HD-PVR H.264 to Mpeg2 commercial skip Question

[Brent]

Originally Posted by babgvant

The method I talked about will work with some filters but it's highly dependent on IntelligentConnect working, and it won't support resizing unless the encoder does the scaling. So it should work, but it's not a perfect solution.

I'm modifying the action that allows an explicit graph to build in DTB to support non-dvrms files. When it's ready I'll provide everything to make it work (stub, profile, directions), assuming I can get it going with a free set of filters (probably AVIVO). I've got a test file, but I didn't have time to mess over the weekend; hopefully tonight.

1.2.x.x is intended for Vista because one of the features specifically targets the WMC; I'll probably remove this requirement if I replatform on Sage.

Originally Posted by Eckwell

This sounds like a great possibility... thank you so much for trying to come up with a working solution. If you need assistance with testing, etc, I can give it a try too...

Ditto. I'm available to test, document or whatever as well. And thanks for your work on this!!!

[ghostlobster]

Originally Posted by babgvant

The method I talked about will work with some filters but it's highly dependent on IntelligentConnect working, and it won't support resizing unless the encoder does the scaling. So it should work, but it's not a perfect solution.

I'm modifying the action that allows an explicit graph to build in DTB to support non-dvrms files. When it's ready I'll provide everything to make it work (stub, profile, directions), assuming I can get it going with a free set of filters (probably AVIVO). I've got a test file, but I didn't have time to mess over the weekend; hopefully tonight.

1.2.x.x is intended for Vista because one of the features specifically targets the WMC; I'll probably remove this requirement if I replatform on Sage.

...dude!

[babgvant]

Got it working with AVIVO, but the file writer filter is exclusively locking the file, so it can't be scanned during conversion.

I remember seeing some mpeg encoder and writer filters on my sage box that came with the install so I'm going to give that a go next.

[Eckwell]

Great! and thanks so much in advance for working on this!

[jelwood]

Originally Posted by erik

Do you downscale the MPEG output? Comskip would only need 320x200 to do its job

erik, how important is the audio stream to comskip? I'm asking because I have this almost working with a modified version of ffmpeg. However, I'm having a difficult time getting good Audio/Video sync. As a result the audio stream gradually gets farther and farther behind the video stream. Of course, I could just convert the video, but I'm not sure how accurate the commercial detection would be without the audio stream. I might try modifying Mencoder and see if it can compensate for the AV sync a little better.

For your general knowledge, Comskip can read the ffmpeg output file as it's being created. I haven't tried having ffmpeg read the .ts file as Sage creates it, but since you mentioned this was a problem, I decided to save this for last (I just need to get a show to convert first).

[Sam]

Originally Posted by jelwood

However, I'm having a difficult time getting good Audio/Video sync.

Have you tried adding -async 1 to the ffmpeg command line?

[jelwood]

Originally Posted by Sam

Have you tried adding -async 1 to the ffmpeg command line?

Yea, I tried that, along with all the other options I could think of. If you would like to play around with it, below is a download link to my build of ffmpeg (this at least reads the x264 stream correctly).
http://home.mchsi.com/~jelwood/ffmpeg.zip

It looks like the faad library is throwing errors on the audio stream so I'm sure that is what's causing the AV sync issues.

Below is the command line that gave me minor success.

ffmpeg -benchmark -y -threads 2 -i "inputfilename.ts" -s 320x240 -copyts -vcodec mpeg2video -b 256k -acodec mp2 -ac 2 -ar 44100 -ab 64k "outputfilename.mpg"

[erik]

Originally Posted by jelwood

erik, how important is the audio stream to comskip?

It depends.
In general it is very important for not getting false cuts.
Without audio (that is correctly aligned audio) it may only deliver acceptable results on some USA channels.

[Eckwell]

Hey folks... How is development coming?

[babgvant]

Jelwood got it working with the development build of DVRMSToolbox using AVIVO, ArcSoft, and MpgDump filters. It is very CPU intensive though...

I hope to make it all public this weekend, or maybe next week sometime.

[sic0048]

Care to guess what kind of CPU is going to be required? Are we talking Quad Core only CPU intensive or do you think most dual core machines will be able to handle it?

I think it is safe to say that my 600Mhz Duron machine is out (yes I have one and yes we still use it).

[babgvant]

It's avaliable - http://babgvant.com/blogs/andyvt/arc...c-release.aspx

To make it work you will need:
- AVIVO (there are other options, but this is the way it's setup OOTB)
- ArcSoft
- Create a Processing Condition that runs "convertforscaning" on the .ts file (triggering off of the fileext is probably the best way)

I think/hope a dual core should be enough for one stream, but my HD-PVR hasn't gotten here yet (later today ) so I can't say for sure. If the box can't handle live convert/scan DTB is configured OOTB to delay processing until recording is done.

[killervette]

Forgive me if this is stupid, is AVIVO only for ATI cards and not nvidia?

[Eckwell]

Thanks for your efforts! unfortunately, I am at a bit of a loss...

I downloaded AVIVO, have Arcosft, and downloaded the DVRMSTool. What to do next. I notice previously in the thread discussions of needed to set up a graph file, but I wanted to understand what needed to be done to test this out. Thanks for your help!

[babgvant]

Originally Posted by killervette

Forgive me if this is stupid, is AVIVO only for ATI cards and not nvidia?

When you try to install it checks for the VC. After it fails (if you don't have an ATI card) drill into the folder that it extracted itself to and find the AVIVO.msi
(C:\ATI\SUPPORT\8-1_xp_xcode_57717\AVIVO) and run that.

[killervette]

will this work on Server 2003?

[babgvant]

Originally Posted by Eckwell

Thanks for your efforts! unfortunately, I am at a bit of a loss...

I downloaded AVIVO, have Arcosft, and downloaded the DVRMSTool. What to do next. I notice previously in the thread discussions of needed to set up a graph file, but I wanted to understand what needed to be done to test this out. Thanks for your help!

You don't need to build the graph anymore.

Open the Processing Conditions Editor, create a new Processing Condition that evaluates FileExt = .ts, set it to run convertforscanning, then set that PC above Every Sage File.

[babgvant]

Originally Posted by killervette

will this work on Server 2003?

It should. Jelwood is running it on WHS, which is based on w2k3 SBS.

[jelwood]

Originally Posted by babgvant

It should. Jelwood is running it on WHS, which is based on w2k3 SBS.

Yes, it should work on Windows 2003 server. As Babgvant said, I'm running it with WHS. Also, it is VERY CPU intensive, so you can really only detect the commercials on one stream at a time. However, I do have this working with an AMD X2 4200+.

Also, I saw questions about the AVIVO codecs. If you don't have an ATI card the installation is a little more difficult (follow babgvant's instructions), however, the AVIVO codecs do work even if you don't have an ATI card (I'm running them with a NVIDIA).

Good luck, it's really nice to have commercial skip working with the HD-PVR files.

Thanks Babgvant for creating this!

[killervette]

cool...im using WHS too. also, can this be scheduled to run over night.? i use the server to stream to extenders among other things.