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

[BBCritical]

Feature request: the ability to create an audio cd from mp3 files through sage

[evilpenguin]

Originally Posted by Kirby

Ok, trying to figure this thing out and what it can do for me. I only record HD, and like to preserve as much PQ as possible. From what I can tell, you are transcoding all HD to 720p, correct? I'm wondering how this would look compared to a very high quality 1080i show, say Star Wars Ep 3 that just aired this weekend. This show in itself poses some interesting dilemnas. My recorded file size was 9.23GB, which also started 1 minute early, and ended 1 minute late. So my guess is that I could trim to the true beginning of the movie, and maybe lose the ending credits, to get to a size that would natively fit on a DL DVD. If that much is true, can your mod be configured to do that or will I always be forced to transocde to 720p? What about shows that are already 720p? And have you tested with any HD Lite material, where the shows are 1280x1080i, and the PAR is 3:2 instead of 1:1?

Another question, when you burn a show to DVD, what happens to the show info? Is it also saved on DVD such that when you play the DVD again, you get all the detailed info, possibly the coverart image, etc? I suppose I need to install the Sage MC 16x9 STV to get more familiar with all this.

You just have a little misinformation, but it's an easy mistake. 720p HDTV is 1280x720 where as DVD is 480i (I think) which is 720x480.

As far as you're quality questions goes, since your starting with such a high quality source, you're probably going to end up with something comparable to a regular DVD with a good transfer. I don't actually own an HDTV, but since you do so you probably understand what that's like. And, while my plug-in could probably put that entire movie onto a single layer disc, since its 2.5 hours long it probably wouldn't look good. Since you have DL-DVD discs at your disposal you're going to want to want to set the DVD size preference to 8.5 which should be more than enough space to encode the whole movie at the maximum bitrate.

As for HDTV Lite, I don't have any available to me so I haven't tested it, but from how you describe it and the wikipedia page it sounds like it would indeed break my script. If anybody has any HDTV lite shows available to them, I would appreciate if you would try and burn them and send me the .qdvd.log file.

And my script does generate menus that that contain the show title, episode title, and the description provided by Sage. And while I don't currently handle thumbnails or cover art I'm planing on adding that down the road.

I hope that answers all of your questions! Give the plug-in a shot and let me know what you think

[evilpenguin]

Originally Posted by BBCritical

Feature request: the ability to create an audio cd from mp3 files through sage

Oh yeah, I remember you mentioning that earlier. I actually looked into it and while its resonably doable, I don't listen to much music so its not very high on my todo list. Maybe someday...

[Kirby]

Originally Posted by evilpenguin

You just have a little misinformation, but it's an easy mistake. 720p HDTV is 1280x720 where as DVD is 480i (I think) which is 720x480.

As far as you're quality questions goes, since your starting with such a high quality source, you're probably going to end up with something comparable to a regular DVD with a good transfer. I don't actually own an HDTV, but since you do so you probably understand what that's like. And, while my plug-in could probably put that entire movie onto a single layer disc, since its 2.5 hours long it probably wouldn't look good. Since you have DL-DVD discs at your disposal you're going to want to want to set the DVD size preference to 8.5 which should be more than enough space to encode the whole movie at the maximum bitrate.

As for HDTV Lite, I don't have any available to me so I haven't tested it, but from how you describe it and the wikipedia page it sounds like it would indeed break my script. If anybody has any HDTV lite shows available to them, I would appreciate if you would try and burn them and send me the .qdvd.log file.

And my script does generate menus that that contain the show title, episode title, and the description provided by Sage. And while I don't currently handle thumbnails or cover art I'm planing on adding that down the road.

I hope that answers all of your questions! Give the plug-in a shot and let me know what you think

Ohhhhh, the light just came on! I thought you were preserving the TS/MPG file, or converting to another format in a lower HD resolution. Didnt realize you were actually creating a "legit" 480i DVD!

I guess what I want is essentially what you have done, but maybe rather than transcoding to 480i and creating a regular video DVD, is a way to write a TS to dvd media, along with a way to preserve program info, cover art, etc, such that I can archive that DVD for months, pull it back out, stick it in a Sage machine, and watch it.

In the past I have converted my HD files to XviD at 1280x720 (although not 720p) which would generally give me a 2:1 space savings on Film material. I would encode at 7000kbps bitrate (forced) and maintain AC3. This process though takes several hours, even on a dual core machine it would take 6-7 hours for a 2 hour movie.

Although it might be nice to have a mod like yours to handle all the front end work on this in Sage and eventually do the burning, I'm not sure its practical, given the long encoding times. And I have since stopped encoding due to larger hard drives dropping in price (just today there were 500gb seagate SATA2 drives for $199 shipped.). If I do start encoding again, I would want to do it in H.264 format, which is even more time consuming, and probably better left as an offline process on another machine.

I may still try out your mod though Might be worth archiving a few of the SD shows I record.

[aoehlke]

yo penguin, in oprder to upgrade, to I have to reinstall everything or just the perl2dvd1.1?

[evilpenguin]

Yeah, you're gonna want to go ahead and reinstall everything, and redo your preferences because I changed the format of the file. I know, big fun, right? I promise this is the last time!

[src666]

Originally Posted by evilpenguin

You just have a little misinformation, but it's an easy mistake. 720p HDTV is 1280x720 where as DVD is 480i (I think) which is 720x480.

Actually, DVD is recorded as 480p natively for NTSC formats, and 576p for PAL. The player handles the interlacing to feed non-progressive displays.

[evilpenguin]

Originally Posted by src666

Actually, DVD is recorded as 480p natively for NTSC formats, and 576p for PAL. The player handles the interlacing to feed non-progressive displays.

Bah, I even had 480p written at first but I thought it didn't sound right so I changed it

Oh well, I just write the script; ffmpeg does the black magic

[fafurd]

So I created a muliti file DVD today without issues with videos that didn't have any detailed program information and it worked fine. I noticed this, did the imdb search and got tons of information. I tried to create the multi file dvd by adding the first one and the sage icon spun forever. I finally killed the "add2DVDQ" process, looked at my dvdlist folder and noticed that it created it, but seemed incomplete in some cases. I also tried to create a single file dvd and had the same issue, so I think it has to do with this text content. Attached is my dvdlist files for two that it locked up on and another where it worked successfully.

[evilpenguin]

Originally Posted by fafurd

So I created a muliti file DVD today without issues with videos that didn't have any detailed program information and it worked fine. I noticed this, did the imdb search and got tons of information. I tried to create the multi file dvd by adding the first one and the sage icon spun forever. I finally killed the "add2DVDQ" process, looked at my dvdlist folder and noticed that it created it, but seemed incomplete in some cases. I also tried to create a single file dvd and had the same issue, so I think it has to do with this text content. Attached is my dvdlist files for two that it locked up on and another where it worked successfully.

Oh yeah, I can see how that would break things. Probably about the best way for me to fix that is to just read up to the first new line and cut if off there. I could just take out all of the new lines, but without all that fancy formatting all of that information would look terrible anyway. Hows that sound?

[fafurd]

Originally Posted by evilpenguin

Oh yeah, I can see how that would break things. Probably about the best way for me to fix that is to just read up to the first new line and cut if off there. I could just take out all of the new lines, but without all that fancy formatting all of that information would look terrible anyway. Hows that sound?

If there is no ther way, that cool. At least the description would still be in tack -- the important thing.

[evilpenguin]

Change log:
6/12/06 v1.2
* Added support for the Default STV and flachbar was awesome enough to turn it into an STVi again for me.
* Backed off the threshold on the estimated vs. reported duration because I couldn't come up with a single equation that worked for all bitrates
* Added an avi bitrate correction because at lower bitrates they transcode too large
* Added 100 kilobit penelty to videos if the previous video transcoded to large.
* All of my adjustments and magic numbers now equations instead of constants and are configurable in the advanced preference file. This means if I find a more accurate representation for any of them, people can just change their preference file instead me of having to release a whole new version.
* I'm now maintaining a stats file of every transcode. Every once and a while I may request people email this file so I can use those stats to fine tune my fancy, new, bitrate equations.
* Fixed add2DVDQ bug where it would hang if there were strange characters in the description
* Now that I've split the preference file into two I'm going to provide an upgrade pack so people who already have it don't have to download everything again.
* Added an advanced preference so you can specify a UNC path for your work folder to be used in the burning batch file. This is very handy if your network drives like to randomly disconnect, as mine do.
* Included a full set of menu pngs for first time default STV users
* Before I demux/remux a video, I create a small test DVD to check for errors. This should eliminate one of my two random, mysterious, video errors.

Note: If you are upgrading, reimport SageMC_DVD_burnImport as it has been changed a little bit.

Just a note to all the new people, make sure you read as much of the install/configuration instructions as you can stomach because I promise there is some good information lurking within my poor spelling and grammar.

Most importantly for default STV users:
* Fill out perl2dvd.pref carefully, leave the theme as "Images_bt" for now, and make sure you're work folder exists. If you have any problems go ahead and post your log files and/or preference files here on the forum and i'll do my best to get you going

Enjoy

[insomniac]

woohoo! your awesome man. I cant wait to try this out!

[aoehlke]

if i could just get this without having to take the sageMC it would be a dream.
I like sageMC and all, but it is not very tolerant of control with a mouse, some features are not accessible via the mouse at all.
also I noticed I cannot manually add a channel to the lineup via sageMC.

penguin, I hope someday you get the time to release this as a standalone, and not require sageMC.

cheers on a great job though!

[evilpenguin]

Originally Posted by aoehlke

if i could just get this without having to take the sageMC it would be a dream.
I like sageMC and all, but it is not very tolerant of control with a mouse, some features are not accessible via the mouse at all.
also I noticed I cannot manually add a channel to the lineup via sageMC.

penguin, I hope someday you get the time to release this as a standalone, and not require sageMC.

cheers on a great job though!

Originally Posted by evilpenguin

* Added support for the Default STV and flachbar was awesome enough to turn it into an STVi again for me.

[aoehlke]

I'm sorry, I dont quite know the ins and outs of sage add ons.
does the stvi thing now mean it can be used without sageMC.?

if so, yahoo!... sage is now the dream machine.

[evilpenguin]

Yep, this now works in the default STV so SageMC is no longer required

Although, I still highly recommend SageMC for reasons that have nothing to do with this plugin

[aoehlke]

i liked almost EVERYTHING about sageMC, except 2 things:
1) mouse control was not fully supported (maybe I just dont knwo all the keyboard shortcuts)
2) i coul dnot manually add a channel to the line up, the option was "gone" from the menu

[dflachbart]

Originally Posted by aoehlke

i liked almost EVERYTHING about sageMC, except 2 things:
1) mouse control was not fully supported (maybe I just dont knwo all the keyboard shortcuts)

Although SageMC was primarily designed for use with a remote, it works well with the keyboard. I am using it myself with a keyboard on my client, and cant think of any functionality I cannot access with a key press ...

Originally Posted by aoehlke

2) i coul dnot manually add a channel to the line up, the option was "gone" from the menu

Did you ever mention this in the SageMC thread ? I don't recall that this ever has been mentioned ...
Shouldn't be too hard to get this back in, or as evilpenguin mentioned below, just switch temporarily to the standard STV.
But let's follow up on this in the SageMC thread ...

Dirk

[evilpenguin]

Originally Posted by aoehlke

i liked almost EVERYTHING about sageMC, except 2 things:
1) mouse control was not fully supported (maybe I just dont knwo all the keyboard shortcuts)
2) i coul dnot manually add a channel to the line up, the option was "gone" from the menu

Yeah, I can see your points, SageMC is definitely designed for couch + remote control usage.

As for the configuration though, on the occasions that I need to do something fancy that SageMC doesn't support, I just switch back to the default STV, make my changes, then pop back to SageMC.

But this is another topic for another thread