(Old) MediaShrink - An HTPC focused encoder

[matt91]

Let me ask a related question, because it might be easier as a temp fix for me. What would I need to do to prevent mediashrink from cleaning up the work file/folders?

[evilpenguin]

Originally Posted by matt91

Let me ask a related question, because it might be easier as a temp fix for me. What would I need to do to prevent mediashrink from cleaning up the work file/folders?

I haven't got that in there yet, give me a few hours and i'll try and release a new version that fixes your problem tonight.

[evilpenguin]

Originally Posted by deanm

When using MediaShrink is there anything I need to do to get MediaShrink to pick out all of the episodes from a DVD and encode each of them individually? Every TV Show DVD I have tried will only pull out the biggest/longest episode and nothing else.

Let me check on that, it looks like just a little bug. I know it was working last week.

Originally Posted by deanm

I would also like to be able to D&D files direct from the DVD Drive (With AnyDVD) is there a switch you set up to copy files into a default folder?

Hmm, i've never considered allowing that, let me look into that.

[evilpenguin]

Originally Posted by reggie14

This is a neat little tool. I saw you posting on the Handbrake forums a bit. Haven't you noticed that these forums are a *much* friendlier place?

I don't blame them too much, they get swamped with stupid questions all the time so its not surprising they just assume everyone else there is an idiot

Originally Posted by reggie14

Based on your SDTV profile, it doesn't look like you ever do variable frame rate encoding for DVDs. I have TV show DVDs that are sometimes telecined (Star Trek DS9, for example), so VFR is important for these DVDs.

DVD's should have VRF and Decomb enabled by default just like the Handbrake dev's recommend. Let me look at that.

Originally Posted by reggie14

Which brings me to the next question. How do you decide if something is telecined? Only some scenes on the DS9 DVDs are telecined. So, when I rip and encode those DVDs I have to make sure I have VFR turned on and Handbrake will detect which scenes are telecined. It seems like the more foolproof method, at the expense of speed, it just to turn VFR on all the time (except, perhaps, for 720p material, since you have problems detelecining that).

For DVD's I can't really check so I trust Handbrake to figure it out for me.

As for TV shows, I detect telecine by running some test clips though mencoder, enabiling the pullup filter, and parsing the log files. Its a little complicated but the results are amazingly accurate. Personally I'm fine with just setting VFR for everything, but since I still support using mencoder (although I don't currently use it at all) I need a way to know when to enable telecine in it.

[kricker]

I'm looking forward to using this. I'll sit back and wait for it to be able to supplant Sage's built in encoder though. I scanned thu the thread, but didn't see if you can have multiple profiles you can choose from, such as ipod touch, blackberry, or HDTV. Is that possbile?

[Lightarrow]

Hi, Nice tool, very usefull and time saving app

I think this has been answered before .. or it is a handbrake problem.

I have a sagetv server where all the videos are located and i want to use my other computer (which is more powerfull) to encode some of the shows that are on the network computer. When i drag and drop the file from the network share. it does not work and causes the application to close immidiatly. I know that handbrake does not recognise UNC paths but i was wondering if you somehow fixed that ?

Thanks again for this great tool, very good job

Jp

[evilpenguin]

Originally Posted by Lightarrow

Hi, Nice tool, very usefull and time saving app

I think this has been answered before .. or it is a handbrake problem.

I have a sagetv server where all the videos are located and i want to use my other computer (which is more powerfull) to encode some of the shows that are on the network computer. When i drag and drop the file from the network share. it does not work and causes the application to close immidiatly. I know that handbrake does not recognise UNC paths but i was wondering if you somehow fixed that ?

Thanks again for this great tool, very good job

Jp

No worries, UNC paths in handbrake, as well as many other things, are fixed in the next version which should be out Monday night.

[razrsharpe]

Originally Posted by kricker

I scanned thu the thread, but didn't see if you can have multiple profiles you can choose from, such as ipod touch, blackberry, or HDTV. Is that possible?

Yes you can have multiple .profile files to handle different output file types (ipod, blackberry ,etc). You would have to manually make these files but it shouldn't be that difficult (it's just a modified autoencode profile). I am not exactly sure what the syntax is in the new version but probably something like mediashrink.exe "PATH TO VIDEO" "ProfileName" /other_switches. In the previous version you could also create your own switches (say /ipod, /blackberry) and then in the autoencode profile make decisions with that info (format, resolution, etc). Also not sure if that functionality is in there yet.

RE lack of integrated SageTV support. Personally, I don't think its a big deal. I have some .bat files that I wrote to help automate the process. The first one creates a .queue file in a central directory that dirmon2 monitors and then dirmon2 runs another .bat file to start the encode with all the appropriate settings. Works really well. If people want I can upload this for mediashrink. I haven't tried yet but I would imagine that one could use Sage Job Queue to create the first .queue file based on watched, archived status, etc. And then still use dirmon2 to execute the actual encode.

[kricker]

Originally Posted by razrsharpe

RE lack of integrated SageTV support. Personally, I don't think its a big deal. I have some .bat files that I wrote to help automate the process. The first one creates a .queue file in a central directory that dirmon2 monitors and then dirmon2 runs another .bat file to start the encode with all the appropriate settings. Works really well. If people want I can upload this for mediashrink. I haven't tried yet but I would imagine that one could use Sage Job Queue to create the first .queue file based on watched, archived status, etc. And then still use dirmon2 to execute the actual encode.

I prefer not to have to install yet another application to do this, especially since I also support 2 other sage setups in the family who could use this, but not do all the setup. But it's your project and you should do as you want.

[razrsharpe]

Originally Posted by kricker

I prefer not to have to install yet another application to do this, especially since I also support 2 other sage setups in the family who could use this, but not do all the setup. But it's your project and you should do as you want.

Since I'm the only one who actively uses my setup I sometimes forget about making it super simple for other users. Sorry if I offended, it was not my intent. Just wanted to share my setup.

And don't get me wrong I would love it if SageTV decided to allow EP's program to be called for the transcoding instead of the built in one. That would be awesome. I truly hope EP is successful in his efforts on that front.

[kricker]

Originally Posted by razrsharpe

Since I'm the only one who actively uses my setup I sometimes forget about making it super simple for other users. Sorry if I offended, it was not my intent. Just wanted to share my setup.

And don't get me wrong I would love it if SageTV decided to allow EP's program to be called for the transcoding instead of the built in one. That would be awesome. I truly hope EP is successful in his efforts on that front.

No offense taken, and I'm sure others would love for you to share your setup, it's just not what I need atm.

[evilpenguin]

@SageTV Integration - For right now, this tool is all about simplifying manual re-encoding by automating the most common tasks and decisions. Right now, I use it in to different ways:

1) I've got hundreds of shows in mpeg-2 format that I want to save indefinitely so i'm slowly going through them all, manually creating .vprj files, and then running ~10 shows every night while I sleep.

2) I'm ripping all my DVD's to my HTPC and then dnd'ing them onto mediaShrink to encode them. Its a real time saver, especially on the TV show DVD's (btw, I fixed that and it'll be out tonight).

But somewhere down the road, I'd really like to make it so that Sage can call it using its built-in encoding scheduler. But, it's going to take getting a little help from Sage to get it working. I'll ask them about it eventually, but right now my focus is working with Sage to help out with metadata and fanart.

@Multiple Profiles - What you're asking for is possible and there's actually some profile work in there for hardware devices but I still need to hook it up. I'll be sure and let people know when its done.

[evilpenguin]

MediaShrink Beta2:

• UNC paths should be working
• Fixed TV DVD detection
• Added /centralWorkFolder for central processing
• Added /saveLog, /saveZip, and /saveAll for debugging
• Reworked logging so the log file shows up next to the video your encoding
• Fixed Cut Commercial Profile so it can be used alone

[matt91]

Originally Posted by evilpenguin

I haven't got that in there yet, give me a few hours and i'll try and release a new version that fixes your problem tonight.

Thanks. Just downloaded the beta2, and it seems to be working fine.

thanks for the quick turnaround!!

Matt

[thorforyou]

Hi,

This is a fantastic tool and the results are good. The only issue that I have is that the 2 pass encode is taking about 12 hours on my sage server.

I have an AMD 4850e processor with 4 gb ram and I am using the latest beta 6.5.11

I have been using the winff open source tool, a front end to ffmpeg using "-f matroska -vcodec mpeg4 -qscale 6 -acodec copy" and get a good rip with good av sync in most cases in about 3 hours. This works best using 720p.

I am a real noob when it comes to handbrake is there a way to speed up the encode using mediashrink even if I have to sacrifice some quality?

The idea of meta data and encode in a single tool is brilliant and I appreciate all of the work and help that you provide.

Thanks
Cliff

[evilpenguin]

Originally Posted by thorforyou

I have been using the winff open source tool, a front end to ffmpeg using "-f matroska -vcodec mpeg4 -qscale 6 -acodec copy" and get a good rip with good av sync in most cases in about 3 hours. This works best using 720p.

I am a real noob when it comes to handbrake is there a way to speed up the encode using mediashrink even if I have to sacrifice some quality?

Yeah, just go ahead an add /divx and /onePass to mediaShrink.defaults.txt. That should about match what you were doing before and possibly be even faster.

[thorforyou]

/genPropertyFile /downloadAllFanArt /defaultProfile /xvid /onepass /baseFolder "TV" inputFile /findFileRegEx "avi|mpg|mkv|mp4|mpeg|VIDEO_TS|ts|ogm|divx|mpts|dvr-ms"

[evilpenguin]

Nope, you want...

mediaShrink.defaults.txt: (Not mediaScraper.defaults.txt)

/defaultProfile autoEncode /divx /onePass /findFileRegEx "avi|mpg|mkv|mp4|mpeg|VIDEO_TS|ts|ogm|divx|mpts|dvr-ms"

[thorforyou]

Thanks , looks like we will finish the encode in 5 hours instead of 12.

Wish that I could buy you a beer.

[evilpenguin]

Just checked out the newest beta and it looks like Sage got serious about subtitle support which is great news.

The other great news is that if you've been using the AutoEncode profile and your video/DVD included closed captioning then the resulting mkv files will already contain an embedded srt track and should magically start working once you update your software.