Handbrake or other Tool to convert recordings?

[aweber1nj]

I'd like to convert some of my recorded shows (targeting recorded movies, mostly) to MP4 or MKV from the default, Sage format (I think MPEG1/2?).

Has anyone found a good tool to do this? I haven't had any luck just using Handbrake directly.

I thought there was a batch setup someone had built that did actually use Handbrake, and replaced the original with the more compressed format and updated Sage's info so it was all still consistent in the STV interface, but I haven't been able to locate that posting.

Thanks in advance,
AJ

[nyplayer]

Originally Posted by aweber1nj

I'd like to convert some of my recorded shows (targeting recorded movies, mostly) to MP4 or MKV from the default, Sage format (I think MPEG1/2?).

Has anyone found a good tool to do this? I haven't had any luck just using Handbrake directly.

I thought there was a batch setup someone had built that did actually use Handbrake, and replaced the original with the more compressed format and updated Sage's info so it was all still consistent in the STV interface, but I haven't been able to locate that posting.

Thanks in advance,
AJ

Try MediaShrink

[pjpjpjpj]

Have you tried the built-in Sage convert function?

[aweber1nj]

Originally Posted by pjpjpjpj

Have you tried the built-in Sage convert function?

I think I did try that, but don't know that it worked (I think the original was still in the recording directory, and I don't think I found the output file in the new format).

[aweber1nj]

Originally Posted by nyplayer

Try MediaShrink

I think that was it. I'll re-download and install that and try it.

Thanks for the find.

[pjpjpjpj]

Originally Posted by aweber1nj

I think I did try that, but don't know that it worked (I think the original was still in the recording directory, and I don't think I found the output file in the new format).

The converted recording will appear in the recordings list with the original (unless you set it to "auto delete" the original). So if you had a recording of a show, it will then indicate you have two - you can then just delete the original, larger file.

I have recently started converting many of my HD recordings (OTA, uncompressed MPG) to "DVD 'good' quality" MKV. A 6 GB show goes down to right around 1 GB, and through the HD300 on my 40" HDTV, I don't really even notice a difference.

[KryptoNyte]

If you have VideoRedo, you could consider using VAP;

http://www.videoredo.net/msgBoard/forumdisplay.php?f=41

[phelme]

Originally Posted by pjpjpjpj

Have you tried the built-in Sage convert function?

The built-in (ffmpeg) converter is a bit out of date and sometimes fails on transport stream recordings; usually resulting in out-of-sync audio.

[GKusnick]

I recently undertook a project to transcode a bunch of recordings to MP4 for playback on Android devices. In my testing I found that Handbrake consistently produced better-looking results than ffmpeg for the same bitrate and quality settings, with fewer sync errors, and took less time to do it.

One issue with Handbrake is that the released version (0.9.5) crashes on some recordings in 32-bit Windows. This problem seems to be fixed in the nightly builds of Handbrake, if you don't mind living on the edge.

[aweber1nj]

Yeah, that's why MediaShrink (which I believe is a bunch of scripts and batch files) to semi-automate this is more attractive to me. I need to see if that'll work with the latest build of Handbrake (I think it uses the CLI).

[phelme]

Originally Posted by aweber1nj

Yeah, that's why MediaShrink (which I believe is a bunch of scripts and batch files) to semi-automate this is more attractive to me. I need to see if that'll work with the latest build of Handbrake (I think it uses the CLI).

I'll be curious as to how you get on with MediaShrink. I had to give up on it myself because too often it would punt on transport stream recordings in its pre-processor for reasons never fully explained in the logs. Probably a Handbrake or ffmpeg issue, as the binaries included in the package are now out of date.

--

Spent some time on MediaShrink last night and think I figured out my issue. An installation of VideoRedo was failing and screwing up the pre-processing scripts of MediaShrink. Since removing it things are much happier.

[aweber1nj]

Good to hear. I think that's what I'm going to try today.

Can I ask how to properly attempt a straight, Handbrake transcode? Anytime I've tried to open up a .ts file with Handbrake, it takes forever, then complains with an error message (last time was "Title not found" or something). Is there some pre-processing I need to do?

--------------
UPDATE

I installed Mediashrink 3.04, and then went about manually replacing all the binary sub-directories (except curl and comskip) with the latest-and-greatest downloads. Am testing now.

One thing I just can't seem to get it to do is to follow the Handbrake Profile I request in "mediashrink.defaults". Do I need to remove the /profile autoEncode entry from the line? I think that's trying to intelligently parse the video's properties and pick its own settings (very cool, but I don't want it to do that in my case).

[aweber1nj]

Handbrake bombed-out again in the midst of the run. Can anyone tell me what might be happening here and how I could fix it? Here's a log snippet:

- Getting Video Info: (D:\SageRecordings\DateNight-3571114-0.ts)(7393987.4921875)
- Getting Handbrake info: "C:\MediaShrink\mediaEngineBins\HandBrake 9.4\HandBrakeCLI.exe" -i "D:/SageRecordings/DateNight-3571114-0.ts" -t 0 2>&1 (D:\SageRecordings\DateNight-3571114-0.workFolder\DateNight-3571114-0.HandbrakeInfo)
+ Scanning title 1 of 1...
+ Scanning title 1 of 1...
+ Scanning title 1 of 1...
+ Scanning title 1 of 1...
+ Scanning title 1 of 1...
+ Scanning title 1 of 1...
+ Scanning title 1 of 1...
+ Scanning title 1 of 1...
+ Scanning title 1 of 1...
+ Scanning title 1 of 1...
+ Scanning title 1 of 1...
+ Scanning title 1 of 1...
+ Scanning title 1 of 1...
+ Scanning title 1 of 1...
+ Scanning title 1 of 1...
+ Scanning title 1 of 1...
+ Scanning title 1 of 1...
+ Scanning title 1 of 1...
+ Scanning title 1 of 1...
+ Scanning title 1 of 1...
+ Scanning title 1 of 1...
+ Scanning title 1 of 1...
+ Scanning title 1 of 1...
+ Scanning title 1 of 1...
+ Scanning title 1 of 1...
+ [13:01:55] hb_ts_stream_decode - eof
+ [13:01:55] Warning: Could not read data for preview 10, skipped
+ [13:01:56] libhb: scan thread found 0 valid title(s)
+ No title found.
+ HandBrake has exited.
- Setting Handbrake Audio Options if /allAudio
+ Handbrake Settings (ALL) : -a -E -B
! Unable to detect video info, skipping to next video

[aweber1nj]

I have downloaded and tried a few different "solutions" (MeGUI and MediaCoder amongst them), and none are liking the output from Sage. I think it's that there are multiple audio streams or something. I really can't tell. Transcoding in 2012 should NOT be this hard.

[GKusnick]

That looks like the problem I mentioned earlier. Try the nightly Handbrake build at http://build.handbrake.fr.

[aweber1nj]

Tried handbrake nightly-build today. Got roughly the same result:
hb_ts_stream_decode - eof
...
No title found.

This is just stupid how hard it is. How can Sage output be so difficult to transcode?

[KryptoNyte]

Are you using the Handbrake 0.9.5 official release, along with it's own GUI for testing purposes, or are you always using Mediashrink in some fashion? Additionally, which tuner are you using that's creating the .ts file?

[aweber1nj]

I have tried it both ways, and with the nightly build version too.
It's surprising, because I usually have great luck with handbrake, but nothing seems to work on this ts file.

[ranger]

Originally Posted by aweber1nj

I have tried it both ways, and with the nightly build version too.
It's surprising, because I usually have great luck with handbrake, but nothing seems to work on this ts file.

Sounds like you need a utility like QuickStream Fix that comes withe VideoRedo. This has rescued quite a few files for me.

[wayner]

What's the source of your files? I use Handbrake regularly without problems - and I use it either on OTA files or MPEG files from a Hauppauge 1850.