STV Import: SageMC Video Tools v3.0

[skyeclad]

Perfesser/EvilPenguin,

Very nice, I think that I'm going to give this a try. Right now compression uses up CPU cycles that I really can't spare. The catch-22 has been that compression helps free up HDD space at the cost of CPU cycles butthe MP4 files that it creates takes more CPU to view, which slows down the compression to begin with.

Having video tools and Dirmon2 scanning for Qdvd files will allow the Vistabox to do some heavy lifting with the only foreseeable cost being network bandwidth. The only think that I find tricky is UNC paths. I managed to do something similar with Dirmon2 for comskip but it stopped working for some reason and I never figured out what changed.

[toricred]

EP,

I'm glad to see you've got time to work on this again. I've had good luck with the new version of Handbrake, but using decomb has slowed it down by almost 30-40%. I'm still running at ~100fps on the first pass and the second pass is unchanged, but it sure was nice to be running at up to 210fps.

[skyeclad]

Originally Posted by evilpenguin

The only tricks would be to have all of your recording folders set up as UNC paths and make sure they are all set to read/write/full sharing privileges.

Ok, I'm almost there. I managed to get Dirmon2 to see my qdvd files on the SageClient/Server but it really only successfully sees one drive. The other drive, which I mapped as a shared network drive using the same drive letter is not seen causing a "no video error". My issue seems to be that the qdvd file indicates that the other video files are on L:\SageTV recordings but does not use the UNC name. Once I manually changed the location in the qdvd file to the UNC name, the vistabox was now able to kick off a compression job.

So, how do I get sage video tools to kick out UNC locations?

[evilpenguin]

Originally Posted by skyeclad

Ok, I'm almost there. I managed to get Dirmon2 to see my qdvd files on the SageClient/Server but it really only successfully sees one drive. The other drive, which I mapped as a shared network drive using the same drive letter is not seen causing a "no video error". My issue seems to be that the qdvd file indicates that the other video files are on L:\SageTV recordings but does not use the UNC name. Once I manually changed the location in the qdvd file to the UNC name, the vistabox was now able to kick off a compression job.

So, how do I get sage video tools to kick out UNC locations?

To get sage to kick out UNC paths you must change all of your recording paths to be UNC. After you first do it, it'll take Sage a few minutes to re establish where all your videos are but it shouldn't have any problems after that. However, just to be safe I recommend backing up your SageTV directory before making the switch.

[skyeclad]

Originally Posted by evilpenguin

To get sage to kick out UNC paths you must change all of your recording paths to be UNC. After you first do it, it'll take Sage a few minutes to re establish where all your videos are but it shouldn't have any problems after that. However, just to be safe I recommend backing up your SageTV directory before making the switch.

Ok, I did that and SageTV knows where the recorded files are kept after I changed the Recording Directory to a UNC path and restart the service but here's the weird part. The Qdvd files still reflect the L:\SageTV Recordings instead of \\Server\L\Sagetv Recordings so I still end up with error logs.

Second question, I'm getting a fair amount of audio problems with Autoencode. Two big issues I'm encountering frequently are: missing audio or audio that includes descriptions of the action for the sight impaired.

[skyeclad]

Ok, I learned something new today. Sage has recorded that all of my existing shows prior to changing the directory to UNC as L:. All shows recorded after the changeover are seen as having a UNC path location. So the long and short of it is that all new recordings can be compressed with Sage tools from the network Vistabox. Old shows require a little more work to make it happen.

Now if someone could help shed some light about the audio questions, I'll be a happy camper.

[Opus4]

Originally Posted by skyeclad

Ok, I learned something new today. Sage has recorded that all of my existing shows prior to changing the directory to UNC as L:. All shows recorded after the changeover are seen as having a UNC path location. So the long and short of it is that all new recordings can be compressed with Sage tools from the network Vistabox. Old shows require a little more work to make it happen.

BTW: did you see the FAQ for changing recording dirs & having existing recordings update thier paths too?

FAQ: How to move files, change recording dirs, etc..

- Andy

[skyeclad]

Thanks Andy. This looks easy.

[skyeclad]

Just finished encoding two more shows where I had the regular track playing and a track that includes descriptions of the action for the visually impaired. I notice it on 2 PBS recordings, Word World and Nature. Once this happens, it becomes very distracting to watch but I would love to compress these files because they take up about 8gigs per show.

Has anyone else experienced this?

[evilpenguin]

Yeah, the issue is basically that the show has multiple audio tracks and the the wrong one is being encoded by default. I never even took multiple audio tracks into consideration when I was writing this thing so there's nothing you can do about it until I fix it on my end.

[skyeclad]

Originally Posted by evilpenguin

Yeah, the issue is basically that the show has multiple audio tracks and the the wrong one is being encoded by default. I never even took multiple audio tracks into consideration when I was writing this thing so there's nothing you can do about it until I fix it on my end.

Ok, EP thanks. I thought it might be a Mencoder thing but I couldn't find anything out there to direct me on how to fix this issue. Is this something that can be identified and selected in the encoding profile?

Otherwise, I'll just compress the files that I know will come out nice. One thing I noticed was that there was this one show that had bars across the top/bottom and sides. The autoencoding profile cropped the show nicely and now it's full screen with a very decent quality. I actually like it better now that it's compressed than before. Nice work!

[Grasshopper]

Wow, 35 pages of posts. I'm just coming to this plugin, and before I install and configure it, I have a newbie question: How much space will I recover? I have about 600 gb of recorded SD shows in Sage.

I'm only asking because my choices are to either throw time at my storage problem (installing and configuring this plugin) or throw money at the problem (new 1TB drive for ~$175).

[evilpenguin]

You're looking at about 1/3 savings for SDTV so that 600GB would go down to ~200GB.

Edit: Apparently I can't do simple math anymore, its a 2/3 savings!

[Grasshopper]

Originally Posted by evilpenguin

You're looking at about 1/3 savings for SDTV so that 600GB would go down to ~200GB.

That's substantial. How much will I give up in video quality, assuming I don't fiddle with it too much?

[evilpenguin]

If you just use "autoencode" profile you prolly won't even be able to tell the difference.

[toricred]

Actually you're looking at 2/3 savings. The resulting files are about 1/3 the original size.

[Grasshopper]

Thanks for the replies. After a few minutes thought, I realized it'd be foolish not to install and use this plugin. If I can compress my existing archives, I can delay the point where I need another drive, and later is always cheaper and better when it comes to electronics.

Now that I have it up and (mostly) running, I have a few questions about some of the options.

Is commercial cutting currently working?

Is there any reason I should prefer a particular container (avi, mkv, mp4)?

From what I understand, h.264 is best-of-breed compression. What's the difference between the various X264 profiles (Animation, TV, Film, Normal, High Profile)?

It seems that compressing shows (in place) is dropping them from the Recorded TV list in Sage. What am I doing wrong?

[toricred]

For me, commercial cutting works great if it is an avi file. I've recently changed to using mkv and commercial cutting not only doesn't work, it destroys the mkv file.

[motobarsteward]

Hello, Evil penguin!

I've been using your tool a bit of late. To cut a long story short, my wife has just realised that I use your tool for creating multi-show DVDs and has asked me to do one for her. Of course, every one I've done for me work like a dream. Now the wife want's one, it stops working! Please help to restore a little WAF. I've attached the zip file and error report. Is it something I've done wrong? I'm using the SageTVClient 6.4.8, SageMC 6.3.7a and your 3.0k release.

AhAhAh I would put the zip file up but it's 1.5M and the forum permits 750K only!

How can I get the log to you?

[motobarsteward]

EP, I have emailed the logs direct to you as requested.