Automatic commercial cutting & transcoding to xvid

[blueskies]

Thanks a lot for these guides guys.. they've helped me tons. The only problem I'm having is that neither MP or Windows Media Player will play the xvid encoded movies. They play fine in VLC; the only problem I see is that the total movie length is always at 0:00:00. I've uninstalled and reinstalled the xvid codecs, but is there a way to get WMP to use/understand them? Seems like any easy fix but I just can't figure it out. Thanks.

[EPGsetup]

Originally Posted by baloubic

Why doesn't it convert anything before deleting everything?

Mencoder isn't working, the batch file steamrolls over the error, and deletes the file then breaks.

Shattik batch file:

:delete
 if "%testmode%" == "yes" goto eof:
   del /q "%~dpn1_original.mpg"
   del /q "%~dpn1_original.avi"
 if "%mpegdel%" == "mpegdel" goto eof:
   del /q "%~dpf1" <<---- Delete this line (temporarily)

Remove that one line from the Shattik batch file and run it manually from the command prompt to see what the error is - it won't delete the file if you remove that line. I am pretty sure there is a mistake in your file when it goes to encode.

shattik_transcode.bat "yourfilegoeshere.dvr-ms"

or, try playing the file in mplayer. If there is an error it will spew out there.

mplayer -demuxer 35 "yourfile goes here.dvr-ms"

Final guess, you added <Enter>'s/newlines in Shattik's batch file. This is the silliest, and most probable, error. That line should be one, contiguous line. I can't help you beyond that.

[EPGsetup]

Originally Posted by blueskies

The only problem I'm having is that neither MP or Windows Media Player will play the xvid encoded movies. They play fine in VLC; the only problem I see is that the total movie length is always at 0:00:00. I've uninstalled and reinstalled the xvid codecs, but is there a way to get WMP to use/understand them?

Easiest way is to get Gspot. Ignore the name - it is quite clean - and simply a codec analysis utility. You can load a media file and attempt to render it, and it will let you know which filters it is using (or are missing) to make the video file appear on the screen.

Fire that up, load the Xvid made by the encoding, and it will let you know if there is a missing audio or video filter. VLC uses built in filters (mplayer does too), but everything else for the most part uses DirectShow filters.

I'd recommend using Koepi's Xvid binaries. Google will find you his page for the latest version.

[baloubic]

Thanks m8, really appreciate your help!

I ran stattik_transcode.bat in dos after having run comskip manually on a file. The problem seems to be that the program simply can't find the file to cut/encode when it's beeing run automatically.

So I tried to drag&drop the dvr-ms file on stattik_transcode.bat and now mplayer in creating an avi file on my hard drive as I write this.

:nodebug
set name=%1
copy "%~dpn1.edl" "%~dpn1.ptl"

This generates ".edl" and ".ptl" files that naturally aren't found.

:nodebug
set name=D:\Recordings\myrecordedprogram.dvr-ms
copy "D:\Recordings\myrecordedprogram.dvr-ms.edl" "D:\Recordings\myrecordedprogram.dvr-ms.ptl"

Is what the script does when I drag&drop the file onto the script.


I guess it's a dirmon problem then, somethings with the targets(dvr-ms,DVR-MS) not working... Strange, because it's setup the exact same way as in your pictures. I'll try rename the recordings directory to a name without spaces to see if that has any effect, when the ongoing mencoder encoding is done. Not that I think that has anything to do with it...

Edit: Switching to a directory name without spaces for the dvr-ms-files made the stattik.bat script work. The only problem remaining is that they're, like blueskies noted above, unplayable (bad header)

[baloubic]

I've got the same problem as blueskies now, with the file mencoder created.

Gspot says it's an xvid, but with a bad header. Dunno why ?

[blueskies]

I thought I'd solved this problem, but I'm not sure. At first I thought that it was because the batch files were using the wrong profile on the files. I edited the :standard line, but was using eps of Family Guy to test, which were being sent to the :cartoon profile instead. So I added the "-demux 35" and "-idx" to all the profiles, and now it's hit or miss. Some shows are encoded perfectly, others aren't and only play in VLC.

What would be a good way to filter all file to go to one profile? (or is this a bad idea?) I was thinking of sticking this line...

if exist "_" goto standard:

...before all the other "if exist"s.

[Noelix]

Thanks EPGsetup for continuing to help people out with the process. I myself got fed up with comskip after it cut off the dramatic ending of an episode of Monk so I removed it from the process altogether. Also, AutoDVRconvert has issues in that it does not always delete the .dvr-ms file or just does not recognize a .dvr-ms file in the directory and won't convert it even if you ask it nicely (aka try to convert it manually instead of automatically).

So for the DVR-MS to MPEG conversion I've been using MP's internal "Compress" feature (note that unfortunately the auto-compress feature does not work and neither do the dvr-ms to xvid or wmv conversions), and then I have Dirmon2 detecting the created mpeg file and encoding it using stattik's script. I haven't had any avi indexing problems with this process so I don't know what the dealy there is (maybe the dvr-ms to avi direct compression?), but I have had issues with Dirmon2 as well - and in case you were keeping track, Dragon Global released a newer version of the program that fixes some bugs.

The process I have now isn't perfect but I feel that the best way for all of us to benefit the most is to get an automated process worked into MP itself, so that's what I'm hoping happens down the line. From the looks of the 'compress' section it looks planned, just not implemented.

[Noelix]

Originally Posted by blueskies

What would be a good way to filter all file to go to one profile? (or is this a bad idea?) I was thinking of sticking this line...

if exist "_" goto standard:

...before all the other "if exist"s.

Just look for "family guy" in the code and remove it if you don't want it to go to the cartoon profile. Honestly I haven't seen much of a difference between standard and cartoon profiles anyways.

[blueskies]

Originally Posted by Noelix

Just look for "family guy" in the code and remove it if you don't want it to go to the cartoon profile. Honestly I haven't seen much of a difference between standard and cartoon profiles anyways.

The problem was more certain shows using different profiles that weren't edited (-demux, -idx, -whatever). I was looking for a way to filter any file to go though the standard profile, rather than editing each one.

Either way, I'm not using this anymore. The setup is pretty much perfect, but I don't really like 1) comskip cutting things incorrectly, and 2) not seeing the info for the show when I select it. I figure, I've got a 250gb hdd holding these recordings, I don't really need to worry about space too much.

[EPGsetup]

Well, I shate Noelix's observation. Comskip keeps getting false positives, even with Motorweek on PBS. However, I am willing to bear with it a bit longer till I get everything slick.

I have continued to edit Stattik's batch file adding fixes here and there, and as it stands I have it so it WILL NOT delete the source file if there is an error encoding it. Also, it automatically uses the right parameters for a DVR-ms instead of a MPG.

As for bluesky's wish to have everything go to a single profile, that is easily accomplished. Right below the :mpg subsection, add the words GOTO standard:. That basically shortcuts all the other profiles.

Right now I am trying to keep all the profiles as generalized as possible, so I am basically reverse enginineering the entire stattik script Noelix posted. I'm linking that below. Not linked yet