STV Import: SageMC Video Tools v2.0.1a (2/02/07)

[evilpenguin]

Originally Posted by pilotguy7ca

EP - have you had a chance to address the problem with SD video with AC3 sound being dropped when creating a DVD image? Everything that is recorded from my r5000 boxes, both SD and HD, has AC3 sound so I can't create a DVD image for my SD stuff Thanks

Yeah, I'm working on it but to fix it, as well as a few other peoples problems, I pretty much have to rewrite my entire encoding engine... so its taking a while

[belleboyd]

Originally Posted by evilpenguin

Yeah, I'm working on it but to fix it, as well as a few other peoples problems, I pretty much have to rewrite my entire encoding engine... so its taking a while

Thanks EP....
I was just gonna ask about my problem ... but now I won't.

[fyodor]

Thanks for putting this together. When I attempt to start a conversion, nothing visible seems to happen in or out of sage. Similarly, there doesn't appear to be anything in my "other programs" menu. Is there something that I need to do to associate the video tools with the "other programs" menu to get progress to show up?

[belleboyd]

Originally Posted by evilpenguin

Yeah, I'm working on it but to fix it, as well as a few other peoples problems, I pretty much have to rewrite my entire encoding engine... so its taking a while

All my shows still fall out of .qdvd log with "File Does not exist" ...
have you got that far yet??? Anyone else having this issue? It started when I upgraded tp 6.018 (sigh)


I'm trying to be patient ... really I am....

Thanks

[Chroner]

I am having trouble playing DVD's that I burned using the latest version of video tools. The DVD's don't have audio when I play them on my PC whether in sage or windows media player, but the video is fine. The DVD's will play with audio in a stand alone player hooked to the TV directly. Further, I AM able to play DVD's that I have not burned in both sage and WMP.

Any ideas as to what I can do to try to solve this issue? I am using nvidia's purevideo as my video decoder and the AC3filter for my audio decoder.

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks

[castylx]

Okay so it sounds silly... but I have to ask. If my client will be doing the burning and the server will be doing the transencoding then I should install this plugin on both computers?

[perfessor101]

Hello

I'd setup the server with both the EP DVD burning plugin and Nielm's Dynamic Menus (Full Setup) ... (Sharing the respective directories between the two systems)

and on the client computer my guess is that you'd only need to setup Nielm's Dynamic Menu with Other Programs on the main menu if you want to burn from within the SageTVClient and then install ImgBurn on the client as well.

Just my guess, hope it helps ...

Bobby

[evilpenguin]

Originally Posted by Chroner

I am having trouble playing DVD's that I burned using the latest version of video tools. The DVD's don't have audio when I play them on my PC whether in sage or windows media player, but the video is fine. The DVD's will play with audio in a stand alone player hooked to the TV directly. Further, I AM able to play DVD's that I have not burned in both sage and WMP.

Any ideas as to what I can do to try to solve this issue? I am using nvidia's purevideo as my video decoder and the AC3filter for my audio decoder.

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks

I would imagine that the problem is wth AC3filter. Is there any reason your using that instead of the nvidia audio filter?

[evilpenguin]

Originally Posted by castylx

Okay so it sounds silly... but I have to ask. If my client will be doing the burning and the server will be doing the transencoding then I should install this plugin on both computers?

Although only computers that will be sceduling need to have the stvi imported, every computer involved needs to atlest have the files extracted and the setup program run.

[Chroner]

Originally Posted by evilpenguin

I would imagine that the problem is wth AC3filter. Is there any reason your using that instead of the nvidia audio filter?

If I use the nvidia audio decoder, I get no sound at all for ANY DVD that I try to play, not just the ones that I have burned. I've been told that the nvidia decoder will only work if i am using S/PDIF output, which I am not.

I switched to the AC3filter and I was able to get sound for non-burned DVD's so I figured that would work, but it doesn't seem to like the DVD's that I burn.

[evilpenguin]

Since I’m pretty well underway with my new encoding engine I thought I’d toss it out there to see if anyone has any comments, concerns, or subjections…

In the current version all of the special logic for cutting commercials, handling HDTV, and any other special condition is hard coded. So if I want to fix anything, for instance people who have SDTV resolution videos with AC3 sound, I need to go into the code a hard code more special logic. In addition, the code for encoding DVD’s and encoding compressed videos is completely separate, despite the fact that they do pretty much the same thing. So after a lot of thinking over break I’ve decided on this new format which I think will really make this plug-in a lot more robust and maintainable for me and hopefully also encourage the community to share and improve custom encoding profiles.

Basically, instead of having one text file with all of the encoding commands in it, each profile will be a separate text file in an encoding profiles folder. There are two benefits to this…

a) If someone comes up with a good profile or an improvement to an existing profile and wants to share it all they have to do is post it on the forums and then people can download it, drop it into their folder, and start using it without any additional configuration.
b) The STV can directly read the contents of this folder and will automatically update the profile list if a new one is added.

This brings us to the new profile format. The current one has a lot of power but lacks expandability. But if I changed the format to just explicitly state every CLI command it would have expandability but no power. So after a lot of thinking I decided on combining both methods and ended up with this…

Profile File:

    Profile                 =SDTV to DVD
    Number of Encodes       =3
    Encode CLI #1           =!#Clean#-i "%%ORIGINAL%%" -acodec copy -vcodec copy "%%OUTPUT_FILE%%.%%ORIGINAL_EXT%%"
    Encoder #1              =C:\ffmpeg.exe
    Encode CLI #2           =!#CutComm#"%%INPUT_PREV%%" ?0>jpg::-edl "%%ORIGINAL_FILE%%.%%COND_EXT%%"<0? -ovc copy -oac copy ?1>mpg,mpeg,ts::-of mpeg<1? -o "%%OUTPUT_FILE%%.%%ORIGINAL_EXT%%"
    Encoder #2              =mencoder
    Encode CLI #3           =#EncodeDVD#-i "%%INPUT_PREV%%" -target %%DVD_FORMAT%% -s %%DVD_RES%% -acodec mp2 -ab 224 -ac 2 -mbd 2 -qmin 2 -async 1 -y -deinterlace -b %%DVD_BITRATE%% "%%OUTPUT_FILE%%.mpg"
    Encoder #3              =ffmpeg
    Output Folder           =

Syntax:

---------- Substitution strings ---------------------
%%ORIGINAL%%        = Full path to original file w/ extension
%%ORIGINAL_FILE%%  = Full path to original file w/o extension
%%ORIGINAL_EXT%%   = The extension of the original file

%%INPUT_PREV%%         = Full path to output of the previous encode command w/ extension
%%INPUT_PREV_FILE%%    = Full path to output of the previous encode command w/o extension
%%INPUT_PREV_EXT%%     = The extension of the output of the previous encode command

%%OUTPUT_FILE%%    = The auto generated name for the output of the encode command w/o extension.  You must ALWAYS specify the extension either explicitly or by using one of the above substitution strings

DVD Only:
%%DVD_FORMAT%%    = use DVD format (PAL or NTSC) specified in perl2dvd.advanced.pref file
%%BITRATE%%       = Let the script determine the bitrate to fit the videos onto DVD


---------- Encoders ----------------
By default, the script will recognize 'mencoder', 'ffmpeg', and 'SageTVTranscoder' as its default encoders, however, you can also specify the entire path to a different encoder to use a different one.

---------- Conditional Substitutions ----------------
Example - ?0>edl,jpg::If an .edl or .jpg file exists, use this text==txt::Else If a .txt file exists, use this text==Else, use this text<0?

For nested if statements, just increment the number next to the question mark starting with zero...
Example - ?0>edl::?1>txt::Do something==Do something else<1?<0?

By default the script checks for the existence of a file with the given extension, however, there are a few special conditions...
DIGSOUND        = True if video has digital sound
1080,720,etc... = True if the original video's resolution matches the number (ex: 1080,720)
PROGRAM		= True if the original video is a program stream
TRANSPORT       = True if the original video is a transport stream
STREAMCOPYDVD   = Special condition for DVD.  The script will check if the video is a) in the proper format and b) if there is room on the DVD.  If these are true then the video will not be transcoded, just de/remuxed.

Putting an '!' in front of a condition will return true if the condition is false...
Example - ?0>!jpg==If no jpg exists, use this text<0?

---------- Comments ---------------
##SomeComment## = These will be used by the script to name the file.

---------- Misc ---------------
Putting an '!' right after the '=' will delete the output file after its used as an input.

So between the unlimited number of CLI commands, the ability to specify new encoders, and the insanely powerful conditional statements I really think I’m onto something here. Thoughts?

[belleboyd]

Originally Posted by evilpenguin

Since I’m pretty well underway with my new encoding engine I thought I’d toss it out there to see if anyone has any comments, concerns, or subjections…

<...snip>

So between the unlimited number of CLI commands, the ability to specify new encoders, and the insanely powerful conditional statements I really think I’m onto something here. Thoughts?

I'm not a real programmer but I can get around in VB and HTML & the like... Flexibility and power is always good. The more the better..
How's it going?

[evilpenguin]

Unfortunately, it's going to take a while because, not only do I have to completely redesign 50% of the script and 100% of the STVi, but I also would like to use this project on my resume eventually so I'm doing a massive code clean up as well.

But if anyone wants to work in parallel with me on some STVi code to add the generic queuing system and native DVD burning, let me know. It would speed things up considerably.

[herrdude]

I am at my wit's end.
I am running SageTV 6.0 and SageMC 6.31. I have followed the instructions here to a T. However, for whatever reason, when I go to burn a dvd, it doesn't show up in the Other programs menu. When I check in the qdvd folder I get the following files that I have attached. So at this level it seems to be working. But, there are no files in my c:\sageothers folder.

When I open up Dirmon2, on the current status page, nothing gets picked up (not queued jobs or anything) when I go to the Global Settings page, it says: Stopped. I click on Uninstall and it says Uninstalled. I click on Install and it says Stopped again. BUT......, when I click on Start nothing happens. I go into the service manager and I try to force the service to start and Windows gives me the following message: Could not start the Dirmon2 service on the Local Computer. Error 1069...

I tried starting from the command line with: Dirmon2.exe -be_the_service. It sends back: I am the service. But still it doesnt start.

I think the whole process is being blocked because Dirmon2 isnt starting.

Any ideas???

[farfromuman]

Is there something I have to do to get the autocompress to start? I set a series to autocompress but all I see are autocompress files in the recordings folder. Manual compression works fine.

Thanks,

Mariusz

[evilpenguin]

Nah, you're not doing anything wrong. I just haven't released the updated version of the STVi for 6.3.1. Check back Monday.

[evilpenguin]

Originally Posted by herrdude

I am at my wit's end.
I am running SageTV 6.0 and SageMC 6.31. I have followed the instructions here to a T. However, for whatever reason, when I go to burn a dvd, it doesn't show up in the Other programs menu. When I check in the qdvd folder I get the following files that I have attached. So at this level it seems to be working. But, there are no files in my c:\sageothers folder.

When I open up Dirmon2, on the current status page, nothing gets picked up (not queued jobs or anything) when I go to the Global Settings page, it says: Stopped. I click on Uninstall and it says Uninstalled. I click on Install and it says Stopped again. BUT......, when I click on Start nothing happens. I go into the service manager and I try to force the service to start and Windows gives me the following message: Could not start the Dirmon2 service on the Local Computer. Error 1069...

I tried starting from the command line with: Dirmon2.exe -be_the_service. It sends back: I am the service. But still it doesnt start.

I think the whole process is being blocked because Dirmon2 isnt starting.

Any ideas???

Yeah, the whole process kinda hinges on dirmon2 kicking off the encodes. Aside from unistalling/reinstalling an older version of dirmon2 (5.5 is what I use) I can't think of anything that would help you. I'd try posting in the dirmon2 thread or over at DragonGlobal.

[herrdude]

thanks for the advice evilpenguin!

for whatever reason, when i reinstalled dirmon2 on another drive in the same computer, dirmon2 starts with no problem.

but..., now with dirmon2 started nothing is being generated into the sageothers folder. and i dont know why but dirmon2 isnt picking up the qdvd files in the qdvd folder. So I don't see anything in the other programs menu in sagemc.

Am I missing something?

[evilpenguin]

Can you post your dirmon2.ini file for me to look at?

[herrdude]

Here it is.

Another question, since i have you on the line. I am trying to link a batch file for my other programs page. I create a shortcut of the file and dump it into my sageothers folder. When I go into SageMC to the other programs page, i click on the link to my batch file, the result is that it opens an explorer window of the sageothers folder and it also causes sagetv to go into screensaver mode. Basically, it doesnt activate the batch file.

Thanks again evilpenguin!