Video Conversion options?

[spacecadet]

Hi all,

Finally upgraded to the v6 beta this weekend and it is great. I have a couple of questions related to the Video Conversion options that I haven't seen answered yet and didn't find in the manual.

1) Is it possible to setup a favorite to always Convert?
2) Is it possible to schedule a Conversion?

On a typical night, my wife falls asleep before her show has aired. I'd like to be able to have the iPod-ready version available for her first thing in the morning so that she can watch the show on an iPod during the train ride to work.

My ideal scenario is something like:

+ Setup favorite "Veronica Mars" to always convert to iPod format
+ Setup Video Conversion jobs to run at 2:00 AM

I suspect these options aren't available (or I probably would have found them), but anyone have any thoughts?

Thanks!

[lobosrul]

Yeah, use Dr Divx 2.

[spacecadet]

Originally Posted by lobosrul

Yeah, use Dr Divx 2.

Thanks. I assume that this is another 3rd party app that I'd have to configure. I'm looking for a solution that I can manage directly from SageTV.

Also, another question (although probably a pretty easy one to test myself)... will SageTV delete the Converted video when the original is deleted? For me, this would be ideal.

Something like:

+ Setup favorite "Veronica Mars" to always convert to iPod format
+ Setup Video Conversion jobs to run at 2:00 AM
+ Watch the converted show on iPod
+ Flag the original recording as watched in SageTV
+ SageTV deletes both original and converted show when space needs to be recovered

[dflachbart]

Originally Posted by spacecadet

Hi all,

1) Is it possible to setup a favorite to always Convert?
2) Is it possible to schedule a Conversion?

Hi spacecadet, if you are willing to try out SageMC, it has the ability to auto-compress your favorites. You can specify the compression on a per-favorite basis. As soon as the show finished recording, the compression will get kicked off (the built-in compression plays very nice with the available CPU time, I don't have any problems running the compression while watching/recording other shows on my not really powerful server). Currently the favorite compression only works 'in-place', replacing your original recording file, but I will add the functionality to save it as a separate file in the next version.

Alternatively, you could also use EP's excellent Video-Tools (DVD burning and compression) addon for SageMC, which uses the auto-compress facility of SageMC and already allows to compress to a separate file. This plugin uses (free) 3rd-party tools to convert/compress the recordings. Since it also uses Dirmon2 to kick off the compression jobs, you could use its 'Blackout Time' options to schedule the compression during the night if this should really be important for you.

Dirk

[spacecadet]

Originally Posted by flachbar

Hi spacecadet, if you are willing to try out SageMC, it has the ability to auto-compress your favorites. You can specify the compression on a per-favorite basis. As soon as the show finished recording, the compression will get kicked off (the built-in compression plays very nice with the available CPU time, I don't have any problems running the compression while watching/recording other shows on my not really powerful server). Currently the favorite compression only works 'in-place', replacing your original recording file, but I will add the functionality to save it as a separate file in the next version.

Alternatively, you could also use EP's excellent Video-Tools (DVD burning and compression) addon for SageMC, which uses the auto-compress facility of SageMC and already allows to compress to a separate file. This plugin uses (free) 3rd-party tools to convert/compress the recordings. Since it also uses Dirmon2 to kick off the compression jobs, you could use its 'Blackout Time' options to schedule the compression during the night if this should really be important for you.

Dirk

Thanks flachbar, I may end up trying this out as I already use DirMon to schedule commercial processing, so this might work out well.