Comclean for DSM-320

[David]

I've been using gb-pvr to record shows, and it does a wonderful job. It's been fun installing and getting all the various utilities working. I record most programs at medium and some at low quality.

I use TVersity media server to serve the recordings to my DSM-320. I just made a windows share of the recording directory and mshared it in TVersity.

Unfortunately, the DSM doesn't do well with Fast Forward, so I have been trying various combinations to have Comclean strip out the commercials for me. If I understand it correctly, it seems that the mpgtx utility is not able to cut the mpg files correctly because the pvr-250 hardware encoding results in frame breaks of less than 1 second (works too good). The result is that the commercial breaks are stripped out, but the DSM-320 gets hung up at those spots for a duration that seems to be about the length of the original commercial break (It feels longer since nothing is happening). Re-encoding the file to avi using mencoder seems to fix the problem about 50% of the time. I've played around with various parameters, but can't find a more optimal solution.

I want an automated process and don't mind that some commercials get through. Does anyone have a working solution? Suggestions?

[erik]

You should try another mpeg editor that can use the output from comskip.
One possibility is videoredo. Its not free but it can run automatically
YOu can also use womble with autoit but I am not sure womble does more then GOB edit
Any other suggestions?

[David]

Suggestions on setting up a command line to call videoredo?

[sub]

It's not erik's fault, but the problem is caused because comclean just removes those sections of the file, it does not fix the timestamps that are embedded in rest of the file. The DSM-320's player obviously depends on those timestamps for playback timing.

[David]

Oh, not placing blame, just trying to solve the problem. I am not even sure if I completely understand the problem, having no experience with mpeg file format. Timestamps could well be the issue.

Comskip and comclean seem to work great! I loved the new feature accidently left on to generate .bat files to call mpgtx directly, bypassing the comclean.bat file.

I have no problem with PC based media players. I know the real problem is with the DSM-320; both in not handling the file more gracefully and having extremely poor implementation of fast forward/pause/reverse.

I am betting I can come up with a workable solution here before D-Link fixes it in firmware.

[erik]

No problem :-)

I am having the same problem with a new networked TV that sometimes hangs when it hits a cutpoint. I then hit pause and play and then the player continues.

Can you use the same trick?

[David]

I could try, but my experience with the DSM 320 has not been good in that area, at least with the prv-250's files. Perhaps the bitrate is too high. I am hardwired, so it is not a wireless issue. Hitting play again usually results in playing the file from the beginning.

I can't complain too much as I researched and knew the problems before I bought the DSM-320.

[dkelley]

here's a wacky idea - since the dsm can already stream, pause, rewind (and maybe fastforward, not sure) live internet tv, why not (it sounds so simple in here, I'm sure it isn't, but it's worth suggesting), as I was saying, why not add an output device to gbpvr which goes through a virtual http port (or similar) which could be entered into TVersity as a streaming video url? That way tversity could display it in real time, pause it, rewind it, etc using it's remote without having to truly integrate with gbpvr? All you need to add is an output which looks like a video stream feed (or in fact is, but hosted locally, however you could do it most easily). Sure, it's not really taking advantage of gbpvr, but it IS providing real-time tv plus basic pvr functionality (pause, rewind live tv) to dsm-320 users, plus tversity can already output saved gbpvr files from shows recorded with gbpvr, and they show up in whatever tversity folder the user chooses in setup.

That would be enough for me and I'm sure most of us to consider gbpvr compatible with the dsm-320, or in fact with any upnp receiver on the market which is compatible with tversity server software. I'd pay you for that feature. Even though we'd be using tversity for media control, not gbpvr, and we wouldn't have the menus and channel guide of gbpvr, we'd have that on the computer and in the meantime would be able to use most fun parts of gbpvr with our boxes.

[dkelley]

Just a note here - the problem isn't with the dsm-320, it's with the media server software and it's inability to smoothly fast-forward and rewind through certain types of compressed video files. The same thing happens on your pc media player if you have a fastforward button, using the same video types, unless there are some pretty funky tricks going on in the background. So TVersity (and the dlink server software too) could fix the fastforward problem. As a matter of example, the current beta release of the d-link server software, along with firmware 1.07 for dsm-320, fixes fastforward and rewind for many video types, although not for all. FF also works very well with tversity 0.8.0.3 (but tversity 0.9.0.4 has compatibility issues with 1.07 firmware currently).

So don't blame the dsm-320 - it's just a very challenging technical problem to get fastforward to work smoothly when the media server's main function is to try to get streaming real-time video and audio working perfectly smoothly with transcoding etc. Imagine how hard it is to transcode on the fly and have the end-user suddenly decide to fastforward for 2 seconds and expect the video to jump ahead smoothly during that time. It's so bloody difficult for programmers, that kind of thing.

Also just a thought for the developer of gbpvr - the dsm-320 is actually a linux box, it can be logged into remotely on your network and it's software can be downloaded and new versions can be uploaded that way (I'm not talking about the firmware update hacks, I'm talking about the actual OS and items like the screensaver's bitmap image choice and the menu graphics and nav controls etc).

The person who figured this out viewed the whole linux directory structure of his dsm-320 and found the folder where the ir remote connection is made, all the static media files, color choices, text, fonts, and custom code to make the GUI. all could be replaced, in theory. Just hasn't been done yet.

Just in case you get really really ambitious sometime in the future!

[sub]

I've actually just sold my DSM-320 a few days ago. Sorry, this of course means I have no plans to add any DSM-320 support in the future.