STV: nielm combo STV (v1.8 Oct 19)

[nielm]

Just to let you know that the new forum software has an RSS feed which is compatible with my RSS reader, so you can browse the latest posts from within SAGE!
http://forums.sage.tv/forums/external.php?type=rss
(there is also an RSS2 feed which works less well -- i will work on that! http://forums.sage.tv/forums/external.php?type=rss2)

[JasonJoel]

Cool. Works great.

Jason

Originally Posted by nielm

Just to let you know that the new forum software has an RSS feed which is compatible with my RSS reader, so you can browse the latest posts from within SAGE!
http://forums.sage.tv/forums/external.php?type=rss
(there is also an RSS2 feed which works less well -- i will work on that! http://forums.sage.tv/forums/external.php?type=rss2)

[mightyt]

Originally Posted by nielm

Just to let you know that the new forum software has an RSS feed which is compatible with my RSS reader, so you can browse the latest posts from within SAGE!
http://forums.sage.tv/forums/external.php?type=rss
(there is also an RSS2 feed which works less well -- i will work on that! http://forums.sage.tv/forums/external.php?type=rss2)

Dude, only 2 days in to the new forum ... You are always on it !!!

Very cool Nielm ...

T.

[remmy925]

Just wanted to thank you for fixing the fonts on your menus. I am now more than happy to use your stv. Only change i needed to make was to tell Sage to use Firefox instead of Opera. Once I figure out how to change the preset cities in the weather section and I am set. Your continued efforts make this a better and better Media Center every day.

[Deadbolt]

I have just tried this STV. I really like the weather and the layout. I am having speed problems though. I have an AMD 2500 w/ 512 MB RAM. I am using a PVR-350 output and I get huge lags/pauses between commands. Has anyone else seen this? It is unusable right now. The Malore skin has no problems...although I see this at times with the beta Malore skin with Comskip.

Thanks!

[Jere_Jones]

nielm,

Can you check for any differences in how comskip is launched in your STV? It seems to work fine if it runs automatically, but trying to run it via Malore's recordings list and it doesn't seem to be able to find the .ini file.

If it's a problem with comskip, I'll be happy to fix it, but I don't know what to fix since I don't know how it is being launched.

Thanks,
Jere

[White94Cobra]

Interesting... for me it's the other way around. It runs fine when run manually, but won't start automatically. When I was running the beta CA STV it worked great both ways. In fact, after two nights all of my recordings had been "comskipped." Now, even after running it for a couple of weeks, I still have about 25% of my recordings with no CA.

[Jere_Jones]

Please note that if comskip doesn't find any commercials it will still produce a .txt file but it will be empty. If it's empty, the list won't show [CA], but since a .txt exist it won't rerun comskip either.

Jere

[White94Cobra]

I didn't realize that (although it would be nice if it showed CA anyway just so we don't manually run it again). While I didn't check for empty .txt files I did run it manually on a few of the shows and it did find and mark commercials. Some of the shows were recorded over a month ago so comskip should have run on them automatically by now.

I can still manually comskip stuff and most of the time it's very accurate. I've noticed when it isn't accurate (maybe 10% of the time), it isn't even close. Many times it either doesn't mark the whole commercial (it skips the first two but not the last three) or it is accurate through the first half of the show but no commercials are marked at all in the second half. I can't wait to try the new version.

[Jere_Jones]

In addition to my previous post:

If an empty .txt file exists, the option to run commercial skip should not show up on the options menu. So... if the show is old and the option to run comskip is there, then something went wrong. Go ahead and run it.

Also, you can (via the options menu) change the sort options to "one group" and then run "Commercial Detect All" and it should run comskip on all shows that don't already have a .txt file.

Jere

[Jere_Jones]

For anyone using comskip ver 0.30 or earlier, I HIGHLY recommend that you replace it with ver 0.31 which can be found here.

It (in theory) will resolve all issues with spaces in the paths to comskip or the mpegs.

Also, I would appreciate your help in making comskip better. If comskip doesn't work 100% for you, please do the following:

1. Change the comskip.ini verbose to "verbose=10".
2. Run comskip on the trouble mpg.
3. Email the resultant .log file along with an explanation of the problem (i.e. It didn't mark a commercial from 4:56 to 5:34) to jere.jones@gmail.com
4. Wait for feedback and/or updated comskip.

If enough people do this we may have a tool that works 99.99% of the time!

Jere

[JHarris]

Is anyone using the MlbDude Browse by Channel/Category and Upcoming Movies guides? Whether I go to them directly in a custom menu or by right-clicking at the Sage TVguide they display the data, but if I try to select a show nothing happens. Then the guide data and category colors get all screwed up. When I return to the TVGuide menu and scroll down, all the show "blocks" stack up on the right side of the grid. It won't return to normal until I restart SageTV. All of these work fine for me in the lastest MlbDude2 STV.

As long as I don't try to select any shows from the MlbDude guides I can browse them just fine, so the problem occurs just when I try to select a show. I've tried deleting all the properties and wiz.bin files and setting up Sage again, and I returned to the orginal menu.xml file. But nothing I do can get the MlbDude guides to work. Otherwise, I have SageTV tweaked perfectly to my liking and am ready to buy. Any ideas?

[littlerm]

Jere_Jones,
The new version of comskip (.30 and .31) doesn't work with nielm's STV on my system. Comskip is never kicked off in the background, and trying to start it manually via the malore recording screen doesn't start comskip either. If I drag and drop a recorded mpeg onto comskip.exe then it starts processing for that file. My setup is as follows:

SageTV installed in D:\Program Files\Frey Technologies\SageTV
comskip.exe and comskip.ini installed in same directory as above
Recordings stored in F:\

[Jere_Jones]

littlerm,

Nielm and I have conversed a little about that exact problem. Oddly enough there is a bug in Sage that aggravated a bug in the Nielm STV that exposed a SEVERE oversight on my part in comskip. To prevent the problem you are seeing, both the STV and comskip had to be patched/fixed. But since comskip is MUCH simpler than an STV, I was able to apply my fix a little quicker. And Nielm is probably sleeping right now. Version 1.4 of the STV should fix it. If not, then we're going to need to get a little deeper into your problem.

Jere

[nielm]

and, as hinted by Jere, here is v 1.4!
To upgrade, you need to download:
the updated STV zipfile
the updated Java classes

V1.4 -- 28 Sept 2004
Bugfixes:

• Fixed bug of mlbdude SageRecordings menus where selecting a playing video would not go to full-screen...
• Fixed bug of malore custom views panels getting unsynchronised.
• Fixed non-responsive 'Browse by Category/Station' views
• Improved ComSkip startup (may need comskip 0.31)

New Features:

• Added dynamic menu option DontScaleItems to limit menus to 6/7 items per page
• Added Commercial skip to file detailed info page -- no longer need to use Malore recordings menu for comskip!
• Added option to start comskip in a minimised window for debugging: nielm/comskip_debug_output=true
• Playback with Commercial skip and .smi Closed captions should now work also for .avi files (commercial detect still needs the original .mpg)
• Removed redundant 'Malore menus options' in detailed setup/enhancements
• Weather report suite Rotan views now support up to 10 layers
• (java update) Improved RSS newsreader so that it now reads the RSS2 feed of this forum

[Jason]

Nielm-

If possible, can you add both the compress and comm detect options to both the archived and imported videos sections?

-Jason

[mightyt]

Nielm ... You are leaving us less and less to ask for in the ultimate STV!!

Only thing I can think of at the moment is MlbDude2 Mini-Guide ...

You are doing some awesome stuff here ...

Thanks, T.

[littlerm]

Ok, thanks Jere_Jones. I will try comskip .31 with nielm's 1.4 STV when I get home. Thanks to all of you (nielm, Jere_Jones, malore, and mlbdude) for your hard work on this. This STV is the best one for me, it has transformed Sage from a Tivo replacement to a Tivo killer, great job!

The only thing missing from Sage that I would like to see is keyword Favorites, but I understand some functionality needs to be added to Sage's core for that functionality to work properly.

[insomniac]

Very impressed with the advancement of this stv. Hell, this,MVP support, and Xcard support is probably the sole reason i check the forums every day!

Good Jod Neilm!

I.

[broderp]

I thought neilms STV included comskip now, why do I need comskip .31 for this to work? (You guys in the "know how" are loosing us little guys- of which I seem to be the only one ) I can't seem to get it to work, I cant find a menu anywhere to turn it on or off, and none of my recordings are being transformed (that I can tell), what do I need to get this to work? I am running Neilm 1.3.