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

[aoehlke]

I am stuck here:
1) If you haven’t already, install and configure Neilm’s Dynamic Menu

2) Import OtherPrograms_vx_x.stvi and SageTV_DVD_burnImport.stvi which are included with with perl2dvd v1.2+.

3) Use the dynamic menu to add the internal screen “Other Programs” to a menu of your choice.

#3, I cannot add Other programs to the main menu. I am not using sage MC.
I have added it like 3 times now, as an "internal screen", it never shows up, I have savede and re-read the menu def file numerous times... argh! probably buggared up my sage again and have to reinstall the whole bloody thing.

[aoehlke]

no wait, I got it.
I had to type "Other Programs" into notepad, and the copy it to clipboard... then use the "paste text from clipboard option" and that worked... so far so good, onto step 4...

[bebanovich]

I love this import in theory and I'm anxious to get it working but right now all of my burn projects are hanging at the same point. After the MenuGen.bat file runs, I get the following error in the log file:

Running menuGen batch file: "E:\DVD\dvdList.0.WorkFolder\menuGen.bat"
Could not find E:\DVD\dvdList.0.WorkFolder\menuBackground.menu.mpg!

I assume I have incorrectly configured something but I'm not sure where to look. The regular perl2dvd.pref file seems otherwise straightforward. I'm using SageMC at the moment. I thought this might be a big duh on my end so I'm not posting a bunch of details . . . let me know if more info / log files are needed.

[aoehlke]

I just discovered a weird thing with the "other programs".
the entry in sage.properties for mlbdude other programs does not like subdirectories.

I used to have C:\Program Files\SageTv\SageTV_OtherPrograms, but it kept removing the backslashes.

when I moved this folder to D:\SageTV_OtherPrograms, it was happy.

[Opus4]

Try using "\\" instead of "\". The backslash charactrer needs to be preceeded by another one first, since it is a special character. Edit: You would probably need a backslash in front of the space too.

- Andy

[evilpenguin]

Yep, Opus is right on. Check the SageMC Wiki entry for Other Programs for more details.

[rsagetv99]

This is a great plugin , you have no idea how happy my mother is going to be when I get this going on her Sage machine.

One problem I had when using this plugin is, it failed to create the batch file and shortcut for one movie that I was trying to transfer to DVD. It looks like it is because of the movie title. I don't remember the exact movie title but it was something like - "Turista: 2 Days in Cuba". From the logs it looked like everything was fine until it tried to create the .bat and .lnk files. I think what happened is that you are using the show title for those files and Windows would not allow a file with ":" to be created. Other people may have similar issues if the record a show with a symbol that Windows does not allow. The other files were created fine since they were named "dvd.list.3" instead of the title. The only way I see around this is to use the MPG filename instead of the actual title when creating the .bat and .lnk file, but maybe you have a better idea.

Anyways, great job!

[Motofreak75]

Hey Rage

Evil penguin said the fix will be in the next release, for us DVB'er.

[rsagetv99]

Also, I think when I loaded this plugin I lost the "Close" button in the "Advanced Options" menu of my Sage recordings. Anyone know how to get this back?

[evilpenguin]

Yeah, sorry about that. I'm sitting on a few bug fixes I need to release, but this week has been a little crazy (a lightening strike took down my Sage Server ) and the extra features I wanted for the next version are proving a little more difficult than I planned. I think i'll just strip out all of the new stuff and just release a bug fix version tomorrow to give people something a little more stable to play with over the weekend.

[evilpenguin]

Originally Posted by rsagetv99

Also, I think when I loaded this plugin I lost the "Close" button in the "Advanced Options" menu of my Sage recordings. Anyone know how to get this back?

Hmmm... It should be there, but i'd be willing to believe its getting cut off at the bottom of your screen. Look at the picture on the 1st post and let me know if you have any extra buttons that aren't there.

[rsagetv99]

Originally Posted by evilpenguin

Yeah, sorry about that. I'm sitting on a few bug fixes I need to release, but this week has been a little crazy (a lightening strike took down my Sage Server )

Wow that is wierd, we had another STV developer a while back that was working on a DVD burning app and had similar problems with lightning and such.

Maybe this project is cursed!!!!

Oh well who cayars, oops I mean cares, all of that is ancient history.

[evilpenguin]

Originally Posted by rsagetv99

Wow that is wierd, we had another STV developer a while back that was working on a DVD burning app and had similar problems with lightning and such.

Maybe this project is cursed!!!!

Oh well who cayars, oops I mean cares, all of that is ancient history.

Haha, it was nothing that major. Just had to replace my PVR-250 and my SATA RAID card

[dblaine2]

Oooh the ghost of cayars....

[evilpenguin]

6/23/06 v1.2.5
* Includes flachbar’s default STVi fix
* Added an optional line in advanced properties to call SageTV -awake at the end of burning batch file. Just make it the path to SageTV.exe or SageTVClient.exe relative to the computer doing the burning.
* If you are burning an imported video that’s named in SageTV format (ShowName-EpisodeName-123456-0.mpg), the script will pull out the proper names for the DVD menus.
* I’m stripping out all illigal file name characters before I try and make a file.
* Drive letters no longer have to be capitalized, but I still recommend it.
* I’m using a new method to detect if SDTV shows need to be transcoded. Basically I just compare the original file size to the desired transcoded size, i’m not really sure why I wasn’t doing this in the first place.

I'm pretty sure that this version fixes all of the bug reports people have sent me so far. Hopefully this will tide people over until I hammer out the bugs with v1.3

[ekiwi]

Just installed this import into the default stv and love it so far queued 6 dvds and burnt 2 of them. I have ended up with watchable/beautiful video dvds

now for my wish list

the movies i record i process with videoredo to remove the begining and ending commercials and then i save them to a directory without the sage epgcode at the end.

they then appear in my imported videos in a directory called sagemovies. I also put the xml file created by nielms java app with them.

this works great for me and everything for watching them is perfect.

burning these files to dvd using the pluging creates a few issues.

one) the entries in other programs get named "sagemovies\hero" but worse they get truncated and i only see a couple of letters of the actual movie title something like "sagemovies\he" makes it difficult to tell which movie i am about to burn.

Two) the entries on the menu page also have the form "sagemovies\hero" which is a little ugly

three) on the sub menu there are no details about the movie

so my wish is

if you cannot find the file in sages db can you check for a xml file to get the details from and use the title contaied in the xml file rather than the name of the file

i would suggest using the nielm xml as it can be used with any stv and it wont conflict with any that are already being created by any individual stv

thanks again i was so close to running out of disk space

-ekiwi

[evilpenguin]

That sounds pretty doable

The Sage Community site doesn't appear to be working right now. Can you post an example XML file for me?

[ekiwi]

file is called

Lost-Reckoning-5491003-0.mpg.xml

yes it has the .mpg and the .xml this is not a mistake

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<sageShowInfo version="1.1">
    <channelList>
        <channel channelId="51541">
            <channelName>TV2 x</channelName>
            <channelDescription>002</channelDescription>
            <channelNumber>2</channelNumber>
        </channel>
    </channelList>
    <favoriteList>
        <favorite favoriteId="18108">
            <title>Lost</title>
            <firstRun/>
            <reRun/>
            <quality>Default</quality>
            <stopPadding>420</stopPadding>
        </favorite>
    </favoriteList>
    <showList>
        <show epgId="EPad9ad9ef">
            <title>Lost</title>
            <episode>Reckoning</episode>
            <category>Drama</category>
            <description>A fast moving and entertaining look at the series so far.</description>
            <airing channelId="51541" duration="3300" favoriteId="18108" sageDbId="5491003" startTime="2006-06-21T09:25:00.00Z">
                <mediafile duration="3720" sageDbId="5548001" startTime="2006-06-21T09:25:00.00Z" type="TV">
                    <segmentList>
                        <segment duration="3720" filePath="g:\sage\Lost-Reckoning-5491003-0.mpg" startTime="2006-06-21T09:25:00.00Z"/>
                    </segmentList>
                </mediafile>
            </airing>
        </show>
    </showList>
</sageShowInfo>

as you can see it has all the info you need and much more

however for me i have edited the mpg file to remove commercials so the length will be shorter than it was when the xml file was created. But shorter is better than longer for you calculations

[evilpenguin]

I got a call from my Dad yesterday and he told me that some of the DVD's I burned him for fathers day were playing too fast on his DVD player. Truth be told, I don't own a real DVD player so i've never tried them out in anything but my SageTV machine and a friends XBOX 360, in which they worked perfectly.

So long story short, I went to fry's yesterday and picked up a cheap, standalone, DVD player, burned a few DVD's and sure enough, all of the audio on the transcoded SDTV shows was playing just a bit too fast making everything sound weird.

Quick fix: If you aren't burning any HDTV, open up your perl2dvd.advanced.pref and modify the top lines...

MPEG2 switches for ffmpeg=-y -acodec copy -intra_matrix 08,08,09,11,13,13,14,17,08,08,11,12,13,14,17,18,09,11,13,13,14,17,17,19,11,11,13,13,14,17,18,20,11,13,13,14,16,17,20,24,13,13,14,16,17,20,24,29,13,13,14,17,19,23,28,34,13,14,17,19,23,28,34,41 -inter_matrix 08,08,08,09,09,09,09,10,08,08,09,09,09,09,10,10,08,09,09,09,09,10,10,10,09,09,09,09,10,10,10,10,09,09,09,10,10,10,10,11,09,09,10,10,10,10,11,11,09,10,10,10,10,11,11,11,10,10,10,10,11,11,11,11 -r 30000/1001 -bf 2 -mbd 2 -qmin 1 -mblmin 1 -lmin 1 -qsquish 1 -rc_init_cplx 500 -padtop 0 -padbottom 0 -async 50 -flags2 +sgop -deinterlace
AVI switches for ffmpeg=-acodec mp2 -ab 224 -ac 2 -mbd 2 -qmin 2 -async 1 -y

to...

MPEG2 switches for ffmpeg=-acodec mp2 -ab 224 -ac 2 -mbd 2 -qmin 2 -async 1 -y -deinterlace
AVI switches for ffmpeg=-acodec mp2 -ab 224 -ac 2 -mbd 2 -qmin 2 -async 1 -y -deinterlace

That should make things work much better. If you are burning HDTV, that will still work, however, any SDTV show that transcodes will still suffer from the speed up. I'll have it sorted out in 1.3.

Sorry it took me so long to catch this one.

Edit: Added -deinterlace

[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