Recording Sage Recordings to DVD Burner

[taltman]

Hi Everyone,

This is my first post to the forum. I just purchased SageTV and will have my system built pretty soon. The system I'm building is going to be a dedicated HTPC in a Shuttle SFF case, so I'd like to do everything with my remote control.

I'd like to create a SageTV menu option that would allow me to take a recorded movie, or series of movies and burn it to my DVD burner.

Does anyone know of a way to do this? Do we need to convert the movies into a different format before we make a DVD? I can probably build a MS Vbscript to do it if someone can give me the steps that need to be taken.

/Tal

[McTurok]

I think you'll end up wanting to customize your DVD's.

I bought a burner and I've been archiving many shows I like to DVD's.

But:
1. I don't want any commericals. So use software to cut them out and
rebuild my MPEG2 Video File.

2. I like to create a nice main menu on my DVD to choose which episode
I want to watch on a show I'm burning to DVD. This really instead for me
but more for friends or family whom I might give my DVD to, to watch.

3. I personally don't ever want anything "scripted" or "automated" because
it's just a HUGH chance for problems, crashing, slowdowns, lock-ups and
added lag to my Sage.tv system.

4. My advice to you is to go into the Setup -> Detailed Setup -> Multimeida
and set your "Recording Quality" to "DVD Long Play" or another "DVD Option".
Then it's ready for burning to a DVD.

5. If #4 was all you were looking for then next time I suggest you do a search
of the forums. There are lots of other threads already talking about these issues
and questions.

Good Luck and I hope you enjoy Sage.tv,
Chris

[stanger89]

Does anyone know of a way to do this? Do we need to convert the movies into a different format before we make a DVD? I can probably build a MS Vbscript to do it if someone can give me the steps that need to be taken.

The actual burning/authoring of the DVD may be possible with the Nero SDK, but to actually change the way Sage behaves, to use whatever you come up with, requires Studio.

[nielm]

To create a DVD:

Record in one of the DVD-compliant formats
optionally: edit to remove commercials, start/stop padding etc
optionally: create a DVD menu with chapters
Convert mpeg2 file into DVD filestructure (video_ts/*.lfo, *.vob)
burn DVD...

There are various mpeg2 editors available for cutting out commercials... I can recommend www.VideoRedo.com

There are various applications for creating the DVD filestructure... Some are better than others... I have used TMPGEnc DVD Author sucessfully, but Nero, Ulead, Intervideo all have their own versions...

There is also a command line tool that can do the conversion step - but I have never used it myself:
http://www.meedio.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=7030&highlight=mpeg2dvd

[taltman]

I think you'll end up wanting to customize your DVD's.

I bought a burner and I've been archiving many shows I like to DVD's.

But:
1. I don't want any commericals. So use software to cut them out and
rebuild my MPEG2 Video File.

2. I like to create a nice main menu on my DVD to choose which episode
I want to watch on a show I'm burning to DVD. This really instead for me
but more for friends or family whom I might give my DVD to, to watch.

<snip>

4. My advice to you is to go into the Setup -> Detailed Setup -> Multimeida
and set your "Recording Quality" to "DVD Long Play" or another "DVD Option".
Then it's ready for burning to a DVD.

Good Luck and I hope you enjoy Sage.tv,
Chris

Chris, Thanks for the information. I was aware of the DVD Options in Sage. I have not authored DVD's before so I was not aware of the process.

From nielm's post I can see I have a few steps I need to follow. I'd prefer to use some programs that I can pass command line arguments to. But in any case, it sounds like I should play around with some of the "Commercial Advance" customizations first.

It sounds like what I need to do is:

1) After a recording - automatically detect commercials using comskip....
1b) Remove the commercials via a script....(has anyone done this already?) - a link to the direct post would be helpful - reading 25 pages of posts to find an answer is very time consuming...
2) In Sage TV select movies that I'd like to burn
3) Pass the Movie names to a Menu Builder
4) possibly convert mpeg recordings to DVD file formats (vobs, etc...)
5) Pass the data (Menu) + (Movie source files) to an authoring program to record the DVD.

What is Sage Studio? Is there a Sage SDK somewhere that i could read? I can do some programming in Java to build this if I had some more information. Are there more applications I could look at?

Thanks for the time and patience everyone!

/Tdog

[stanger89]

What is Sage Studio? Is there a Sage SDK somewhere that i could read? I can do some programming in Java to build this if I had some more information. Are there more applications I could look at?

If you do a search you'll find more info (might want to limit it to posts by Narflex to avoid the "less pertinent" discussion:)), but short answer:

Studio is what was used to build the 2.0 UI, and is what is used by people like mlbdude, Opus4, Malore, etc (no offense to those I didn't mention :)) to build their custom STVs. It's in private beta and under NDA, so you won't get too many questions answered, but you can get a good idea what it's capable of by looking at the varous STVs and how they are different from the default.

[mostlyfodder]

there's a program written by a user named cybervillain in to meedio forums called "MPEGIIDVD", or something close to that. i used to use it with myHTPC, before meedio (www.meedio.com) was released. i'm pretty sure he updated it to work with meedio, and it only functions as a plugin. however, i'm pretty sure that the originial myHTPC version would work as a free-standing app. you should search these and meedio's forums for posts by that author and i think you'll find a solution. the program was short & sweet.

i stopped using it because i started using videoredo on a networked computer. so i'd set up my cuts on the other computer and then process them overnight in a single batch process that would handle several movies at once. i'd have videoredo save the new files to the non-htpc computer on the network, so in the morning i didn't even have to wait for file xfers.

good luck-
fodder

[justme]

For anyone thinking of doing such a thing the MPEG2DVD thread mentioned above, contains very usefull info. Several very knowledgable people came and went as different sections of the process were mapped out. Some other programs of interest mentioned in that thread, but not in the first post are:

DVDauthor-A nearly complete free opensource suite for DVD authoring. It contains just about everything needed to make mpegs into DVD compliant Vob files of the correct size/spec. It will build and put them into the correct dir stucture(Video_TS etc.). It and even has the ability to build custom menus thru it's use of XML configuration files. Of course you can use a few simple/default XML files over and over again or you could have(with Studio generating the XML) a very complex custom menu setup for each seperate project.

Cuttermaran or Mpeg2schnitt-These are free opensource mpeg2 editors that can be used for removing unwanted footage(commercials,beginnings, etc). At the time the Mpeg2DVD project was started neither supported a command line interface(CLI). Because of this there was no practical way for them to be used. I'm sure at least one now has a CLI and I believe the other allows for an XML file to specify where the cuts should be made. I can't remember which is which, from memory right now. Either way the comskip info could easily be used to determine the edit points. Or a very ambitious/smart person with Studio access could make a simple editting interface for Sage that then generates the cuts from the user's selections.

Quenc-a free re-encoder for mpegs. Most likely to be used for shrinking instead of using rejig, although some recent feature additions(AC3 and MP2 audio handling) could make it usefull in other steps. Usually rejig would be sufficient to transcode the files down in size if needed. But if you try to shrink them too much(anything over 85% of the original,IMO) transcoders(like rejig) produce very poor results. This is where a true re-encoder(re-encoder are slowler than transcoders) like Quenc comes in handy. With a re-encoder you can go lower(no lower than 70%,IMHO) Of course ideally you want to record the shows in a profile that doesn't need to be shrunk. But sometimes your files go a little over, especially if the show didn't contian as much editable(commercial) time as you estimated. Programs like Rejig and Quenc allow you to make use of your recordings for DVD, all be it at a reduced quality. This is a handy thing, if the show is not airing again in the near future.

Anyway, all the pieces exist to go from recorded mpeg2(or even several different mpeg2s) to DVD. Assuming you don't need to shrink any of the shows/files to fit on a DVD the basic proccess would be:
Demux(use bbdemux or PVAStrumento)>edit(mpeg2schnitt or Cuttermaran)>Remux into DVD compliant Mpegs(use mplex included with DVD author)>Build the DVD compliant file structure and menu(use DVDauthor)>Make a ISO(use mkisofs)>burn to DVD(DVDdecrypter or ImgTool).

Obviously you could do this differently but the above process uses only free or opensource tools(that have a CLI) the entire way. One thing many people might want to do is avoid the ISO creation stage. If you use a app like CopytoDVD you can skip the make ISO step and CopytoDVD will burn the DVDauthor generated file structure straight to the DVD. This saves HD space and a little time, but means that the process now requires a peice of payed software besides SageTV. The same things go for the edits by using VideoRedo.

[nielm]

2) In Sage TV select movies that I'd like to burn
3) Pass the Movie names to a Menu Builder

Apart from these 2 items, everthing else you can do now :)

[abasu2003]

can someone tell me what they use to author dvd's that lets you bypass transcoding? the dvd author programs i briefly looked at seem like they don't have a way of just accepting the mpg.

[McTurok]

can someone tell me what they use to author dvd's that lets you bypass transcoding? the dvd author programs i briefly looked at seem like they don't have a way of just accepting the mpg.

I have never had to "transcode" any of my DVD's I've made from my Sage'tv recording.

I use the DVD recording quality setting for my shows and then just use another program to could out the commericals.

I'm used Adobe Encore and TMPGenc to create DVD's.

Unless you mean the Encoding to DVD format *.vob files?
I think every DVD Authoring program has to create those.

[abasu2003]

I thought TMPGenc only creates dvd compliant mpg's

[McTurok]

I thought TMPGenc only creates dvd compliant mpg's
The one I use creates the VOB Files in temporary folder and then burners the files and menu system to the DVD.

I then go a remove them manual as to not take up my Disk Space but only after i verify the DVD is functional.

[jsturtevant]

Here is another approach... I find DVD authoring time consuming and I'm just looking for an inexpensive archive playback method...

The Phillips player will play native MPEG and DIVX files so you can simply burn them to DVD. This is $63 at amazon or $33 if you get their credit card.

Depending on the recording format you can get 4-8 1hr episodes on a SL DVD disk ($0.25/ea).

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B000204SWE/104-5070521-0289524?v=glance

cheers,
Jim

[McTurok]

I think you deleted your post, but I use:

TMPGenc DVD Author

Like the guy above said, you could just copy the MPG files to a DVD and Sage.tv will play them if you have your DVD drive setup as an Import Video Files location.

But I create DVD menus so my Friends and Family can watch the stuff I save.

[KJake]

This would be a very cool option to have. Panasonic has DVD burners built into their Tivo boxes and the menus are automatically created with the show title and the episode info that you can view before watching the show. Having Sage do this would be a big one up on people I know who have those boxes...plus it'd save me tons of time.

I'd be willing to help out on this little project. I don't have Studio, but we could probably figure out a fairly automated way of doing this, right?

So, let me guess, the automatic DVD menu authoring is the next stumbling block here?

[big boi]

The actual burning/authoring of the DVD may be possible with the Nero SDK, but to actually change the way Sage behaves, to use whatever you come up with, requires Studio.
not exactly true. i use nielm's STV (actually upgrading to 2.1 and prolly cayar's STV today) and since nielm put the menus into the XML file i simply added a menu item that launches nero. it's not exactly seamless (which i think is what you're saying is not possible without studio) but it's pretty damn close.

[mostlyfodder]

....I'd be willing to help out on this little project. I don't have Studio, but we could probably figure out a fairly automated way of doing this, right? So, let me guess, the automatic DVD menu authoring is the next stumbling block here?

kjake-
these issues were definitely addressed in several of the discussions that occurred over at meedio maybe a year ago or so (see the above link as place to start).

nice screenshot here:

http://www.dac.se/MPGII2DVD.jpg

the mpg2IIdvd meedio plugin link is:

http://www.meedio.com/maid/detail.php?mode=detail&plugin_id={40D24A4F-A19B-48CF-A2CB-9AC2156C64FC}

the official discussion thread link is:

http://www.meedio.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=18461&start=0

if you find some of the old threads, these guys discussed almost every issue you can think of surrounding a project like this. some of the usernames were: cybervillain, gplasky, & edtee.

-fodder

[KJake]

fodder: Looking closer into the meedio posts and the older myHTPC posts I'm seeing that no one has tackled dynamic menu generation - and I don't believe that their generated DVDs even have menus! I've started working on this because I think it's one of the biggest features and could be fairly hard to do (at least from a CLI stand-point). As far as setting up the transcoding/muxing/burning, I think someone can put that together in no time. For samity's sake, I'm building menus with DVDauthor like it's been suggested above...

justme: Simply creating them with an XML file as you've stated is not really true. There's tons of other things dealing with making your own menu MPG files and subtitles as buttons that you've gotta setup just for the XML config'd buttons to work.

I'll post updates on this as I get closer to even getting a motion/animated menu working.

-Kevin

[abasu2003]

KJake,

I briefly looked into this and will revisit it once I am done with school for the itme being, but some things I came across that might help.

The DVDAuthor GUI's are extremely helpful in figuring out a quick solution to DVD menus. The GUI's just simplify everything, adn while you become a slave to some of the pre-determined menu formats, most likely thats going to happen anyway without a studio integrated solution to DVD ripping. I'm thinking a two-level menu, where this a title track and maybe another menu that has buttons to each scene would od the trick. Also integrate a background image.

I can't remember the names of the GUI's I was using, but a google search should do it.

Also, seeing as how most people have txt files that have commercial information, it would be nice to put screen breaks during commercials. Also, maybe have a menu that has buttons that point to those screen breaks.


one problem i did have with the gui's was i couldn't figure out how to stop them from transcoding. most people record in DVD format so that seems kind of important.

In general, are most people thinking of doing this as one episode per DVD? I assume if you only have single layer burner, you probably dont' ahve much choice.

[justme]

one problem i did have with the gui's was i couldn't figure out how to stop them from transcoding. most people record in DVD format so that seems kind of important.
abasu2003,
Are you sure that it wasn't demuxing and remuxing/splitting the mpegs into Vob files rather than transcoding? It is neccessary to use mplex to make sure the mpegs will work with DVDauthor. Also we found out in the MPEGIIDVD project that demuxing your mpegs is often neccessary to get them to be accepted by mplex for DVDauthor. It adds an extra step, but you can't(at least we didn't work too much on it) reliably tell which files will go thru DVDauthor(and it assorted toolset) and which won't. In the end it ended up easier to just demux and then use mplex to remux. Of course this stage was needed to use the opensource mpeg2 editting apps we looked at so we didn't look into it too much.

Simply creating them with an XML file as you've stated is not really true. There's tons of other things dealing with making your own menu MPG files and subtitles as buttons that you've gotta setup just for the XML config'd buttons to work.
KJake,
Believe me I realize it's not quite that simple. But as abasu2003 points out, things can be simplified. Although at the cost of versatility, but if someone really wants total menu creation then they should leave the Sage UI IMHO. What I had enviosioned doing back when I was working on this was using a few XML files as templates and only doing slight mods as needed for the shows detailed info. We could use the SageTV background for the menus and use the SageTV style(simplifying/standardizing the xml) for the menu's structure as well. Sort of like what Tivo did with their DVD burning PVR. For the first try I think we should skip editting, as this requires more work in the SageTV UI(see my comments in the PS)

I love the DVDauthorGUI located here. (http://www.videohelp.com/~liquid217/dvdauthorgui.pl) It comes with a compiled win32 binary for the most recent stable version of DVDauthor and all it's assorted tools(not all we need for the final project but enough to get started). Still I think it's main use to this project would be to follow it's approach. I personally don't see the need to build the DVDauthorGUI into SageTV. I think we(again see my PS) can make our own simple actual SageTV UI and then expand it, as needed.

PS:In case anyone hasn't figured it out, I went into all of this a long time ago(I'm the edtee from the Meedio/myHTPC forum). I will honestly admit to certian parts(XML generation as an example) being over my head(I'm not really a coder), in the end. This is the reason there isn't already a STV addon with the general abilities talked about above. I just ran out of steam without any help in my many weak spots. It's been a long time and I've forgotten much of the DVD building specific stuff I learned, not to mention I'm not as healthy as I used to be. But if there is anything I can do PM me. I'm not great(like Neilm or Cayars) but maybe I can add the parts to Sage that you guys need. If you guys help, I'm sure we can come up with something basic. We can then worry about expanding it from there. Maybe we'll attract the attention of one of the "real" STV experts. But I will offer to help out in the meantime. Anyway PM me if you are interested and have the programming skill/time.

/justme

[KJake]

Thanks justme, this info helped.

I've got some plans to try somethings out tonight after work, I'll post screenshots if they're not too ugly ;)

[KJake]

:( that was a bust - sorry - nothing tonight.
Plus I picked up a Sun Spac IPX from work and had some fun playing with that ;) ... so I neglected this a little bit.

Also, justme - I agree that we should not built a dvdauthor front-end into Sage.

[infiniti_guy]

If I wanted to do it the simple way (without adding DVD menu editing functions- e.g. just burn directly to the DVD as is with no menu), would it be possible to place a "Burn to DVD" option on the recorded program screen (for the specific recorded TV show- say next to the "Watch Now" commanmd)?

I'm not sure if this is something that's easily possible or not, but I think a lot of Sage users would like this.

-Infiniti_guy

[abasu2003]

i think thats what we're working on. however, there are command line dvd burners that you can configure to just pass through the episode name.

[abasu2003]

People should look at DVD Styler (http://dvdstyler.sourceforge.net/index.html) also for a simple GUI

[KJake]

A small update...I've got the DVD menu structure working the way I want it to.
I've ditched motion menus for now because they're much harder to do.

I'm moving on to dynamically placing text on an image now. This is going to be tricky I think.

The fun part is going to be when I have to put all of this together. Sounds like I should code it up in Java for it to be easier to implement in Sage. It's been a while since I've written any, but I'll update again when I get something working that you all can see.

[justme]

A small update...I've got the DVD menu structure working the way I want it to.
I've ditched motion menus for now because they're much harder to do.Cool. As for the motion menu I'm definitely not for animated, so you staying static is good news to me. :) I say keep it simple, for now.
Maybe I should PM you some screenshots of a mock up(generated by Sage) of what I'm thinking of as far a Menu structure. I thinking of like a main menu(lists the shows on the DVD) that then drops to a sub(which has the shows detailed info) for the actual show. This means we only have x+1 menus, were x is the number of shows being burnt. I'm open to different ideas I just wanted to let you know what I was thinking. What are you thinking, menu structure wise? Are we basically on the same page?

I'm moving on to dynamically placing text on an image now. This is going to be tricky I think.The easiest way for me to supply the show info to you is an XML dump similiar to like what Malore did in his first STV. This should give you an idea of what to expect, as far as format.

The fun part is going to be when I have to put all of this together. Sounds like I should code it up in Java for it to be easier to implement in Sage. It's been a while since I've written any... .At this stage the Language shouldn't be that big of a deal. Depending on how you code it, the langauge shouldn't matter. If you go with more of a Comskip style approach, then it can be totally language independent. We can just pass the proccessed data back and forth. This is basically what the current comskip does. Basically, it is called by Sage and given the data to proccess the correct show. Comskip then outputs the data that the STV then uses to make the correct actions in the Sage UI. ...but I'll update again when I get something working that you all can see I'd love to see anything you have, ASAP(but no pressure). This would help me know what I can and can't do for you. Or what I should try and have exposed for you.

Big thanks for doing this. Without help from someone like you, I'd never be able to properly do this. After all this time I'll just be happy to have a simple app that works. This should help spur farther development(hopefully after lots of user interest:) ).

/justme

[KJake]

The easiest way for me to supply the show info to you is an XML dump
This would be a great way of getting the show info.

At this stage the Language shouldn't be that big of a deal. Depending on how you code it, the langauge shouldn't matter.
I agree now. Heck, my first working release of this will probably be a batchfile.

[KJake]

So, here's what I've got for an actual working menu.
This is the SubMenu that'll contain Detailed Info about the show.
From here, you can play the selected show, or return back to the main menu to select a different show.

http://www.kjake.net/sage/DVD_showinfo.jpg

[KJake]

Hey - progress made.
This is interesting I think...

I figured if we're going to dynamic graphics, why not start with the easiest dynamic graphics tool first. SUBTITLES.

I got this working and I think it's got potential for being a solution, but I've got some problems with it though:

1) The text was created through a process of 3 subtitles so that I could get text size and position on the screen.
2) Using Text Subtitles on the same screen apparently disables/breaks highlight button graphics. They show up until the subtitle text displays and then they're gone. The buttons still work, but you have no idea which one you've selected. This needs to be fixed.
3) Subtitle text is ugly.

Feedback appreciated. I'm probably going to burn this to test on my DVD player to see what it all really looks like on the TV.

http://www.kjake.net/sage/DVD_Showinfo_Detail.jpg

[KJake]

Much updated tonight...

Title, Description, and Details are loaded from a XML file that I statically created in hopes that I will be able to get XML Show data from Sage.

Those 3 sections are then written onto a Still Frame Background, Encoded, Joined with a Silent Audio track, and then the menu button highlights are Muxed into the final MPEG.

The nice part about this is that it's all CLI and the only input needed so far takes place in the XML file.

Much logic work needs to be done to handle more than 1 title now...but that's for another day.

Also, since I'm doing things this way now, I decided to keep everything at the PNG level until the very last step and this change has created a much nicer background image after being encoded and muxed.

Tonight's screenshot featuring sudo-dynamic text that looks a helluva lot better than last night's attempt.

Edit: uploaded a new screen shot with better looking button hightlights.
http://www.kjake.net/sage/DVD_Showinfo_Detail2.jpg

[justme]

Great improvement. :clap: That looks great. :goodjob:
Title, Description, and Details are loaded from a XML file that I statically created in hopes that I will be able to get XML Show data from Sage.If you're using the Malore stlye of XML, then I can assure you we can get you the show's detailed info. One thing I was thinking we should add to Malore's XML dump code is the mpeg's full path. You're going to need that info for later processing of the mpegs. Of course any changes(demux/remuxs/edits) to these mpegs should go to a seperate DVD burning working directory. I was thinking of dumping the file pathes in a seperate XML file along with any other info you feel you need for proper processing. This way we keep the XML file for the actual detailed info menus simpler.

Editted to add a zip contianing 2 sample XML dumps

[KJake]

If you're using the Malore stlye of XML, then I can assure you we can get you the show's detailed info.I'm not sure what that format is...mine is basic:
<sageinfo>
<title>Happy Days</title>
<description>Al has a fish fry. (CC)</description>
<details>Air Date: 11/23/2004\nRated: TV-G\nRun time: 0:30</details>
</sageinfo>

Notice the \n to add a new line in the picture.

I guess this can change, it's not a big deal, but lets change it now before I get too used to it :)

I'm also looking at my screen shot here at work and that menu highlight looks ugly, I'm going to change it back to the old color that I had in my first SS I posted...looks much better.

Edit: I couldn't stand it anymore, so I did it now. The ugly one is gone.

[KJake]

I took it easy tonight and all I added in was ISO creation and Burning the ISO to a supplied Drive letter. It works, but isn't worth much yet.

[KJake]

Here's a dump of what the heck I did tonight.

I don't have the full menu generation going yet, but I made progress on making this way more dynamic than it was with handling more than 1 title. I've only test 4 'fake' titles. Also, I started on the Top Level Menu that'll bring you into the menu that I've been showing previously.

Enjoy - these are just the JPG files that the program produces - no screen shots of the actual menus tonight.

[KJake]

So...in essance the Menu System for this project is COMPLETE! Yay.
Well, not exactly, but close. The imaging part is done and it all gets put together automatically. The part(s) that have not been worked on yet are 1) getting XML info from Sage, 2) diving into actually encoding/packaging/muxing/rejiging Sage video files and 3) building the interface in Sage that the user will use to drive all of this mumbojumbo.

All of this is being looked into, but it will take some time.

I leave you with a link to a WMV that I created to showcase the actual Menu and it's structure. There is definately room for enhancements here. The clip is about 400K and 0:37 long. Once I do eventually hit 'Play' you get to see my inspiration for this setup.

Feedback, comments welcome at this point...

http://www.kjake.net/sage/dvdmenu.wmv

[taltman]

Guys this forum rocks! I have some more information that might help...

Thanks to Crashless I found this information about the mpeg2dvd programs:

http://www.meedio.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=7030&highlight=mpeg2dvd

All the instructions you need are in that thread. Let me know if you get it working.

/Tal

[KJake]

Yup, I found the same info taltman. Thanks for finding it again tho. I'm going to need to read up on it to start in on the actual video file recipe I need to concoct. The thing they didn't do is create a menu...*at all!* So, since this info was out there already, I got started on the hardest part of setting up a dynamic menu system. That part is almost done, but I'm going to hopefully have time to start on the video stuff tonight.

[KJake]

taltman, good news, I'm even closer tonight. Assuming that there are no bugs, which there are, all that's left is SageTV integration. I have the full DVD structure working and processing from the original Sage .mpg files. There's just a little too much manual things going on right now and much more testing needs to take place so that we know this will work on everyone's systems.

[taltman]

Hi Kjake,

Dude you rock! Let me know if you need help with any scripts. I don't really have that much time to contribute but I am a full time sysadmin. I could probably help you write up a script (batch or vbscript) or even some java code if you need.

Also - someone mentioned early on in this thread that we should be cutting out commercials. Have you made progress in this front? It seems easy to do provided you have a tool that can parse the text files and cut out the frames. It seems to me the best way to cut the frames is from the end...in other words if there are commercials from segements 100 to 200, 500 to 900, 1520 to 1780 for example you should cut out the frames from the end and repeat the process, otherwise all your going to have to re-index all your frames....so I would do the following:

cut frames 1520 to 1780 first
then 500 to 900,
then 100 to 200....

Does that make sense? Hope all is well. Good luck and let me know how I can help - although moving at snail pace compared to your progress =) :thumb:

[KJake]

Thanks taltman :)
I have thought about cutting out commercials. I do that by hand whenever I burn a DVD, and although MpegVCR makes quick work of it, I'd like to automate it too. I've breifly looked at the comskip application here in the forums and I'm thinking that we could adapt it easily to this project. I'll start playing with it tonight, but I've heard that it's not quite 100% accurate yet, so we'll see how testing goes.

Off to work :(

[justme]

I've also been thinking using Comskip...

I think it's a good idea. Even though it won't be 100% accurate i think we can eventually correct some of it's missmarks manually. What I was thinking of, is using Comskip as it at first. We know from Cayar's STv that we can mark sections as keep or skip based on comskip feedback. These would be the dafault edits.

Now as for maually correcting some small mismarks by Comskip. it seems to me that if we look at the comskip data more closely we should find lots of black frame marks that were not determined to be commercial breaks. If we can get this data into the Sage UI then a user could go to the area where comskip miscalculated and then allow the user to step the marker forward or backwards using the unused black frame detections. In most cases this should allow the user to find a point very close to the true start/end of a cut segment. It won't be perfect or dead accurate but if you want that kind of accuracy then you should go outside of Sage's UI, IMHO.

I haven't really looked into all the details of this. ie would comskip be able to provide the correct info in one pass or would a second specialized "editting" pass be needed. Anyway I just wanted to throw it out there for people to think about. It seems doable at a glance, rather it's worth the effort or not is another issue entirely. Still such a detailed/user controlled editting operation is most likely going to have to wait until the full basic of this DVD proccess becomes a reality.

my 2 cents,
justme

[KJake]

I think this was a bit of a challenge, but it seems to work so far.
I've not fully tested it all because I don't have the time/paitence to wait for it all to run through the entire job. All of my test files are small clips that don't have any commercials in them. I tested comskip on 1 ~800Mb file so far and it was almost correct. It wasn't dead wrong though either. It just missed a portion of a set of commercials, but it got the other 2 commercials in the 30min segment almost 100% dead on frame.

I've got this setup to call comskip, then feed this to videoredo, and then demux and rejig for DVD compliance. It should be that easy... I'm going to see how easy it will be to add in the 'cutlist' approach for womble mpegvcr too so that the users have a bit more choice since no one makes a good free mpeg2 cutter.

I'll finialize more tomorrow night to where it should be working essentially. Sorry if I dissappointed anyone today ;) I just am tired after staying up so late last night.

Hey, and then let's go hog wild and throw in Rejig while we're at it and dynamically shrink the final product down to something that'll fit onto a DVD-R...yeah, no. Sorry, I looked at that when I began this. I'm not sure if we can make that part work.

[Shuyun]

I'm very excited about this project and think you’re doing great work KJake. Here is my 2¢ as a part time programmer and full time sys admin. Get the basic stuff done first. Get the menu system working, plugged into sage and burning. This is the core of your project, the other stuff like auto commercial deletion and auto compression is a great thing to have but it can be added later and these add-on parts can sometimes be more difficult than the original project. This way the program is a little tighter when you start bug hunting after release and once you get the bugs down you know any further problems are caused by the new additions. Also the commercial skip is a neat feature but it is no where near 100% as to finding all of the commercials. For some shows it misses commercials and others it marks part of the show as a commercial and this is something that a lot of people have spent a lot of time on as I’m sure you know. What about instead of auto deleting the detected commercial you put in chapter points as a start. This way when a commercial is detected you can chapter to the end of the commercial break. Later when commercial detection is 100% you could set them to auto delete.

This is just my 2¢ so feel free to disregard it and by no means do I mean any disrespect. I think you are doing a great thing and look forward to using your Sage recordings to DVD burner program.

Thanks,
Shuyun

[KJake]

What about instead of auto deleting the detected commercial you put in chapter points as a start.This was something I thought about today. Doing this would definately push commercial marking in the current alpha out of the release until we get it finalized. I like that idea because then we're not getting rid of commercials that should 'technically' stay in there.

Also, I'm using the untested .61 version of ComSkip, not the .2x version in the melorebeta.zip in the commercial detection thread. .61 is much better at detecting commercials, but I've only tested 1 file so far. If I don't see that it's going to be worth while, I'll scrap the idea for now and put it on the TODO list.

Thanks for your interest, I appreciate it. We're working hard to get something out to the public soon. As always, keep watching this thread for any updates.

[KJake]

Hey guys - wanted to give an update tonight.

I have the comskip/videoredo portion worked into the process, but I don't really like it, so I'm going to leave it commented out for now while we focus on the main thing at hand.

Since I last updated, headway has been made.

We now have an STV in the works that is outputting XML for the system to read in. The structure of things have been changed to make integration into Sage easier too.

Right now, I don't have to manually come up with XML files to test the system, so that part is working well. There is still some focus up front that needs to be spent on some more XML file work, but after that, it will mostly become a project to develop the STV integration to allow the user to interface to this system.

Also, I did think more about Rejig and this would be doable in certain cercumstances where it's easier to fit in (i.e. big giant TV movie that is 6Gb could be shrunk to fit on a DVDR). So, that's on the TODO list still...but probably won't be in the first public release.

No pretty pictures either :( Sorry ;)

-KJ

[abasu2003]

may i ask who's STV?

[KJake]

Right now, it's just a mod to the OriginalV2. Hoping to get some help down the road to pull the mods out as a plugin/import. It is being made with portability in mind so that hopefully anyone can either use it as an Import STV or it won't be hard for the STV maintainer to include it in their next release.

I'm not sure if who's helping me wants it to be known yet...so, I'll leave it at that. :) They'll speak up if they want to.

[taltman]

KJake,

I was thinking, rather than cutting out the commercials - why not make dvd chapters at the ending of the commercial break? This way you can skip to the next section of the movie...

I would prefer burning to dvd-r. Dual layer burning might be interesting later on...for now I think a majority of people are interested in DVD-R recordings.

Maybe if we can focus on just creating the VOB, INFO and BUF files we can then leave it up to others to use their favorite dvd burning/authoring tool. Building the chapter indexes and cutting out the commercials might be a nice touch for phase 2, or phase 3 of the project.

/Tal

[KJake]

taltman, I totally agree.

I should be able to do the chapter skips in this first phase. I can just read in the output from comskip and then calculate the time code. (Should be 29.97 frames per second for NTSC, so 2000 frames should be 2000/29.97=00:00:66:73 HH:MM:SS:ss. This will be fun to do...) Then since I need to write out the dvdauthor.xml file dynamically anyways, I can just add in the chapter points. I'll see how it goes, if it ends up holding anything up, than I'll put it to the side for later. Also, as you can figure out here, 'phase 1' will be for NTSC. I'd like to get this to do PAL at some point too because I know PAL users are out there.

Also, yes, burning to a DVD-R is already possible with this. The structure is created, and ISO is made (UDF DVD-video standard) and then the ISO is burned to the user supplied drive letter (e.g. D:). So that part is done already :)

More to come soon!

-KJ

[KJake]

An update on how things are fleshing out.

Squashed a lot of bugs here and there and we're able to get some good XML data now, so the menu(s) have/has changed a little to provide some more info to the user to help them select their choice and for nicer archiving.

Basic XML generation of the show info is completed I'd have to say. The only thing that might need to be done is to tweak formatting down the road.

Moving on to more complicated XML writing this week to finish the automation of the scripts that make the DVD in the background.

Here's a look at the new menus (ignore the colors, I encoded this fast):
www.kjake.net/sage/newdvdmenu.wmv

You can see on the Top Level that now you see this:
Title: Episode (if exists) Date Recorded HH:MM duration

Also, at the SubMenu, Episode has been added and line breaks are put in automatically to format the description text. Duration was modified and the Quality setting was dropped due to a limitation. The entire block of details have moved to get out of the way of the description too.

you'll also see a short blip of a recorded video play. It is meant to show that when the video ends, it returns to the Top Level menu, but the encoding screwed it up.

[alon24]

An update on how things are fleshing out.

Squashed a lot of bugs here and there and we're able to get some good XML data now, so the menu(s) have/has changed a little to provide some more info to the user to help them select their choice and for nicer archiving.

Basic XML generation of the show info is completed I'd have to say. The only thing that might need to be done is to tweak formatting down the road.

Moving on to more complicated XML writing this week to finish the automation of the scripts that make the DVD in the background.

Here's a look at the new menus (ignore the colors, I encoded this fast):
www.kjake.net/sage/newdvdmenu.wmv

You can see on the Top Level that now you see this:
Title: Episode (if exists) Date Recorded HH:MM duration

Also, at the SubMenu, Episode has been added and line breaks are put in automatically to format the description text. Duration was modified and the Quality setting was dropped due to a limitation. The entire block of details have moved to get out of the way of the description too.

you'll also see a short blip of a recorded video play. It is meant to show that when the video ends, it returns to the Top Level menu, but the encoding screwed it up.

I am guessing that you only support ISO-8859-1, would it be possible for you to support ISO-8859-8 also (both in xml header and in writing the output stream to disk).

without this I would loose all the info that sage holds for me since I use Hebrew.

Cayars Stv supports Changing of xml header only (for compression), but we (hebrew and other langs), need the file to be written in the same encoding, so that it can be read as hebrew and not only xml encoding header which still writes the hebrew as jiberish).

I could supply a small code sample that does this thing exactly in the hopes that you will incoparate this into you'r plugin,.

also I suppose that since creating the xml and only then after we have a set of files, and the xml will hold all data, it would be possible for me to edit both the xml file and the file names in order to make the file names more readble (on the dvd), is that a resnoble assumption???

[KJake]

I am guessing that you only support ISO-8859-1, would it be possible for you to support ISO-8859-8 also (both in xml header and in writing the output stream to disk).We could make the XML writing configurable, but you are correct...currently it is set to ISO-8859-1. What about UTF-8? That's supposed to be universal, right? Also, I'm not sure if the output stream is or needs to be set to a certain charset...or are you talking about the file names?

also I suppose that since creating the xml and only then after we have a set of files, and the xml will hold all data, it would be possible for me to edit both the xml file and the file names in order to make the file names more readble (on the dvd), is that a resnoble assumption???I'm not sure that I know what you mean here. Do you mean you'd like to have hebrew text on the DVD screen? I think that is possible because the text is created via a TTF font file, so just drop in your language's version of the TTF (if it exists), otherwise it will use the Arial font on your system.

[KJake]

I'm taking a small break from all of this for the holiday season. I'll start up on it again next week and I'm brain storming about changing this hodge podge of batch files into a single .exe with a .ini for configuring. The .ini could be seperate, but I think I'd like to integrate it into the sage.properties since a configuration menu could be built for the DVD stuff and then writing things out to the properties file would be easy.

Thoughts, comments?
-KJ

[alon24]

We could make the XML writing configurable, but you are correct...currently it is set to ISO-8859-1. What about UTF-8? That's supposed to be universal, right? Also, I'm not sure if the output stream is or needs to be set to a certain charset...or are you talking about the file names?

I do believe that u need to write the output stream with the proper encoding or else it will not work, I've attached a small piece of code to illustrait this.
UTF-8 is ok, but again I believe u'd have to do the same trick with the outputstream, also, I input the data to dage with Cp1255 (equal to ISO-8859-8) and sage shows it very well.
File names is something I would love to change, I just don't think that its relevant since I guess u do a compress and create one video file, so file names should not matter - right?



I'm not sure that I know what you mean here. Do you mean you'd like to have hebrew text on the DVD screen? I think that is possible because the text is created via a TTF font file, so just drop in your language's version of the TTF (if it exists), otherwise it will use the Arial font on your system.

Hebrew text is displayed well with Arial font. I was thinking that before the process starts(the actual burning), I could change the text that is going to be diplayed, if its giberish, I would love to be able to change it).

also would it be possible to support RTL (Right To Left) so I can read my text from right to left, since in sage today it's LTR and I flip everything.

If this is possible then I would parse the XML file before starting the actual job, and reverse the hebrew again(for RTL purposes) - also in reversing I replace "(" for ")" and other tricks.

Have a nice holiday and merry chrismas.
Ilan

[KJake]

yeah, this is a little over my head right now...but I would be more than happy to work with you to figure this out and implement it. I think a lot of this is fairly new to Sage since I think I8N just came about in version 2.1....or at least noticably.

I'm going to try and get this past Alpha state and then start releasing things to a new thread so that people can play with it. I'm more than happy to share my scripts and any Java that I'm writing. The more people interested in this, the better it will be.

[alon24]

any news???

[KJake]

Hi there Ilan. Sorry, no news. I ended up taking a vacation from the whole project and have not gotten back into it yet. I've got another big project outside of work right now that will be partly finished on Thursday...hopefully the 2nd part of it will be finished the week after. I'll try and find time in there to work on this, but for now, it's on hold.

[alon24]

Hi there Ilan. Sorry, no news. I ended up taking a vacation from the whole project and have not gotten back into it yet. I've got another big project outside of work right now that will be partly finished on Thursday...hopefully the 2nd part of it will be finished the week after. I'll try and find time in there to work on this, but for now, it's on hold.

ok, i am waiting pattiently
is it time yet?
is it time yet?
is it time yet???

:-)

[KJake]

It's good that you reminded me actually. I did so little on my computer in the last week, I forgot what was all going on. ;)

[walts81]

Hello Fellas,

I was reading up on this thread and had an idea about the commercial removal process. What if.... there was a command mapped to one of the "custom commands" that whenever executed would write the current location of the video to a file. So you could be watching and when you get to a commercial hit "pause" then hit "custom" to mark start location. Then at the end of the commercial segment do the same to mark end location. This would help when/if comskip isn't completely accurate. And if you mark a location that overlaps one already in the VideoRedo file then just replace it. Does that make sense? Wuddayathink?

- Josh

[KJake]

Looks like Cayars has beat me to DVD burning, I guess I'll have to go see what he's doing.

[JREkiwi]

Cayars has the DVD burning, but doesn't have menu creation. Certainly looks like 2 pieces of the puzzle that should be connected.

[Mysticeti]

I have never had to "transcode" any of my DVD's I've made from my Sage'tv recording.

I use the DVD recording quality setting for my shows and then just use another program to could out the commericals.

I'm used Adobe Encore and TMPGenc to create DVD's.

Unless you mean the Encoding to DVD format *.vob files?
I think every DVD Authoring program has to create those.

Hi McTurok,

Just wondering, does Adobe Encore complain about your SageTV recordings not having an AC3 or PCM track when you burn them to DVD?

Thanks.

[KJake]

Well, I've finally got this put together with Crashless on the STV side. Check it out. (http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?p=108953&postcount=1)