SageMC Video Tools 3.5 (Development Thread)

[skyeclad]

Originally Posted by mp328

*cough* friday was 4 days ago *cough*

lol

Well I wasn't right there when it finished. I stopped watching it after 2 days. It was good to get off the couch. : )

[mp328]

Originally Posted by skyeclad

Well I wasn't right there when it finished. I stopped watching it after 2 days. It was good to get off the couch. : )

lol no, that wasnt for u....

EP said he was gonna have something out for friday, that's who the comment was for

[evilpenguin]

I need to try a fix in the latest beta but I'm just being a baby about upgrading because I don't want to have to remap all my QAM channels . But i'll man up and give it a shot tonight.

[Brent]

EP,
Quick question. Is it possible (now or in the new version) to do the following with Video Tools?

• Have SageTV Server in basement
• From Client PC in livingroom, initiate a "convert to itunes" or "convert to DVD" action in VideoTools.
• Have the actual transcoding done on the server in the basement, but the resulting file end up on the client PC in the livingroom

[evilpenguin]

Originally Posted by 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?

Yikes, that's pretty brutal, what kind of CPU do you have? My server is a Q6600 so sometimes I'm a little unintentionally insensitive to people with slower PC's I could make the autoencode profile check the CPU type and downgrade the settings if it detects a single core PC, would you prefer that?

As for the rest of it, I do shrink the video a bit intentionally. My reasoning is that by scaling it there are less pixels to encode and therefore more of the important details are preserved.

Now the black bars shouldn't be there. I don't think its that my plug-in is adding black bars to the actual video, but just cropping it in such a way that it doesn't fill your TV anymore and that's a bug. It prolly has something to do with the way i'm handling overscan. I'll take a look at it.

[evilpenguin]

Originally Posted by Brent

EP,
Quick question. Is it possible (now or in the new version) to do the following with Video Tools?

• Have SageTV Server in basement
• From Client PC in livingroom, initiate a "convert to itunes" or "convert to DVD" action in VideoTools.
• Have the actual transcoding done on the server in the basement, but the resulting file end up on the client PC in the livingroom

Yep, that'll be (and I think already is) possible. You just specify the output folder to be on the client PC and then it'll get copied there when its finished.

[nyplayer]

Originally Posted by evilpenguin

I need to try a fix in the latest beta but I'm just being a baby about upgrading because I don't want to have to remap all my QAM channels . But i'll man up and give it a shot tonight.

I did some cmmercial cuts. with the latest RC and SageTV does not handle them that well. It changes the recording from time. So then Sagetv adds the cut minutes at the end... So when you watch the show it does not mark it watched and when you do go to play the show again it will Not play.

It Goes to play it and ends. The only way you can watch the show again is to mark it watched then mark it not watched.

See Pic attached.

[evilpenguin]

Hmm... Here's my correspondence with Sage on the issue...

Me:

Hi,

Sage still properly detecting updated durations for in place swapped videos that have been cut. Could you please do something about it in this beta?

Tue 8/5 6:10:39.650 Swapping MediaFile's file to be \\Secretivo2\Data4\SageRecordings\NFLFootball-SuperBowlXLIITeamsTBA-1271880-0.mkv from MediaFile[id=1344056 A[1271880,1267192,"NFL Football",21254@0203.15:00,210] host=secretivo2 encodedBy=Silicondust HDHomeRun Tuner 1010120D-0 KCPQDT format=MPEG2-PS 0:00:00 39258 kbps [#0 Video[MPEG2-Video 59.94006 fps 1280x720 16:9 progressive]#1 Audio[AC3 48000 Hz 6 channels MAIN idx=1 id=bd-81010002]] \\Secretivo2\Data4\SageRecordings\NFLFootball-SuperBowlXLIITeamsTBA-1271880-0.mpg, Seg0[Sun 2/3 15:00:00.006-Sun 2/3 19:10:00.001]]

Tue 8/5 6:10:39.652 Now using external format detector...
Tue 8/5 6:10:39.851 File Format Parsed \\Secretivo2\Data4\SageRecordings\NFLFootball-SuperBowlXLIITeamsTBA-1271880-0.mkv=MATROSKA 2:41:57 0 kbps [#0 Video[H.264 59.94006 fps 1248x688 progressive]#1 Audio[AC3 48000 Hz 6 channels idx=1]]

I've even improved my swapping method so that it uses a .tmp file to ensure that it doesn't' get detected mid-copy and its still not working.

Them:

What problem exactly is this causing? Is it just that if you have a 1 hour
show; then recompress it to 45 min that it still shows ups a 1 hour show and
that the counter during playback is scaled so it runs 1.333 times faster
than normal?

SageTV Support Team

Me:

Nope, the counter still goes at the normal speed but now the show just stops before the end of the time line. Its a pain because the shows will never get marked as watched because it can never reach the end of the time line. Then when you go to watch the show again without clearing the watched status it will try and start playing again where it stopped the previous time, which is already past the end of the video, and this will cause it to stop playing instantly. All and all its a bit clunky.

Honestly, my preferred method of handing this would be to detect and use the new duration. But if Sage just isn't wired that way I'd be happy if cut videos would show up like recording that only partially recorded (i.e. the first 22 minutes of the time line would be green then the last 8 would be red (there was a time in v5 where it actually worked like this)).

Them

OK, we've updated it now to do this for the next build:

> Honestly, my preferred method of handing this would be to detect and
> use the new duration

Cheers,

SageTV Support Team

And I just followed up with another email pointing to this thread. I'll get myself updated to the latest beta ASAP and verify this, although, I can't imagine that this will be hard for their testers to duplicate.

[skyeclad]

Originally Posted by evilpenguin

Yikes, that's pretty brutal, what kind of CPU do you have? My server is a Q6600 so sometimes I'm a little unintentionally insensitive to people with slower PC's I could make the autoencode profile check the CPU type and downgrade the settings if it detects a single core PC, would you prefer that?

Well, I tried going the UNC route to offload my compression work to another Q6600 PC and it worked...except there was a big catch. Once Sage reverted to using UNC for everything, the server/client PC had to send all data packets intended for a local HDD through the SRV.SYS subsystem before passing on to the HDD. The result was that my "System" process which normally chills at 3% was going up to 40-50% when playing back a file in a UNC location, even if that location was a local drive! Long story short, my A64 3200+ had no juice left over to play LiveTV and it took days to figure out why. So I decided to just encode on the slow PC and drop UNC. At least Mencoder takes only what's left over and video playback isn't too adversely effected by compression activity. Maybe a slow cpu profile would be good rather than adding it to the auto-encode profile?

Sometimes it amazes me how I have enough power in this old PC with an ATI x800xl to play back 1080i/p and even H.264 at decent bitrates. It's time to upgrade though and I'm setting my eyes on an ATI 3650 for BD playback.

[mikesm]

Originally Posted by skyeclad

Well, I tried going the UNC route to offload my compression work to another Q6600 PC and it worked...except there was a big catch. Once Sage reverted to using UNC for everything, the server/client PC had to send all data packets intended for a local HDD through the SRV.SYS subsystem before passing on to the HDD. The result was that my "System" process which normally chills at 3% was going up to 40-50% when playing back a file in a UNC location, even if that location was a local drive! Long story short, my A64 3200+ had no juice left over to play LiveTV and it took days to figure out why. So I decided to just encode on the slow PC and drop UNC. At least Mencoder takes only what's left over and video playback isn't too adversely effected by compression activity. Maybe a slow cpu profile would be good rather than adding it to the auto-encode profile?

Sometimes it amazes me how I have enough power in this old PC with an ATI x800xl to play back 1080i/p and even H.264 at decent bitrates. It's time to upgrade though and I'm setting my eyes on an ATI 3650 for BD playback.

I've never noticed that behavior before. What OS are you running?

[skyeclad]

I'm running in XP.

[brb84]

Dumb question, but...I'm stumped for some reason trying to follow the instructions at https://sourceforge.net/project/show...kage_id=210295

It says to import the video tools xml file, but stvi's are the only thing sage lets you import? I'm quite confused. Somehow I had this working a few months ago, but I've since wiped the computer and can't remember what I did.

[evilpenguin]

Originally Posted by brb84

Dumb question, but...I'm stumped for some reason trying to follow the instructions at https://sourceforge.net/project/show...kage_id=210295

It says to import the video tools xml file, but stvi's are the only thing sage lets you import? I'm quite confused. Somehow I had this working a few months ago, but I've since wiped the computer and can't remember what I did.

You're supposed to load SageMC imports from the SageMC "Settings Menu", not the detailed Setup. There should be a button on the top left that says "Import STVi".

[mp328]

hey EP, the new fall season starts monday with prison break, i guess this isnt gonna make it in time then

xmas maybe???

[evilpenguin]

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:\Users\scottz.REDMOND\Downloads\perl2dvd\Development
set MODE=
set PROFILE=Auto Encode
set SWITCHES=

After...

set COMMAND=
set DIRECTORY=C:\Users\scottz.REDMOND\Downloads\perl2dvd\Development
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


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.

[nyplayer]

EP,

2 Things.

1. You mention videoredo suite does this work with just VideoRedo? I currently own Videoredo... really have no need to upgrade to VideoRedo suite at the moment.


2. Did Sage correct the problems that exist when you cut commercials with the latest release?

[evilpenguin]

Originally Posted by nyplayer

1. You mention videoredo suite does this work with just VideoRedo? I currently own Videoredo... really have no need to upgrade to VideoRedo suite at the moment.

The project files should be the same so I'm pretty sure it'll work. I only own the TV suite so I can't say for sure.

Originally Posted by nyplayer

2. Did Sage correct the problems that exist when you cut commercials with the latest release?

*sigh* Not quite to my satisfaction, but I'm going to stay on their back until this works like it should. Basically now they say that can solve the watched/unwatched issue with an STV update that should be coming out soon.

Here's the rest of my email thread with support...

Hey,

It appears people are still having issues where the show isn't being
marked as watched when its finished even though it is detecting the
new duration. Check out this post...

http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/show...5&postcount=27

Also, is the RED at the end of the timeline the expected behavior.
From your email it sounded like you were going to be adjusting the
timeline to match the new duration.

It's doing what we intended it to do. It's updated the file's duration in
the database to be what it actually is now. That's why the red exists at the
end of it.

If you want it to be able to be considered watched after only watching the
green portion then you'll need to do a plugin that modifies the Airing
object associated with that file. This is not something we're going to
change the core to do because doing so could cause other data loss in the
EPG when the redetection needs to occur for other reasons (like error
recovery).

Sorry we can't do more for ya on this one.

SageTV Support Team
SageTV, LLC

I'll be honest, that's not really an acceptable solution. What about
having it so that the red goes at the beginning of the timeline and
not the end? That'll take care of the wached/unwached issue.

That still wouldn't take care of the watched/unwatched problem because you
need to watch a significant majority of the airing in order for it to be
considered watched; and that would start at the green and not include the
red.

SageTV Support Team
SageTV, LLC

Well what's the behavior if Sage only records 22 minutes of a show
intentionally via a manual recording?

This is different because ManualRecordings create an alternate Airing object
to wrap the original one which then allows modification of the timeline
through the wrapper object.

SageTV Support Team
SageTV, LLC

Well, I guess whats there will be be fine for now this release, but
you guys really need to figure out a way to make this work on your
end. You telling me to write a plug-in to let a media player the
duration of a video is like my bank asking me to tell them my new
account balance every time I use the ATM. You've already got all the
info you need so I really shouldn't need to do get invovlved.

The problem is you're trying to defeat the logic behind the 'watched'
tracking system. It knows very well the duration of the file; and it also
knows how long the broadcast schedule indicated the show should run for
which is why it doesn't indicate it's been watched.

Is the real problem that (1) it hasn't been marked watched, or (2) that when
you try to watch it again it'll start at the end so you have to mark it
watched/unwatched to get it to be at the beginning, or (3) something else?

If it's #2 then there's a solution to that we can do that wouldn't break
anything else regarding the watch tracking system or the EPG database (we'd
just need to modify the watched reset check for when you try to playback a
file that's already been watched; and logically in this case it should reset
the watched time since otherwise there's no point in really playing it back
since there's no playable content left in the file)


SageTV Support Team
SageTV, LLC

Yep, #2 is definitely the problem. Starting a video and having it
stop immediately is a pretty clunky and I think constitutes a
usability issue. I can't think of any case where this behavior would
be desirable.

As to this point,

> It knows very well the duration of the file; and it also
> knows how long the broadcast schedule indicated the show should run for
> which is why it doesn't indicate it's been watched.

I understand that pretending that the recording is exactly 30 minutes
long after its recorded is great for a polished PVR experience. I'm
sure if you showed the actual duration (29:58ish) you'd be getting an
support emails every day that say, "OMGZ, Sage missed 2 seconds of my
recording!!" But I'm arguing that if something happens that alters
the duration of the file past a certain threshold you can safely
assume that it was knowingly initiated by the user and that they no
longer care about the original broadcast schedule duration

There'll be an STV update we put out post 6.4 which'll fix #2.

I've still got to look in the other modification more; that's one of the
failure recovery scenarios so we need to be careful what we change there.

SageTV Support Team
SageTV, LLC

[nyplayer]

EP,

Where do you get the Videoredo path from. I know it's different in Suite and videoredo.

The videoredo path is.

C:\Program Files\VideoReDoPlus

PS also How would I resize from 720 to 512.?

[matt91]

is the sourceforge link working?

I can get to the non-beta Perl2DVD download page (
http://sourceforge.net/project/showf...kage_id=210295) but can't locate the beta.

[evilpenguin]

Opps, they may have killed my SNV access due to abuse, let me look into that