Built-in transcoding (converting) of HD recordings

[TwistedMelon]

Has anyone had good results transcoding HD recordings? I made a test last night using 7.0.11 on a 1080i MPEG2 stream recorded ATSC/OTA.

Using the MPEG4 HDTV setting with a "High Quality AVI" setting produced a file that was unacceptable.

Faults:
The video was now progressive instead of interlaced - but there was no de-interlacing option set - this makes the video look like crap.

The audio has a ton of pops and crackles as well as plying back way too slowly (like the stereotypical devil sounding audio when you play a record back super slowly)

The original had two audio tracks - the transcode has only one.

Obviously not expected behavior, at least as far as the audio goes. I'd like to see AVI either go away or be complemented by MKV and MP4 container formats. Maybe integrate support for x264. Honestly I've never been happy with the quality of any of my conversions, even when they didn't have audio bugs. Maybe fine for iPod use, but I can't use it for archival purposes.

[Fuzzy]

The built in transcoder is really built for just that, transferring to mobile devices and such. Look into MediaShrink here on the forums for a much more robust encoding system.

That said, if you know ffmpeg commands, you can probably make a new profile for the built-in transcoder that would suit your needs.

[TwistedMelon]

Thanks for the tip about MediaShrink. I may use it along with the job queue to set up some on-going transcoding. I'm running a default encode test on an episode of Sesame Street right now. Then I'll try some different quality levels on an episode of Super Why. Need to save some space as these kids shows take up a ton in HD MPEG (OTA).

I may also fiddle with creating my own preset(s) but I don't have too much time over the next couple of months to run many tests.

At the very least I think the higher quality presets built in need to be looked at and updated. Certainly we can't be left with presets that cause problems such as the one I mentioned.

[ChaOConnor]

Originally Posted by TwistedMelon

Thanks for the tip about MediaShrink. I may use it along with the job queue to set up some on-going transcoding. I'm running a default encode test on an episode of Sesame Street right now. Then I'll try some different quality levels on an episode of Super Why. Need to save some space as these kids shows take up a ton in HD MPEG (OTA).

LOL That's exactly what I had to do. I used SJQ3 & MediaShrink to compress all the Super Whys, Sesame Streets, Thomas the Tank Engine & Sid the Science Kid shows. Worked like a charm.

I have a new bug though, since upgrading to v7 of Sage, now whenever I run MediaShrink the shows compress but are sped up double or triple time. They play fine in their original state/file format, but once compressed to a .mkv, they are all messed up. MediaShrink hasn't changed, so I'm wondering if the recordings are different in some way now.

[TwistedMelon]

Is there an option to prevent MediaShrink from generating a log file? Or to clean up (delete) the log file and all temporary stream parts? After my first test I had a 90KB log file and 1GB of video, audio and other files (some comskip files, etc..)

The results were decent. It would have been nice to see a warning that MediaShrink takes all HD content down to 720p by default though.

I've been using version 7 since the first betas and am currently running version 7.0.11 I believe. I'm not seeing the resulting mkv play back at a faster rate than the original. Source was 1080i MPEG2.

[sdsean]

make sure to not add /saveLog on the command switch for MediaShrink. . . if you don't want log files

I agree that the built in transcoding is pretty useless, although if they brought back dynamic menus, then in theory I could add my own menu options for transcoding and just run some external command. . . ( ;-) )

[sdsean]

oh and it should indeed clean up after itself. . . here are the options I use. . . .

start /I /B /LOW /WAIT mediaShrink.exe /onlyWhenVprj /batch /findFileRegEx "avi|mpg|mpeg|VIDEO_TS|ts|divx|dvr-ms" /defaultProfile autoEncode /ac3 /yres 720 /vbitrate 2500 /abitrate 192 "your file path"

Note I never get anything other than /defaultProfile autoEncode to work. . . no idea why there hasn't been anyone responding to my pleas in that forum. . .