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

[dflachbart]

Hi evilpenguin,

the new version always tries to transcode my SDTV recording. I tried it with the defaullt setting Maximum Bitrate=7800 as well as the standard one from the previous version (6000) ...

Here is the critical section from the log file:

------------video Info Loop #0 ----------------
Full Path[0] = \\mediapc\recordings\TheOffice-CasinoNight-815914-0.mpg
Extention[0] = \\mediapc\recordings\TheOffice-CasinoNight-815914-0(.mpg)
Filename[0]  = \\mediapc\recordings\(TheOffice-CasinoNight-815914-0.mpg)
File[0]      = (TheOffice-CasinoNight-815914-0).mpg
Full file[0] = (\\mediapc\recordings\TheOffice-CasinoNight-815914-0).mpg
HDTV[0]      = (4)@@@The Office###Casino Night$$$Employees take some big gambles when they host a charity casino-night in their warehouse.%%%
showTitle[0] = (The Office)###Casino Night$$$Employees take some big gambles when they host a charity casino-night in their warehouse.%%%
episodeName[0]= (Casino Night)$$$Employees take some big gambles when they host a charity casino-night in their warehouse.%%%
episodeDesc[0]= (Employees take some big gambles when they host a charity casino-night in their warehouse.)%%%
Getting Video Info: "E:\Video\SageTV\SageTV\SageTVTranscoder.exe" -i "\\mediapc\recordings\TheOffice-CasinoNight-815914-0.mpg" -t 1 "E:\Video\tmp\TheOffice-CasinoNight-815914-0.WorkFolder\temp.mpg" 2>"E:\Video\tmp\TheOffice-CasinoNight-815914-0.WorkFolder\TheOffice-CasinoNight-815914-0.vidInfo.txt"
Duration Line[0]:   Duration: 00:42:58.5, start: 0.289344, bitrate: 4687 kb/s
hours[0]    = 00
minutes[0]  = 42
seconds[0]  = 58.5
totalMin[0] = 42.975
Video Info Line[0]:   Stream #0.0[0x1e0], 29.97 fps(r): Video: mpeg2video, yuv420p, 720x480, 4000 kb/s
Resolution[0]  = 720x480
Bitrate[0]     = 4000
Frame Rate[0]  = 29.97 
Format[0]      = mpeg2video
------------Video Info Loop Finished ----------------
Total DVD time = 42.975 minutes
# of Videos    = 1
Avg Bitrate    =  14240
Bitrate TOO HIGH -> 6000
------------ffmpeg Loop #0 ----------------
(4000 - 978.666666666667)*42.975*60 < 36718750 * (42.975/42.975)
No Transcoding nessisary.  Adding Nav Packets
Transcoding Video: "E:\Video\SageTV\SageTV\SageTVTranscoder.exe" -i "\\mediapc\recordings\TheOffice-CasinoNight-815914-0.mpg" -target ntsc-dvd -acodec copy -vcodec copy "E:\Video\tmp\TheOffice-CasinoNight-815914-0.WorkFolder\TheOffice-CasinoNight-815914-0.2dvd.mpg"

Avg bitrate = 14240 ? Am I doing anything wrong ?


Dirk

[evilpenguin]

Nope, not at all, for a 42 minute video that is the kb/sec that will fill the entire 4.7 billion byte DVD. The math on getting videos to fit on DVD's is a little strange. I'll post a little something about my calculations on the install page tommorow.

Every looks like it's going good, let me know how the DVD turns out

[dflachbart]

Originally Posted by evilpenguin

Nope, not at all, for a 42 minute video that is the kb/sec that will fill the entire 4.7 billion byte DVD. The math on getting videos to fit on DVD's is a little strange. I'll post a little something about my calculations on the install page tommorow.

Every looks like it's going good, let me know how the DVD turns out

Hi evilpenguin,

now I am a litltle confused ...

Shouldn't a 42 minutes show (encoded with standard 3.2 GB/hr quality) fit well on 4.7 GB DVD without the need for transcoding ? All I can tell is that the very same show had been demuxed/remuxed with the previous version, that's why I ask ...

I would prefer *not* to transcode, since it uses almost 100% on my CPU compared to 30-40% with demux/remux ...

Dirk

[evilpenguin]

Yeah, that log file is a tome of lies. There's a lot of stuff in there that says one thing, but I know it means another just because I wrote it For instance,

(4000 - 978.666666666667)*42.975*60 < 36718750 * (42.975/42.975)
No Transcoding nessisary. Adding Nav Packets
Transcoding Video: "E:\Video\SageTV\SageTV\SageTVTranscoder.exe" -i "\\mediapc\recordings\TheOffice-CasinoNight-815914-0.mpg" -target ntsc-dvd -acodec copy -vcodec copy "E:\Video\tmp\TheOffice-CasinoNight-815914-0.WorkFolder\TheOffice-CasinoNight-815914-0.2dvd.mpg"

The first equasion is what I use to determine if an SDTV show in DVD format needs to be transcoded. If it's true, the no transcoding is nessisary, however if it is false the video needs to be transcoded.

The next line tells you that the script determined that the equasion is true and that no transcoding is nessisary. I know the next line says "Transcoding Video", but it's really not

The parameters

-target ntsc-dvd -acodec copy -vcodec copy

just tells ffmpeg to demux/remux into a dvd complient mpeg. You can tell for sure that it's doing this because the output file size will get bigger really fast; pretty much as fast as it takes your computer to copy a 1 gig file.

[dflachbart]

Originally Posted by evilpenguin

The next line tells you that the script determined that the equasion is true and that no transcoding is nessisary. I know the next line says "Transcoding Video", but it's really not

Yeah, this was the source of the confusion, I thought because of the fact that SageTVTransacoder is called it is indeed transcoding ...

I should have just read then changelog more thoroughly

5/19/06 v0.9
- Started using SageTVTranscode for sdtv demux/remux. This seems to clear up all of the issues I was having with bbdmux, mpgtx, and mplex.





But I ran into a new issue: selecting "Send To Single File DVD" does not create the qdvd file for the show in the recording directory any more, but a dvdlist.0.qdvd file in the work directory ...

I debugged the code in Studio, and found the parameters with which add2DVDq.exe is called, so I called it manually from the command line:

E:\Video\SageTV\SageTV>add2DVDQ.exe "\\mediapc\recordings\TheOffice-ConflictReso
lution-777495-0.mpg!!!4@@@The Office###Conflict Resolution$$$Chaos ensues when M
ichael takes responsibility for conflict resolution from the Human Relations dep
artment.%%%", 1740000
Creating qdvd file for \\mediapc\recordings\TheOffice-ConflictResolution-777495-
0.mpg!!!4@@@The Office###Conflict Resolution$$$Chaos ensues when Michael takes r
esponsibility for conflict resolution from the Human Relations department.%%%,
Creating qdvd file from E:\video\tmp\dvdList.0

Then I repeated the same call with the old v0.8 version, I got

E:\Video\SageTV\SageTV>add2DVDQ.exe "\\mediapc\recordings\TheOffice-ConflictReso
lution-777495-0.mpg!!!4@@@The Office###Conflict Resolution$$$Chaos ensues when M
ichael takes responsibility for conflict resolution from the Human Relations dep
artment.%%%", 1740000
Creating qdvd for a single video - \\mediapc\recordings\TheOffice-ConflictResolu
tion-777495-0.mpg!!!4@@@The Office###Conflict Resolution$$$Chaos ensues when Mic
hael takes responsibility for conflict resolution from the Human Relations depar
tment.%%%,=1740000

which creates correctly the qdvd file in the recording directory ...

Is this a configuration issue, or a bug in v0.9 ?

Thanks,
Dirk

[evilpenguin]

That's actually working as intended. When I was doing all my testing I thought it was a pain to have my .qdvd files in multiple places, so changed add2DVDQ to put everything in the work folder. I did, however, get a little lazy and I didn't re-add the code that named the qdvd files readably.

Is there anything about the functionality of add2DVDQ.exe v0.8 you want me to readd?

[dflachbart]

Originally Posted by evilpenguin

That's actually working as intended. When I was doing all my testing I thought it was a pain to have my .qdvd files in multiple places, so changed add2DVDQ to put everything in the work folder. I did, however, get a little lazy and I didn't re-add the code that named the qdvd files readably.

Is there anything about the functionality of add2DVDQ.exe v0.8 you want me to readd?

Ahh, ok, so I only need to update the scan folder in Dirmon ...

It would be nice if the file gets properly named again, but other than that, it works now flawlessly, and ImgBurn just burned my first DVD successfully !

Thanks for all your work,

Dirk

[evilpenguin]

Woo, first successful burn by somone other than me

Would you want the .qdvd file named properly, or would it be better if I just name the batch script that you see in Sage better, like the full episode/title of the first video on the DVD?

[dflachbart]

Originally Posted by evilpenguin

Woo, first successful burn by somone other than me

I am sure other will follow soon now that it is so much cleaner ...

Originally Posted by evilpenguin

Would you want the .qdvd file named properly, or would it be better if I just name the batch script that you see in Sage better, like the full episode/title of the first video on the DVD?

I would think properly naming the .qdvd file would be good idea because then you can see in Dirmon (in the active tasks list) which file is processed. And this would automatically change the name of the .bat file too ... ?

Only if it's not too much work ....


Dirk

[jwaters]

Good news... I've been able to successfully burn a DVD also! Nice work indeed.

But not without some glitches:


It may be something I'm doing wrong, but I get an error in the log file when using DirMon to call perl2dvd.exe (everything works when I run it manually from a command line) A "dvdList.1.WorkFolder" directory gets generated, and the vidInfo.txt log file says something like this:

FFmpeg version CVS, Copyright (c) 2000-2004 Fabrice Bellard
  configuration:  --disable-debug --enable-memalign-hack --enable-a52 --enable-gpl --enable-xvid --enable-faac --enable-mp3lame 
  libavcodec version: 51.1.0
  libavformat version: 50.0.0
  built on Apr 13 2006 15:07:54, gcc: 3.2.3 (mingw special 20030504-1)
S:\EverybodyLovesRaymond-TheMentor-36143-0.mpg: I/O error occured
Usually that means that input file is truncated and/or corrupted.

Now, if I simply go to a command line and call perl2dvd.exe manually:

C:\Program Files\SageTV\SageTV>perl2dvd.exe "D:\DVDWorkFolder\dvdList.0.qdvd" "C:\Program Files\SageTV\SageTV\perl2dvd.pref"

Everything runs, and I get a .img file created in my working directory, and a link to burn the image is created in Sage's "Other Programs"


The other issue I'm having is that the few SD shows that I've burned are in a widescreen format. Shouldn't it preserve the 4:3 aspect ratio for SDTV?

Thanks again. I look forward to seeing progress on this project. I love the DVD menus & ability to customize them!

Jason

[evilpenguin]

Originally Posted by jwaters

It may be something I'm doing wrong, but I get an error in the log file when using DirMon to call perl2dvd.exe (everything works when I run it manually from a command line) A "dvdList.1.WorkFolder" directory gets generated, and the vidInfo.txt log file says something like this:

FFmpeg version CVS, Copyright (c) 2000-2004 Fabrice Bellard
  configuration:  --disable-debug --enable-memalign-hack --enable-a52 --enable-gpl --enable-xvid --enable-faac --enable-mp3lame 
  libavcodec version: 51.1.0
  libavformat version: 50.0.0
  built on Apr 13 2006 15:07:54, gcc: 3.2.3 (mingw special 20030504-1)
S:\EverybodyLovesRaymond-TheMentor-36143-0.mpg: I/O error occured
Usually that means that input file is truncated and/or corrupted.

Is S: a network drive by chance? If it is, then dirmon might not be running the scripts in a user mode that has permission to access the network. The two ways around this are to...
1) Run dirmon2 hidden
2) Run dirmon2 service as your username (I use this one)

As for the 16x9 SDTV shows, can you go ahead and email me the log files for those DVD's at the email address I'm PMing you. That's definitely a bug I want to squash quick

[evilpenguin]

I was looking around the media portal forums over the weekend and I stumbled upon the BlueTwo Dark Metal theme, which I think makes a pretty slick looking DVD menu...



Or even, better, override the little windows guy with the hp_vidoes.png from MetalMod...

[dflachbart]

Hi evilpenguin,

I kicked off another DVD last night, and this time I disabled the debug flag and noticed that the *.bat file got blown away during cleanup (or never got created). The img file was there, and I could burn it just fine.

I'll try another one tonight to see if I can reproduce it ...

Dirk

[evilpenguin]

Originally Posted by flachbar

Hi evilpenguin,

I kicked off another DVD last night, and this time I disabled the debug flag and noticed that the *.bat file got blown away during cleanup (or never got created). The img file was there, and I could burn it just fine.

I'll try another one tonight to see if I can reproduce it ...

Dirk

hmm... It must not be getting created because they are only deleted at the start of the script, and only when a corresponding .done file exists. Also, when they are created they are put directly into the 'SageOthers' folder.

print "**> Creating batch file\n";
    $link = new Win32::Shortcut();
    $link->Path("$localSageOthers\\$showTitle[0].$qdvdFile.burn.bat");
    $link->WorkingDirectory($localSageOthers);
    $link->Save("$sageOthers\\$showTitle[0].$qdvdFile.burn.lnk");
    $link->Close();
print "<** Done\n";

If you can re-create it, send me the log file and i'll see if I can't figure it out.

[evilpenguin]

I can reproduce the 16x9 SDTV bug pretty easily with zoomplayer. It looks like DVDauthor is guessing the wrong aspect ratios for the videos and, while Sage lets me get away with it, more specialized DVD playing software (or even a standalone player) doesn't put up with it. Should be an easy fix

[evilpenguin]

5/23/06 v1.0
- Fixed bug where the mpegBitrate wasn’t being adjusted when the average bitrate was over the max bitrate
- Fixed bug where .bat files with spaces were not being deleted
- Added an optional and semi-experimental way to set transcode priority. It has worked in all of my testing so far, but just the same I added the ability to revert back to the old method by setting the priority to ‘off’
- I am now explicitly telling dvdauthor the aspect ratios and widescreen status of the videos instead of letting it wrongly infer them. Unfortunately, a side effect is that all 16:9 videos will have 16:9 menus and the same thing for 4:3. This is necessary to ensure better compliance with the DVD standard
- imgBurn batch files are now named with the filename of the first video on the DVD. I looked at naming the .qdvd files all like this, but it introduced too many complications
- Started adding PAL support. I’m not quite there yet, think 1.1
- Added a bunch of extra error checking that will abort the script if things start going wrong
- Added the ability to override the default max characters per line for the sub menu description
- Since they dynamic menus are my favorite part of this, I added the option to pick random themes for every DVD. If you set your theme folder as ‘random’, it will scan your theme folders and any one that contains a themeName.override file, even an empty one, will be considered.

[evilpenguin]

Ok, I originally had no intention of adding animations to the menus, but I stumbled upon an adorable little animation in the BlueTwo Dark Metal theme that I just couldn't resist

https://home.comcast.net/~zadigian/m...nd.animate.mpg

Still needs some tweaking as far as the animation speed and the location goes, but I think it'll look great when its done

[dflachbart]

Originally Posted by evilpenguin

If you can re-create it, send me the log file and i'll see if I can't figure it out.

Created another DVD last night, this time the .bat file was there, and everything else also works like a charme now. Perfect ... !

Dirk

[evilpenguin]

Glad to hear it!

v1.0 should be pretty solid so I don't anticipate any major problems. So if you have SageMC and a DVD burner, don't hesitate to try it out. Configuration is a lot easier than it looks. I've been burning a bunch of HDTV season finale's for friends, including the two hour 24 one, and they've all come out looking/sounding great

[aoehlke]

I've installed everything, and followed all instructions, but when I choose send to dvd, nothign happens. how can I best troubleshoot my setup?