ShowAnalyzer 1.0

[ldavis]

Originally Posted by bits

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

FYI, and I have done this, convert to mpg but do not delete the original avi. SA will then create an .edl file based on the mpg. You can then move the .edl file back to the avi folder and delete the mpg file. No loss in quality.

[bits]

Originally Posted by ldavis

FYI, and I have done this, convert to mpg but do not delete the original avi. SA will then create an .edl file based on the mpg. You can then move the .edl file back to the avi folder and delete the mpg file. No loss in quality.

That is another way to go but the the re-encoding time is much longer than simply using MP4Cam2AVI....no re-encoding involved and literally takes a minute or less.

[ldavis]

Originally Posted by bits

That is another way to go but the the re-encoding time is much longer than simply using MP4Cam2AVI....no re-encoding involved and literally takes a minute or less.

That's true but it only works if the file can be easily remuxed into something SA will work with. With the conversion method, there is no limitation other than that Sage can play/convert the original file. Yes there is conversion time but really, hands on time is about 10 seconds to start a whole directory full of files.

[bits]

Originally Posted by ldavis

That's true but it only works if the file can be easily remuxed into something SA will work with. With the conversion method, there is no limitation other than that Sage can play/convert the original file. Yes there is conversion time but really, hands on time is about 10 seconds to start a whole directory full of files.

That is the reason I said what I said in my first post,

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

If something other than h264 was wrapped in the avi wrapper then its a no brainer that it will need to be re-encoded. I can not think of anything I have recorded then converted that would be worth converting again in order to cut commercials. IMHO it is rather silly to re-encode recorded material that still contains the commercials. As someone said earlier commercials make up at least 25% of any given recording and to dummy down a recording by re-encoding it to save space only to leave 25% of the video in commercials makes no sense at all.

[joe123]

Originally Posted by bits

That is another way to go but the the re-encoding time is much longer than simply using MP4Cam2AVI....no re-encoding involved and literally takes a minute or less.

I am not up on all of the different recordings methods.

I used SageTV to convert to the best MPEG4 ( AVI Interlace ). Can I use this program to uncovert?

[davephan]

Originally Posted by Humanzee

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.

I checked ShowAnalyzer 1.0.52.760 configuration, "Tools", "Settings", "Scheduler".

"History Exists" checkbox is checked
"Any Aritfact Exists" checkbox is unchecked.

Is this the wrong configuration? I did not change it, so it must be the default.

Dave

[davephan]

Originally Posted by ldavis

FYI, and I have done this, convert to mpg but do not delete the original avi. SA will then create an .edl file based on the mpg. You can then move the .edl file back to the avi folder and delete the mpg file. No loss in quality.

What did you use to convert the AVI file into an mpeg file?

Dave

[davephan]

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

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.

I timed SA1 again on a TS HD file. I setup my system for the maximum recording quality. The TS file is 1.8 gigs in size for 30 minutes. It took my i-7 950 6 minutes and 34 seconds to process the file.

The "CS" logo does show up in the video import menu, and commercial skipping does work on playback, although it is not perfect, since it missed some commercials and skipped over about 10 seconds of normal programing.

Dave

[ldavis]

Originally Posted by davephan

What did you use to convert the AVI file into an mpeg file?

Dave

If Sage can play it, then Sage should be able to convert it.

[ldavis]

Originally Posted by bits

That is the reason I said what I said in my first post,
If something other than h264 was wrapped in the avi wrapper then its a no brainer that it will need to be re-encoded. I can not think of anything I have recorded then converted that would be worth converting again in order to cut commercials. IMHO it is rather silly to re-encode recorded material that still contains the commercials. As someone said earlier commercials make up at least 25% of any given recording and to dummy down a recording by re-encoding it to save space only to leave 25% of the video in commercials makes no sense at all.

I agree with the general presmise of course but since SA 1.0 is in beta and somewhat buggy (as was the reason for the original post in this thread), you may not be able to process an MP4 with earlier versions. In either case my method does result in some additional CPU cycles but there is no dumming down of recordings as you say. The original recording is retained and is used for viewing purposes. The converted mpg file is used to generate an edl(to be used with th original file) and is then deleted. I agree it is "silly" to accept a degradation in quality just so I do not have to pick up a remote and skip commercials but I am not all that stingy with some extra CPU time which is all we are talking about here.

What is done with the output of SA at that point (comskip only or an editor that will not require re-encoding) is up to the end user. This is just a method that should get SA to work on any file that Sage can play and will not result in any loss of quality in the end.

[bits]

Originally Posted by ldavis

I agree with the general presmise of course but since SA 1.0 is in beta and somewhat buggy (as was the reason for the original post in this thread), you may not be able to process an MP4 with earlier versions. In either case my method does result in some additional CPU cycles but there is no dumming down of recordings as you say. The original recording is retained and is used for viewing purposes. The converted mpg file is used to generate an edl(to be used with th original file) and is then deleted. I agree it is "silly" to accept a degradation in quality just so I do not have to pick up a remote and skip commercials but I am not all that stingy with some extra CPU time which is all we are talking about here.

What is done with the output of SA at that point (comskip only or an editor that will not require re-encoding) is up to the end user. This is just a method that should get SA to work on any file that Sage can play and will not result in any loss of quality in the end.

The dummying down I refer to is the re-encoding of mpeg at the time of recording not when your procedure is used. My premiss, my point, is that it makes more sense to save HDD space by cutting out commercials from the original recording(this is the recording before being re-encoded to something that SA or comskip can not do commercial detection on).

My specific point to your procedure is still the same as I have stated all along. If the re-encoded and or original recording is h264 wrapped in avi then it is simpler and faster to use the MP4Cam2AVI. I say this because SA and comskip can handle h264. However if the avi file is something other than h264 or mpeg2 then your procedure certainly makes sense and as you say would not result in any PQ loss. IMO it does not make sense to re-encode an entire video that is already SA or comskip compliant but has an avi file extention that depending on the video size, video specs and your system specs can take hours to do when it can be done in a few minutes and mouse clicks using a freeware app. But to each is own. Your system will work.

[bits]

Originally Posted by joe123

I am not up on all of the different recordings methods.

I used SageTV to convert to the best MPEG4 ( AVI Interlace ). Can I use this program to uncovert?

Probably not but other more experienced STV users may know differently. If the .mp4 file is h264 then I think you can use MP4Cam2AVI, a free app, to change the file extension from avi to .mp4 which should then work in SA and or comskip. This process will not further degrade your recording. Not all video files with a .mp4 file extension are h264. Xvid and divx for example can have a .mp4 extension. Use MediaInfo (freeware) to get video details.

I am a bit of a purest in that I strongly prefer viewing recorded video in its as recorded state. All video re-encoding degrades the PQ and is not reversible. However, depending on the codec, re-encoding settings, original video quality ect....the resulting re-encoded video can be quite watchable. But as I said; it is not reversible. What ever PQ is lost or artifacts introduced by the re-encode are permanent.

My suggestion would be to stop compressing your recorded video. Use SA or comskip to find the commercial breaks, which can be done automatically after each recording is completed. Install the comskip stv and watch and delete. For video you want to archive for a long time then cut the commercials using VideoReDo and then compress them. You will save an additional 25% HDD space and you will have the great pleasure of watching a video without commercials, which is more pleasurable than ff and rw'ing your way through the commercials.

The comskip stv is very cool in that once SA and or comskip have generated the correct files post commercial scan, you can watch the video as though there are no commercials, commercial breaks are automatically skipped. No ff and rw required unless the commercial start stop points are slightly off then you can rw or ff to get to the correct spot.

[toricred]

I don't recall, but I don't think SA will work with mp4 files either. I'm pretty sure it only works on ts, mpg, dvr-ms, and wtv files.

[bits]

Originally Posted by toricred

I don't recall, but I don't think SA will work with mp4 files either. I'm pretty sure it only works on ts, mpg, dvr-ms, and wtv files.

Come to think of it you are right. Which means the Mp4Cam2AVI will not work. I will have to root around and see if something else that can be used.

What might be nice is the ability to first do the commercial detection, generate the necessary files and then have STV do the conversion.

[toricred]

The issue has now been fixed in ShowAnalyzer version 1. There are now "Guardian" extensions to protect "Artifacts" such as edl files as long as they exist and yet they don't cause SAV1 to analyze the file because it wouldn't work.

In addition the problem with analyzing a file while it is recording is now fixed.

[joe123]

Originally Posted by toricred

The issue has now been fixed in ShowAnalyzer version 1. There are now "Guardian" extensions to protect "Artifacts" such as edl files as long as they exist and yet they don't cause SAV1 to analyze the file because it wouldn't work.

In addition the problem with analyzing a file while it is recording is now fixed.

Nice!