STV Import: SageMC Video Tools v3.0

[rlvogel322]

Originally Posted by evilpenguin

Are you encoding and cutting the commercials in the advanced options or running the commercial cutting profile against the original mpegs?

Also, when a video is cut the .edl file should be renamed to .edlcut so if its not that's a but and i'll look into it.

edit: Damn, I had a nice long post explaining the commercial cutting problems w/mencoder but I got an error when I submitted it lost it all. If I get time later tonight I may rewrite it.

I'm encoding and cutting in the advanced options. Basically select advanced options then select AutoEncode and enable commercial cutting. I'm pretty sure I don't see the edl getting renamed to edlcut. I'll look closer though.

Is there a profile (or easy enough for me to create) to just cut commercials without encoding? This may be a silly question since I see the commercial cutting profile but it looks like it does encoding too.

[evilpenguin]

Originally Posted by rlvogel322

I'm encoding and cutting in the advanced options. Basically select advanced options then select AutoEncode and enable commercial cutting. I'm pretty sure I don't see the edl getting renamed to edlcut. I'll look closer though.

Is there a profile (or easy enough for me to create) to just cut commercials without encoding? This may be a silly question since I see the commercial cutting profile but it looks like it does encoding too.

There should be a "Commercial Cut" profile right in the list. However, cutting of mpegs is iffy at best, you'll prolly only get it to work 50% of the time.

In my experience i've never had a problem cutting a video that's already been encoded so i'm a little confused as to why your having trouble. Are these by chance HDTV shows that are failing to be cut?

[rlvogel322]

Nope, SD cartoons for the kids. I'll give it another try and see what might be happening. I'll set it to encode then cut commercials as two separate jobs.

[toricred]

I'm having problems with HD programs that are 1080i. After using the autoencode profile I get heavily pixelated videos with serious problems with audio sync. In addition, Sage states that they are 1080p. Any suggestions?

[evilpenguin]

Hmm, lots of trouble these last few days...

... and on that note i'm going on a mini-vacation this weekend so i'll deal with all this when I get back on Monday

[gveres]

Originally Posted by hammondr

Sage created a slew of .AUTOCOMPRESS files about 5 minutes ago, but nothing happening in the qdvd folder yet.... still have my fingers crossed! The .AUTOCOMPRESS files seem to match up with favorites I just double-checked and saved.

Hammond, if you find the solution, please PM me. I will do the same. It seems you and I are experiencing the same problem.

Every one of my recordings has a .autocompress file next to it, but none of them are being autocompressed.

Greg

[toricred]

Are you using the "fixed" version of MC 6.3.7a? It is available on the MC thread, and I think I put the link in this thread a few days ago.

[rlvogel322]

Everything seams to work just fine when I set it to Autoencode and then do Commercial cut except for renaming the edl file to edlcut.

Have a good mini vacation EP!

[rsagetv99]

Anybody know the format of the qdvd filename?
For example:
MANswers - (1).videoDVD.59.qdvd

What does the (1) and .59. stand for?

[rlvogel322]

# Function: Cut Commercials
#
# Attempts to cut commercials from video
#
# Input = %%INPUT_MAIN%%
# Ouput = %%OUTPUT_MAIN%%

    Encode CLI #1     =?>EXT:edl<:>#Cutting_Commercials#"%%INPUT_MAIN%%" -o "%%OUTPUT_MAIN%%.?>INPUT_MAIN:videoContainer=~mpeg<:>mpg<=>avi<?" -oac copy -ovc copy -hr-edl-seek -edl "%%ORIGINAL_FILE%%.edl" ?>INPUT_MAIN:videoContainer=~mpeg<:>-of mpeg -mpegopts format=dvd:tsaf<?<?
    Encoder #1        =mencoder.exe
    Encode CLI #2     =?>EXT:mkv<:>mkvMux<?
    Encoder #2        =insertFunction
    Encode CLI #3     =?>cuttingComm<:>?>EXT:edl&&comCutSuccess<:>#Moving_EDL#"%%ORIGINAL_FILE%%.edl" "%%ORIGINAL_FILE%%.edlcut"<?<?
    Encoder #3        =move
    Encode CLI #4     =?>cuttingComm<:>?>EXT:txt&&comCutSuccess<:>#Moving_TXT#"%%ORIGINAL_FILE%%.txt" "%%ORIGINAL_FILE%%.txtcut"<?<?
    Encoder #4        =move
    Output Mode       =

OK, I did some checking in my log files and also started to learn how the encoding profiles work (outstanding BTW).

This is from the Commercial Cut.profile.

The first variable "cuttingComm" is not defined. It looks like it starts out as "cutComm" from the AutoEncode profile when you set it as an option under advanced options so maybe this is a typo.

The second variable "comCutSuccess" is never getting defined. I understand that this was probably intended to signify success from mencoder. I'll look into defining some logic for that.

It seems to me, the combination of these two things is why the edl file is not being moved to edlcut.

[gveres]

I have two bizzare things going on:

Here is what I had done:

I installed SageMC as an STV
I installed SageMC Video Tools as an STVi

then the message came out, you should upgrade to SageMC 6.3.7a.

I installed SageMC 6.3.7a as an STV
I installed SageMC Video Tools again (because it was no longer part of the UI after doing the previous step)

Now I no longer have the option to use Handbrake. It was there before I upgraded to 6.3.7a but it vanished. Another thing that vanished was that I had created a custom profile (from the SageMC Video Tools menu) called Kids. It was no where to be seen when I reloaded. So I created it again.

Hmmm, come to think of it, I think that Handbrake was in the list until I created the Kids profile. In fact, I am pretty sure it was there because I thought I used it to create the Kids profile. But I first noticed that handbrake was gone because when I tried to apply the kids profile to a series, I noticed that it came back and said a handbrake profile was applied. (on the series detail screen). Then I went back to pick the profile again and this is when i noticed that handbrake was gone.

The second weird thing:

I have not been able to get the Video Tools UI to show up on a placeshifter installation. I don't know if I am doing this correctly, but what I am doing is:

1) launch placeshifter
2) go to settings / SageMC / Load STVi
3) select the video tools xml file

the system thinks for a bit and then dumps me back at the home screen. But when I go to the series settings screen, there is no compression options at the bottom.

Has anybody been able to get this working on placeshifter? I want to be able to schedule recordings from somewhere other than my headless server in the basement.

Thanks
Greg

[rsagetv99]

Originally Posted by rsagetv99

Anybody know the format of the qdvd filename?
For example:
MANswers - (1).videoDVD.59.qdvd

What does the (1) and .59. stand for?

Looks like the number in parenthesis is the number of videos in the dvd. Still not sure what the other number is for.

[toricred]

EP put something about that when he released the last version. I think it was a number that was selected randomly so that two jobs with the same name wouldn't cause a problem.

[gveres]

I have been trying for the past few days to get the SageMC Video Tools UI to show up for placeshifter clients.

I was trying to add it in using the My Menu / Settings/ Import STVi command. This just wasn't working at all. It didn't give me an error or anything. In fact it would appear to work. However, when I went to the SageMC menu / Extras, there was nothing there. When I went to Series Settings, there was no Add Compress Job: entry.

Today I figured out a way to get it working. I found out which copy of the SageMC_169.xml my placeshifter was using and I replaced it with the version that the server was using. In my case I copied SageMC_169-5.xml (the server copy) to SageMC_169-6.xml (the placeshifter PC copy). Then I started up Placeshifter and the new UI was there.

The next task is to get this showing up on my Sage Client running on my Mac.....

Greg

[toricred]

The same is true for the extenders. Whereas the import does its job on the extenders, you can't perform the actual import on them. Good luck with the Mac.

[gveres]

Yes right after posting, I did the same thing for my HD extender. It worked fine.

I don't understand why the import doesn't work on a Placeshifter client. But I assume this is a known limitation with SageTV in general.

For the Mac Client, I already have SageMC installed. I was wondering if I could just get away with copying over the SageMC_169.xml file from the server to the client. I will likely try that first before trying to "install" it.

Greg

[evilpenguin]

Originally Posted by rlvogel322

The first variable "cuttingComm" is not defined. It looks like it starts out as "cutComm" from the AutoEncode profile when you set it as an option under advanced options so maybe this is a typo.

That could be the case, I've changed around a lot of the variable names in the main script the last few versions.

Originally Posted by rlvogel322

The second variable "comCutSuccess" is never getting defined. I understand that this was probably intended to signify success from mencoder. I'll look into defining some logic for that.

Before I compress a video, I check the edl file and determine what the duration of the video would be without commercials. Then after every encoding step, I check the duration of the encoded video and if that's reletivly close (within 30 sec) the original minus commercials then I assume that what ever happened during that encoding step removed the commercials and so I magically create the comCutSuccess variable from within the main script. Then that variable is used to block moving the edl/txt files if the commercial cutting failed.

Honestly, I'm really unhappy with that solution because its has the script making a hard-coded descision on its own, completely hidden from the profile files. Ideally i'd like to add some new conditional options so that you could do the entire comparison from within the profile files...

?>%%ORIGINAL_DURATION%%-%%INPUT_MAIN_DURATION%%>=30<:>...

Hopefully it'll be easy to add and will make it into the next update (which is becoming huge at this point ). Either way i'll take a serious look at it just to be sure its working as I intend it to.

[evilpenguin]

Originally Posted by rsagetv99

Looks like the number in parenthesis is the number of videos in the dvd. Still not sure what the other number is for.

Originally Posted by toricred

EP put something about that when he released the last version. I think it was a number that was selected randomly so that two jobs with the same name wouldn't cause a problem.

Yep, the number in parenthesis is the number of videos in the job and the second one is random to prevent unintentionally overwriting qdvd files when shows don't have episode titles.

[evilpenguin]

Originally Posted by gveres

Yes right after posting, I did the same thing for my HD extender. It worked fine.

I don't understand why the import doesn't work on a Placeshifter client. But I assume this is a known limitation with SageTV in general.

For the Mac Client, I already have SageMC installed. I was wondering if I could just get away with copying over the SageMC_169.xml file from the server to the client. I will likely try that first before trying to "install" it.

Greg

3.0k uses an old version of the STVi import tools that didn't support importing into extenders/placeshifters. This is already fixed in the next version.

[rsagetv99]

Originally Posted by evilpenguin

Yep, the number in parenthesis is the number of videos in the job and the second one is random to prevent unintentionally overwriting qdvd files when shows don't have episode titles.

OK, great.
What is the other file that get's created, the .txt file? Is that to show the current status of the process?

E.G. MANswers - (1).videoDVD.20.queued.txt