STV Import: SageTV DVD Burning v2.0d (12/5/06)

[Deadbolt]

Originally Posted by evilpenguin

Wait, now I get it, you want to replace the original recording with the cut recording, right?

Yes, and be able to choose which ones I do this on...for instance if I'm burning 2 TV shows, be able to tell your STV to commercial cut one show but not the other when I add them to the queue.

[evilpenguin]

Change list-

• Bugfix: (SageMC) Mencoder was crashing on some people’s computers. I swapped out mencoder with the new official build. If you want to try and use some optimized versions, you can download them here… http://ffdshow.faireal.net/mirror/mplayer/
• Bugfix: (SageMC) Audio size was being incorrectly estimated.
• Bugfix: (SageMC) Enabling/disabling features wasn’t working on SageTV Client or SageTV running as a service. This was a STVi issue so you’ll have to re-import.
• Bugfix: (SageMC) The hardcoded default encoding profile had some incorrect parameters.
• Bugfix: (SageMC) The 2-Pass Xvid profile included had some incorrect parameters.
• Bugfix: Wasn’t detecting invalid parameters soon enough.
• Bugfix: Removed old preference that enabled dirmon-less operation, this is no longer supported.
• Bugfix: DVD menu generation would always fail when you were using UNC paths for videos
• Enhancement: Added the option to use a centralized work folder rather than using the recording drives.
• Enhancement: Removed perl2dvd.pref and perl2dvd.advanced.pref from the download. These will automatically be generated by perl2dvdsetup.exe
• Enhancement: perl2dvdsetup.exe now makes a backup of your old pref files instead of just ovewritting them
• Enhancement: perl2dvdsetup.exe specifically asks you about a few important advanced preference items
• Known Issue – UNC paths break the iso creation for DVD’s

http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/down...do=file&id=142

[jbarr]

Evil,

Almost there!

OK, it looks like everything created properly, but it failed to create the .img file. I got the Burn status in Other Programs, but ImgBurn failed to find the .img file.

The logs and burn .bat file shows what look like there may be a bad path somewhere.

Attached are directory listing screenshots and log files and prefs files.

I'm getting very excited about this because I am SO close!

[evilpenguin]

Originally Posted by jbarr

Evil,

Almost there!

OK, it looks like everything created properly, but it failed to create the .img file. I got the Burn status in Other Programs, but ImgBurn failed to find the .img file.

The logs and burn .bat file shows what look like there may be a bad path somewhere.

Attached are directory listing screenshots and log files and prefs files.

I'm getting very excited about this because I am SO close!

Bah, another UNC path issue, I thought I got all those today. Oh well, I'll have another fix out tomorrow.

[evilpenguin]

Change list-

• Bugfix: Fixed 2 more UNC path issues

http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/down...do=file&id=142

[perfessor101]

Thank you very much ... it's working great ...

I was really having fun with all those UNC paths ...

Bobby

[jbarr]

Bingo!

Everything processed as expected, logs are clean, I saw the VIDEO_TS directory filled with the proper files, and IMGBurn completed without error.

When I get home from work in a couple hours, I'll see how the DVD plays.

The only thing left is to cleanup the files. I had the prefs setting set to retain everything, so I assume if I reset that value, things will get nicely cleaned up?

Evilpenguin, YOU DA MAN!!!

BTW, we just purchased an entertainment center that'll hold up to a 50" TV, so my next purchase before the end of the year will be a new LCD HDTV. Once that's installed and working well with SageTV, then it's SageMC time!

[evilpenguin]

Glad to hear more people are finally having success!

[larryf]

While trying to get this working in the default STV, I made the mistake of using the latest 'comskip edl' (1.17) and the latest customizable menus (5.4)... Now having the 'hang' problem mention in the customizable menus thread. The customizable menus stvi included in evil's installation is the older one, best if you stick with that until they sort out the problems with 5.4.

Tried the setup with sagemc, and all worked well for me. I may try again on the default STV this weekend (this was all on a test box), but for now I'll be looking in the sagemc thread to see if anyone fixed the 'mouse doesn't work in all menus' problem in mc....

Evilpenguin, with this plugin you are gonna make my girlfriend very happy.... Maybe I should be jealous?

[jbarr]

New issue: I recorded two shows (King of the Hill episodes) and then selected each as part of a multi-video DVD list. I then selected process list, and it created a number of file (attached) and then it hung. In the recordings subdirectory ("Recordings dir.png" file) the file KingoftheHill-KingoftheAntHill-375743-0.vidInfo.txt has an error:

File '\\htpc\SageTV_Recordings\King of the Hill - King of the Ant Hill(2).dvdList.0.WorkFolder\temp.mpg' already exists. Overwrite ? [y/N]

I had to then manually kill all the related processes through Task Manager.

Same behavior when adding multiple and then selecting "process" or adding one, then selecting another and choosing "Add & process".

[evilpenguin]

Originally Posted by jbarr

New issue: I recorded two shows (King of the Hill episodes) and then selected each as part of a multi-video DVD list. I then selected process list, and it created a number of file (attached) and then it hung. In the recordings subdirectory ("Recordings dir.png" file) the file KingoftheHill-KingoftheAntHill-375743-0.vidInfo.txt has an error:

File '\\htpc\SageTV_Recordings\King of the Hill - King of the Ant Hill(2).dvdList.0.WorkFolder\temp.mpg' already exists. Overwrite ? [y/N]

I had to then manually kill all the related processes through Task Manager.

Same behavior when adding multiple and then selecting "process" or adding one, then selecting another and choosing "Add & process".

Wow, great find, I noticed a random hang over the weekend, but I never figured out the cause!

Try this test perl2dvd.exe and see if it fixes it...

[jbarr]

Evil,
Worked like a charm!

And it really was surprisingly quick. The whole process took under 25 minutes from selection of two half-hour shows to playback of the DVD. Very nice!

To me, this launches SageTV way past the competition. It's an excellent way to provide "fair use" copies of shows in a clean, slick interface. There's obviously a lot going on behind the scenes, and I presume that any errors would require digging a bit to troubleshoot, but you've certainly covered the bases to make this an easy click-click-click process.

[evilpenguin]

11/21/06 v2.0c -

• Bugfix: Fixed an issue where a file overwrite warning was hanging the process
• Enhancement: Added easy single video DVD creation, check out the single_video_dvd.batch for an example.

[JREkiwi]

Originally Posted by larryf

While trying to get this working in the default STV, I made the mistake of using the latest 'comskip edl' (1.17) and the latest customizable menus (5.4)... Now having the 'hang' problem mention in the customizable menus thread.

larryf, as I said in the customizable menus thread, I believe the issue was with the comskip stvi. It should be fixed in version 1.2. The latest version is 1.2.1

John

[Patilan]

Greetings!

First off, Evilpenguin, I want to say that I am extremely happy that someone has finally written a plugin that incorporates MEncoder. Thanks!

There are some things though that are bugging me about the way the plugin works with the profiles now.

The first thing that struck me was that the Video Filters line was left blank, and yet the transcoder started a video filter -- scale. That's certainly not a clean way to do things. The plugin should absolutely have no knowledge about the transcoder options whatsoever, or things can get really messy. Just for one example, if I have a chain of several video filters, where will the plugin put 'scale' in the chain? Put anything funny before the 'pullup' filter and mencoder will crash. Does your plugin really need to know things like that? Absolutely not! Besides, mencoder is still in very heavy development, and things change on a daily basis. Your plugin should only know about the profiles file: take the lines as text, add them up together, pass it to mencoder. Done! Nice and clean.

Those "mb/30 minute", "Custom Res", "Est. Audio Size", etc, aren't very intuitive. You were probably thinking how to split one single mile-long settings line into separate, somewhat more user-friendly and self-explanatory sections. But where do you draw the line? When designing this plugin you should be really focused on functionality alone rather than on user-friendliness. You are not planning on explaining to people what each option means anyway. There's RTFM for that. If somebody needs to know what :8x8dct: means, then there's the link to the manual. The "smarter" your plugin tries to be, the more restricting (and useless) it becomes for people who [think they] know what they want.

Below are two example profiles, the way I feel things should be (less the remarks in the last lines). Look at them for a while, and I hope that you'll see the logic to it.

-------------------------------
 Profile =H264-ivtc-900kbps
 Command = -of avi  -ovc x264  -ofps 24000/1001  -priority idle 
 Filters = -vf crop=704:464:8:8,pullup,softskip,hqdn3d=3:2:4 
 Codecs Options = -x264encopts frameref=2:bframes=2:trellis=1:keyint=120:bitrate=900
 Pass 1 Options =:pass=1:turbo=1  -o NUL  -nosound
 Pass 2 Options =:pass=2  -oac copy  -forceidx  -o  '<--here the plugin will append the Output and Input File Names
-------------------------------
 Profile =H264-HQ-1200kbps
 Command = -of avi  -ovc x264  -priority idle 
 Filters = -vf hqdn3d=2:1:2 
 Codecs Options = -x264encopts subq=6:frameref=6:bframes=2:trellis=1:8x8dct:partitions=all:weight_b:b_adapt:bime:brdo:bitrate=1200
 Pass 1 Options =:pass=1:turbo=1  -o NUL  -nosound
 Pass 2 Options =:pass=2  -oac copy  -forceidx  -o  '<--Output/Input File Names Please!
-------------------------------

Yours,
Patilan

[evilpenguin]

Originally Posted by Patilan

Greetings!

First off, Evilpenguin, I want to say that I am extremely happy that someone has finally written a plugin that incorporates MEncoder. Thanks!

There are some things though that are bugging me about the way the plugin works with the profiles now.

Rest assured, i'm craftier than I look...

If you read the page about making your own profiles you'll see that, while I dumbed everything down to simplify it for the average user who doesn't want to learn about mencoder, I still left enough tricks to satisfy even the most hardcore power user.

Items of note include...

• If you include the scale filter in your video filters line, I will use that instead of adding my own
• If you read all the way to the bottom, you'll see that i've left a method to completely specify each pass' commands, including the bitrate.

[Patilan]

Oh, and I meant to ask you... In several places I saw you referring to a "mencoder new official build". What do you mean by "official build"? If I am not wrong, there are no official builds for MEncoder. You can either get the "official" source files and compile your own build, or you can get somebody elses builds which are certainly not "official" builds. Am I missing something?

[evilpenguin]

The official builds are directly from the mplayer website download section

http://www.mplayerhq.hu/design7/news.html

[Patilan]

Originally Posted by evilpenguin

Rest assured, i'm craftier than I look...

If you read the page about making your own profiles you'll see that

Trust me, I did read all that before I dared to post.

But the whole thing does look a little too messy right now.

Originally Posted by evilpenguin

... while I dumbed everything down to simplify it for the average user who doesn't want to learn..

The average user who doesn't want to learn will go with the predefined profiles. I will volunteer to help you include plenty of such profiles.

Originally Posted by evilpenguin

If you include the scale filter in your video filters line, I will use that instead of adding my own.

I don't really care about the scale filter. In my example scenario I did not have a scale filter of my own. My question was, since you are starting scale anyway, where will you put it in the filter chain (first/last/other)? And the point I was trying to make there was that your plugin doesn't need to be making decisions like that.


Yours,
Patilan

[evilpenguin]

I'd be more than happy to discuss your thoughts on the profiles. Why don't you enable private messages and we can take it out of the forum.