STV Import: SageMC Video Tools v3.0

[TechBill]

Originally Posted by TechBill

I downloaded SageMC_VideoTools_v3_0f.exe and extracted it to SageTV folder then went to Load STV (not Import STVi) SageMC_169_ep.xml.

After loading it, I went to SageMC Extra and it's blank. There no setup menu for video tool in it.

Any idea what I may have missed?

Thank you
Bill

Never mind, my eyes crossed reading the instruction. I missed step 4c) Import SageMCVideoTools_v3_0.xml into SageMC_169_ep.

When I saw that step for some reason my brain think I already done that step and I was thinking in term of Load SageMC_169_ep.xml.

All is good now. It working

Thanks
Bill

[xj-boonie]

Originally Posted by evilpenguin

By that I mean just load it up in Sage and see how it looks. Even without watching the show you can pretty much tell when comskip was successful, and when it had a few problems.

For instance, every once and a while one commercial from a commercial break will be flagged as part of the show and you can see that as a commercial block with a little hole in it. Another common one is the opening of a show being too short and as such lumped in with the first commercial break.

All and all, for a 30 minute show, cutting commercials only save ~100 mb when compressing at 1500 kbs. And for my money that's not worth risking ruining a recording by a bad auto-cut.

Ok... time for my second dumb question... In detailed settings, I've got Background Commercial Processing - Enabled, but both While Awake and While Recording are Disabled - is this why I'm not seeing it?

[evilpenguin]

Ok, sorry, I misunderstood, sounds like you're talking about getting comskip set up. Check out

http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=20358

Its a really easy way to get things going.

Or you could also take dirmon2 which you already have if you're running this plug-in and set up a new job for comskip like this...

[evilpenguin]

Oh, I forgot to mention. To burn DVDs, go to the status menu, select the burnDVD icon, and one of the options will be to burn the DVD...



Its super easy now and uses a CLI burner from the windows server 2003 tool kit you installed. It does everything from within Sage, no more jumping between apps and losing focus.

[Chroner]

Quick question:

Does the DVD burning capability check for .edl files and cut accordingly?

[evilpenguin]

Originally Posted by Chroner

Quick question:

Does the DVD burning capability check for .edl files and cut accordingly?

• Known Issue – I forgot about commercial cutting in video DVD's

Nope, I forgot to add that. Once I get some reports back that all the other DVD stuff is working working, i'll pop that in.

[grooves12]

Trying the DVD burning.

The DVD just perpetually stays in working status. There is a 4gig or so img file that has been created, but it seems to start the process over as soon as it is done.

What is not happening to get it to the next step?

[evilpenguin]

Originally Posted by grooves12

Trying the DVD burning.

The DVD just perpetually stays in working status. There is a 4gig or so img file that has been created, but it seems to start the process over as soon as it is done.

What is not happening to get it to the next step?

Go into your qdvd file and after "/videoDVD<&>" add /saveZip. (Its very important that /videoDVD be the first thing in the qdvd file)

This should create a nice zip file with every log file that you can send to me @ perl2dvd(at)gmail(dot)com. Hopefully i'll be able to figure out whats going on with this.

[grooves12]

Is there somewhere to put this in a defaults, or does it have to be inserted into the individually created qdvd files before the processing starts?

[evilpenguin]

Originally Posted by grooves12

Is there somewhere to put this in a defaults, or does it have to be inserted into the individually created qdvd files before the processing starts?

You can also create a "perl2dvd.advanced.pref" file, put it next to perl2dvd.exe, and add this line...

DEBUG: Save work folder log files to zip = true

[nyplayer]

EP,

One question... Do you cut commercials before compressing or after. I am asking because I find it better to cut the commercials out before doing a 2 pass?. If you leave the commercials they sometimes get a higher bitrate than the movie itself.

[evilpenguin]

*sigh* You've exposed my secret shame: I'm cutting out commercials after encoding (If this were the doom9 forums, i'd be run out of town on a rail )

I tried to setup pre-encode/during-encode cutting, but I couldn't make it work 100% of the time with only freeware tools. For an automated plug-in reliability >> efficency.

[mikesm]

Originally Posted by evilpenguin

*sigh* You've exposed my secret shame: I'm cutting out commercials after encoding (If this were the doom9 forums, i'd be run out of town on a rail )

I tried to setup pre-encode/during-encode cutting, but I couldn't make it work 100% of the time with only freeware tools. For an automated plug-in reliability >> efficency.

Doesn't this affect timelines a bit? Usually after transcoding I see some shifts in timelines reducing the accuracy of the cuts.

thx
mike

[evilpenguin]

That's a possibility I hadn't considered, but even if it does affect the timeline I should be able to compensate for it by comparing the original video's duration to the compressed one and adjusting the EDL points accordingly.

[grooves12]

Originally Posted by evilpenguin

You can also create a "perl2dvd.advanced.pref" file, put it next to perl2dvd.exe, and add this line...

DEBUG: Save work folder log files to zip = true

Okay, this was done, and ran again... it did the same thing. Ran through the whole process, then started over. But, I don't see any zip files being created, where are these supposed to be located?

EDIT: never mind, I had a typo in the name of the .pref file. Starting over again, and will report back.

[evilpenguin]

Originally Posted by grooves12

Okay, this was done, and ran again... it did the same thing. Ran through the whole process, then started over. But, I don't see any zip files being created, where are these supposed to be located?

The zip file should be getting created right next to the qdvd file. It sounds a little like the machine doing the processing may not have write privledges to the qdvd folder. Are multiple computers involved in this setup?

Basically your problem is that the qdvd file isn't getting deleted by perl2dvd.exe and that's causting it to keep processing it over and over again. Could you also check if .work files are being created next to the .qdvd files?

[grooves12]

Okay, here is the zip file...

Like I said, what is happening is, I send the DVD to be created. Everything runs through. It goes through all the steps, creates the .img file, cleans up the work folders, and then starts over. For a quick instance if I go in at the right time, the Menu even shows the status as being ready to burn, then it goes back to "working."

I thought it might be a Dirmon2 issue, but I rechecked the configuration, and it is exactly as outlined in the instructions.

[evilpenguin]

Thanks for the log files. It looks like the issue is in the code rather than with your setup. I'll get to the bottom of this, but in the meantime, go ahead and delete that qdvd file manuallly to kill the loop.\


edit: Already found it
This...

    if ( $status =~ /(finished|error)/i && !($qdvdFile eq ""))
    {   
        # If we're finished or it's an error, delete the qdvdFile
        unshift(@delFiles,$qdvdFile);
    }

Should be...

    if ( $status =~ /(finished|error|burnDVD)/i && !($qdvdFile eq ""))
    {   
        # If we're finished or it's an error, delete the qdvdFile
        unshift(@delFiles,$qdvdFile);
    }

I'll update the build tonight.

[evilpenguin]

Change list-

• Bugfix - Fixed issue where qdvd file wasn't being deleted when making a DVD. This was causing Dirmon2 to keep processing the same job over and over

This change is just to perl2dvd.exe you can just download the updated file from here .

[rlvogel322]

EP, thanks for all the work on this.

I have one issue that I haven't been able to search and find a resolution on. It's working great on my PC which is server(service mode) and client but not on my MVP. I can see the Video Tools menu under SageMC/Extras.

I followed the import directions on the server side and when I finally got to my MVP (I have SageMC loaded for this too) the status menu item was there (surprised me a little). It said it didn't have a link to anything though. I also went to SageMC/Extras and the video tools weren't there. So I loaded the SageMC_ep and then imported the Video Tools through the MVP interface and things got a little screwy. The Status menu would show things on the screen but overwrite the main menu in a transparent way. Also, the Video Tools menu under SageMC/Extras is not there and when I go to send a show to be compresssed none of the Video Tool options are there. I'm running version 6.2.10 of Sage. I'm at a loss on this and any help would be appreciated.