ShowAnalyzer 1.0

[joe123]

Hi.

After many successful years the older ShowAnalyzer on SD recordings, I recently tried the new ShowAnalyzer 1.0.52.760 since I am now doing HD recordings.

Somehow, the new ShowAnalyzer removed ALL of my previous Showanalyzer .txt and .edl files on 8 drives SageTV recordings.

Many of my recordings were converted from MPG to AVI (MPEG4) with SageTV compression after Showanalyzer was done processing the original MPG file.

How can I now process the AVI files with ShowAnalyzer? Do I have to convert them back from .avi to .mpg, and then run showanalyzer? Any automated tools for doing this?

[davephan]

Where did you get ShowAnalyzer version 1? I have ShowAnalyzer version 0.9.2.232. The Dragon Global web site has version 0.9.7. Are there any large improvements with version 1? It seems that Jere hasn't been around for quite awhile. I don't know what happened to him.

Dave

[joe123]

Originally Posted by davephan

Where did you get ShowAnalyzer version 1? I have ShowAnalyzer version 0.9.2.232. The Dragon Global web site has version 0.9.7.

Dave

Yes, it is not well documented, but you can get it here:

http://www.dragonglobal.biz/forums/s...uild-here.html

Info at:

http://www.dragonglobal.biz/forums/showanalyzer-1-0

It is not very stable. It took out all of my .edl and .txt files form 8 drives. The only good thing about it is that it will process HD files (ts files).

[davephan]

Originally Posted by joe123

Yes, it is not well documented, but you can get it here:

http://www.dragonglobal.biz/forums/s...uild-here.html

Info at:

http://www.dragonglobal.biz/forums/showanalyzer-1-0

It is not very stable. It took out all of my .edl and .txt files form 8 drives. The only good thing about it is that it will process HD files (ts files).

I tried installing ShowAnalyzer 1.0.52.760, and McAfee removed at least one file, reporting it was a Trojan. So, I remove the program.

Dave

[joe123]

Originally Posted by davephan

I tried installing ShowAnalyzer 1.0.52.760, and McAfee removed at least one file, reporting it was a Trojan. So, I remove the program.

Dave

It's safe. Some AV software are tagging it as trojan, but it is not. I have NOD32 - the best in the AV business and I also have PREVX - both say it's safe.

[Bikeman]

Joe123,

I actually run both versions, 1.x on .ts files and 0.9.7 on .mpg as 0.9.7 is much faster, more accurate and less subject to 'hanging' I've found.

I don't let 1.x delete the .edl or .txt, let 0.9.7 delete them using DirMon2.

Jeff

[joe123]

Originally Posted by Bikeman

Joe123,

I actually run both versions, 1.x on .ts files and 0.9.7 on .mpg as 0.9.7 is much faster, more accurate and less subject to 'hanging' I've found.

I don't let 1.x delete the .edl or .txt, let 0.9.7 delete them using DirMon2.

Jeff

Cool thanks - I had not thought about running both as you mentioned. Good idea.

I lost all of my .edl and .txt files when I installed 1.0 version. Not sure how I lost them, but they are gone. Many recordings were converted to .avi (mpeg4). Any idea how I can re-process the .avi files with Showanalyzer?

[davephan]

I didn't think that ShowAnalyzer version 1 could have a Trojan, unless a Trojan accidently got into the software development computer(s) somehow. I will try to figure out how to get McAfee to not flag it as a Trojan and re-install version 1.

I'm not sure why version 1 would delete the EDL and TXT files unless there is a configuration parameter for it to delete them. I haven't tried version 1 yet since McAfee labled it as a Trojan.

I did 1 timing on my new i-7 950 3.06 gig quad core SageTV computer with 3 gigs RAM under Windows XP Pro. I tried running ShowAnalyzer on a movie on the Spike channel, which has a lot of commercial breaks. The movie was 2 hours and 34 minutes long, the mpeg2 file is 6.4 gig in size, and recorded at the highest quality level. The time to process the file was 4 minutes and 24 seconds. I think this is much quicker than my old E6850 3.00 dual core. I will try running some more files on both systems to compair the timings.

Dave

[joe123]

It may have been me, some setting I did wrong, but SA1 took out all of my prevous .edl .txt files

Try running SA1 on a HD file with the highest recording (5GB/hour) to see how fast it process it.

That's the real test.

[Bikeman]

joe123,

The only thing I can think of is that 1.x didn't have the info in its database that it had run the files, so it deleted them.

Sorry, can't help on the .avi files.

Jeff

[toricred]

SAV1 doesn't support avi files. You would have to convert them to mpg files to do the analysis. Your problem was probably that Filewatcher was turned on, and the delete orphaned artifacts was also on. Since the default list of movie file extensions doesn't include avi files the edl and txt files looked like orphans. I actually had the same thing happen. The problem is that if you add avi to the list of movie extensions and continue to use the built-in Filewatcher then it will try to analyze avi files, but since it can't it will fail.

BTW, the latest version (1.0.52.760) has significantly fewer problems with hanging unless you use wtv files from 7MC, but nobody here does that. It does, however, still have problems detecting while a file is still being recorded. If you use something like SJQ, Dirmon2, or DTB to make sure the file is done recording then it should work fine. It should also be very fast. a 1 hour 7GB HD OTA file takes me about 10-15 minutes to process. This is with two files processing at once. The speed of the drive is the biggest hold up for me. The accuracy will require tweaking for your environment as the defaults are not very good. I've spent a lot of time tweaking mine and am now somewhere around 95% accuracy (higher if you don't include TNT-HD).

[joe123]

Originally Posted by toricred

I actually had the same thing happen. The problem is that if you add avi to the list of movie extensions and continue to use the built-in Filewatcher then it will try to analyze avi files, but since it can't it will fail.

Man, what a nasty surprise - Jerry should have thought about it to bypass .avi files or another option for that.

Does anyone know if SageTV transcoder.exe can go the other way around, from .avi to .mpg and if so, what are the options?

[Oats]

A quick google search found free software called cbreak that will detect and cut commercials from avi files. I'm not sure how well it works but it has to be better than transcoding to mpeg then back to avi. Transcoding loses quality so if I were you it would be a last resort.

Something you might want to think about doing in the future is actually removing the commercials before converting to avi. I know there is an option to have SA output a file that can be used by videoredo to remove them from the mpeg file. That way you don't have to worry about this happening again, plus it will save you a lot of storage space. A regular show has about 25% commercials, if you have 1TB of recordings that is ~250GB of wasted space.

[Humanzee]

Originally Posted by joe123

It may have been me, some setting I did wrong, but SA1 took out all of my prevous .edl .txt files

In SA1 you have to go in and look for the setting that says "Has been run if:" "Any Artifact Exists" vs. "History Exists". By default, instead of looking that an edl exists it looks to see if SA1 has processed the file before. That caught me too and I spent a week re-processing my files.

[joe123]

Originally Posted by Humanzee

That caught me too and I spent a week re-processing my files.

Yeah, really nasty over sight of Jerry.

[joe123]

Originally Posted by Oats

Something you might want to think about doing in the future is actually removing the commercials before converting to avi.

One long summer ago, I did that. Had all the scripts setup to run videoredo and get rid of the commercials.

Ran several hundred recordings and then we realized how SA is not 100% acurate and the missing parts of the shows where the critical ones (like the last few minutes).

Never again....

[Oats]

Originally Posted by joe123

One long summer ago, I did that. Had all the scripts setup to run videoredo and get rid of the commercials.

Ran several hundred recordings and then we realized how SA is not 100% acurate and the missing parts of the shows where the critical ones (like the last few minutes).

Never again....

Good point, I assumed you watched the shows before the conversion. I am the only SageTV user and record very few shows so I frequently forget that a lot of people have multiple users and a lot more recordings.

[joe123]

Originally Posted by Oats

I am the only SageTV user and record very few shows so I frequently forget that a lot of people have multiple users and a lot more recordings.

We have hundreds of recordings and the majority are not mine. My daughter has 360+ Friends, 90+ this, 55+ that and I don't watch done.

By the time we learned that the recordings were missing critical parts, it was too late.

[bits]

Originally Posted by joe123

Cool thanks - I had not thought about running both as you mentioned. Good idea.

I lost all of my .edl and .txt files when I installed 1.0 version. Not sure how I lost them, but they are gone. Many recordings were converted to .avi (mpeg4). Any idea how I can re-process the .avi files with Showanalyzer?

If the video is h264 wrapped in avi then you could use MP4Cam2AVI to change the avi to mp4 without re-encoding.

[bits]

Originally Posted by joe123

We have hundreds of recordings and the majority are not mine. My daughter has 360+ Friends, 90+ this, 55+ that and I don't watch done.

By the time we learned that the recordings were missing critical parts, it was too late.

None of the commercial detection software is 100% and probably never will be which is why I have never relied on cutting them automatically. If you do rely on them then you get what you get.

The best approach I have seen and used is the semi-automatic one. Automatically do the commercial scan after recording completes and generate a VPrj file VRD. Load the VPrj file in VRD and confirm cut points which takes about 15 secs per show. Batch process in VRD. It did start to get to be chore after 6 years but for files I want to archive for awhile I still go that route. With the comskip stvi in SageMC the need to cut commercials is greatly reduced and has been one of many pleasant surprises bundled up with my recent switch to SageTV + HD200.