(Old) MediaShrink - An HTPC focused encoder

[zzmystique]

feature request: Any chance you could add the sagetranscoder to mediashrink as an option if handbrake or memcoder fail to convert the recording.

Mediashrink works brilliantly on most recordings, the way it deals with aspect ratios is great.

At the moment I haven't had any success converting NZ freeview terrestrial recordings.

With the latest sagetv beta, the sagetranscoder is the only package I've found which successfully converts the recordings, but the aspect ratio often produce distorted recordings.

Thanks

[JREkiwi]

Originally Posted by zzmystique

At the moment I haven't had any success converting NZ freeview terrestrial recordings.

HandBrake should be able to convert them, but I suspect that if this works the same way as EP's early code then it's the pre-processing that's probably the problem.

You could try using a renamed copy of SageTVTrancoder to replace FFMpeg that's included.

John

[nyplayer]

Originally Posted by zzmystique

feature request: Any chance you could add the sagetranscoder to mediashrink as an option if handbrake or memcoder fail to convert the recording.

Mediashrink works brilliantly on most recordings, the way it deals with aspect ratios is great.

At the moment I haven't had any success converting NZ freeview terrestrial recordings.

With the latest sagetv beta, the sagetranscoder is the only package I've found which successfully converts the recordings, but the aspect ratio often produce distorted recordings.

Thanks

If you want to use FFMPEG that is built into handbrake you have to set the /divx switch... That will use the ffmpeg built in handbrake.

[evilpenguin]

Originally Posted by JREkiwi

HandBrake should be able to convert them, but I suspect that if this works the same way as EP's early code then it's the pre-processing that's probably the problem.

You could try using a renamed copy of SageTVTrancoder to replace FFMpeg that's included.

John

That's probably it, I do some pretty intense scanning of the video and if the A/V info that sagetvtranscoder reports has something I don't expect it could be failing in a lot of different places. If you email me a log file I should be able to fix it pretty easily.

[toricred]

I've just started using the HD-PVR and I tried this on one of those recordings. It worked, but it took 2-3 hours for a 1 hour recording. Should this work any better than that in your opinion?

[reggie14]

Originally Posted by toricred

I've just started using the HD-PVR and I tried this on one of those recordings. It worked, but it took 2-3 hours for a 1 hour recording. Should this work any better than that in your opinion?

I haven't tried this tool yet, but I do use Handbrake. 1/3 of realtime sounds about right to me. In fact, you probably even have a decent speed computer if you're going that fast. I just tried running Handbrake on a 1080i mpeg2 file (going to a 1080p H.264 file) and it was going about 5fps on a 2.5Ghz Core 2 Duo (so, about 1/6 of real-time).

But, why are you running this on the HD-PVR recordings? If I understand what this tool does, if you're using the autoprofiles, then I think you'd just be going from, e.g., 720p H.264 to 720p H.264. If you need smaller recording files you should probably just reduce the bitrate that the HD-PVR uses. If you just want to make some files a lot smaller, you you'll want to drop the resolution when you re-encode it (probably down to 480p).

[toricred]

I was only trying to see what I could get as far as space. I've decided to forego compression for now (moving to all HD-PVRs soon) and just up my storage capacity as I need it. (That and getting the wife and kids to stop recording everything they see and keeping them.)

[zzmystique]

Originally Posted by evilpenguin

That's probably it, I do some pretty intense scanning of the video and if the A/V info that sagetvtranscoder reports has something I don't expect it could be failing in a lot of different places. If you email me a log file I should be able to fix it pretty easily.

I can upload/email the logs - which ones do you need?

Cheers

Anne

[JREkiwi]

Originally Posted by zzmystique

I can upload/email the logs

I've forwarded them to EP for you Anne.

John

[zzmystique]

Originally Posted by JREkiwi

I've forwarded them to EP for you Anne.

John

Thanks John but I don't think I emailed you the right logs.

If you have any issue i'll need you to post the mediaEngine.log file that gets created next to the .exe. Otherwise I'll have no idea what the problem is.

No MediaEngine.log is being generated, how do I activate the logging?

Thanks
Anne

[evilpenguin]

Hey John/Anne,

No worries, those logs gave me what I needed. If you can go ahead and verify via the Handbrake GUI that those videos actually encode without my code getting in the way, I'll change my pre-processing code so that it won't try and touch those videos.

-EP

[zzmystique]

Hi EP

The files do not transcode using the hand brake GUI. The error message reads as follows.

No Title found. Please make sure you have selected a valid, non-copy protected source......

So the problem doesn't appear to be around your code. Sagetvtranscoder appears to be the only thing that will convert it.

Thanks

Anne

[evilpenguin]

Hmm, I could probably get it working with Sage's transcoder, but there wouldn't really be any benefit over what you can already do in Sage.

[zzmystique]

The benefit for me is the automatic aspect ratio checking. I currently use the auto compress plugin for by channel (I record 24/7). The channels broadcasts varies so much between shows that i often end up with distorted stretched or squashed convertions.

Mediashrink for all other recording formats seems to do a really good job resolving this.

Thanks

Anne

[evilpenguin]

So some recordings work and other's fail?

[zzmystique]

Sorry if I have confused you.

The only convertions that fail using mediashrink are the freeview digital terrestrial recordings from my hauppauge hvr2200 (example format: MPEG2-PS[H.264 576i, AAC/12kps@24khz stereo eng (AAC_LATMC)]), recordings from my hauppauge pvr500 (AV inputs) and hauppauge hvr4000 (satelitte) convert successfully.

Anne

[evilpenguin]

Ahh, I understand now. Can you make me a very small clip (start a recording and then quit Sage after a few seconds) that I can use for testing? If you can get it under 20mb you can just email to me @ mediaScraper@gmail.com, otherwise I can setup an FTP server.

[zzmystique]

I have sent to small clips, I think one station uses slightly different audio codecs (not sure though)

Thanks

Anne

[evilpenguin]

Thanks, I'll make it so it sends those through SageTVTranscoder rather than trying to use handbrake.

[zzmystique]

Thanks - that would be great.

Anne