Transcoding

[OTAjunkie]

handbrake compresses a TS video (post commercial cutting) to about 40% of the original filesize

Yes my milelage does vary. A 4GB TS recording of "The Daily Show" (30 min) is reduced to 238,417KB (21:08 min[it's almost imposible to get "Your Moment of Zenn" with comskip so i just prepad Colbert]). I think that is a 94% size reduction? Is my math right?
and for what it's worth here's to two Mencoder scripts I'm using:

Code:

mencoder "%~dpn1.ts" -af volume=+10db -vf-add scale=480:320 -ofps 29 -oac faac -faacopts br=192:mpeg=4:object=2 -ovc xvid -xvidencopts bitrate=15000:aspect=16/9:threads=2 -o "%~dpn1.avi"

mencoder "%~dpn1.avi" -edl "%~dpn1.edl" -oac copy -ovc copy -of avi -o "%~dpn1_.avi"

[Zogg]

That sounds a bit extreme. It takes me about 67min to transcode 1 hour to AVI without commercials. This time is from the shows finish and includes a Comskip run, transcode to AVI and then Comclean run.

I was thinking of multiple jobs running every day, not just one job. But still, you have your cpu processing for 110% the actual length of the show. If you record 10 hours of shows in one evening then now your system is crunching away for 11 hours of compute time, instead of just idling or going into standby.

I know hard drives aren't quite as cheap as they once were, but for under $100 U.S. you can add a 1.5TB drive that holds a LOT of shows, and then just let your system go into standby and save on electricity costs.

But that is my opinion and what works for me, and I don't expect everyone to agree. And I appreciate the info on mencoder, I will have to give it a shot to see if I can get a 10 min transcode time too!

[OTAjunkie]

Since the Mencoder script is called from my PostProcessing.BAT, every recording I make goes through the process automatically. On average I'll record from 4 to 7 shows nightly. I transcode these files not for archiving but rather to shrink file size by transcoding to AVI and cut commercials so my phone can hold all recordings. The following morning I hit "sync" on my phone and by the time I'm out of the shower the transfer is complete. I'll watch these recordings when I have time during the day or as I recently discovered if the is a power failure. And these recordings are also great for use with NEWA as the file size is almost at a minimum which reduces bandwith loads(my upload is only 256kb) and there are no commercials to sit through. I rarely store network TV shows for more than a week (they're just not that valuable to me).

[grits]

Hi OTAJunkie,
I'm trying to also setup "a Comskip run, transcode to AVI and then Comclean run.". Any chance you could post or PM your ini's and batch files? It would save me some testing and trial and error. As it is I have comskip running, since you are in Canada as well you probably have a good comskip.ini I could use. And I am playing with the transcoding etc. I was also wondering, wouldn't you want to run Comclean first, so it would save you some transcoding time? Just curious.

[OTAjunkie]

@grits
I'm using the standard comskip.ini file without any tweaks(that I recall).
I transcode first because with the Mencoder version I use I can't run a "Comclean" with the file in TS so to AVI it goes and then another AVI file without commercials is created.
I'll keep the first AVI & EDL in archive for a while but the "clean" avi goes to my phone and then gets deleted(poof!!!)

[grits]

Can you post or send me your parallelprocessing.bat, postprocessing.bat, and any other bat so I can see how you are doing your comclean? Just hate reinventing the wheel. I don't need to shrink it for phone, just shrink to a reasonable size that still looks good on a 50" screen, and strip out commercials. Thanks for your help.

[grits]

Also, I'm very lazy :-)

[UncleJohnsBand]

Can you post or send me your parallelprocessing.bat, postprocessing.bat, and any other bat so I can see how you are doing your comclean? Just hate reinventing the wheel. I don't need to shrink it for phone, just shrink to a reasonable size that still looks good on a 50" screen, and strip out commercials. Thanks for your help.

Agree....it would be nice if they were posted for reuse.

[peter t]

I edit the commercials out with Video Re DO then save files as MPG to a NAS Box, view at my leisure then delete

[OTAjunkie]

Ok here goes(again), but first I have to say that the Mencoder script I use only seems to work with this version:"mencoder-p4-svn-24762"(Google it for download).

PostProcessing.bat

Code:

@echo off

comskip %1
:continue

call menco %1


:eof

"menco".bat (the Mencoder script batch file)

Code:

mencoder "%~dpn1.ts" -af volume=+10db -vf-add scale=480:320 -ofps 29 -oac faac -faacopts br=192:mpeg=4:object=2 -ovc xvid -xvidencopts bitrate=15000:aspect=16/9:threads=2 -o "%~dpn1.avi"

mencoder "%~dpn1.avi" -edl "%~dpn1.edl" -oac copy -ovc copy -of avi -o "%~dpn1_.avi"

NOTE: the first mencoder command transcodes TS to AVI and boosts volume +10db ("volume=norm" is normal) and scale is 480:320(phone size) you can pick your own size as you like. This script yeilds a file that is about 6% the size of the original(which makes it useful for me to stream via NEWA as well).
There are two more lines(not posted here) that move the *.AVI & EDL files to another folder(archives) and the *_.AVI file to yet another folder(NEWA)

One more note: If you reception is OTA, if you have even one "blip" in your signal Mencoder may not complete eventhough that recording seems normal in NPVR playback. But if you got a strong steady signal there'll be no issues.

You can play around with it by putting the Mencoder.exe, Comskip files, the "menco".bat and a Postprocessing batch file in a folder on your destop and create a shortcut to the Postprocessing.bat and place it on your desktop. Then take short(15min) TS file and drag and drop it onto the Postprocessing shortcut and watch it run. When you get it running the way you like move those files in the above folder to your Program Files>NPVR folder but leave the PostProcessing in your Scripts folder.