commercials: detect, cut, transcode, move

[tchapin]

Hi there. There are some shows that I would like to keep around, outside of the "recorded tv" part of the app, like some cooking shows. I was thinking that it would be cool to be able to cut out the commercials and transcode the video to AVI or something to save space.

From what I've read, I can shut down Sage, move the files, restart Sage, and everything should be fine. Sage won't complain, and there won't be phantom files in my "recordings" listings. (I do seem to have some phantom files showing up in my media center views, which I understand to be because I deleted some files from the filesystem and not from within Sage.)

In any case, is my understanding correct?

Is there any way to automate this moving of the files that I want to save, or at least kick off the process from within Sage via UI commands from my MVP?

I realize that I can then use comcut (if I move the ShowAnalyzer edl / txt files with the video file) to remove the commercials from the file via Dirmon (if edl / txt files exist for a given MPG, run comcut), then use Dirmon again to trigger a transcode to AVI (or whatnot) once the commercial cutting is done.

What to people recommend for transcoding?

Is there any way to do all of these steps or at least trigger them from within Sage? Is anyone doing anything similar? I have looked at the SageMC Video Tools, but from what I understand, they don't quite meet my needs.

Also, when away from home, I use Orb to watch my recordings, and it would be nice to have the commercials cut out. I've found that placeshifter UI is really slow and the video quality that I get with it is not as good as Orb.

Thanks.

Todd

--
Sage 6.3.10.166 / Java 1.6.0_03
SageMC STV 6.4.7a-fix / JAR 6.3.7a
PVR 150, IR-UID
Windows XP SP2, AMD Athlon 64 3500+ / 2GB RAM / 300GB HD rec space
JR Media Center 12.xxx (latest version), ORB v1
3 Media MVPs (only regular viewing sources)

[ChePazzo]

Strange.... I do this all the time and never end up with phantom recordings.

I have a separate folder in my media library where I store shows that have no commercials (sometimes it is just easier to have already cut out the commercials than to allow the comskip plugin to skip them esp if the job wasn't 100% right).

I strip out the commercials, save to this new folder and delete the video from the SageTV Recordings directory.

The only issue I've had is that sometimes the new show doesn't show up with the correct timecode, but if I just tell Sage to "refresh media library" from the setup menu, then it gets fixed.