STV Import: SageMC Video Tools v3.0

[evilpenguin]

Originally Posted by mp328

btw even the comskip.ini file that comes bundled in the perl2DVD folder is set not to output *.edl files.
u should change this value inside the file to make sure it does "output_edl=0" and set to "1" , thats what i finally figured out today, u might already know that tho.

I included my own version of comskip and comskip.ini because I needed to specially configure it for my needs. I wouldn't recommend messing with it as its set up to generate huge log files that I need for crop detecting that you defininetly don't want for your general commercial detection needs. I'd say just go ahead and revert my .ini file and download/install you're own copy of comskip and use that.

Originally Posted by mp328

and when does autocompress kick in? only when the file gets recorded??? cuz i turn it on on a few files and it will not start at all. sometime it will kick in after i reboot a few times for whatever reason...

any idea why it wont start to convert right away...

SageTV makes the .qdvd files and its dirmon2's job to kick them off. I'd double chek that dirmon2 is up and running properly.

I'd recommend giving this section of the instrucitons a quick read over...

http://perl2dvd.wiki.sourceforge.net...Vi#howsAndWhys

[toricred]

I see on the HandBrake forum that they have source code up with a fix for the HD issue. Are you going to wait for a release before upgrading it?

P.S. I know you're spending all your time with the HD Extender, but I thought I'd ask anyway. I guess I so addicted to your compressions I need my fix so I can quit using mencoder that runs soooooo ssssllllloooooowwwwwlllllyyyy.

[evilpenguin]

Originally Posted by toricred

I see on the HandBrake forum that they have source code up with a fix for the HD issue. Are you going to wait for a release before upgrading it?

P.S. I know you're spending all your time with the HD Extender, but I thought I'd ask anyway. I guess I so addicted to your compressions I need my fix so I can quit using mencoder that runs soooooo ssssllllloooooowwwwwlllllyyyy.

Yep, i've been following that too and it looks like that fix is ready for primetime. Unfortunatly, it also looks like its surrounded by some other changes that are still works in progress.

Once I get my HDextender and reclaim my client as a gaming/dev machine I plan on trying to merge just that change into the 9.1 release as a stop gap solution until they put out a new official one. I'll keep you posted.

[sojourner753]

evilpenguin,

Any update on 3.0 for the default STV?

thanks

[mp328]

Originally Posted by evilpenguin

I included my own version of comskip and comskip.ini because I needed to specially configure it for my needs. I wouldn't recommend messing with it as its set up to generate huge log files that I need for crop detecting that you defininetly don't want for your general commercial detection needs. I'd say just go ahead and revert my .ini file and download/install you're own copy of comskip and use that.

SageTV makes the .qdvd files and its dirmon2's job to kick them off. I'd double chek that dirmon2 is up and running properly.

I'd recommend giving this section of the instrucitons a quick read over...

http://perl2dvd.wiki.sourceforge.net...Vi#howsAndWhys

the comskip just wouldnt work right on my system until i changed it to output *.edl files, that was the only thing i did and now it works.

and yeah i figured out that it was the dirmon that wasnt starting up when windows booted up for whatever reason. once i got that sorted out it worked fine

tnx for the hard work on this thing

[evilpenguin]

Originally Posted by mp328

the comskip just wouldnt work right on my system until i changed it to output *.edl files, that was the only thing i did and now it works.

and yeah i figured out that it was the dirmon that wasnt starting up when windows booted up for whatever reason. once i got that sorted out it worked fine

tnx for the hard work on this thing

Glad its working for you

As for the comskip, if your using my .ini its also generating a huge (2mb+) .csv file per video which you don't need.

[mickp]

Hi there,

First up; Thanks EP for your hard work and thanks also for pushing ahead with the DVD burning portion of the video tools.

I'm experiencing some problems with creating a pal dvd.

My appologies if this has already been covered elsewhere. I must admit that I haven't been using the video tools up until now because my interest at the moment is burning video dvd's not encoding. This means that I'm not well versed in the creation and use of profiles etc. I could easily be missing something obvious that I should have set or changed already.

The first (main) issue that I'm seeing is that mencoder is converting videos to ntsc (see the attached screenshot) rather than leaving them as pal. This of course takes much cpu and isn't the desired result. So far as I can see everything is set for pal.

The qdvd file generated looks like this;

/videoDVD&&&/statusFiles&&&/saveLogZip&&&/dvdMenu&&&Blue Two Midnight&&&/ntsc&&&/videoFile&&&\\hal\gshows\GoodGame-693146-0.mpg&&&videoDVD&&&/title<:>Good Game<:>/episode<:><:>/description<:>Join hosts Junglist and Bajo for an entertaining and informative look at the latest in the Australian gaming scene.<:>/deinterlace<:>/avi<:>/mp3<:>/xvid<:>/outputMode<:>InPlace<:>/cliBitrate<:>1500<:>/Normal<:>/twoPass<:>

The ntsc bit (/ntsc&&&/) is probably a bit of a worry.

The second problem that i'm seeing is that the process is failing to generate an iso file to burn. Generating the .imgFolder appeared to be working correctly. The vob files were being created and the directory structure looked okay.

When I tried to debug the process by manually running the command I found that the source directories (which took a long time to create because they were being converted to ntsc) had been deleted

The command that was being attempted was;

"C:/Program Files/SageTV/SageTV/perl2DVD/mkisofs.exe"  -dvd-video -o "C:/dvdwork/Good Game - (1).videoDVD.videoDVD.img" "C:/dvdwork/Good Game - (1).videoDVD.videoDVD.imgFolder"

I've attached the debug zip file along with what I think are the relevant config files.

Can anyone see where I might be going wrong?

Mick.

[evilpenguin]

Thanks for the log files, i'll take a look those issues this weekend.

[toricred]

Now that I'm using 2 Extenders (1 HD and 1 MVP), I'm noticing that the server is causing a bit of a lag on the extenders. I'm currently doing my compressions on the server and I think that may be part of the problem.

I have two options to try to fix this:

1. Since I replaced one of my clients I have a spare system (AMD 4000+ with 1.5GB of RAM) that I could use to do just the compressing and nothing else.

2. I could look at getting at Core 2 Duo (I'm currently using a Pentium D 925) as an upgrade, but I only have enough for maybe an E4500.

Which would you suggest?

[larryf]

If it helps anyone, I did get this working on Vista X64 Enterprise... I still have UAC enabled.


Had a bit of trouble at first... I had an older version of SageMC installed with version 2 of the video burning tools. When I loaded SageMC_169_ep.xml, I had a really odd screen with black and white images. Extracting the latest SageMC and overwriting with ep's sagemc seemed to fix this, but then I really hosed it by importing the wrong XML file (twice!). It was time to do a clean install anyway, I had a lot of junk in my Sage directory.

My reinstall went like this:


Pulled everything from my sage directory, put it in a temp folder.
Installed latest SageTV (right click, run as administrator)
Copied channel logos and wiz.bin from temp folder
Started Sage, set up channels, directories, etc that I lost when I messed up the properties file
Stopped the Sage service (again, right click, run the sage service control as administrator)
Extracted the latest SageMC to the sage directory (not sure if this is needed, but it worked for me)
Followed ep's directions from here, had to run the dirmon2 setup as administrator like above.

I am also experiencing the known bug with the chapter menus 'invisible' on the burned DVD, but other than that it works great.

Thanks, EP!!!!

[evilpenguin]

Originally Posted by toricred

Now that I'm using 2 Extenders (1 HD and 1 MVP), I'm noticing that the server is causing a bit of a lag on the extenders. I'm currently doing my compressions on the server and I think that may be part of the problem.

I have two options to try to fix this:

1. Since I replaced one of my clients I have a spare system (AMD 4000+ with 1.5GB of RAM) that I could use to do just the compressing and nothing else.

2. I could look at getting at Core 2 Duo (I'm currently using a Pentium D 925) as an upgrade, but I only have enough for maybe an E4500.

Which would you suggest?

Yeah, the Pentium D is not the best proc (I have one at work), its like the celeron of the dual-core world .

A CPU upgrade certainly couldn't hurt, but for $30 extra dollars i'd recommend going with the E6550. It'd be quite a performance boost for not too much more money.

Also, how much RAM do you have in your server? Is it atleast 1 gig?

[evilpenguin]

Originally Posted by larryf

If it helps anyone, I did get this working on Vista X64 Enterprise... I still have UAC enabled.


Had a bit of trouble at first... I had an older version of SageMC installed with version 2 of the video burning tools. When I loaded SageMC_169_ep.xml, I had a really odd screen with black and white images. Extracting the latest SageMC and overwriting with ep's sagemc seemed to fix this, but then I really hosed it by importing the wrong XML file (twice!). It was time to do a clean install anyway, I had a lot of junk in my Sage directory.

My reinstall went like this:


Pulled everything from my sage directory, put it in a temp folder.
Installed latest SageTV (right click, run as administrator)
Copied channel logos and wiz.bin from temp folder
Started Sage, set up channels, directories, etc that I lost when I messed up the properties file
Stopped the Sage service (again, right click, run the sage service control as administrator)
Extracted the latest SageMC to the sage directory (not sure if this is needed, but it worked for me)
Followed ep's directions from here, had to run the dirmon2 setup as administrator like above.

I am also experiencing the known bug with the chapter menus 'invisible' on the burned DVD, but other than that it works great.

Thanks, EP!!!!

Yeah, the newest version of SageMC is a must as it contains some changes to the core that my plug-in depends on.

Glad you everything installed and running, i'll get those DVD issues fixed up this weekend.

[toricred]

My system has 2GB of RAM in it. My main question was weather I'd gain much by moving compressions to a separate machine for now or just bite the bullet and buy the new processor.

I found the E4500 for $119. Where did you find the E6550 for a reasonable price?

[evilpenguin]

Newegg's got the E6550 for $165. It may be $50 more but its much more than $50 better than the E4500.

[toricred]

Thanks. I thought maybe you'd found a great deal on the 6550 that I couldn't find.

What about moving the compressing to another machine until I can affort the CPU? Do you think it's worth the effort since it may be 3-4 months before I find room in the budget?

[evilpenguin]

Yep, that should work fine as well, just make sure you setup a central work folder on the other machine to keep the network traffic down.

[CadErik]

Originally Posted by evilpenguin

i'll get those DVD issues fixed up this weekend.

[toricred]

EP, there's a new version of SageMC out that adds support for the online videos. I assume we need to continue to use your version to keep the gui portion of the compressions, etc. Have you thought about a way to let us continue to use the mainstream SageMC? Maybe you can talk to flachbar and meinmaui about adding your necessary changes.

[mp328]

Originally Posted by toricred

EP, there's a new version of SageMC out that adds support for the online videos. I assume we need to continue to use your version to keep the gui portion of the compressions, etc. Have you thought about a way to let us continue to use the mainstream SageMC? Maybe you can talk to flachbar and meinmaui about adding your necessary changes.

i updated to the new version 6.3.6 and then imported the video tools.stvi without the sage_mc_ep and it still seems to work just fine.... mind u i only do compress and commercial cutting, nothing with dvd burning. and the only thing i noticed being different is the option in the series settings to tell it to wait till comskip is complete.

i figured if anything i can always just load the old back up *.xml file and start from the beginning.

[MeInMaui]

Originally Posted by toricred

EP, there's a new version of SageMC out that adds support for the online videos. I assume we need to continue to use your version to keep the gui portion of the compressions, etc. Have you thought about a way to let us continue to use the mainstream SageMC? Maybe you can talk to flachbar and meinmaui about adding your necessary changes.

I'm pretty sure that flachbar already folded EP's changes into SageMC v6.3.6

Aloha,
Mike