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

[zzmystique]

Hi John

My issue is with the aspect ratios of TV recordings here in NZ varying considerably between shows as well as channels, so i often get converted recordings where the output is distorted.

I am testing mediashrink with dirmon2 as this seems to deal with problem effectively, but also allows me to convert more than one file at a time.

At the moment I'm not having any success converting NZ freeview terrestrial recordings using dirmon2 with media shrink. (Handbrake or memcoder). The sagetranscoder is the only package which successfully converts the recordings. (These recordings were created by an hvr2200 and a nova td 500)

So my plan at the moment is to use the sagetrancoder for the terrestrial freeview recordings and dirmon2 with mediashrink for all the other recordings.

Have you had any success converting the terrestrial freeview recordings with mediashrink?

Thanks for all your help John - you are a star

Anne

[JREkiwi]

Anne, you could probably modify your SageTVTranscoder profiles to include aspect=16:9 and use channel compression with that profile on all the 16x9 channels. You could even call SageTVTranscoder via DriMon.

John

[kevine]

Help. AutoCompress is compressing the same recording many many times. There are hundreds in the queue. It appears it never creates the .autoCompress file. I have manually created it but they are still in the queue. They may eventually disperse but I will have to wait and see. How does this happen? Is there anything I can do from preventing this in the future? Thanks.

[freedml]

I have turned auto-compress off, but I still get a compress job starting seemingly randomly a couple of times a day. Any idea why this might be happening or how to stop it?

Is there a way to remove this from the standard UI or do I have to start from scratch with the UI and add everything else back???

[JREkiwi]

Originally Posted by freedml

I have turned auto-compress off, but I still get a compress job starting seemingly randomly a couple of times a day. Any idea why this might be happening or how to stop it?

Ensure that Auto Compress is disabled on each UI that is using an STV with the import loaded.

Originally Posted by freedml

Is there a way to remove this from the standard UI or do I have to start from scratch with the UI and add everything else back???

Just remove it via Manage STVI Plugins and let SageTV automatically do a rebuild.

John

[freedml]

Another client must have been starting it. Thanks for the tips.

[JREkiwi]

New version available for download

(1.4.7)
- Added external compression option. It will create an .autocompress file, but not do any processing, allowing an external process to do the auto compression.
- Fixed scheduling to correctly recheck a file that is waiting on a condition before compressing. Also fix not running on old files when a new favorite compression is set up.

John

[nyplayer]

John,

I tried this with the newest beta when I went to details customize. I hit compression style and there is no way to set anything there its a blank box..

[JREkiwi]

Originally Posted by nyplayer

I tried this with the newest beta when I went to details customize. I hit compression style and there is no way to set anything there its a blank box.

Thanks. I've updated the download to fix that.

John

[drewg]

One of my local channels recently started airing a series I want to save, so I'm looking into the best way to compress it. This STV seems like just what I want. I have 2 "newbie" questions:

1) I've manually compressed the first few episodes, and replaced the original recordings with the compressed version. Will the plugin try to re-compress them? If yes, how do I prevent that from happening? Remove and re-add the favorite?

2) The show I want to compress is being shown OTA on a 720p station, and is 4:3 with black bars (ST:TNG). Further, the station has a new encoder, and sets RFF/TFF flags telecine flags. This confuses the *#$% out of ffmpeg and every open source player or converter I've tried (and older Vizio TVs too), and the conversions end up rather choppy. On the original recording, mplayer will get confused about the framerate, especially when the scene contains a lot of panning or fast motion:

[swscaler @ 0xe6a5d0]SwScaler: using unscaled yuv420p -> bgr565 special converter
A:  17.8 V:  17.8 A-V:  0.016 ct: -0.216 1056/1054 29% 41%  1.2% 80 0 
demux_mpg: 24000/1001fps progressive NTSC content detected, switching framerate.
A:  18.0 V:  18.0 A-V:  0.022 ct: -0.205 1066/1063 29% 41%  1.2% 80 0 
demux_mpg: 30000/1001fps NTSC content detected, switching framerate.
Warning! FPS changed 47.952 -> 59.940  (-11.988010) [7]  %  1.2% 80 0 
A:  20.5 V:  20.5 A-V:  0.027 ct: -0.168 1218/1214 29% 41%  1.3% 80 0 
demux_mpg: 24000/1001fps progressive NTSC content detected, switching framerate.
<...>

I'm currently using "AppleTV High Quality Widescreen". Is there some flag I can use to ffmpeg that will cause it to interpret the RFF/TFF flags correctly, and have non-jerky motion in the compressed files?

The exact command SageTV seems to be using is:

$ ps -ef | grep ffmp
sagetv    7184  1218 95 08:42 pts/3    01:26:46 /opt/sagetv/server/ffmpeg -v 3 -y -vsync 1 -async 100 -stdinctrl -i /var/media/tv/StarTrekTheNextGeneration-TheNakedNow-893402-0.mpg -f mp4 -vcodec libx264 -b 2500000 -s 960x540 -r 29.97 -aspect 16:9 -acodec libfaac -ab 128000 -ac 2 -ar 48000 -deinterlace -g 150 -qmin 25 -level 31 -loop 1 -sc_threshold 40 -partp4x4 1 -rc_eq blurCplx^(1-qComp) -refs 2 -qmax 51 -maxrate 4500000 -bf 1 -keyint_min 40 /var/media/tv/StarTrekTheNextGeneration-TheNakedNow-893402-0.tmp

Thanks,

Drew

[JREkiwi]

drewg,

A1. It will only attempt to compress files with an extension of .mpg or .ts. If you manually compressed file is an .mpg or .ts file create a file videoname.autoCompress (videoname.mpg) and it will not attempt to compress it again.

John

[drewg]

Originally Posted by JREkiwi

drewg,

A1. It will only attempt to compress files with an extension of .mpg or .ts. If you manually compressed file is an .mpg or .ts file create a file videoname.autoCompress (videoname.mpg) and it will not attempt to compress it again.

John

Cool, thanks. Its NAME.mp4, so I should be good on that front.

Drew

[meno]

Trying to use this plugin but having a problem getting it working, i cant find any settings in the menu, i have them in the favourites (advanced) but not in setup.

Also doesnt appear to convert anything, ive setup a few favourites to convert, they have recorded but not started converting as yet (36 hours).

Wanted to try converting by channel or convert all recordings but can see how.

Also please confirm if this should be installed on the (WHS) Media Server / Client or both.

Thanks

[nethead]

Hello,

Installed this plugin using the latest version (V1.4.7 21/June/2009), keeping all the settings at default and selecting some favs to compress, I have had a number of them compressed with bad sound.

The playback of a large number of the videos have a high pitched sound or no sound.

what is even odder, not all of the compressed files have this sound problem.

example: SNL recorded over the past 2months, some compressed with no sound problem, latest 2 compressed have sound problems.

I've disabled the compressing at this time.

[nyplayer]

Originally Posted by nethead

Hello,

Installed this plugin using the latest version (V1.4.7 21/June/2009), keeping all the settings at default and selecting some favs to compress, I have had a number of them compressed with bad sound.

The playback of a large number of the videos have a high pitched sound or no sound.

what is even odder, not all of the compressed files have this sound problem.

This doesn't do the compressing.... all it does is tell what profile to use for compression and what favs to compress. You need to post in the SageTV thread and state what compression prifile you are using.

example: SNL recorded over the past 2months, some compressed with no sound problem, latest 2 compressed have sound problems.

I've disabled the compressing at this time.

This STVI doesn't do the compressing it merely tells sage what compression profile to use and what fav to compress.

You need to post in the Sagetv thread and state what profile you are using for compression and what type of file you are compressing for ex mpg with ac3 etc..

[VCRUser]

I find that I often get odd audio in recorded shows, sometimes with the initial recording, sometimes with a conversion. Occasoinally, a spotty signal will result in a conversion's supposedly succeeding but actually only converting part of the progrma. So, I invoke all my conversions manually, and delete the original recording only after I've verified that the sound is ok and the full program converted. If not, I redo the conversion with a different setting, which often works. My usual conversion target is MP4 AVI good (about .8 gb per hr) , but when that fails, I go for DVD Extra Long Play (about 1.5gb per hr). From there, I can often get a successful MP4 AVI conversion at a second pass. But the moral of the story is never enable automatically deleting the original. I have no idea why the audio is often problematic, but this almost always works. I have one show with the audio out of sync and - I think - not by the same amount throughout. I'm not sure if or how I can fix that. I haven't watched the show yet and probably have a backup VCR copy to watch when I'm ready, but it would be nice if there were a way to fix it.

[joe123]

Originally Posted by JREkiwi

drewg,

A1. It will only attempt to compress files with an extension of .mpg or .ts. If you manually compressed file is an .mpg or .ts file create a file videoname.autoCompress (videoname.mpg) and it will not attempt to compress it again.

John

I have a number of recordings which never got converted (compressed for one reason or another), so if I remove the videoname.autoCompress text files, will it go through and not re-compress already compressed files but compress only those that are NOT already compressed (.mpg)?

[JREkiwi]

Originally Posted by joe123

I have a number of recordings which never got converted (compressed for one reason or another), so if I remove the videoname.autoCompress text files, will it go through and not re-compress already compressed files but compress only those that are NOT already compressed (.mpg)?

Yes.

The logic works something like this:
Find files that match the autocompress criteria (favorite, channel)

If autoCompress file exists skip to next file
If autoCompress file doesn't exist

Check if file is .mpg or .ts
Check if format is MPEG or H.264 (by default it won't compress H.264 files)
Check all the other wait rules (Comskip, Captions, Archive, Watched)
Create autoCompress file and add compress job to queue.

The gotcha is, don't delete the autoCompress file of an .mpg or .ts file if you are compressing to .mpg or .ts (ie: HD MPEG to SD MPEG in .mpg or .ts) or it will compress it again.

John

[null_pointer_us]

This plugin is great!

I can drop my HD file size from 9 GB / hour to 4 GB / hour without a noticeable drop in quality. The processing takes a while, but it doesn't interfere with normal use of my computer because a) my shows are on a separate disk and b) the conversion thread starts at lowest priority.

One small issue remains:

This computer uses Windows 7. The PC keeps going to sleep in the middle of compression jobs. Also, it won't wake up to do the conversions. How do you people fix this? i.e. Is there an option somewhere for Sage.properties?

I ask here since this is really only a problem when compression jobs are supposed to happen automatically. If I had queued them manually, I could have changed the computer's power profile to keep it awake.

[joe123]

Originally Posted by JREkiwi

Yes.

The logic works something like this:
Find files that match the autocompress criteria (favorite, channel)

If autoCompress file exists skip to next file
If autoCompress file doesn't exist

Check if file is .mpg or .ts
Check if format is MPEG or H.264 (by default it won't compress H.264 files)
Check all the other wait rules (Comskip, Captions, Archive, Watched)
Create autoCompress file and add compress job to queue.

The gotcha is, don't delete the autoCompress file of an .mpg or .ts file if you are compressing to .mpg or .ts (ie: HD MPEG to SD MPEG in .mpg or .ts) or it will compress it again.

John

Thanks John.