STV Import: SageMC Video Tools v3.0

[evilpenguin]

Originally Posted by toricred

What's the status on the Wait for EDL feature? For now can we set it in the properties file?

The Wait for EDL freature requires some mods to the base STV and I just haven't been able to get synced up with Dirk/Mike the last two releases. I'll try extra hard to get it into the next bug fix release!

(In the meantime, I have a modified version of 6.3.7 that includes it that I can post for people who need it this weekend)

[toricred]

It would be really great if you could post that modified version or PM me with it if you don't want it on the forum.

[saltlyck2]

So quick! The encoding worked but I still need to use the "Optimise" option with Roxio. Not a big deal since it takes the same amount of time. The only pitfall is that I'm trying to set this BB up with SFTP to automatically sync the shows I have in my output folder daily and bypass Roxio altogether. I'm going to spend some time on it over the weekend. Is it possible to take a file that has been formated from Roxio and get the details I need from it's info to get this encoded correctly?

Also thanks for the Video Tools. It's obvious that you have put a lot of time into this. Since I rarely reply to answers to my questions I thought this would be a good time to say THANK YOU!

[evilpenguin]

Originally Posted by saltlyck2

Is it possible to take a file that has been formated from Roxio and get the details I need from it's info to get this encoded correctly?

Yeah, download MediaInfo and open the original, encoded, video and the "optimized" encoded video with it. You should be able to export a log for each file. Post those logs to the forums and i'll take a look at them.

[saltlyck2]

Before ##################################

General #0
Complete name : C:\Documents and Settings\************\Desktop\sagetv\Seinfeld-TheHandicapSpot-7729148-0.mencoder.avi
Format : AVI
Format/Info : Audio Video Interleave
Format/Family : RIFF
File size : 239 MiB
PlayTime : 21mn 52s
Bit rate : 1531 Kbps
StreamSize : 1.99 MiB
Writing application : MEncoder Sherpya-SVN-r24762-4.2.1
Writing library : MPlayer

Video #0
Codec : XviD
Codec/Family : MPEG-4V
Codec/Info : XviD project
Codec profile : Streaming Video Profile/Level 1
Codec settings, Packet bitst : No
Codec settings, BVOP : Yes
Codec settings, QPel : No
Codec settings, GMC : 0
Codec settings, Matrix : Default
PlayTime : 21mn 52s
Bit rate : 1393 Kbps
Width : 720 pixels
Height : 480 pixels
Display Aspect ratio : 4/3
Frame rate : 23.976 fps
Standard : NTSC
Resolution : 8 bits
Chroma : 4:2:0
Interlacement : Progressive
StreamSize : 226 MiB

Audio #0
Codec : MPEG-1 Audio layer 3
Codec profile : Joint stereo
PlayTime : 21mn 52s
Bit rate mode : VBR
Bit rate : 75 Kbps
Channel(s) : 2 channels
Sampling rate : 48 KHz
Resolution : 16 bits
StreamSize : 11.7 MiB
Writing library : Xing (new)

After ##########################################

General #0
Complete name : C:\Documents and Settings\*********\Desktop\sagetv\Seinfeld-TheHandicapSpot-7729148-0.mencoder.mp4
Format : MPEG-4
Format/Info : ISO 14496-1 Base Media
Format/Family : MPEG-4
File size : 82.0 MiB
PlayTime : 21mn 51s
Bit rate : 524 Kbps
StreamSize : 382 KiB

Video #0
Codec : MPEG-4 Visual
Codec/Family : MPEG-4V
PlayTime : 21mn 52s
Bit rate mode : CBR
Bit rate : 192 Kbps
Width : 320 pixels
Height : 240 pixels
Display Aspect ratio : 4/3
Frame rate : 24.000 fps
Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 0.104
StreamSize : 61.5 MiB
Language : ehs

Audio #0
Codec : AAC LC
Codec/Family : AAC
Codec/Info : AAC Low Complexity
PlayTime : 21mn 51s
Bit rate mode : CBR
Bit rate : 128 Kbps
Channel(s) : 2 channels
Channel positions : L R
Sampling rate : 44.1 KHz
Resolution : 16 bits
StreamSize : 20.1 MiB
Language : ehs

################################

And TIA this thread has saved me hours for sure.

[bling_bling_vr6]

My gf hates the SageMC 16x9 stv because she's been using sageTV with the default stv for years and is used to the menu and all other options. I'm just trying to get dvd burning working again. I used to have it working in v5 with otherPrograms & videotools2, but those downloads has disappeared. Thanks in advance for any help you might be able to provide.

[Arioch5]

I've updated post 366 with some information about the encoding process test I ran. So far I didn't really see any change. Handbrake was by far the fastest, but it still has aspect ratio problems. It squishes the video in the horizontal direction. AutoEncode, auto-crops the files a bit to much (still loosing part of the "This show available in HD" at the beginning of Mythbusters. Mencoder, though the slowest was again a perfect compression. It looks just like the original.

I would really love to be able to get mencoder results from handbrak speed. Anything I can do to adjust this? Any news on the missing Advanced options? I'd love to play with the Handbreak options to see if I can get the aspect correct since it's litteraly 3x faster for me than mencoder.

[evilpenguin]

So here's the deal the the cropping. In the case of Mythbusters, first I figure out exactly where the black bars are using comskip and its incredibly accurate. However, in order for the best compression, I need to ensure that the horizontal and vertical resolutions are both divisible by 16 so in most cases I need to crop it an additional few pixels on each side. So in the worst case you're losing an additional 15 pixels past the black bars, which in my book isn't too big of a deal. About the only thing I can do is make sure i'm splitting the extra pixels evenly between the bottom/top and left/right to minimize the effects. Here's what my Mythbusters cropped/uncropped just so you know what i'm seeing.

As for the wonky aspect ratio, I can barely notice it, but it is definitely off a little. That should be very fixable.

Edit: Looking at the pictures, the left/right seems way off. If you look at the metal by Adam's shoulder on the left vs the fire extinguisher on the right you can really tell. I'll take a look at that for the next version.

[toricred]

Are you going to post your modified version of the STV so that I can set the wait for edl feature?

[evilpenguin]

Originally Posted by toricred

Are you going to post your modified version of the STV so that I can set the wait for edl feature?

Sorry, I've been very busy this week. I hope to find sometime to work on stuff tomorrow and just do a full release with a bunch of bug fixes.

[evilpenguin]

Originally Posted by Arioch5

It squishes the video in the horizontal direction. AutoEncode, auto-crops the files a bit to much (still loosing part of the "This show available in HD" at the beginning of Mythbusters. Mencoder, though the slowest was again a perfect compression. It looks just like the original.

I did some more digging on this and it turns out Handbrake was trying to preserve the original aspect ratio after the autocrop and giving up 80 vertical lines (!!!) of resolution in the process. This will be fixed in the next version, good catch

[flashbacck]

Originally Posted by TechBill

This is what I see when I open Advanced Compression Options in the photo attached to this post.

Bill

This is what I'm seeing as well.

[evilpenguin]

Originally Posted by flashbacck

This is what I'm seeing as well.

Me three. Its an import issue that i'm trying to work out today.

[Arioch5]

Originally Posted by evilpenguin

I did some more digging on this and it turns out Handbrake was trying to preserve the original aspect ratio after the autocrop and giving up 80 vertical lines (!!!) of resolution in the process. This will be fixed in the next version, good catch

Awesome! I think what I'm seeing with the cropping is probably being amplified by the fact that for some reason myth busters puts some of those icons (like the TV and CC) directly against the top of the screen. Now that I look at the example pictures you've given your right the loss is negligible.

I'm really glad you found the hand break aspect ratio, it's much faster for me. I'll be eagerly awaiting the next revision

Thanks for all your work on this mod

[evilpenguin]

Well, i've been pounding my head against the wall for days trying to duplicate people's UNC video DVD issues with zero success. That is, until late last night, when I had a break through.

Now, it would be difficult to explain the exact nature of the problem to anyone who doesn't have a workable understanding of the foundation of computer science and a good general knowledge of Windows low-level file system implimentation but i'll give it a shot and try not to talk over anyone's head: I fixed it a few weeks ago and forgot to put the the new .exe into the release

So anyone that's still having issues with UNC paths, can you download this updated version of menuGen.exe and put it into your ".../SageTV/perl2dvd/" directory? Then try burning a DVD, I have a feeling it'll work

[mikesm]

Is the 3.0j version that available for download via sourceforge the real 3.0j version? I installed it, but the menus don't have the same options that the screenshots in the download page indicate, and is missing certain things like wait for edl.

Are all the mirrors in sync, or did I screw something up. The downloaded file says 30j...

Also, how do I get the stvi to import properly on the extenders? It imported fine on the server, but when I import it on the extenders, no new options show up.

thx
mike

[evilpenguin]

There are two issues here:

1) Dirk and I are a little out of sync right now so i'm some features that require support from the base SageMC don't work. We'll have this straightened out with the next SageMC release.

2) I'm constantly reworking/adding/removing stuff and not updating the documentation. I've kinda been holding off until I get everything working/where its supposed to be. I'm hoping that this next release will be pretty solid and I can shift my attention to documenting all the cool stuff the plug-in can do.

I haven't noticed any issues importing on the extender, but I haven't done it in a while. I'll give it a shot this week and see whats going on.

[rlvogel322]

Originally Posted by mikesm

Also, how do I get the stvi to import properly on the extenders? It imported fine on the server, but when I import it on the extenders, no new options show up.

I had the same issue the first time. Once you get it imported on the client don't import the videos tools on the extender (goofy things happen). For the extender, just load the new STV named something like SageMC_169-1.xml.

That worked for me on the MVP. Don't have an HD100 yet.

HTH
Rick

[mickp]

Originally Posted by evilpenguin

So anyone that's still having issues with UNC paths, can you download this updated version of menuGen.exe and put it into your ".../SageTV/perl2dvd/" directory? Then try burning a DVD, I have a feeling it'll work

Woot!!!1!!!!1

It works. Yay! Hurrah! Yipeeee!

Thanks heaps e.p.

The ISO was created and works perfectly when burned. I did receive an error when attempting to burn using the built in feature but this appears to be Vista not liking dvdburn.exe so far as I can see. I thought it might be a UAC problem so opened a cmd prompt as administrator and received the same error:

C:\Program Files\Windows Resource Kits\Tools>dvdburn.exe d: "\\hal\gshows\Media
Watch - (1).videoDVD.videoDVD.img"
Media type: DVD-R
Preparing media...
|   0.0% doneError burning ISO image

I've inserted a nasty hack for the moment to use imgBurn instead. imgBurn is working in Vista without a problem.



Any chance of making this a setable option down the track?

Thanks again,

Mick.

[evilpenguin]

Originally Posted by mickp

I've inserted a nasty hack for the moment to use imgBurn instead. imgBurn is working in Vista without a problem.

How does imgBurn work with the UI? Does it pop-up over the SageUI or take focus away from Sage?

As for dvdburn.exe I haven't ready anywhere that its incompatable with vista so I suspect your issue may be hardware/media related. On you're end you can try using a DVD+R and on my side I have a Vista PC I can drop a known working DVD burner in and test.