STV: Cayars17 Ultimate STV (Release 17 - Jan 18)

[sting7777]

Not a huge deal - but in the options menu when watching a show - the aspect menu item isn't centered anymore - its jsutified to the left.

everything else seems to work perfectly for me

[Cayars]

Originally Posted by mls

Please note the ones with stream type=10 (for DVD compliance) to see which are and are not (and "fair" is=10):
<snip>

It's not just about the "type" setting. You have to also have the correct bitrates and audio stuff.

[mls]

I guess the klinker is that with what your working with it's not capable of burning SVCD and only can do strictly DVD. In that case you will be stuck with having to use one of the DVD quality settings in SageTV for this idea to work.

[Cayars]

Yes, at least for now it's strictly a "DVD" program. Maybe later...

BTW, sorry for the lack of updates/upgrades but I've been in experimental mode trying out lots of things. This STV and extras is now sucking up my life.

[pciccone]

Originally Posted by Cayars

Yes, at least for now it's strictly a "DVD" program. Maybe later...

BTW, sorry for the lack of updates/upgrades but I've been in experimental mode trying out lots of things. This STV and extras is now sucking up my life.

Carlo, your STV is better then any SageTV user could have ever possibly dreamed about especially the ability to do "one-click" DVD burning.

Now, you should polish the remaining issues and sell your STV to Frey to really make some $$$

Phil

[Cayars]

Attached is a new version of the DVDBurner.exe in the zip file. Extract the EXE file to the SageTV/STVs/OriginalV2/Cayars/External/DVDBurner directory (I think that's right).

This should hopefully fix the problem when using compression and the ISO ends up being slightly too big to write to disc.

This will be a configurable setting in an upcoming version.

File Removed

[JUC]

Hi, when i select a show to be added to the DVD burn list it does not show up. If I exit out of sage and restart---there it is in the list where it should be. any thoughts? I haven't fiddled around with it that much and am fairly new to this stv--been using sagemc but the dvd burn option was just too hard to pass up to give it a shot.
JUC

[jgsouthard]

Originally Posted by JUC

Hi, when i select a show to be added to the DVD burn list it does not show up. If I exit out of sage and restart---there it is in the list where it should be. any thoughts? I haven't fiddled around with it that much and am fairly new to this stv--been using sagemc but the dvd burn option was just too hard to pass up to give it a shot.
JUC

FYI, I haven't seen this issue. The DVD's show up in the list immediately without exit/restart.

[JUC]

thanks, i originally thought that there was something wrong with my test version because the DVD list had nothing in it. About a day later i rebooted and happened to check the list, and the show i wanted to burn the other day was finally there. I need to do some more troubleshooting and see exactly when it is showing up and when it is not.

[Cayars]

I'm not sure how this could happen since it's pretty straitforward code but if you can reproduce it let me know how.

[jgsouthard]

Originally Posted by Cayars

Attached is a new version of the DVDBurner.exe in the zip file. Extract the EXE file to the SageTV/STVs/OriginalV2/Cayars/External/DVDBurner directory (I think that's right).

This should hopefully fix the problem when using compression and the ISO ends up being slightly too big to write to disc.

This will be a configurable setting in an upcoming version.

Based on one test with the new 1/3/05 dvdburner.exe, I'm seeing the same problem as before. It's trying to burn an image size of 2,346,662 sectors to a DVD+RW with only 2,295,104 free sectors. The ISO size appears to be nearly identical to the last version.

The ISO file shows 4,693,324,000 bytes in Windows Explorer, but the file properties (right-click) shows 4,805,963,776 bytes. I'm not sure whether this is relevant.

[Cayars]

What size does it show in a DOS window?

[Cayars]

Well I went back and looked at all the code for the DVD Burner Compression and it's seems to be working correctly. The file sizes before authoring are good. It's in the file authoring that things "grow" and this makes sense. I suppose there is also overhead for the disc file system too.

So it's going to be a trial and error thing until I can find some docs on this. In the mean time here is another build that should be much closer. Let me know the DVD Decrypter packets of the ISO and Disc again after running this one.

[jgsouthard]

Originally Posted by Cayars

What size does it show in a DOS window?

DOS shows 4,805,963,776 bytes, the same as File Properties showed in Windows. This would be too large for a normal DVD, I think.

I'll give the new burner a try and let you know.

[Cayars]

Yep, this is the same as the right click properties. Actually they are both the same as one is KB and the other is bytes but I prefer looking at the bytes so I don't need to do the math in my head.

[jgsouthard]

Originally Posted by jgsouthard

DOS shows 4,805,963,776 bytes, the same as File Properties showed in Windows. This would be too large for a normal DVD, I think.

I'll give the new burner a try and let you know.

The latest DVDburner.exe burned OK. The reported compressed image size on my test file was 2,201,730 sectors or 4,509,143,040 bytes (as reported by DVD Decrypter, Windows File Properties, and DOS). DVD Decrypter reported the available space on the DVD+RW that I was using as 2,295,105 sectors, the same as before, but this time it was able to burn the entire ISO without an overburn error.

Thanks for your continued work on this. This really is a killer STV -- our repeated nagging should be interpreted as user interest and not complaining.

[jgsouthard]

Originally Posted by pciccone

Carlo, your STV is better then any SageTV user could have ever possibly dreamed about especially the ability to do "one-click" DVD burning.

Now, you should polish the remaining issues and sell your STV to Frey to really make some $$$

Phil

I'd like to second this and add an observation and a couple of comments.

If I've been following the threads correctly, version 16 (or maybe 15 and 16) represented some major changes/improvements in your code that were geared toward efficiency and performance. You've also added significant additional functionality with the DVD burning, etc. I really applaud those efforts.

It seems to me, though, that these efforts have introduced some new UI bugs that need a little tweaking and cleaning. Some of them have already been mentioned, but I've noticed a couple that I don't think have been mentioned yet. I've just been holding off while you got the basic functionality working. None of them are very serious, but my general feeling is that 16 seems a little less polished/solid than the previous few versions.

My proposal is that you focus the next couple of releases on bug fixes and UI cleanup and don't try to add significant additional functionality until everything currently in is solid. Just my 2 cents worth....

Also, I'd REALLY like to see this STV and/or it's features as part of the standard SageTV software. You've got a package of functions that should have been included by Frey.

I know that this STV is probably too advanced for some users, but I think Frey could incorporate a basic/advanced toggle that would turn on/off some of the more advanced options. To make this part of the standard offering would also require agreeing on one UI "look" to carry through the whole STV, unlike the current Sage/Mlbdude vs. Malore differences. I personally don't care for the look of the Malore screens so I don't use any of them, but I know that some users would really like to keep those layouts. In short, making this a standard Sage offering would require some compromises and simplification, but I think it could be done without losing the essence of your STV.

Sorry for the rambling. Do others agree with this? Is there a good way to carry this message to Frey?

[Cayars]

Thanks for the comments guys. It means a lot. Just so you guys know what I'm up to. I've changed my plans for 17. The feature set I was going to introduce may or may not make it depending on time. I've sketched it out but have not added any code to the STV for it. This might still make it in 17 as a scaled down "intro" and then built up over a couple of releases. It might be better to introduce it that way and get feedback during development.

For version 17 I'd like to clear up any and all known bugs and get the STV as clean as possible. During the last couple of releases I've went back and cleaned up some previously coded things. The more I work in studio the more I find out about better/proper ways to do things so I like to "fix" them instead of building on "bad" code.

In the process of cleaning up some of the code in the TestD version I did kill something in the OSD that kept it from working at all. I looked and looked but could not figure out what the problem was. At that point I had to either start all the changes again from version C (re-do everything) or keep the D version but replace the OSD code with that from version C and start over with that OSD code.

I did the latter but probably shouldn't have (hind site). A lot of little "hooks/references" got blown out and I had to fix many of them for the released version. Still many little things OSD related got by me and will be fixed in the upcoming release. So if you know of any bugs issues let me know.

Version 17 will have a couple of new options for Comskip processing. It will have a new version of the DVDBurner with some optimizations that will allow it to process faster and cut out some steps depending on certain things. I'm also going to add an option to use a second work directory. This second directory would only be of use to you if it's on a second/different drive. I'm going to recode portions of it to be able to read from one work directory and write to the second and vice versa. This will dramitcally improve throughput which is the limiting factor at present. I've also made a change or two to the DVDBurner.exe since the release earlier today so it will use 0% CPU when it's waiting on the components to do their thing.

Besides what I've mentioned above the things I have planned for the next couple of version are:
IMPROVEMENTS to COMSKIP
IMPROVED DVD BURNER
AUDIO CONVERTER for DVD Rips that will change AC3 to MP3 audio formats for those trying to play Ripped DVDs on the MediaMVP or out the PVR-350 board.
COMMERCIAL CUTTER
MPEG2 RE-CODER (make your mpgs smaller). Record at a higher rate to get a better picture and then recode it smaller to save space. End result will be better then just recording it at the lower rate.
AVI TRANSCODER - convert your mpgs to Xvid or DivX and use only 1/5th to 1/10th the space!
A BATCH QUEUE MANAGER - this will move all processing out of the "SageTV" process and managed by an external set of programs. This will become important as more "external" programs are added for functionality. As an example if you quit SageTV right now while Comskip.exe is running you can't start SageTV again until comksip is killed or it finishes. By moving this to be managed outside of the STV/Sage process it can be run on multiple computers on your network. Logging can be added. Multiple steps can be carried out at the same time (i.e. comskip and then commercial cut it followed by a transcode to AVI/DivX).
A SECURITY FRAMEWORK
A security framework. What I'm going to do to "introduce" it is to release a scaled back version in the first release. It will have a detailed setup screen that will allow you to create an "account" a "pin code" and associated "access levels".

So for example I could create an account called "Carlo" (alpha/numeric) with a pin code of "1234" and an access level of 50. I could create an account "Kids" WITHOUT a pin code (empty) and give it an access level of 10. I could create a "Guest/Baby Sitter" account with a pincode of "2233" and give it an access level of 20.

Now for the first release the only introductions will be a login screen (new menu choice). What it will do when a person logs into the system will be to re-load a menu from disk called 10.xml, 20.xml or 50.xml using the examples from above. The name of the menu will be the same as the "access level".xml. The system will have 2 menus out of the box called 1.xml and 100.xml. 1.xml being the most basic and 100.xml being the power user menu and will basically be the cayars-menu.xml as it stand in the 16 release. The system will default to the 100.xml default after installation but the startup menu will be configurable in detailed setup and could be changed to 1.xml.

When ever the screen saver kicks in the default menu will be re-loaded (configurable). Even if you're worried about security in the normal sense this will still be useful to you. I'll release all my menus as 100.xml. Instead of having to reload your menus all the time you can make your highest access (or only menu) as 99.xml and my menu will not overwrite yours anymore.

After the initial release I can start adding checks in many place in the code to check for an access level. For example no one will be able to access "favorite setups" without a user defined access level of say 50. Do one can delete a show without an access level of 40. I'll probably be able to make some changes to the display routines so that "adult" files don't even get showed in the listing unless the logged in user has an access level of 70. All access level restrictions will be user defined in detailed setup.

So with all this said, start thinking and putting lists together of things that should be controlled based on an access level. You can also start thinking about how you would setup your user account menus and what access level you would give to each.

BTW, it's safe to say that not much is going to change if anything in the current menu file EXCEPT for one new menu items that will take you to the "login" screen. So if you want to get a head start building your menus for the kids, wife, baby sitter, guests or even a "normal" account for yourself go ahead but just keep in mind you'll need to add the login screen to each menu you create.

Carlo

[ToxMox]

Wow Carlo! Your dedication continues to impress me. Keep up the great work

[jgsouthard]

Originally Posted by ToxMox

Wow Carlo! Your dedication continues to impress me. Keep up the great work

By the way, you (Carlo) mentioned earlier that this thing was starting to consume your life, which I fully understand given the pace of updates. But you can't keep up this pace. Although I greatly appreciate the value that you've added to SageTV (including these wonderful future ideas), don't let this thing burn you out. I'd rather see a slower pace of updates than force you into abandoning development due to burnout.