STV Import: Video Editing for Sage

[BobPhoenix]

Originally Posted by joe123

Thanks. I will check it again tonight. But to answer one of your questions, Yes, in the timeline, I see cuts (the cut lists also shows the cut points). I see the red markers showing the sections of the commercials.

Will check the VideoRedo options tonight.

Since you see the cut points make sure that you save those cut points with the "Cut Files>Save the Cuts to the Selected Formats" with VideoReDo cut points only like the graphic below. Then use the VideoReDo option to process your file with "Replace Original File" showing, "VideoReDo Edit Mode" showing. Now you can either add the video to your queue ("Add Current Video to Queue") or initiate processing with "Start VideoReDo Processing File(s)".

BobP.

[joe123]

Originally Posted by BobPhoenix

Since you see the cut points make sure that you save those cut points with the "Cut Files>Save the Cuts to the Selected Formats" with VideoReDo cut points only like the graphic below. Then use the VideoReDo option to process your file with "Replace Original File" showing, "VideoReDo Edit Mode" showing. Now you can either add the video to your queue ("Add Current Video to Queue") or initiate processing with "Start VideoReDo Processing File(s)".

BobP.

That's the problem. When I do the "Cut Files>Save the Cuts to the Selected Formats", the only two formats available are EDL and TXT.

[BobPhoenix]

Originally Posted by joe123

That's the problem. When I do the "Cut Files>Save the Cuts to the Selected Formats", the only two formats available are EDL and TXT.

Then you haven't configured the plugin to know where VideoReDo is located on your system. Go to Options>VideoReDo Options and set the location to the VideoReDo directory by navigating to it. It should open a popup menu to C:\PROGRAM FILES so you should just be able to scroll the list down and select the VideoReDo directory. When you have selected the VideoReDo directory - you must navigate inside the directory - then just select "Select Current". Now you will have the VideoReDo directory configured and you should then be allowed to save in the proper format.

[joe123]

Originally Posted by BobPhoenix

Then you haven't configured the plugin to know where VideoReDo is located on your system. Go to Options>VideoReDo Options and set the location to the VideoReDo directory by navigating to it. It should open a popup menu to C:\PROGRAM FILES so you should just be able to scroll the list down and select the VideoReDo directory. When you have selected the VideoReDo directory - you must navigate inside the directory - then just select "Select Current". Now you will have the VideoReDo directory configured and you should then be allowed to save in the proper format.

I did set that up already. It is set to: C:\Program Files\VideoRedoPlus

I will reset to see if that fixes it.

[BruenerXII]

Let me get this straight..
If I use this without VideoRedo, cut commercials, and then save the cuts to selected formats .txt and/or .edl, SageTV itself with no other programs (ComSkip, ShowAnalyzer ..etc) will be able to read the .txt or .edl file while playing the video, and skip the commercials automatically?

I don't care if it doesnt actually cut the commercials (u know taking the commercials right out and the file is smaller and what not) but will it just say.. mark them, so sage can skip them?

Thanks for any help.

[joe123]

Yes. You will need the ComSkip stvi option which you need to load up in SageTV.

The commercials will not be cut out, just skipped over. When watching, you will not see the commercials.

[BruenerXII]

ahh.. dunno how i missed that one eh?
Thanks joe123

[BobPhoenix]

Originally Posted by joe123

I did set that up already. It is set to: C:\Program Files\VideoRedoPlus

I will reset to see if that fixes it.

The code that displays the VideoReDo option looks to see if a property has been defined for the location of VideoReDo. If you have reverted back on your properties file that field may have been removed. Also since VideoReDo runs on Windows pc's only I also check to see if the OS is a WindowsOS. However I can probably remove this check since I've seen other SageTV Linux users using VideoReDo with Wine. For now I'm going to leave the check in since I have no way to test my code out on the Linux version of SageTV. One last thought. Make sure your version of VideoReDo Plus is 2.5.2.491 or greater.

[joe123]

Hi Bob.

Yes, I have 2.5.3.501 version. Quick question on VideoRedo. I am running manually and after it has detected the commercials, I use the "Save As" option to save the new file.

Is there a way to tell VideoREdo to save over the original file? Right now, I have to save it somewhere else and then replace the original with new.

[BobPhoenix]

Originally Posted by joe123

Hi Bob.

Yes, I have 2.5.3.501 version. Quick question on VideoRedo. I am running manually and after it has detected the commercials, I use the "Save As" option to save the new file.

Is there a way to tell VideoREdo to save over the original file? Right now, I have to save it somewhere else and then replace the original with new.

To be perfectly honest I don't know for sure. However I suspect that it isn't possible to save the edited file over the original because it doesn't load the whole file into memory. It just copies the file where ever it can and only reencodes at the cut points. That is what makes it so fast but why you wouldn't be able to save with the same file name. My plugin writes to a .new file then renames the original file to .old and then renames the .new to the correct file name - when using the replace option. I did it this way so that if you make a mistake and set the first cut point wrong and only get commercials for instance. You can rename the .old file and get back your file. That is one of the reasons why I would suggest backing up the wiz.bin file before you perform a replace - for now - just in case. In the next full version upgrade (0.3) I am implementing an undo option that will automatically perform the restore of those files (.old to .mpg for example).

[joe123]

Bob, I have tried this thing several times and I yet to get a mpeg with the commercials removed.

Can you please explain step by step what I need to do to simply remove the commercials from a movie? I have VideoRedo.

Also, I have SA and DirMon2. SA spits out eld and vprj files - do I need to delete those for the movie I want to remove the commercials from when using you setup?

P.S. I don't want to do any eddting, I just want SIMPLE commercial removal.

[BobPhoenix]

Originally Posted by joe123

Bob, I have tried this thing several times and I yet to get a mpeg with the commercials removed.

Can you please explain step by step what I need to do to simply remove the commercials from a movie? I have VideoRedo.

Also, I have SA and DirMon2. SA spits out eld and vprj files - do I need to delete those for the movie I want to remove the commercials from when using you setup?

P.S. I don't want to do any eddting, I just want SIMPLE commercial removal.

If you have SA set to use absolute paths in the Vprj files for VideoReDo then you don't have to delete any files.

When I get home tonight I will go through a step by step process for this. It also might help to turn on debug logging if you still have problems with this and post the logs here. I put in a lot of logging and I might see something in them that may be causing this. I could probably do the same step by step now but I don't want to miss anything so will do it when I can have it in front of me at the time.

[joe123]

Thanks.

[BobPhoenix]

I have 10 graphics to illustrate this process so this will be in two posts because of the forum limit of 5 per post.

1. First you need to open the file you are interested in having VideoReDo process from the Open File menu. When you select this menu an menu will be displayed allowing you to select your video by category - Graphic 01-OpenYourFile.jpg
2. Select your cut file from the popup menu - if you have cut points already defined. This popup menu can be hidden if you choose a default cut file format for the Open File options. Graphic 02-SelectCutFileFormat.jpg. I suggest you use the VideoReDo Vprj file if present as this will show you what VideoReDo will remove from the file.
3. Now if you need to adjust your cut points you can do so at this time with the controls at the bottom of the screen. Note on the graphic 03-OpenedFileWithCutsDisplayed.jpg you can see the areas of the video that will be removed by VideoReDo in Red.
4. Now if you haven't saved the cut points to a Vprj file already do so now. VideoReDo use Vprj files to process a video. If you use ComSkip or ShowAnalyzer and set them to output Vprj files and you don't make any adjustments than you can skip this step. If you need to save then the follow graphic 04-SaveVprjCutFile.jpg shows how you should set the options. Then choose Save the Cuts to the Selected Formats menu item. This writes out the Vprj file for VideoReDo to process.
5. In graphic 05-VideoReDoMenu-ShouldLookLikeThis.jpg you see the options on the VideoReDo menu that must be set to replace the video in the SageTV system. You must have "Replace Original File" showing and you must have "VideoReDo Edit Mode" showing.

On the next post I will show how to proceed further

[BobPhoenix]

Continuing on with Part 2 Step 1

1. Now with the display showing the options defined in Part 1 Step 5 select the "Start VideoReDo Processing File(s)" menu to start your file processing. Once you have your first file processed with this method you can then get familiar with the queuing process and use the other options available. Graphic 06-StartVideoReDoProcessing.jpg shows the option to select to start the processing
2. Once VideoReDo processing is started another popup will be displayed that looks like graphic 07-ProcessingDialog.jpg. Just select OK and make it disappear.
3. When you do that the screen will change to the following graphic 08-FlashingMenuName.jpg. You will notice the menu name flashes from white to orange and back. This will continue as long as VideoReDo is processing your file. It will however only flash this menu name and not all menus that you might navigate to while VideoReDo is processing your file.
4. When VideoReDo has completed with the file the following popup will be displayed allowing you to delete the .old file immediately or when you exit the SageTV GUI. This is Graphic 09-ProcessingCompleteMessage.jpg. The .old file are created so that you can restore your video by renaming the file and restoring a backup of your Wiz.Bin. (Note I am working on an undo function that will automate this for version 0.3)
5. Now when you open the file in the SageTV player you will see the missing video at the beginning of the on screen display like in the following graphic 10-WhatVideoLookLikeInSage.jpg

Now if you have problems and have followed these directions please post your log file and I will see if I can find a reason from that as to why it isn't working. To turn on debug logging just look at this FAQ entry.

BobP.

[joe123]

Thank you, thank you and Thank you Bob.

I was getting getting stuck on screens 2 and 4, I was reading them wrong. My bad. Somehow, I thought I had to pick click on "Replace" which brought up the ther screen (so no replacement was being done).

How I have another problem, but it's VideoREdo (not enough disk space to convert).

Once I fix this, I am sure all will work.

Again, many thanks specially for the screen shoots - they do all the talking

[BobPhoenix]

Originally Posted by joe123

Thank you, thank you and Thank you Bob.

I was getting getting stuck on screens 2 and 4, I was reading them wrong. My bad. Somehow, I thought I had to pick click on "Replace" which brought up the ther screen (so no replacement was being done).

How I have another problem, but it's VideoREdo (not enough disk space to convert).

Once I fix this, I am sure all will work.

Again, many thanks specially for the screen shoots - they do all the talking

Your welcome. I really debated when I created those whether I should have them be indications of the current mode or what you would get when selected. I went for the indications of the current mode but I should have added a little more to them to indicate that is what it is. Next maintenance release.

[nielm]

I wiki-fied those instructions here, so that they can be linked and updated easily

[talonmike]

Can you move those step by step in a single thread?

[BobPhoenix]

Originally Posted by talonmike

Can you move those step by step in a single thread?

I could but NIELM already put them on the WIKI. Do you really want another thread that will disappear off the current page rather quickly here? Because I can separate it out if you really want.


Edit after reading your post again I'm wondering if you meant a single post rather than a single thread. The answer to that is NO because you can only attach 5 files per post. I didn't want the instructions in one post and the graphics in another.

I did add the instructions to the First post as links that only bring up the individual post that will hopefully work well.