(Old) MediaShrink - An HTPC focused encoder

[Fuzzy]

It may be ffdshow reporting incorrectly to sage. try turning on the OSD in ffdshow's video settings, and see what the aspect in and aspect out are reporting.

[evilpenguin]

Originally Posted by perfessor101

I realized I missed it earlier, that it was overcropping a little and resizing it a little too, which made it look even more aggressive.
I was hoping for close cropped but no picture loss and I realize now that it was less 'picture loss' and more pixel loss.

That is a little bit more agressive than it should be, I wonder if Handbrake is resizing *then* cropping rather than the other way around. Hmm, i'll take a look at it

[BKeadle]

Originally Posted by razrsharpe

(i have some .bat files to help with this and can share them if youre interested).. and can set blackout times where processes do not start... that gets you most of the way there because the average encoding for an hour of video is about the same (for me 4 hours for a 1 hour hd OTA video).

I'd be interested to see these .bat files you referenced here. This is exactly what I'm looking to do!

[BKeadle]

Hey EP - now I see where you've been spending your time


So now I'm looking to compress my video files, and see yoru EXCELLENT media shrink is the route to go. One quick question. You posted earlier your command defaults. There are these that you use that I don't see in the readme txt:

/cliBitrate 1800 /highProfile

Can you elaborate what these do? ( I suppose cliBitrate is self evident, but being a noob, 1800 Bitrate doesn't mean anything to me)

Thanks.

[frontlinegeek]

Originally Posted by Fuzzy

It may be ffdshow reporting incorrectly to sage. try turning on the OSD in ffdshow's video settings, and see what the aspect in and aspect out are reporting.

OK, so I tried this but it looks like Sage is not calling out to FFDShow as there is nothing showing up on the screen unless I quite Sage and use WMP and then it shows on the screen in WMP and shows a AVC1.

Where things are weird/frustrating is when I use MS to encode TV shows from a DVD, they all come in great and are seen in SageTV as a 480p video as opposed to the movies coming in as 720*386 or so.

Any help here will be wonderful as everything plays fine outside Sage but the movies play bad in Sage.

[evilpenguin]

Originally Posted by BKeadle

I'd be interested to see these .bat files you referenced here. This is exactly what I'm looking to do!

I'd recommend taking a look at SJQ for your launching needs, it takes a little patience to setup but its an incredibly handy tool.

Originally Posted by BKeadle

Can you elaborate what these do? ( I suppose cliBitrate is self evident, but being a noob, 1800 Bitrate doesn't mean anything to me)

Those options are from the old CLI format, I recently switched over to a new one, see this post for all the details on the new command line options...

Originally Posted by que3jxp

Any help here will be wonderful as everything plays fine outside Sage but the movies play bad in Sage.

Check in Settings->Video/Audio->MPEG-4 PlayBack, it should be set to Direct Show and not SageTVPlayer.

[razrsharpe]

Originally Posted by BKeadle

I'd be interested to see these .bat files you referenced here. This is exactly what I'm looking to do!

i actually don't use those bat files anymore and use SJQ instead like EP suggested... way more robust....

[BKeadle]

Thanks EP and razrsharpe - I've read quite a bit about SJQ but thought that DirMon2 was essentially the same function - and as a noob, more step-by-step references using and setting up Dirmon2 so that's what I've been using. Is there a compelling reason to switch from DirMon2 to SJQ?

[razrsharpe]

Originally Posted by BKeadle

Is there a compelling reason to switch from DirMon2 to SJQ?

basically it's a lot more flexible...and you don't need silly work arounds (the bat files) to make mediashrink work with it...

[BKeadle]

Originally Posted by evilpenguin

Those options are from the old CLI format, I recently switched over to a new one, see this post for all the details on the new command line options...

Ah, that's the document I was referencing when was referring to your posted items. So those switches aren't that they're undocumented, but superceded. I get it.

That's the difficult part about starting this late in the game. These forums go back so far, and I'm never really sure if I'm working with current information or old items much less having downloaded the latest code. Some of your threads, EP, have several "latest download" links embedded in the 100+ pages - it takes a lot of time reading through and trying to comprehend everything.

Is there any sort of technical reference to the inner workings of SageTV/MC - how it works? The User Manual is a basic reference as to the "stock use" of the product. It's the customizations and tweaking I'd like to know more about.

Thanks again for all the work that you guys do - and your willingness to help those of us that can only aspire to your greatness.

[BKeadle]

All one has to do is ask...

Just after I posted the inquiry about technical documentation, I find this helpful link that I've somehow missed previously, and might help answer many of my questions.

[frontlinegeek]

Originally Posted by evilpenguin

Check in Settings->Video/Audio->MPEG-4 PlayBack, it should be set to Direct Show and not SageTVPlayer.

Yup. It was set this way. Still no joy I also tried on another XP based client and it has the same issues.

[BKeadle]

Originally Posted by nyplayer

Ok that was my fault you should not have the /B it causes the batch file to end prematurely. If you take the /B switch it will open a new window but it will wait for medaishrink to complete.

I see a .bat file in my mediashrink folder that has the /B switch in it. Should it, then, be removed?

Do I understand correctly that if I'm just doing a DnD to convert a file, I can drop it on mediashrink.exe, and if I want to do several at a time, sequentially, I'd DnD it onto the mediashrink.bat? And for scheduled conversions, I'd use the batch file?

How would I go about scheduling the conversion to:
- convert any video that is 30 days old (or more)
- convert any video that has been watched

[BKeadle]

If I'm also using the 3.0k Video Tools plugin (for the DVD Burning functionality), I assume I should be disabling the Compression option since it has been superceded by mediashrink - or is there something to do to have the VideoTools using mediashrink instead?

EP - I think it's been posted a couple of times, but I don't think I've seen an answer - will we see a "Burn to DVD" plugin using mediashrink thus obsoleting Video Tools?

[BKeadle]

So, I'm not completely clear: if I run mediashrink against a recording, using the /inPlace and /cutComm, of these remaining files, which are no longer needed?
1) Seinfeld-TheBetrayal-107461-0.mkv
2) Seinfeld-TheBetrayal-107461-0.my
3) Seinfeld-TheBetrayal-107461-0.autoEncode.(1).log
4) Seinfeld-TheBetrayal-107461-0.edl
5) Seinfeld-TheBetrayal-107461-0.log
6) Seinfeld-TheBetrayal-107461-0.mpg.chapter
7) Seinfeld-TheBetrayal-107461-0.txt
8) Seinfeld-TheBetrayal-107461-0.vprj
9) Seinfeld-TheBetrayal-107461-0.xml

I'm assuming just 1 and 2, and the rest are no longer needed or referenced? Is MediaShrink supposed to clean these up (except for the log if /saveLog is specified) or is that a seperate process for the likes of Dirmon2/SJQ?

[BKeadle]

During my testing, I had a Seinfeld show in my Recorded TV listing. I then ran it through MediaShrink with /inPlace switch so that the .mpg was removed and the .mkv is left. I go back to my Recorded TV listing (to watch the new converted file to see the difference), but it is no longer in the Recorded TV listing. Should it have been removed from the listing? How do I get it back?

And losely related to that - if the same show is in the same directory in 2 (or more) different formats, which one would be played if selected in SageMC interface?

[Fuzzy]

It the same filename exists with two different extensions, it will actually show up twice in the list, the detailed info should show which is which.

[BKeadle]

Thanks Fuzzy. The detail info as in the Program Info? I don't see any reference to a filename (or extension/media type)

The "missing" Seinfeld show actually showed back up in the program listing. What's with the delay? Does the "Refresh Imported Media" do anything for that, even though "Recorded" info isn't "Imported Media"?

[nyplayer]

When you replace a file you need to do a refresh.... for the new MKV... mp4 file to show up.

[BKeadle]

Hey EP, another technical question for you:
I dragged a single video on to mediashrink.bat. Viewing the process via Process Explorer as shown here:

http://img714.imageshack.us/i/sagemcmediashrink1.jpg

mediashrink.bat calls mediashrink.exe (expected), but that then calls another subprocess to mediashrink.exe (with same command line - unexpected), which calls another subprocess to MediaEngine.exe with the full mediashrink default command line switches (expected) but that then calls a second instance of MediaEngine.exe (un-expected). So it looks like for a single job, it's being duplicated twice. That seems unusual.