SageMC Video Tools 3.5 (Development Thread)

[evilpenguin]

This plug-in is dead, please see MediaShrink for all your encoding needs.


Here's a link to a little beta action...

SageMC Video Tools v3.5 beta

General Testing:
This is what I really care about, I want people to throw various recordings at it and see that there are no unexpected crashes and their happy with the results.

* Extract download into to its own folder (NOT SAGETV FOLDER)
* Drag and drop a recording (or VIDEO_TS folder!) onto perl2dvd.exe

This will encode the recording using the "Auto Encode" profile and drop the new video right next to the original.

VideoRedo Commercial Cutting:
* Buy/Download/Install VideoRedo TV Suite
* Run profile2bat.exe
* Go into the encodingBatchFiles folder and edit Auto Encode.bat
Before...

set COMMAND=
set DIRECTORY=C:\tv2pc
set MODE=
set PROFILE=Auto Encode
set SWITCHES=

After...

set COMMAND=
set DIRECTORY=C:\tv2pc
set MODE=
set PROFILE=Auto Encode
set SWITCHES=/cutComm

* Drag and drop a recording onto Auto Encode.bat

Other Useful Switches:
/cutComm - Cut Commercials
/onePass - Do a 1 pass encode
/saveLog - Save the log file
/saveAll - Save all temp files
/horizontalScale 512 - Scale horizontally to ###x512
/cliBitrate ### - Use ### for the bitrate

Random Notes:
* There is no SageMC support yet, this is just for some manual testing. So don't try to import this into anything, it won't work!
* None of the hardware profiles are working yet
* For cutting commercials, the first thing I do is check if there's a .edl file and if so I convert it to a VideoRedo project file and us it. If there isn't one I just run a VRD adscan and use those results. I highly recommend tuning up your comskip to make it as accurate as possible and using those edl files.
* If the video is in MPEG-TS format I run it through a VRD quickstream fix.
* If a CC track exists i'm adding as a separate track in the mkv by default.
* There haven't been any DVD burning improvements
* I'm making everything an mkv file by default right now since sage supports it so well and the tools are incredibly stable and easy to use.
* HD-PVR recordings don't work and will crash.

[Brent]

Awesome! I've been waiting for you to find time back at this app as it is one of my favorites.

My laundry list that I can think of for SageMC Video Tools:

• h.264 support (I know this is unlikely for the moment)
• Mp4 support
• Profiles (you already mentioned this above so I'm VERY excited to see this

I'm available for testing (breaking) if you need any assistance. Thanks so much for taking the time to continue work on this!

[flashbacck]

I vaguely remember something about you wanting to change the format of the encoding profile files. Is that happening?

[toricred]

I'm actually really impressed with the current version. The only problem I've had is when I try to remove commercials when compressing to .mkv. The exact same compression with an avi container can cut the commercials no problem.

[evilpenguin]

Originally Posted by flashbacck

I vaguely remember something about you wanting to change the format of the encoding profile files. Is that happening?

I'm pretty happy with the overall format of the profile files, I just restructured them a little bit to be more organized and added some additional built in methods for calling functions.

Originally Posted by Brent

h.264 support (I know this is unlikely for the moment)

Yeah, i'm pretty limited by the capabilities of the tools I use so about the best I'll be able to do is gracefully exit when I encounter one of those.

[Slipshod]

Do the video tools work with the HD-Extender?

[evilpenguin]

Originally Posted by toricred

I'm actually really impressed with the current version. The only problem I've had is when I try to remove commercials when compressing to .mkv. The exact same compression with an avi container can cut the commercials no problem.

I think i've got the mkv commercial cutting fixed, but going forward I'm going to highly recommend people use purchase VideoRedo so I can use that for all the editing. I've already got it up and running on my server and it's great.

[evilpenguin]

Originally Posted by Slipshod

Do the video tools work with the HD-Extender?

Yep, you can use the plug-in from an HD-Extender to setup/scedule encodes, but it also needs to be installed on at least one Windows machine to do the actual encoding.

[mikesm]

One thing that would be really great is an option to create the dvd menu in a way that it autoplays all of the videos on the DVD in sequence (and restarts at the end). The main use for this plugin in our house is taking a set of kids video programs (dora, little einsteins, etc...) and burning them to DVD for playback in the car.

The one issue with how it's done now is you have to go through the menu system to select a segment, which is a pain when you are driving and can't see the screen playing in the back.

Thanks EP!

[evilpenguin]

Originally Posted by mikesm

The one issue with how it's done now is you have to go through the menu system to select a segment, which is a pain when you are driving and can't see the screen playing in the back.

I remember a long time ago when I was figuring out all the menu stuff I saw an easy method for having giving the main menu a 30 second timeout and having it autoplay all the titles after that, but I can't seem to google it right now. I'll keep looking though.

[QueOnda]

Originally Posted by evilpenguin

+ Easy DVD mode that will convert all episodes of a TV show DVD with a single click (Done!)

Would this allow you to have an HD stream (mpg2) and convert to dvd???

[mikesm]

Originally Posted by evilpenguin

I remember a long time ago when I was figuring out all the menu stuff I saw an easy method for having giving the main menu a 30 second timeout and having it autoplay all the titles after that, but I can't seem to google it right now. I'll keep looking though.

That would do the trick for me. Thanks!

mike

[evilpenguin]

Originally Posted by QueOnda

Would this allow you to have an HD stream (mpg2) and convert to dvd???

Nope, it's actually goes in the other direction.

Most apps will automatically pick the proper DVD title to encode on a movie DVD because its easy: the longest. But I go the extra mile and try and detect if its a TV show DVD (contains multiple titles that are about the same length) and encode all of them at the same time.

In my testing it's been working great. I just select a DVD to encode from my imported videos and a few hours later I get a new folder that contains all of the episodes from that disc in h.264 format.

To the best of my knowledge this is the first encoding tool that does this

[Brent]

Any ETA for release? Looking forward to trying out the new stuff

[mikesm]

Originally Posted by evilpenguin

Nope, it's actually goes in the other direction.

Most apps will automatically pick the proper DVD title to encode on a movie DVD because its easy: the longest. But I go the extra mile and try and detect if its a TV show DVD (contains multiple titles that are about the same length) and encode all of them at the same time.

In my testing it's been working great. I just select a DVD to encode from my imported videos and a few hours later I get a new folder that contains all of the episodes from that disc in h.264 format.

To the best of my knowledge this is the first encoding tool that does this

Whoa! VERY COOL!

[evilpenguin]

Originally Posted by Brent

Any ETA for release? Looking forward to trying out the new stuff

I ran some promising tests last night and Sage fixed a commercial cutting bug on their end today so I hope to have something for people to play with by Friday.

Be warned: It'll just be a standalone drag n' drop app w/o the STV component at first, I'm putting off reworking that until everything else is done.

[evilpenguin]

For those of you having problems with the wrong audio track being encoded, you can fix it in the current version by replacing the mencoder in the "perl2dvd" folder with a newer one downloaded from here...

http://downloads.sourceforge.net/mpl...9&big_mirror=0

Also, unzip and replace this file in the "encodingProfiles" folder so it doesn't sound like the audio is coming out of a tin can.

[skyeclad]

Originally Posted by evilpenguin

For those of you having problems with the wrong audio track being encoded, you can fix it in the current version by replacing the mencoder in the "perl2dvd" folder with a newer one downloaded from here...

I tried this new version on a file with a second audio track and it seems to work! No more audio for the visually impaired on PBS shows.

[skyeclad]

One question, I just compressed a 4 hour Olympic opening ceremony. It took about 3 days or so on my slow cpu. Anyway, on autoencode, it shrunk the video from 1080i to 968x688 adding black bars on the sides. Is this normal and can I prevent it from doing so in the future?

[mp328]

*cough* friday was 4 days ago *cough*

lol

im glad ur stil working on this thing EP