Utility: DirMon2

[Ronno6]

OOPS! In the "must not exist" I had .txt rather than txt I guess that little dot can make a difference. We'll see now.

Nope. ShowAnalyzer has run 2x now since correction. I'm lost again.

[geogecko]

Been a long while since troubleshooting the service issue.

From what I remember, you have to use the login and password of the system for it to work.

You may also need to right-click My Computer>>Manage, go to services and applications, and services.

In there, you need to find DirMon2, and double click it, go to the Login tab, and make sure it's setup correctly with user name and password.

I'm not sure if DM2 will show up in the services section here, if not, go into DM2 GUI, and try to get it setup as a service as far as you can, then go back and see if it's listed in the services section.

I'm not sure this will solve the other problem though.

I compared your ini file to mine, and it looks good from what I can tell. If you get the services thing working, and still have problems, repost your ini file, and we can take a look again.

[geogecko]

Oh, and BTW, the user name, will be typed in as ".\geogecko", if your user name was geogecko, without the quotes.

[othy]

Just to add a little confusion to all of this

You also have to ensure that the user account is set up to be used by a service. I'm sure someone has an elegant solution for doing so. I think I just went to Services (Control Panel?) and set up the username/password there, and it popped up and asked if it should be allowed to auto login for a service.

That wouldn't affect jobs getting queued repeatedly, of course.

Tim

[Ronno6]

Thanks, all. The only reason I inquire about the user name/password is that someone had suggested that to cure my continuous CPU usage I was seeing with DirMon2.exe in the task manager of Windows. Since installing a new HD and clean installation of the related programs, the CPU usage is no longer an issue. I think I'm closing in on the solutions to the other problems. Thanks again.

[Humanzee]

Originally Posted by geogecko

Guess it all depends. The processing time will be different for every system, and can then be configured to where it will take a lot longer to process (throttling). But, I wouldn't think anyone would want commercial processing to take more than 4 hours!

Well, these are only on bad recordings off of my firewire setup. Sometimes the program gets 5c encrypted or something and SA will hang up. I don't know if Dirmon will Force a taskkill or just ask for a program close. The frame count and FPS sit at 0 but the cpu is chugging on it anyway. It's funny though, sometimes a bad recording will work in SA but not in sage. I can open a video full of garbage but it will show commercial segments.

[shatter]

PROBLEM:

I can't get the DirMon2 service to start on my machine. I keep getting "Error 2: The system cannot find the file specified." When I try to start the DirMon2 service from the windows xp services screen. Any ideas why this is occurring? Doesn't seem to matter if I try to run at as Local System or under my admin account.

SOLUTION:

Copied DirMon2.exe to /windows/system32/ directory and all was happy. Not sure why installer for service didn't take care of this issue.

[SomeWhatLost]

just curious, is it possible to check/trigger off the existence of a directory?
ie if any directory exists in the folder Dirmon2 is monitoring, I want to wait till the directory is done being created/accessed/whatever and then move it off to another drive... seems like this is something dir2mon could do, and its already running to keep my shows showanalyzed (is that a proper verb?)

[razrsharpe]

I am using Dirmon2 to execute a batch file (.bat) to start my video compressions. I want the batch file to run in windowed mode (like you would from the CMD prompt) to monitor the encoding status. Is there a way to have Dirmon2 not hide the process window? I have the "Hide console window" option unchecked, but it has no effect on the visibility of the process. Any suggestions are appreciated.

Thanks

[aflat]

Originally Posted by razrsharpe

I am using Dirmon2 to execute a batch file (.bat) to start my video compressions. I want the batch file to run in windowed mode (like you would from the CMD prompt) to monitor the encoding status. Is there a way to have Dirmon2 not hide the process window? I have the "Hide console window" option unchecked, but it has no effect on the visibility of the process. Any suggestions are appreciated.

Thanks

Just a guess since I don't do it myself, but you'll probably have to modify the service. Go to the service properties, then check the "Interact with desktop" checkbox. You'll have to run the service as a user, and not localsystem to be able to check the box.

[davephan]

I am able to use Dirmon2 without problems if I set the "Targets" field to "file extensions only" and use "mpg" in the "Targets" field.

However, I would like to restrict the files that will be processed. I tried setting the "Targets" field to "entire file path", which did not work using wildcards.

For example, I tried using the following syntax in the "Targets" field to try to process only filenames beginning with 'abc' and 'nbc'.

d:\video\abc*.mpg,d:\video\nbc*.mpg

Is it possible to use 'wildcards' in the file names? If not, the option of using "entire file path" would not be very useful, since the exact file names cannot be predicted in the future.

Dave

[gplasky]

Originally Posted by davephan

I am able to use Dirmon2 without problems if I set the "Targets" field to "file extensions only" and use "mpg" in the "Targets" field.

However, I would like to restrict the files that will be processed. I tried setting the "Targets" field to "entire file path", which did not work using wildcards.

For example, I tried using the following syntax in the "Targets" field to try to process only filenames beginning with 'abc' and 'nbc'.

d:\video\abc*.mpg,d:\video\nbc*.mpg

Is it possible to use 'wildcards' in the file names? If not, the option of using "entire file path" would not be very useful, since the exact file names cannot be predicted in the future.

Dave

Try this:

Your path is defined in the Where field of Dirmon2. If you already have added the d:\video there then just try putting the abc*.mpg in the target field. ALso when you make changes look in the dirmon2.ini file to see if it makes sense.

If that doesn't work you might be able to build on the commandline stuff.

Command Line Options Substitutions
The command line options block is a rather complicated creature.

First, if it is blank, then the target file name is added.
Example
Command Line Options:
Result: ShowAnalyzer X:/Directory/file.mpg

Second, if it is not blank, but does not have any of the substitution strings then the the target file name is put before what ever is put in the options block.
Example
Command Line Options: -status
Result: ShowAnalyzer X:/Directory/file.mpg -status

Third, if there are any substitution strings used then ONLY what is built from the options block is passed to the processor.
Example
Command Line Options: -i [[%FULLFILESPEC%]] -o [[%PATH%/%BASENAME%.avi]]
Result: ShowAnalyzer -i X:/Directory/file.mpg -o X:/Directory/file.avi

What are the substitution strings and what will the result be?

Code:
Example filename: D:/TV/Nova.mpg
%FULLFILESPEC% - D:/TV/Nova.mpg
%DRIVE% - D
%PATH% - D:/TV
%DIRECTORY% - TV
%BASENAME% - Nova
%EXTENSION% - mpg
Example filename: D:/Nova.mpg
%FULLFILESPEC% - D:/Nova.mpg
%DRIVE% - D
%PATH% - D:
%DIRECTORY% -
%BASENAME% - Nova
%EXTENSION% - mpg
Example filename: //Media/TV/Nova.mpg
%FULLFILESPEC% - //Media/TV/Nova.mpg
%DRIVE% - //Media/TV
%PATH% - //Media/TV
%DIRECTORY% -
%BASENAME% - Nova
%EXTENSION% - mpg
Example filename: //Media/TV/SageTV/Nova.mpg
%FULLFILESPEC% - //Media/TV/SageTV/Nova.mpg
%DRIVE% - //Media/TV
%PATH% - //Media/TV/SageTV
%DIRECTORY% - SageTV
%BASENAME% - Nova
%EXTENSION% - mpgAdditionally, anything contained within [[ ]]'s will be surrounded with quotes if necessary (i.e. there are any spaces). DO NOT NEST THEM!! Bad, bad things will happen if they are nested. If someone can come up with a possible use for nested quotes, then I'll look into supporting it. Until then, just don't do it.

The problem being is there is no place I could find where it specifically states Dirmon2 supports wildcards. There was one post talking about adding it but no confirmation.

If all else fails maybe create a batch job or two using your abc*.mpg and nbc*.mpg and have Dirmon2 run the batch jobs.

Gerry

[machine88]

I have just finished installing windows 7 32 bit professional. I have most of my programs installed and running with the exception of dirmon2. After I install Dirmon2 and configure the settings, I hit the install button. This button does not seem to be working. I have tried to unistall and re-download the program several times with no luck. Can anyone help?

Thanks
Chris

[toricred]

Have you tried turning down UAC? Also have you tried running DirmonGUI as an administrator by right-clicking and selecting "Run as Administrator"?

[machine88]

Setting the permissions worked great. Thanks

[MalibuDave42]

Can I run DirMon2 and Comskip from 2 or more PCs against the same target directory of recordings?

I have 200+ shows and just installed comskipping... once I am caught up I will run it from 1 pc, but it would be quicker to throw some more processors at it.

Thanks

[razrsharpe]

Originally Posted by MalibuDave42

Can I run DirMon2 and Comskip from 2 or more PCs against the same target directory of recordings?

I have 200+ shows and just installed comskipping... once I am caught up I will run it from 1 pc, but it would be quicker to throw some more processors at it.

Thanks

probably... you just need to be careful with your rules so that two computers do not try to comskip the same file.... if you run into issues look into SJQ to execute your comskip jobs instead of Dirmon2 (its much customizable/configurable/powerful/etc and you can have multiple computers execute jobs off the same queue.

[MalibuDave42]

I suspected there would not be a problem -- until they try to write the same EDL file.

Looking at the queue via DirMonGui, I can see all of the shows in the queue matching the DirMon rule "for MPGs with no EDL run comskip." Even though there is a queue, does this get re-evaluted prior to executing comskip? In other words, each PC running DirMon builds it's own queue, but if PC1 DirMon fires off comskip, comskip will write an empty EDL populating it with info as it runs, then when Instance2 of DirMon gets to the same recording it will see the EDL and not fire comskip. Am I making any sense?

If this was true, there would be an instant in which there may be a collision, but the odds of that happening are very small.

[razrsharpe]

my understanding is the queue gets reevaluated before executing new jobs... it would be pretty silly if it didnt... so ya like you say there is theoretically a time when a collision could occur but its very small.

[jnewman33]

Hey all,

I have dirmon2 installed on Windows Home Server (WHS) monitoring a share on the WHS as outlined in the tutorial located elsewhere on this forum. The tutorial is not WHS based but I believe it still is applicable.

Everything is working and I am generating .edl and .txt files. My problem seems to be that dirmon2 is trying to process the source files in a loop that never ends. I have the triggers set per the tutorial and the .edl and .txt files that are present should preclude the processing after the first run.

I do see that similar issues have been discussed here but I cannot see a firm resolution.

Any help is greatly appreciated,

James