancement.

[malore]

I've finished up the changes I've been working on.

• Added adjustment to SageTV's playing time to hopefully better align the marked breaks with playback.
• You can now have background commercial processing ignore shows recorded on specific channels. Edit the sage.properties file and set background_commercial_processing_ignore= a list of channel number seperated by commas (ex. 78,11)
• Changed how the commercial autoskip function was implemented to hopefully work better with pvr-350's.
• The custom 5 command will now start commercial processing on the currently selected episode in my version of SageTV Recordings.
• Added additional levels to the verbose setting of the comskip.ini file.
verbose=1 shows building of commercial breaks on screen
verbose=2 writes building of commercial breaks to file
verbose=3 writes list of black frame breaks
verbose=4 writes list of every black frame detected

1) Download malorebeta.zip
2) Backup your sage.properties and wiz.bin files, just to be safe.
3) Install the new files

enjoy,
malore

[malore]

I've been working with the require_div5 setting some more. I've added a new setting div5_tolerance that lets you set how much leeway to give.

Here is an example of a show that has a black frame scene change shortly after the show returns.

require_div5=0
start: 15483, end: 15841, len: 11.95s
--start: 15841, end: 16847, len: 33.57s 45.51s
--start: 16847, end: 20440, len: 119.89s 165.40s
--start: 20440, end: 20759, len: 10.64s 176.04s
--start: 20759, end: 20892, len: 4.44s 180.48s
--start: 20892, end: 22131, len: 41.34s 221.82s

15490 22140

require_div5=1
start: 15483, end: 15947, len: 15.48s
--start: 15947, end: 16847, len: 30.03s 45.51s
--start: 16847, end: 20440, len: 119.89s 165.40s
--start: 20440, end: 20759, len: 10.64s 176.04s
--start: 20759, end: 20892, len: 4.44s 180.48s

--------------------
15490 20896


So in this case, require_div5=1 resulted in only the commercial being marked.

[stanger89]

Hey for those of you interested in cleaning up all those txt files orphaned when Sage deletes recordings I've found a rather simple way to do it. Simply enter the following at a command prompt. It assumes you are in the SageTV recordings dir

for /f "tokens=1 delims=." %i in ('dir /s/b *-0.txt') do if NOT EXIST %i.mpg (del %i.txt)

And if you would like to test it (to see what will be deleted) with out deleting anything:

for /f "tokens=1 delims=." %i in ('dir /s/b *-0.txt') do if NOT EXIST %i.mpg (echo %i.txt)

[Snuffy2]

Is there anyway to add to the ini an option to start comskip with different priorities? I know I can go into task maager & set the priority to something other than Normal, but it resets everytime comskip restarts.

I let comskip to run whenever it needs to because in my Sage it is always active, Screensaver is disabled and recording almost 24/7 so I'd like it to run whenever a file is done recording.

BUT I'd love to get it to run at a Low Priority.

I know you can do this from a commandline or shortcut
START /LOW PROGRAM.EXE

Is it possible to implement different priorities into the ini?

Thanx for a GREAT addon BTW!!

[malore]

If you take a look you'll see it is running at idle/low priority now, before the processing thread was idle priority so, there isn't really much difference. It just looks better in the task manager.

[ErsatzTom]

Unless malore disagrees, I think this thread should be made sticky/note.

t

[malore]

Originally posted by ErsatzTom
Unless malore disagrees, I think this thread should be made sticky/note.

t

It doesn't matter to me, but at some point this will become the only version of my stv file available, so there will already be a sticky thread.

[krutaw]

Originally posted by samson
I can not find a pattern for the lockups with the malorebeta-1.zip but the malore350.zip locked up like clock work when for me when I hit pause.

Last night I had the first lockup with the malore350 stv after several days of heavy use. This happened when I was interacting with the previously recorded videos.

[chrysek]

Malore, I just wanted to take this opportunity and thank you so much for all the great work you've done, this commercial skip rocks, I love it so much... but I have a small request, actually two requests if possible:

1) would it be possible to have an option to not to delete now_playing_file ? I am using D.Vine case with this display, it on the other hand uses smartie program. I did set it up to read this file and it is all fine, problem starts when I stop playing and this file gets erased. Maybe if I had this file still in I would not see the garbage (unwnted characters) on my LCD screen. Its not a big deal, I love the display when I am watching something and it does show that file.
2) my second request is to have similar text file but with now_recording_file information about show recorded. I know this might be littbit complicated because what if I am recording 2 or 3 shows. In that program I know I can display file and then the line of a file, so what I did with now_playing_file was to display line 1 and line 2 on the same line and then times (line 3 and 4) on the second LCD display line. It works pretty nice. But if I have more than 4 lines I do not think this program would display what I wanted to display so I was thinking maybe there could be recording file1, file2 etc depending on how many tuners someone might have it would create that many files. Also if there would be option to erase this file or just to have it empty in there when the show is over with recording.

This is not a top priority to have but would be so nice to have such. See when I am playng a show its nice to see this information but when I have TV off and it is recording I would love to see display on my HTPC box and be able to see whats recording, that once again would be a great feature to have.

Once again, thanks for a superb work...

Chris

PS: I am using this program to display info on my DSIPLAY http://backupteam.gamepoint.net/smartie/

[Jere_Jones]

Chris,

If you're willing to use Girder to control your LCD then I can share my solution. Using LCDMaster with Girder gives you a lot more flexibility. For me, when I start watching a show in Sage and the nowplaying file is created, my LCD screen shows it's contents. When there is no file, the screen shows other stuff (date/time, weather, cpu, drive space, a note to the wife that I love her , etc).

I could also come up with something to handle the nowrecording file (if implemented).

I know Girder is a pain, but the flexibility is incredible and well worth the effort. PM me if you would like some help.

Jere

PS I'm also using a Dvine case.

[chrysek]

Originally posted by Jere_Jones
Chris,

If you're willing to use Girder to control your LCD then I can share my solution. Using LCDMaster with Girder gives you a lot more flexibility. For me, when I start watching a show in Sage and the nowplaying file is created, my LCD screen shows it's contents. When there is no file, the screen shows other stuff (date/time, weather, cpu, drive space, a note to the wife that I love her , etc).

I could also come up with something to handle the nowrecording file (if implemented).

I know Girder is a pain, but the flexibility is incredible and well worth the effort. PM me if you would like some help.

Jere

PS I'm also using a Dvine case.

Perfect, I did purchase Girder but it was a bit complicated to configure it, I will take another look at it and see if I can figure it out. Do you have any scripts for Girder to do this?

Thank you so much.

Chris