SlimmGBPVR - replacement for GBPVRTray

[Mister Slimm]

Any chance of putting a time limit on how far after an event that the pop-up balloon will pop-up? I'm occasionally getting a balloon popping up several hours after a recording has finished. I'm also sometimes getting balloons popping up and telling me something again when I come out of GB-PVR.

The other thing I noticed was when I was doing a back-to-back recording on the same channel earlier this week. Everything happened as you'd expect on the first recording, but when the second recording started, a balloon popped up and told me that the first recording had just started (again!). I can't remember if I got a balloon telling me that the first recording had finished.

I don't know if this is what's happening here but the timing of balloon tips is down to Windows Explorer and not down to the application itself. My tray app asks Windows Explorer to display a balloon immediately when a recording starts or stops, etc., as you'd expect, but has no control over when Windows Explorer actually gets around to showing it. If Windows Explorer considers the CPU busy, for example, it won't show it until it considers the CPU not busy. If Windows Explorer considers the user away from his computer, only one balloon will be shown and any subsequent balloons will either appear when it considers the user has returned or not at all. Also if another tray app is showing a balloon when I try to show mine, mine will be ignored and may or may not be displayed at a random future time.

The other aspect regarding not entirely consistent messages in the started and stopped balloons is a problem I have on my investigation list. For example, on my system, it tends to work fine nearly all the time (even with immediately subsequent recordings) but I occasionally get a balloon without the title of the recording that has started or stopped. At this time, I don't know why.

The next release of the application features the ability to enable / disable the appearance of the balloons that are shown when a recording starts / stops if that is of only help.

As always, thanks for your supportive comments and bug reports.

[therealshatting]

hello!

i find slimmgbpvr really useful, but ive noticed it uses quite alot of memory: judging from what windows task manager says, about 50mb real and 45mb paged. well i dont really mind that much about it, i just find it a bit strange for such a small utility to use so much memory. maybe theres a leak or something?

cheers, steven

[Mister Slimm]

hello!

i find slimmgbpvr really useful, but ive noticed it uses quite alot of memory: judging from what windows task manager says, about 50mb real and 45mb paged. well i dont really mind that much about it, i just find it a bit strange for such a small utility to use so much memory. maybe theres a leak or something?

cheers, steven

I know. All .NET applications appear to take up huge amounts of memory but it is not an area for concern.

So, for example, the GB-PVR recording service and Config utility appear to consume similar amounts of memory to SlimmGBPVR. No matter how big the application, about 25-30Mb of memory is referenced by using the .NET Framework. In reality, almost all the memory referenced by .NET applications isn't actively used and, therefore, most of it is left in virtual memory and never accessed. Also, most of it is shared between applications and so the memory usage statistics for .NET applications running the same version of .NET are largely talking about the same chunk of memory.

SlimmGBPVR is small, the entire install package including documentation is only 300k. But when it runs it references the .NET Framework and, whammo!, apparent memory footprint becomes 20-30Mb.

Regarding memory leaks, the use of the .NET Framework makes memory leaks far less likely as it automatically tracks and correctly disposes of any memory accessed. However, I am surprised that your Mem Usage stat is 50Mb (I am presuming that when you say real memory you are talking about the Mem Usage column in Task Manager). On my system, my Mem Usage is 17,040k, my VM Size is 32,944k and my Peak Mem Usage is 39,724k. The maximum I have seen my Mem Usage is about 26M and that's when I'm debugging it. I don't restart my computer for days, sometimes weeks, at a time.

Windows XP virtual memory abilities are excellent and, on default settings, use very small amounts of physical memory for background tasks like SlimmGBPVR despite large numbers in the Mem Usage column.

[gEd]

FYI: Memory Usage

[Mister Slimm]

As always, please note that this is a beta version. Comments appreciated.

Features:

• User can change numerous options.
  
• Animated recording icon.
  
• GBPVRcli.
  

Direct download link

[jonmck]

I am running GBPVR 0.95.16 and Xguide 0.363.

When Slimm is running , any cancelled program keeps recording - slimm says it has stopped, but the GBPVR icon shows it is still reocrding.

I love the program but it keeps messing me about.

Any ideas

[Mister Slimm]

I am running GBPVR 0.95.16 and Xguide 0.363.

When Slimm is running , any cancelled program keeps recording - slimm says it has stopped, but the GBPVR icon shows it is still reocrding.

I love the program but it keeps messing me about.

Any ideas

I am sorry but I don't quite understand the post.

"When Slimm is running , any cancelled program keeps recording - slimm says it has stopped" - isn't that right? If a programme is cancelled, it isn't recording, it is stopped.

Or is it the balloon pops up saying that a recording has stopped but the Slimm icon (as opposed to the GBPVRtray icon) doesn't change? When you say GBPVR icon is that the icon from GBPVRtray or from SlimmGBPVR's tray utility?

Or is it that you cancel a programme using my tray utility and you get the message saying that the cancel request has been put through to GB-PVR but the cancellation doesn't seem to work and the recording ends at its normal time anyway? (If this is the case, are you trying to cancel a recording during its post-padding period? This is known to be somewhat inconsistent.)

I shall download Xguide and see if I can recreate your problem. Any further deliberation would be most appreciated. Thanks for taking the time and making the effort to post.

[Mister Slimm]

BETA v1.1.2241.28408

As always, please note that this is a beta version. Comments appreciated.

Features:

• Inconsistent configuration handling now hopefully made completely consistent.
  
• Couple of bugs removed.
  
• When using delayed shutdown and an animated recording icon, the animation reflects the shutdown requested.
  

Direct download link

[chud]

i had an "issue" recently where my gbpvr.mdb file size was > 1GB. even though GBPVR tries to do a compact of the database either after using the config tool or after fetching EPG data, it would appear that the fact that the database was being accessed by SlimmGBPVR prevented this compaction.

has this come up before and is there any thought to having SlimmGBPVR do a database compaction? a window of time could be defined and since SlimmGBPVR knows something about the recording schedule it could shut down the recording service and initiate this procedure without upsetting any recordings...

[Mister Slimm]

i had an "issue" recently where my gbpvr.mdb file size was > 1GB. even though GBPVR tries to do a compact of the database either after using the config tool or after fetching EPG data, it would appear that the fact that the database was being accessed by SlimmGBPVR prevented this compaction.

has this come up before and is there any thought to having SlimmGBPVR do a database compaction? a window of time could be defined and since SlimmGBPVR knows something about the recording schedule it could shut down the recording service and initiate this procedure without upsetting any recordings...

1Gb Jet database! WOW!

You are absolutely correct. SlimmGBPVR monitors the database and maintains a constant connection and so GBPVR cannot compact itself. I noticed this feature in v9608 release of GBPVR but have not investigated at precisely what time it does it. It sounds like the simplest solution for the moment is stop SlimmGBPVR, run the Config utility, then restart SlimmGBPVR. Sorry for any inconvenience.

As to whether Slimm GB-PVR could do it, hmm, I'll look into it. There is already a safe restart recording service option and a safe config utility option and I may be able to build the compact and repair procedure into that. It is now added to my To Do list.