Post Processing bat file question

[sub]

It'll only run one postprocessing.bat at a time, with others queued until completion of any currently running instance.

[nightwalker]

thanks sub, i was thinking that's the way it worked.

[nightwalker]

How's your disk space? If the disk is getting close to full and badly fragmented, the process can take considerably longer and the video will be jerky on playback, though the jerkiness will go away if you defragged it.

As far as diagnosing the aborts goes, try redirecting output from comclean and retime to a log file, and perhaps add a couple redirected echos to a log file to let you know where you are in the process. That way you'll have something to look at when it fails and perhaps give you a clue about what's happenning.

The disks are fine, defragmented on a regular basis. I had the day off today and ended up spending most of it trying to diagnose the problem. I think most of the problem is my system being ready for it's yearly wipe and rebuild. I tried a couple of small recordings with no processing at all and they stuttered a bit, After a reboot they seemed fine.

The only thing that's been consistant thruout is if the bat file was going to fail it was going to be on the first recording of a back to back recording session. The process is taking about 3 times longer than it used to to wipe the commercials but i think that's where a rebuild is needed. I'll get to that in a few days. What does concern me is the batch file not completing, nor knowing exactly why and it being odd that it's the first recording of a mulitple recording session, all back to back.

As far as redirecting output to a log file, can you give me an example of that? i guess what i'd need to do is have the output of comclean and retime to a file for review. it seems to be in retime that it chokes on. Without retime it's much better but my wife loses the ability to skip forward or back since the timeline is broken.

[-Oz-]

maybe try using videoredo since it keeps the timeline intact and see if that fixes the issue. If that is the case then you know its retime... Videoredo has a free trial.

[nightwalker]

maybe try using videoredo since it keeps the timeline intact and see if that fixes the issue. If that is the case then you know its retime... Videoredo has a free trial.

I can certianly try Videoredo, I ran a couple of recordings using comeclean2 with cuttermaran. That worked equally well and didn't need to have retime run on it, but it was very slow.

The problem was it also failed in the same places. Back to back recordings. It can't work if the postprocessing batch file just doesn't complete.

[wtg]

I tried a couple of small recordings with no processing at all and they stuttered a bit, After a reboot they seemed fine.

If they aren't stuttering after reboot, then obviously the recording itself is fine. There's something else going on with the PC.

What does concern me is the batch file not completing, nor knowing exactly why and it being odd that it's the first recording of a mulitple recording session, all back to back.

As far as redirecting output to a log file, can you give me an example of that? i guess what i'd need to do is have the output of comclean and retime to a file for review. it seems to be in retime that it chokes on.

So here's what I believe is your batch file, modified to redirect the output to review.log along with some comments and timestamps. The > causes the output to be written to the file, deleting and re-creating it if it already exists, and >> causes the output to be appended to the existing file.

Code:

@echo off

echo Comskip running on %1 recorded from channel %2 >>channel.log

Rem list of channels to not run comskip on
if "%2" == "5" goto eof:
if "%2" == "71" goto eof:
if "%2" == "12" goto eof:
if "%2" == "19" goto eof:

echo Starting comskip...  >review.log
time /t                       >>review.log
comskip %1                >>review.log  2>>&1

echo Starting comclean... >>review.log
time /t                          >>review.log
call comclean %1            >>review.log  2>>&1

echo Starting retime...     >>review.log
time /t                          >>review.log
call retime %1                >>review.log  2>>&1

echo Retime complete.    >>review.log
time /t                         >>review.log

del "%~dpn1_original.mpg"
del "%~dpn1_clean.mpg"
move "%~dpn1_original.mpg" E:\holding
move "%~dpn1_clean.mpg" E:\holding
del "%~dpn1.log"
del "%~dpn1.txt"
del "%~dpn1.VPrj"
:eof

You should be able to look at review.log afterwards and see if there are any errors, and see approximately how long each step took.

Good luck.

[wtg]

Another thought... have you installed new software recently or running extra services? Are you sure your PC isn't simply running out of memory and swapping to disk? That would definitely make it run slower and stutter, and might explain it being intermittant. Processing MPG files takes a pretty good chunk of memory too.

Also, just for kicks you might try deleting and recreating to swap file too, defragging before re-creating it to make sure it's recreated contiguously.

[nightwalker]

If they aren't stuttering after reboot, then obviously the recording itself is fine. There's something else going on with the PC.



So here's what I believe is your batch file, modified to redirect the output to review.log along with some comments and timestamps. The > causes the output to be written to the file, deleting and re-creating it if it already exists, and >> causes the output to be appended to the existing file.

Code:

@echo off

echo Comskip running on %1 recorded from channel %2 >>channel.log

Rem list of channels to not run comskip on
if "%2" == "5" goto eof:
if "%2" == "71" goto eof:
if "%2" == "12" goto eof:
if "%2" == "19" goto eof:

echo Starting comskip...  >review.log
time /t                       >>review.log
comskip %1                >>review.log  2>>&1

echo Starting comclean... >>review.log
time /t                          >>review.log
call comclean %1            >>review.log  2>>&1

echo Starting retime...     >>review.log
time /t                          >>review.log
call retime %1                >>review.log  2>>&1

echo Retime complete.    >>review.log
time /t                         >>review.log

del "%~dpn1_original.mpg"
del "%~dpn1_clean.mpg"
move "%~dpn1_original.mpg" E:\holding
move "%~dpn1_clean.mpg" E:\holding
del "%~dpn1.log"
del "%~dpn1.txt"
del "%~dpn1.VPrj"
:eof

You should be able to look at review.log afterwards and see if there are any errors, and see approximately how long each step took.

Good luck.

I'll add that in and see if it gives me a clue, thank you very much for the tips.

[nightwalker]

Another thought... have you installed new software recently or running extra services? Are you sure your PC isn't simply running out of memory and swapping to disk? That would definitely make it run slower and stutter, and might explain it being intermittant. Processing MPG files takes a pretty good chunk of memory too.

Also, just for kicks you might try deleting and recreating to swap file too, defragging before re-creating it to make sure it's recreated contiguously.

It's been a strange go round with this. I'm running a dedicated GBpvr machine with 1Gig of ram. I don't even use the PC to view anything on, I use the MVP's exclusively for viewing or listening to music. The last time i touched it to add anything was to update to 98.13. That seemed to go well and all was working, as far as i know. I don't use it much for recording or viewing videos myself, that's my wife's domain. I set it up to record all her soaps and it's been humming along for a very long time doing really well. I wouldn't have known anything was wrong until she told me her soaps were jumping around some. She said it had been doing that awhile but she couldn't remember how long. Looking at the logs didn't show anything wrong but looking in the directories were her recordings are stored did. It was full of log, txt, original files that should have been taken care of by the postprocessing bat file.

It may be that there is something wrong in the system itself and a wipe and rebuild is what's needed but since it does so little to start with I'm not quite convinced that's what it is so far. I've installed GBpvr in another clean system as a test and setup almost the exact same system. I'll let them both run today and see if there is any difference between them. If nothing else it'll be interesting.

[wtg]

Check available memory after it's been running for a while, and check it as soon as you see the problem again. Maybe you have some renegade process that's eating up memory.

1 GB of ram is certainly more than enough for a dedicated GB-PVR machine, but if your running something with a bad memory leak, it doesn't matter how much ram you have.