MUX'ing, VSplit, and MPG2 files.

[gosquad]

Well I'm with you, jd! What i'd do for a 100mbit link to this guy's dtivo! Now if he had all the Quincy eps, too! haha (a personal vice of mine)

-gosquad

Originally posted by jdiner


Forget the money. I will just send you disks or money for disks and you can make me a full set of MacGyver episodes. One of my favorite shows as a kid.

--jdiner

[Wooly]

Re: MacGyver episodes:

Forget you sending me disks or money - I'd be insulted. You'll have the full series, on DVD-R's, in DVD Jackets and shipped all at my expense, as soon as we get to a point where I can start ripping these things off. It's the LEAST I can do for your providing a moron like me with the ability to enjoy a hobby as challenging as this.

Originally posted by jdiner


Forget the money. I will just send you disks or money for disks and you can make me a full set of MacGyver episodes. One of my favorite shows as a kid.

--jdiner

[scarabus]

Originally posted by Wooly
In case you're wondering, I have EVERY episode of Babylon 5, MacGyver, and Farscape all grabbed from my DTV, waiting...patiently...for the holy grail from Jdiner!

Season 1 of Babylon 5 is due out on DVD next month - that should free up about 40Gb and save you a fair amount of time.

Already got my copy on order...

[hancocks]

Jdiner,

My $0.02 --

- Shows extractable as one-stop-shopping as VOBs, either for instant burning to DVD-r or easy commercial removal followed by burning to DVD-R, or maybe DVD-RW if they work on my set-top box(hey, nice two- or four-show menu, that's fine...nothing fancy). Put 'em in your 800-DVD juke, and life's looking good (no, I don't own that one yet).

DVD-Rs are running about a buck, and are headed for CDR-type prices. So, DVD quality (or thereabouts) for 2-hour storage at $0.07/hr. when the prices bottom out. Right now, a little over $0.50/hr. What's not to like?

- Stu

[jdiner]

Originally posted by rc3105
*jdiner, what type of standalone player do you have?

I have an APEX ad-600a. One of the old original ones... But let's just say it seen certain upgrades over the years.

--jdiner

[captain_video]

I've been storing tystreams as well as split and processed (i.e. patched & imported in SpruceUp with PRV files) on DVDs as DVD isos. I occasionally miss an episode of shows that I'm archiving and I like to keep them in a specific order when I burn them to DVD. I use episode guides culled from the net as a checklist to see which ones I already have and which ones I'm missing. If I miss an episode that is intended to be included on a DVD with other episodes, I copy the episodes I already have to DVD-RW and wait until the missing episode is rebroadcast. When it is, I can simply copy the episode back to my hard drive for authoring to DVD. It seems that storing the raw tystreams works better than the processed files. I've had problems importing files back into SpruceUp and ended up repatching and processing them again. Its probably just a matter of changing permissions on some of the files. I don't think the PRV files are being recognized after being restored to the PC.

Note that the permissions have to be changed because once you burn a file to DVD it automatically becomes read-only. Just right-click and change the properties and you're good to go. I've had to do this a lot with Seinfeld episodes lately because they've been broadcasting them all out of sequence for some reason. They used to broadcast them in numerical order by episode number but now they seem to be jumping all over the place. My PC hard drive is limited to about 50GB of working space for extracting and processing tystreams. When the drive starts filling up and I see that there are holes in the continuity of episodes I have to start off-loading the tystreams to DVD until needed.

[jdiner]

Ok. It has taken a lot longer than I thought it due to some majorly screwy logic in things. At least from the outside it is rather insane...

I have the new byte counting mechanism ready to roll for the VSplit program. It is a much better way of determining if things are as they should be in terms of always having the right data and not getting out of sync or using bad chunks. It still needs a bit more testing by me but I wanted to give everyone a heads up...

Once I get it posted I need people to run it. Right now the action that takes place is based on the old code. And the new code is just informational. It will print messages about what should be done based on both sets of code. What I need most is for people to run it and let me know if they ever report differences.

I.e. the BC code says it is good, and the PTS code reports it as bad and vice versa. If they are the same then it is all good and there is nothing to be concerned about.

For those with the time and inclination to run it I recommend using the -n option. This will not write anything out. With less disk access things just run a bit faster...

--jdiner

[koreth]

Looking forward to trying it out! I have a bunch of streams from Showtime ready to try (all Dolby Digital audio).

[rpongett]

Great.

I have a lot of items of varying lengths (and probably video quality) on my TIVO, including Pay-Per-View programming.

I'll run it all whenever you post it.

[Hoochster]

Thanks for your time on this JDLINER, I have lots of movies to dub off once this is ready so I should be able to give it a good run.

Hoochster

[Pr.Sinister]

Well, i tried something this morning before going
to work and i got some interesting results.

1st i have to set this up with a bit of background...

Before i got my TurboNet, archiving to VCD/SVCD
was done by capturing the program from S-VIDEO
with CyberLink PowerVCR II v3.0, Editing out commercials
at blazing speeds with M2-Edit Pro v4.0 and burning
VCD/SVCDs with fancy menus with Nero v5.x.x.

I never had a problem with A/V Sync...

Then i bought the TurboNet, started extracting, installed
ALL KINDS OF CODECS AND MUXERS , and a bunch
of editing software. All this to try and make the process as
easy as it was with Video Capturing.

Well last week i recorded a show on my Canadian Dish/PVR
combo and wanted to archive it to CD. So obviously i have
no network card in that one so i go back to VidCap. All is well
with the capture but to edit out commercials, i have a problem!

None of the smaller clips where in sync!!! i tried M2-Edit,
MPEG2-VCR, Ulead VideoStudio, CyberLink PowerDirector,
etc...

Now why would this no longer work when it was always
perfect before? What's changed? ALL THE NEW CODECS I INSTALLED!!!

So to test my theory, i installed a fresh copy of WinXP on a
different partition, installed CyberLink PowerDVD, PowerVCR II,
and MPEG2-VCR. THAT'S ALL.

I then loaded a TMPGenc SVCD Muxed MPEG2 of the season
premiere of The Real World : Las Vegas (It was awesome BTW!)
and tried to make smaller clips.

THE CLIPS WERE IN SYNC!

Now it just might be a fluke but when i get home tonight,
i plan on extending my test by taking the same MPEG
and cutting it with the same software but on the WinXP
install that has all the junk installed. I will alternate back
and forth so i can definately see what's up with that.

I will let you know what i figure out tomorrow.

[jdiner]

I posted this over in the TyTool thread. But then realized that it is far more of a VSplit core function than the GUI it is wrapped. So I put it here as well for comments from the rest of you.

---------------------------------------------------------------

I just had the coolest idea!

Every now and again we run into holes in the extracted TyStream files. These are problematic because they throw off the data. Even if we get back to the right stream we are still missing 24-32 ms of data...

I have been toying this morning with the idea of adding into the output file enough empty audio packets, of the right type, to fill in the hole. So for 24-32ms there would be 0 sound but things would stay lined up.

Now that would be cool. This could also be extrapolated, I believe at the moment, to "save" the sync from the very start. In essence if we are off by 7ms then generate a chunk that is set to play 7ms in length. But that plays nothing. Thuse the output files would be truly "sync'ed perfectly" from the very start. This might or might not work.

The reason I say that is that I am not sure yet if I can make it play for a smaller segment of time. Or if it has to be the fill 24ms or 32ms that I see from the SATivo and the DTivo.

But I just had the thought that we could go the other way with almost as much ease. Add a GOP to the start of the video segment that had enough frames (at the standare 29.97 the tivo uses) to get to that same "perfect" sync point. You would have a black lead-in on the video but it would mean the sync would dead on for the DVD-burning people amoung us.

--jdiner

[gosquad]

Now that's a "Why didn't I think of that?" post!

gosquad

[laserfan]

Originally posted by Pr.Sinister
...Now why would this no longer work when it was always
perfect before? What's changed? ALL THE NEW CODECS I INSTALLED!!!

I remember somewhere around here someone expressed a concern about the possibility of conflicting codecs. I also asked a question about "how you find them" and it seems trickier that just looking in the Multimedia Control Panel (what about WMP filters for example).

Fer sher I have downloaded junk that I later removed and am always concerned that residual cr*p gets left behind. If you or anyone else can offer pointers on cleaning-up codecs beyond the obvious of re-formatting/reinstalling from scratch, they would be most welcome.

[keith721]

can't recall who said it where, but seem to remember something about the Elecard/Moonlight MPEG codec causing problems with TMPGenC and synchronization...

"I'm not losing my memory -- I've just got more to remember, now that I'm older."