Transcoding without commercials

[DBGaither]

Okay,

So there are some shows that my family loves and will watch over and over again. Fortunately, they are in syndication (Everybody Loves Raymond & America's Funniest Video's) so they air often. So a single AFV episode can occupy almost 5.5 gigabytes of space (in HD) and Raymond is over 2 gigs. And I want to keep these shows for multiple viewings but I'd like to be able to transcode them WITHOUT commercials to save space.

I'm running Sage7 in Windows 7.

What tools do I need to accomplish this task?
Is there any special format I should transcode to?

[matt91]

In my experience, it's a royal PITA to "snip" out commercials and transcode on a routine basis. I used to do it so that I would automatically have a mobile phone-friendly version each morning of a couple of late night shows.

If memory serves, I'd run comskip to identify the commercials, and then video redo to actually process them (i.e., snip them out.) I'd then transcode them to another format (not sure what exactly I used to do that.) Sage Job Queue coordinated it all.

It worked 50% of the time. The other 50%, some process would hang, or the commercials wouldn't be detected at all, or something.

To be fair, my server is/was on the slow side, so maybe something beefier would handle these tasks better. I'm not sure.

If you are willing to sit down in front of the computer to do all this yourself, you can certainly make it work. I wanted this automatically overnight, however.

Hope some of that was helpful.
Matt

[mzup]

I run comskip to detect, videoredo to cut, and ffmpeg to condense. I use dirmon to control it and run at night. Works well, but as matt pointed out it's not 100% perfect, but very good. The only thing I started having issues with is it stopped moving the final video to its permanent location. I have to do that manually.

[wayner]

I have never done this whole three step processs (Comskip, cut commercials, transcode) in an automated fashion but I do the comskipping and the transcoding on an automated process using SJQ all the time with very few issues. Occasionally I have used VRD to snip out the commercials as well but that is on a manual basis. I don't think it would be very hard to add this step to the whole situation - you just need to have comskip creating vrpj files and then run VRD in batch mode. I keep intending to automate this whole process but have never gotten around to do it. I encourage you to do so and post any scripts that you write to help others.

The way that I would do this is to use SJQ to run Comskip as soon as the show ends. You will need to change the comskip.ini file to output vrpj files which are readable by VideoRedo. You will then run VideoRedo in batch mode and pass it two parameters - the vrpj file and the mpg original recording file. The final step would be to transcode it and I would just use SJQ to call the Sage internal transcoder. I have always used the MPEG-4 Good Quality or MPEG-4 High Quality options but that may depend on your source - I am usually starting with cartoons that don't need to be high quality. Alternatively you could use an external encoder like Handbrake. You mention the shows are in HD - are they from an OTA or QAM tuner? I am guessing that they are given the large size that you mention for the files. If they are from an HD-PVR then it is a little trickier and there is no point in encoding since it is already in a very efficient codec.

So the way that this would work is that you would have one groovy script written that performs the three tasks and SJQ would kick off the script when the recording ends, or you could manually run it on any recordings that you have. You would be able to "steal" the script code that you need from what other folks have done in the past, the only part that you would have to write yourself is the call to VideoRedo.

By the way, here is a thread from a couple of years ago that discusses this issue http://forums.sage.tv/forums/showthread.php?p=368246

[BobPhoenix]

I had a version of my VideoEdit plugin about 3/4ths done (SageTV V6.X compatible) it used the Com interface that GKusnick talked about in the indicated thread. It even had a status display that you could watch the progress of VideoRedo do it's work. You could run an AdScan, Quick Stream Fix or an Edit. My problem was I coded myself into a corner and no longer have the time to start over again. I could provide the Java code and STVI I was using to control it over the Com interface if desired. Jacob is also required.

[vguenther]

BobPhoenix.... your videoedit plugin looks like it was awesome! Any chance you are still working on a version for sagetv v7?

Would love to be able to set cutpoints in the sage interface for a videoredo job to not have to rely on automatic comskip cutpoints, etc.

Thanks!

[BobPhoenix]

Originally Posted by vguenther

BobPhoenix.... your videoedit plugin looks like it was awesome! Any chance you are still working on a version for sagetv v7?

Would love to be able to set cutpoints in the sage interface for a videoredo job to not have to rely on automatic comskip cutpoints, etc.

Thanks!

Wish I could say that I was but it is on hold until I get some problems around the house and office straightened out so no time line on when or if I will pick it up again. If I do pick it up again it will be as a series of plugins rather than one LARGE one. That is one of the problems I had and how I coded myself into a corner.