User Interface Suggestions

[hughmanoid]

I upgraded to Arizona at the end of Decmber 2010 and would like to see USB KEYBOARD, PAUSE/RESUME added.

1:   Keyboard input settings are soft keyboard or cellphone but it would be nice to just type in on a USB keyboard rather than using yhe remote.  Haven't researched 'cellphone' setting.
   A:  Dedicating the USB port to keyboard sounds simple enuf since I can live with SD or Network Shares having given up the CF slot to Arizona.
   B:  Haven't tried this but I recall a reviewer that may have put a USB HUB and two usb drives on the OSD.  I'm no programmer, but I can guess that supporting a hub and MULTPLE devices increases complexity logarithmically.
 
2: Sure would like to be able to PAUSE and resume recording. 
   A: There seems to be a few seconds lag before recording begins.  Perhaps when the confirmation screen is presented, a background recording to a circular buffer could setup all the necessary steps so that when you confirm, you actually resume an initially paused recording.   I used to pause my old VCR in play mode,  press RECORD and then unpause at the point I wanted to start recording from the source. 
  B:  Am considering using a video titler and it would be nice to record a title screen, PAUSE, switch to video feed and resume recording.  I am trying to avoid recording on the OSD and the have to clean it up on the PC and wait overnight to render

[heyrick]

I upgraded to Arizona at the end of Decmber 2010 and would like to see USB KEYBOARD, PAUSE/RESUME added.

I think there is some sort of "issue" regarding the use of USB keyboards? I'll let greyback or ChadV step in if they have specifics.
If you should wish to upgrade to OSDng, there is an optional VNC server. It is pretty slow, but it will provide a fairly direct connection between the OSD's user interface and your computer. I guess it depends how much you would plan to use such a keyboard. If it is for poking around the innards, telnet into the machine via a network cable - it's a lot less hassle.

1:   Keyboard input settings are soft keyboard or cellphone but it would be nice to just type in on a USB keyboard rather than using yhe remote.  Haven't researched 'cellphone' setting.

Cellphone setting is annoying. It is like most mobile phones where you write as 22344776664473337 and the letters change as you press the keys. I prefer the soft keyboard even though it probably takes longer to do stuff.

A:  Dedicating the USB port to keyboard sounds simple enuf since I can live with SD or Network Shares having given up the CF slot to Arizona.

It would be a deal-breaker for me For some reason 8Gb USB gadgets are around 25% (or more) cheaper than 8Gb SD cards. Shame, as SD cards fit flush in the side of my eeePC while USB things stick out like Shrek ears.

B:  Haven't tried this but I recall a reviewer that may have put a USB HUB and two usb drives on the OSD.  I'm no programmer, but I can guess that supporting a hub and MULTPLE devices increases complexity logarithmically.

Never thought to try. You know, the OSD runs a baby version of Debian Linux inside, so if the firmware has support for hubs and automounting multiple USB devices, then I don't see why it shouldn't work. That said, it looks like the OSD is set to mount SD as "SD-card" and USB as "USB". What would it do for subsequent USB devices? Maybe one day I'll try this, see what actually happens.

But note that keyboards and mice are "human interface devices" and work a little differently.

 

2: Sure would like to be able to PAUSE and resume recording.

Ever try pressing the Play/Pause key?

Be patient. The first time, it takes a few (about 8!) seconds for the notification to appear on-screen. Press the Play/Pause key again to resume recording.
When I'm home, I do this to hack adverts out of films.

A: There seems to be a few seconds lag before recording begins.

That's the OSD setting stuff up. It is insurmountable. What you're asking for is to have a car driving down the road as you're engaging its starter...

Perhaps when the confirmation screen is presented,

Ah, the confirmation screen. Annoying, isn't it? Go into your settings and look around (perhaps under the 'Record' item?). You can turn the confirmation off, so it'll only hassle you for honestly important things like "you can't record to USB when there's no USB drive!".


Hope this helps.


Best wishes,

Rick.

PS: If anybody at Neuros has the Word (or whatever) docs for the original user guide, please chuck them at me so I can make some modifications to give coverage to Arizona/OSDng. (saves writing from scratch) I think it is safe to say that the "firmware changes too often" excuse won't work any more, new users are suffering from a lack of decent end-user documentation...

[ChadV]

The USB drivers provided by the chipset manufacturer to us are storage-only.  I've not heard of anyone using multiple USB drives at once, but people have used a powered hub in order to provide additional power for USB drives that need more than the OSD can provide.

As far as the editing, you may just be using the wrong software...  You'll have to poke around a bit on the forums, but I know there are a couple of different editors people have found that are capable of writing back in the same format/resolution as the source, which drastically reduces the rendering time to almost realtime.

Rick: I had a PDF of the manual at one point, but can't find it now...  Maybe Joe can help with that.

[greyback]

I'm also sorry to say that the chipset isn't smart enough to deal with multiple USB devices through a hub. So I don't think 2+ USB drives are possible.

Also since the USB driver doesn't support gadgets (keyboards, mice, printers, scanners...), the OSD software wasn't written to accept keystrokes from such a device. So plugging in a keyboard would do nothing anyway.
-G

[heyrick]

As far as the editing, you may just be using the wrong software...  You'll have to poke around a bit on the forums, but I know there are a couple of different editors people have found that are capable of writing back in the same format/resolution as the source, which drastically reduces the rendering time to almost realtime.

I use Free Video Dub for hacking out adverts in auto-recordings. It is a bit advert-ish (obsessed with trying to get you to install some stupid browser toolbar), but so long as you just close those windows, it works well. From USB to network share, it can process a movie in about five-ten minutes.
http://www.dvdvideosoft.com/products/dvd/Free-Video-Dub.htm

It can't join files, however.  It might be, from his description, that hughmanoid needs to do this?

Also since the USB driver doesn't support gadgets (keyboards, mice, printers, scanners...),

Oh dear. That kills that idea stone dead... 

[pfft2001]

I upgraded to Arizona at the end of Decmber 2010 and would like to see USB KEYBOARD, PAUSE/RESUME added.

I think there is some sort of "issue" regarding the use of USB keyboards? I'll let greyback or ChadV step in if they have specifics.
If you should wish to upgrade to OSDng, there is an optional VNC server. It is pretty slow, but it will provide a fairly direct connection between the OSD's user interface and your computer. I guess it depends how much you would plan to use such a keyboard. If it is for poking around the innards, telnet into the machine via a network cable - it's a lot less hassle.

A few points re: the VNC server and the use of the "Soft Keyboard".

1) I don't think it is fair to say that the VNC server is slow.  IME, it only seems slow, when driving the OSD onscreen GUI, is because the OSD onscreen GUI is slow.  The VNC server doesn't make it any slower; in any case, I'm sure the bottleneck, if any, is, as you would expect, network bandwidth.  On my LAN, it is fine.  You're not accessing it over a dial-up connection, are you?

2) The VNC server doesn't change the fact that you still have to use the onscreen keyboard to enter text.  It's no different than using the remote in that regard.  (Your text above seemed to imply that using VNC eliminated the need to hunt and peck the onscreen keyboard...)

3) (Once you figure it all out...) The one and only time when you actually need to use the remote as a keyboard [*] is when you are typing in the filename for a scheduled recording.  And even then, you don't need it (see next set of notes):
....a) If you are doing an "ad-hoc" recording, you should just accept the default (osd.mp4) and then rename the file afterwards using your PC.  You are recording to the network, aren't you? (If not, why not???)
....b) When setting up a scheduled recording, again, just accept the default, then use the "sqlite3" utility to change the filename in the database.  I've taken to doing it this way, and it is a lot easier than using the onscreen keyboard.


[*] Other than perhaps during the initial OSD setup - but even then, the only thing I can think of is setting the IP address and that's not text, just numbers.

[heyrick]

1) I don't think it is fair to say that the VNC server is slow.  IME, it only seems slow, when driving the OSD onscreen GUI, is because the OSD onscreen GUI is slow.  The VNC server doesn't make it any slower; in any case, I'm sure the bottleneck, if any, is, as you would expect, network bandwidth.  On my LAN, it is fine.  You're not accessing it over a dial-up connection, are you?

I think it is fair(ish) to say it is slow. Accessing on a 100mbit LAN which is my eeePC, two other computers, and the OSD through a Linksys DIR-100. I routinely use VNC on the share-box to set up and burn DVDs.

I suspect the OSD's VNC client sends raw bitmaps. That could explain some of the speed difference? Either way, I found it quicker to plug in the USB video dohickey and just use the OSD's UI like normal.

The VNC server doesn't change the fact that you still have to use the onscreen keyboard to enter text.

You can't send it regular keypresses? <sigh> I guess that makes sense.

....a) If you are doing an "ad-hoc" recording, you should just accept the default (osd.mp4) and then rename the file afterwards using your PC.

Sometimes I do this if I don't have time to enter a filename, or if the movie has a stupidly long name like "Austin Powers - The Spy That Shagged Me". I'm not going to sit and type out all of that!

You are recording to the network, aren't you? (If not, why not???)

No, recording to USB device. This means I can turn the share-box off when it isn't being used. Plus I personally witnessed (and gave up on) a copy-paste from the OSD to the share-box of a movie that was about a Gb and a half. I gave up after some FIVE hours, popped the USB device into my eeePC and copied the file in about four minutes. It is possible that accessing the network in this manner is slow and doing writes while recording works better (and in real time). I don't know, but since the cut'n'paste does NOT multitask from the user's point of view AND provides no sort of "%ge done" indication, there's no excuse for such lousy behaviour.
I might write some code to spit hunks of data to a network share and see how it behaves in reality. Suffice to say this file copy fail put me off wanting to record across the network.

Besides, it's prefectly simple using a USB key and I can pop it directly into my eee for watching.

....b) When setting up a scheduled recording, again, just accept the default, then use the "sqlite3" utility to change the filename in the database.  I've taken to doing it this way, and it is a lot easier than using the onscreen keyboard.

Mmmm... I (or you?) ought to see if I/you can't throw together a dead simple program to do the SQL commands necessary to you just need to enter:

  prren osd.mp4 "the mentalist 3-17.mp4"

With "prren" standing for programme rename.
Thought: you can't do a simple "if filename is osd.mp4 then..." because there might be existing entries with that name. Perhaps better to search for the most recent addition?

Can you tell me what the default OSD SQL library is called? And for bonus points, where's its header file?

<rummage><rummage>

Looks like /Neuros-Cooler/external-libs/sqlite/binaries/include

My build failed to make Neuros Cooler (failed trying to build curl). I wonder if I write something to use SQL if I would need to include the SQL library or if it can dynamically link the one already on the OSD? I think some suck-it'n'see is required here.


Thanks for the feedback and suggestions.

[pfft2001]

....a) If you are doing an "ad-hoc" recording, you should just accept the default (osd.mp4) and then rename the file afterwards using your PC.

Sometimes I do this if I don't have time to enter a filename, or if the movie has a stupidly long name like "Austin Powers - The Spy That Shagged Me". I'm not going to sit and type out all of that!

OK - it occurred to me, then, that you could also do it by editing the sysconfig.ini file (From memory - I think that's the file), to change the default filename for recording.  That's the recommended way of doing an ad hoc recording with changed settings.  And note that it is just a text file, so easier to edit than is the SQL database.

....b) When setting up a scheduled recording, again, just accept the default, then use the "sqlite3" utility to change the filename in the database.  I've taken to doing it this way, and it is a lot easier than using the onscreen keyboard.

Mmmm... I (or you?) ought to see if I/you can't throw together a dead simple program to do the SQL commands necessary to you just need to enter:

 prren osd.mp4 "the mentalist 3-17.mp4"

With "prren" standing for programme rename.
Thought: you can't do a simple "if filename is osd.mp4 then..." because there might be existing entries with that name. Perhaps better to search for the most recent addition?

The problem with that is that you'd still have to do a re-sync afterwards to make the change "stick".  So, it is not a good idea to make it too automated, lest it give the appearance of being a simple operation.

[heyrick]

I have been thinking of wading around the source to see if it would be possible to add something to the scheduler.

An idea, once a minute look for ~/sched.dat and if there, import a list of entries from it. On the PC side, simple prog to build the file, telnet in, and drop it in place. Will have a max latency of a minute...


Best wishes,

Rick.