Better playback of radio recordings

[JP23]

Hi Sub,

NPVR is able to record radio shows with no problems, but when you play them back the experience is not great.
As well as just seeing a black screen, which is not a big problem - I encounter the following issues:

No ability to skip forward or back
No OSD or timeline
No resume options if playback is stopped part way through
The 'This recording has been watched to completion....' and prompt to delete message comes up every time you stop playback, even if you've only played the first few seconds.

Any chance of improving radio playback so these issues don't occur? It would greatly improve the WAF in my household.

[pBS]

use ffmpeg to add video to the audio files and you'll get all those features back..just takes a few secs as it's optimized to not add too much to file size..

Code:

ffmpeg -y -f lavfi -i color=c=black:s=qcif -r 4 -i "input file" -c:a copy -c:v libx264 -tune stillimage -map 0:v:0 -map 1:a:0 -shortest -r 4 -g 8 "output file"

i usually just save as original name so it replaces original file..
this keeps audio as-is and just adds a black frame video, so you can pause/skip/resume..adds roughly less than 1% to size of file..
you can play with the -r [framerate/sec] and -g [group of pictures size,roughly skipping point size] to get skipping that's more responsive if you want..

you could add logic to postprocessing.bat to process all radio channels automatically.. [only takes a few secs to process,1000's of fps]
To process ch 550 thru 750:

@for /L %%f in (550,1,750) do (if %2==%%f ffmpeg line from above...)

you can also add text to that black frame w ffmpeg, tho i doubt any motion possible,just static text..tho it could change during song..

[JP23]

Thank you pBS, that is extremely helpful, I will do some tinkering with my postprocessing.bat and try to get this working.

For users who are not comfortable with scripting etc, I do think it would be a worthwhile improvement to integrate something like this into NPVR. As long as NPVR already knows which channels are radio channels, perhaps a static image of the channel-logo, or some basic animation could be added automatically as a video track?

[JP23]

pBS - Any chance you could post an example postprocessing.bat that does this - I haven't been able to make it work, and I'm not sure why...

[pBS]

which channel #s do you want included?

[imilne]

perhaps a static image of the channel-logo

Speaking on behalf of oled owners everywhere, no, no, no!

Iain

[JP23]

which channel #s do you want included?

I've got it working now, I very much hope substituting the right channel numbers in was a bit I could manage.

Every test I did with ffmpeg using the -y option to overwrite the existing file failed immediately as the input file gets overwritten straight away, stopping processing. So I ended up writing the new file elsewhere and then copying it back to the recording directory.
I also ended up removing the @for... line and putting an if > goto statement for every radio channel number, which is ok because I only have 10.

Thanks again for all your help.

@imline - I get the concern, but I don't think the odd 30 minutes of a static image amongst hours of tv playback is going to ruin a TV? An animation or a black screen might be better options though.

I suspect Sub isn't very interested though or he probably would have said something by now...

[pBS]

does oled suffer from burn-in?