DVD burning mod (7/14/06 - v1.4.2)

[evilpenguin]

Originally Posted by aoehlke

how can I tell what version of this plugin I currently have, and how do I upgrade? just install over top? or completely remove and go back to the original stv in sage?

had to keep up with the upgrades on it lately

If you're not sure, just go ahead and download the full and upgrade everything except your perl2dvd.pref file. That hasn't changed since v1.0 so you should be good.

[dblaine2]

you will need to use the sage path defined in the prefs to use for your awake sage command. my install is still in the old path c:\program files\frey technologies

EDIT: nm, found the setting in perl2dvd.advanced.prefs

[evilpenguin]

Originally Posted by dblaine2

you will need to use the sage path defined in the prefs to use for your awake sage command. my install is still in the old path c:\program files\frey technologies

EDIT: nm, found the setting in perl2dvd.advanced.prefs

I hide a lot of crafty stuff in that advanced property file

[dblaine2]

I'm just wondering why you define the path to sage executable in both the perl2dvd.prefs and again in perl2dvd.advanced.prefs. That's why I made the statement above until I went searching and found it in the other file.

[evilpenguin]

A lot of the reason there seems to be a lot of redundency in the preference files is because you're sceduling/transcoding/burning on the same computer. However, I tried really hard to make everything open ended enough so that you can use seperate computers for each step.

For instance I have two sage clients that can scedule, a nice powerful Sage Server that does all of the transcoding, and then I can burn the DVDs from my main client. As such I have to deal with multiple paths relative to multiple different computers. In my setup, both lines are needed.

I know it doesn't look like it, but i've done my best to keep things as simple as possible

[dblaine2]

I defer to the programming god

[evilpenguin]

6/28/06 v1.3
* I'm now creating status images in the Other Programs to indicate when files are queued (yellow), being processed(blue), finished(green), or errored out(red). Yellow and blue ones are just for information purpuses and don't do anything when clicked, however, the green ones will burn the dvd when clicked and red ones will just delete themselves when clicked.
* Reworked SDTV demux/remux check to be much more accurate (again).
* Fixed a bug where SDTV shows were playing to fast on standalone DVD players when they were being transcoded
* Added option in the advanced properties file to chose what happens to SageTV (quit, minimize or sleep) when you start imgBurn.
* Fixed a bug where sometimes the wrong videos were being turned into test DVD's
* Added support for neilm's XML show files. If they exist, then the title, episode, and description will be read out of them.
* The logic that checks if your videos report the right duration is now disabled by default. I'm just not happy with it right now.
* Fixed a bug in add2dvdq where single quotes were being removed from file names causing everything to break
* Fixed a divide by zero error when test mpeg creation fails
* Fixed menu bug where if title, episode, or description ended in a number, the information would get messed up
* Fixed bug where I would try and create batch files with illegal characters
* Included updated Other Programs STVi for default STV

[rsagetv99]

Originally Posted by evilpenguin

6/28/06 v1.3
* I'm now creating status images in the Other Programs to indicate when files are queued (yellow), being processed(blue), finished(green), or errored out(red). Yellow and blue ones are just for information purpuses and don't do anything when clicked, however, the green ones will burn the dvd when clicked and red ones will just delete themselves when clicked.

Great! I was just going to ask for something similar.

I set this up for my mother, and wanted to give some feedback/suggestions from a novice's point of view.

It would be nice if the "Burn Multifile DVD" button said "Process Multifile DVD" instead, it was confusing enough trying to explain the process, and the wording confused her even more.

Also, I had a few times that the burn process failed for one reason or another, and I had to go into ImageBurn and kill the process, however when I closed ImageBurn your batch file continued to run and the image files were deleted. I had to start the whole process over again. Now that you have the status icons maybe you could have the green icon pop-up a message that gives you the option to re-run the burn process, or if the burn was successful to delete all of the files.

One more thing, not sure if you have it as an option, but it would be nice if you had a section in the prefs to define a pre (and maybe even post) process to run. This would give the ability for someone to run VideoRedo to cut the commercials before transcoding to DVD format.

Offtopic, is there any way to tell when ImageBurn is done? DVDDecrypter used to have the option to eject the DVD when finished, but I have not found a similar option in ImageBurn.

Thanks for this great program!!!

[bebanovich]

I have tried all versions of this import and default as well as SageMC stv and I still get the exact same error no matter what video I try to burn. The process stops when it can't find menuBackground.menu.mpg. I have tried redoing my pref file a few times just in case I did something stupid like leave an extra space or forget to capitalize.

I am attaching my log file this time *crosses fingers*

[evilpenguin]

Originally Posted by bebanovich

I have tried all versions of this import and default as well as SageMC stv and I still get the exact same error no matter what video I try to burn. The process stops when it can't find menuBackground.menu.mpg. I have tried redoing my pref file a few times just in case I did something stupid like leave an extra space or forget to capitalize.

I am attaching my log file this time *crosses fingers*

There should also be a file in the folder called menuGen.log, as well as a file in your SageTV directory called menuGen.gen. Can you post both those files too?

[evilpenguin]

Originally Posted by rsagetv99

It would be nice if the "Burn Multifile DVD" button said "Process Multifile DVD" instead, it was confusing enough trying to explain the process, and the wording confused her even more.

I like it, consider it done for the next version. In the meantime you can open up Studio, search the STV for "Burn Multifile DVD" and change that text manually.

Originally Posted by rsagetv99

Also, I had a few times that the burn process failed for one reason or another, and I had to go into ImageBurn and kill the process, however when I closed ImageBurn your batch file continued to run and the image files were deleted. I had to start the whole process over again. Now that you have the status icons maybe you could have the green icon pop-up a message that gives you the option to re-run the burn process, or if the burn was successful to delete all of the files.

The problem is that I have no way of knowing if imgBurn succeeded or not, so the whole burning batch file is a total hail mary. However, rest assured I know how annoying it is to lose an image and I am doing my best to think of a good solution. If anyone has any ideas, i'd love to hear them

Originally Posted by rsagetv99

One more thing, not sure if you have it as an option, but it would be nice if you had a section in the prefs to define a pre (and maybe even post) process to run. This would give the ability for someone to run VideoRedo to cut the commercials before transcoding to DVD format.

I bet I could set something like that up. I'll play around with that a little bit once the dust settles on this version.

Originally Posted by rsagetv99

Offtopic, is there any way to tell when ImageBurn is done? DVDDecrypter used to have the option to eject the DVD when finished, but I have not found a similar option in ImageBurn.

You should be able to set that in the Settings :: Device window.

[rsagetv99]

Originally Posted by evilpenguin

If anyone has any ideas, i'd love to hear them

In case you missed it in my long post, this was a suggestion, just not sure if it is doable.

Originally Posted by rsagetv99

Now that you have the status icons maybe you could have the green icon pop-up a message that gives you the option to re-run the burn process, or if the burn was successful to delete all of the files.

Expanding on the idea: So basically don't do the delete the files during the burn process instead. Actually, I made a mistake in my prior post, you would not want the green icon to pop up the message, otherwise it would do it every time you burned a DVD, including the initial time.

Maybe add another colored icon, like purple when the file is finished burning, then when the user clicks the purple icon a Sage option box pops up and asks if you want to delete the image files, or if you want to retry the burn process. If the choose retry, then Sage calls the burn batch file, if they choose delete, then Sage calls a delete batch file.

Just a thought.

[bebanovich]

Originally Posted by evilpenguin

There should also be a file in the folder called menuGen.log, as well as a file in your SageTV directory called menuGen.gen. Can you post both those files too?

Gladly.

[FuzzyBS]

The perl2dvd v.1.3 complete package archive file seems to be corrupt. WinRAR 3.51 says "Unexpected end of archive" and it only has 5 or 6 files in it, way too small to take up 6 megs in a RAR file, so I repaired the archive and it found many other files, but it also says they are corrupt. And yes, I did try downloading again with the same results.

The page I'm downloading from is:
http://zadigian.backpackit.com/pub/552408

The URL for perl2dvd_v1_3RC2.rar I used was:
https://home.comcast.net/~zadigian/perl2dvd_v1_3RC2.rar

Thanks in advance.

Bruce

[evilpenguin]

https://home.comcast.net/~zadigian/perl2dvd_v1_3RC3.rar

Download fixed. Thanks for the heads up.

[evilpenguin]

Originally Posted by bebanovich

Gladly.

Hmmm... I just downloaded your menuGen.gen file and the menus were generated just fine for me.

If it's failing then that should mean that your dvdList.0.Workfolder still has all of the temp files. Can you do me a favor, open up a command prompt and enter the command... and then post error.log?

"E:\DVD\dvdList.0.WorkFolder\menuGen.bat" 2> "E:\DVD\dvdList.0.WorkFolder\error.log"

[evilpenguin]

Originally Posted by rsagetv99

In case you missed it in my long post, this was a suggestion, just not sure if it is doable.

I think something like that would be doable. How would this be...

I have the burning batch file burn the DVD and, instead of deleting the image, it creates another lnk, jpg, batch file with a trashcan icon. You can then reclick the burning batch file to reburn the image or, if the burn was successful, you can click the trashcan to delete both buttons and the DVD image.

Edit: Actually, I might have found a much easier way. Turns out imgBurn has a delete image CLI flag that I imagine would only delete it on a successful burn. I'll play around with that today and see what I can't come up with.

[rsagetv99]

Originally Posted by evilpenguin

Edit: Actually, I might have found a much easier way. Turns out imgBurn has a delete image CLI flag that I imagine would only delete it on a successful burn. I'll play around with that today and see what I can't come up with.

OK, thanks.
Also, I am not sure if is related to the download being incomplete, but when I kick off a single file job it shows a blue icon in the queue screen, but the name was not the Title of the show, instead it was the work filename like dvd.0.list or something like that. Also, you might want to change the color of the highlighting, because when I selected the icon it turned it green (even though it was still processing) which could be confusing.

[evilpenguin]

Originally Posted by rsagetv99

OK, thanks.
Also, I am not sure if is related to the download being incomplete, but when I kick off a single file job it shows a blue icon in the queue screen, but the name was not the Title of the show, instead it was the work filename like dvd.0.list or something like that. Also, you might want to change the color of the highlighting, because when I selected the icon it turned it green (even though it was still processing) which could be confusing.

1) When I create qdvd files I name them all dvdList.x, then when the burn is finished I create the readable named batch files. It made sense when I wasn't making all of these status pictures, however, now i'm thinking I need to name them readable sooner. Now that the systems in place, tweaking should not be difficult. Expect it to work much better in the next version.

2) When you create a DVD a picture with a little yellow bubble gets created, however, the second perl2dvd starts processing that file it overwrites it with a picture with a little blue bubble. So, the file probably started processing in the time it took you to get back to the Other Programs menu. My entire reasoning behind the yellow images was to give you feedback that the .qdvd files were being created properly.

3)Unfortunately, I don't have much/any control over the highlight color as that's all depends on what theme you are using in SageMC. The only thing I can affect is the actual picture that shows up, which is why I use the little bubbles.

[rsagetv99]

Originally Posted by evilpenguin

3)Unfortunately, I don't have much/any control over the highlight color as that's all depends on what theme you are using in SageMC. The only thing I can affect is the actual picture that shows up, which is why I use the little bubbles.

I thought that might be the case, so what I was seeing was normal behavior for the shortcut. However, the reason I thought it was a problem was because I did not get the little bubble, it had no icon inside the shortcut. Even after the show processed and the shortcut now displays the title, I still don't have a bubble.

Once you get the bubbles working then I don't think the green highlighting will be an issue.

BTW, I don't mean to bombard you with these little tweaks, just trying to give you feedback.