STV Import: Auto Compress for version 6 Default STV (V1.4.5 1/October/2008)

[joe123]

Great plugin John.

Question (two questions actually )

1) What prevents auto compress to finish before something like showanalyzer completes?

2) Some of my favorites have 200+ recordings. Once I set a favorite to autocompress, will it do all previous recordings as well as new ones? If no, is there a way with this plugin?

Thanks,
Joe

[wayner]

Since John is a kiwi and on a different clock from those of us in NA I will give a crack at your first question. If you click "Wait for Comskip" then I believe AutoCompress waits until it sees the files such as .edl or .txt files before it tries AutoCompressing. If you don't select that option then I don't believe it waits and you could run into problems, particularly if you select it to delete the original.

[joe123]

Originally Posted by wayner

Since John is a kiwi and on a different clock from those of us in NA I will give a crack at your first question. If you click "Wait for Comskip" then I believe AutoCompress waits until it sees the files such as .edl or .txt files before it tries AutoCompressing. If you don't select that option then I don't believe it waits and you could run into problems, particularly if you select it to delete the original.

Thanks. Yes, I noticed that, but this can get a bit complicated with race conditions.

My dirmon2 checks every 5 minutes and kicks off showanalyzer which creates the .edl and .txt files right away, which is great when I begin seeing a 2 hour movie 30 minutes into it. Since has not completed yet, but I have 30 minutes buffer, I get to skip the commercials. I could tell showanalyzer to wait to create the .edl and .txt files after the movie stops recording, but then I loose what I said above.

Another related question: What happens when I have it set to replace the original MPEG2 file after it is done converting and I am watching the original movie recording?

[JREkiwi]

Thanks wayner, here's some more detail for Joe

A1) So, here's how the scheduling of compressions works.

1. Waits for the show to finish recording
2. If "Wait for Comskip", then wait for an .edl or .txt file to exist. The assumption is that if commercial detection has started on a file it will complete well before a compression of the file that starts after it.
3. 2. If "Wait for Captions", then wait for an .smi to exist. Same assumption on processing speed as for comskip.
4. If "Wait for Watched" then wait until the recording is flagged as watched before a compression of the file starts.

If you are watching the original file when it gets around to deleting it, it can't delete it because the file is in use. In that case, you will end up with both the compressed file and the original, although I've only ever had that situation arise in testing, I've never seen it happen in real world usage.

If you are concerned about that situation, you could also enable the option "Wait for Watched".

A2) Once you set a favorite to autocompress, it will run on all previous recordings as well as any new ones.

John

[joe123]

Originally Posted by JREkiwi

A2) Once you set a favorite to autocompress, it will run on all previous recordings as well as any new ones.

John

Great and thank you John for this mod. It is great.

One more question on the last part. If I have a favorite set to compress and let's say half the movies are already compressed, will it try to re-compress the already compressed movies?

I am asking becuase SageTV built-in compress will do exactly this which is a BUG in my opinion, but SageTV wont own up to it.

[JREkiwi]

Originally Posted by joe123

One more question on the last part. If I have a favorite set to compress and let's say half the movies are already compressed, will it try to re-compress the already compressed movies?

There are 2 situations.

This will only compress if starting from an .mpg or .ts file, so if the compressed file is something else ie: .avi, then it will never attempt another compression.

If the compressed file is an mpg ie: compressing from HD to SD mpg, then as long as the .autocompress file still exists, then it will not attempt to recompress.

John

[JREkiwi]

New version available for download

(1.4.6)
- Changed monitoring and cleanup code so only one client will perform scans in multi-client environment.
- Reduce frequency and impact of orphan file cleanup

John

[joe123]

Thanks and one last question which you may have answered, but I am confused.

If I have a favority with say 100 movies and they all have their .txt and .edl from showanalyzer and I set this favorite to autocompress, will it only compress new recordings, or new recordings and existing recordings?

If new recordings only, is there a way to have your autocompress compress old existing recordings?

[JREkiwi]

Originally Posted by joe123

If I have a favority with say 100 movies and they all have their .txt and .edl from showanalyzer and I set this favorite to autocompress, will it only compress new recordings, or new recordings and existing recordings?

It will compress both new and existing recordings.

John

[joe123]

Originally Posted by JREkiwi

It will compress both new and existing recordings.

John

Ok. I set a folder with around 100 existing movies to auto compress and it is not doing it. Do I have to wait for a recording of this favorite to occur or do something else to kick it off?

[JREkiwi]

Originally Posted by joe123

Ok. I set a folder with around 100 existinng movies to autocompress and it is not doing it. Do I have to wait for a recording of this favorite to occur or do something else to kick it off?

It can take up to an hour to start processing existing recordings.

New recordings should start within 5 minutes of finishing recording, but I changed the frequency of checking existing recordings to reduce the amount of disk activity.

John

[cathersal]

First of all I want to thank you for this great plug in. It very cool to have people like you making useful stuff like this.

For me, the main thing I want is decent quality with small size because I ship all my files over the internet to Europe. Autocompress works great, but I'm sure I can get even smaller if I cut out the commercials. However, it looks like the way to do this with your plugin is to use EvilPenguin's add-on which includes a way to remove the commercials before transcoding. However, as you probably know, his program is rather involved and needs a bunch of other components. In addition the current the Wiki for his project says this about commercial cutting " Enable Commercial Cutting - Currently Does Nothing"

http://perl2dvd.wiki.sourceforge.net...ng+SageMC+STVi

So, I'm left wondering the best way to automatically cut commercials or shrink my files with your plugin. It looks like you can run the compress 2x. Is that right? Do you recommend this? Or do you have some other ideas on how to cut out the commercials before compressing?

Thanks!

[JREkiwi]

Originally Posted by cathersal

However, it looks like the way to do this with your plugin is to use EvilPenguin's add-on which includes a way to remove the commercials before transcoding. However, as you probably know, his program is rather involved and needs a bunch of other components. In addition the current the Wiki for his project says this about commercial cutting " Enable Commercial Cutting - Currently Does Nothing"

It only works with version 2.0 of the EvilPenguin stuff which doesn''t seem to be available anymore.

Originally Posted by cathersal

So, I'm left wondering the best way to automatically cut commercials or shrink my files with your plugin. It looks like you can run the compress 2x. Is that right? Do you recommend this? Or do you have some other ideas on how to cut out the commercials before compressing?

I've never had anything that detects commercials accurately enough to rely on any sort of automatic commercial removal. So, for anything that I want the commercial removed on, I just get comskip to create a vprj file for VideoRedo and use that to remove the commercials, then do a compression of it.

John

[joe123]

Any hooks avaialble to perform a function on the file after the movie has been compressed?

I like the idea of defragging the compressed file after it's done.

[wayner]

Originally Posted by JREkiwi

The compressions are run on the server, but it needs a UI with the import installed running somewhere to add the compression jobs to the queue.

"Run Autocompress on this client" was something that got added ages ago that allowed preventing some clients from running the scheduling logic, when I was trying to track down a weird SageTV bug.

John - just to clarify on this. I run my Sage server on Windows Home Server - my clients are several HD-200s and SageClient (and occasionally PlaceShifter). On these clients I run the SageMC STV which I don't believe supports AutoCompress.

Should I then make sure that I am always running the Sage default UI (with Auto Compress added in) on the server so that the Auto Compress jobs get initiated?

[JREkiwi]

Originally Posted by wayner

John - just to clarify on this. I run my Sage server on Windows Home Server - my clients are several HD-200s and SageClient (and occasionally PlaceShifter). On these clients I run the SageMC STV which I don't believe supports AutoCompress.

SageMC does include AutoCompress. That's where the code for this import came from, although it has diverged from that since then.

John

[gplasky]

Originally Posted by wayner

John - just to clarify on this. I run my Sage server on Windows Home Server - my clients are several HD-200s and SageClient (and occasionally PlaceShifter). On these clients I run the SageMC STV which I don't believe supports AutoCompress.

Should I then make sure that I am always running the Sage default UI (with Auto Compress added in) on the server so that the Auto Compress jobs get initiated?

Auto Compress is disabled by default in SageMC. Go to Settings-SageMC and enable it.

Gerry

[wayner]

I appear to be getting multiple AutoCompresses running - I think this may be due to having, at one time, SageMC also set up to do compressions. When I look at my sage.properties file it looks like there may be multiple settings for the same show - at least in terms of the folder that the compressed file is stored. It is also possible due to setting up the Autocompress from both the server and a client/extender. Here is an example of my sage.properties:

compression/3542764/archive_wait=false
compression/3542764/auto_compress=true
compression/3542764/auto_compress_2=false
compression/3542764/caption_wait=false
compression/3542764/compression_dir=\\\\server1\\videos\\Kids Shows\\Dora
compression/3542764/comskip_wait=false
compression/3542764/delete_original=true
compression/3542764/inplace=false
compression/3542764/standard_profile=MPEG4-High Quality Deinterlaced AVI
compression/3542764/use_compression_dir=true
compression/3542764/watched_wait=false
compression/410392/archive_wait=false
compression/410392/auto_compress=true
compression/410392/auto_compress_2=false
compression/410392/caption_wait=false
compression/410392/compression_dir=\\\\server1\\videos\\Kids Shows\\Dora
compression/410392/comskip_wait=false
compression/410392/delete_original=true
compression/410392/inplace=false
compression/410392/standard_profile=MPEG4-High Quality Deinterlaced AVI
compression/410392/use_compression_dir=true
compression/410392/watched_wait=false

I don't know exactly what shows 3542764 and 410392 are but I am guessing they are both Dora as they are set to move to my Dora folder. When I look at my Dora folder I have double copies of most shows, in my compressed .avi format. However for some of the shows one of the compressed .avi files is still in the original Recorded TV folder.

What is the best way of fixing this? Can I just delete all of the compression/XXXXX lines in Sage.properties and go through the AutoCompress Favorites setup again or is that a bad idea?

[JREkiwi]

If you go to Setup -> Detail Setup -> Customize -> Auto Compress Options -> More Options -> Edit Auto Compress Favorites

It will take you to a panel that lists all the favorites by name that have Auto Compress enabled. Looks like you've got 2 favorites that are compressing to the same folder. Maybe you have a title favorite and a keyword favorite that have been setup.

You have double copies of the same airing?, or is it that you're recording the same episode multiple times because SageTV isn't seeing them as the same episode?

John

[wayner]

The same show is being compressed twice - for example in my \Dora folder I have:
Dora-Click-3469547-0.avi
Dora-Click-3469547-0.1.avi

I get this exact same result every day for the 1:00am airing of this show and there is no .autocompress file for the above show.

But for another airing of Dora I get a slightly different result - I have two copies of the same compressed show - one in my TVshows folder and one in my \Dora folder. For these shows where one shows up in either folder I do have .autocompress files. According to the Edit Auto Compress Favorites there is only one entry for Dora. But in the sage.properties that I pasted above there appears to be two entries for this show.

Should I just shut down Sage and delete all of the compression/ settings (other than the defaults) in my sage.properties and start over to set up compression of my Favorites?