| Issue 33: | Entire show doesn't get encoded | |
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What steps will reproduce the problem? 1. Download a show using MPEG-2 (8 Mbps) with comskip 2. 3. What is the expected output? What do you see instead? The show downloads entirely, runs comskip completely, but then only partially encodes the file. There is no error but the resulting file is only a small portion of the show. Anywhere from a couple of minutes of the show, to about half of it. What version of the product are you using? On what operating system? 1.4 OS X 10.5.5 Please provide any additional information below.
Nov 13, 2008
Oh one other possibility: how much free hard drive space do you have? It needs to generate a LOT of temporary data to remove commercials.. you'll need to have at least enough space to hold the whole show unencoded, plus enough for your encoded show (so at 8mbps, we're probably talking about 1.5x the size of the show as reported by tivo). the code doesn't check to make sure you have the space...
Nov 13, 2008
I have had success with mpeg-2 (5 mbps) so it appears to only be a problem with the 8 mbps setting. There are no messages that mencoder crashes. The show appears to download successfully (Growl reports the download is complete, and iTivo does not retry downloading) I have plenty of hard drive space, over 500GB free space. When I get home tonight I will try it turning off comskip and turning on "download first then encode" and report back.
Nov 13, 2008
I have discovered that it is only a problem with HD shows, and that it happens with HD shows on both the 5mbps and the 8mbps setting. I am currently trying an HD show on MPEG-2 (8mbps) with no comskip and "download first then encode", I will post my results
Nov 13, 2008
No luck. The MPEG-2 options both 5mbps and 8mbps do not work with HD shows, even with comskip turned off and "download first then encode" selected. Any ideas?
Nov 14, 2008
Honestly I don't have any useful ideas.. are the mpeg-4 downloads working ok? (iphone, quicktime, etc)? There may be a bug with the mpeg-2 encoder or the settings I pass to it. (HD files are pretty big, so the mpeg-2 encoder might be hitting walls with some frames and the bitrate limits). If it's working for an mp4 setting but not mpeg-2, the only thing I can suggest isn't fun: Go to the advanced setting after selecting and mpeg-2 format, and start playing with the video settings. I'm not an expert with the tool either unfortunately, and documentation about mencoder is very poor. Out of interest though: why are you aiming for mpeg-2 encoding? the quality is generally much worse than mpeg4, and an mpeg-2 of an HD movie can't be put on a DVD or sent back to a regular tivo anyways. If you just want to use it to edit out commercials and then tivo go back it, use 'minimal re-encoding' or whatever it's called (you won't be able to view it unless you use VLC, but it probably won't barf out mencoder like the other mpeg-2 settings). Yeah, not very helpful :(
Nov 14, 2008
As I have mentioned previously "minimal re-encoding" is totally useless because the audio and video don't sync. I guess I will just go back to no encoding and be stuck with the commercials. Oh well, thanks for trying.
Nov 28, 2008
Any new ideas on why HD shows aren't getting encoded entirely? I have been messing around with some of the settings but have not been able to fix it. It works fine with non-HD shows. Any thoughts? Between "minimal re-encoding" having audio and video sync issues, and MPEG-2 not working with HD shows, it is impossible to remove commercials and keep the resulting file in a format that works with TiVo GoBack. Thanks.
Nov 29, 2008
I seemed to find a fix for it. I set "vrc_buf_size=18350" I tried various other values, both lower and higher, and for some reason that is the one that seems to work. I don't know what exactly this does, but I guess it may make sense that the HD shows need a larger buffer to encode the show. Please add an additional setting for MPEG-2 HD that includes this change in the buffer size (and maybe and increased bitrate for higher quality). Thanks.
Nov 29, 2008
Hey! Thanks for figuring it out. I'm changing the 5MBps entry to a 7MBps and calling it 'mpeg-2 HD', and adding the vrc_buf change to that entry. It should go out with the next beta. Thank you again...
Nov 30, 2008
Ok check out the beta to see if it's doing 'the right thing' for you?
Nov 30, 2008
Unfortunately the change in bitrate seems to make the change in buffer size not fix the problem anymore. I have tried increasing the buffer size but it does not seem to fix the problem. Any ideas on your end?
Nov 30, 2008
ideas no :( Sadly I'm just using an external program that I only understand a little bit of to do the encoding. For now, I guess I'll set it back to 5Mbps then (next beta should get the change). In the long run I'm likely to switch to using the handbrake encoder since it is faster, and maybe that will resolve the problems...
Dec 2, 2008
Is it difficult switching to handbrake? I have found handbrake to be extremely reliable. It might fix a lot of problems and make things much easier in the future. It sounds like a great idea to me.
Dec 2, 2008
The latest beta supports handbrake. (still trying things out with it) HOWEVER, handbrake doesn't support edit lists, so you can't use it to remove commercials.
Dec 2, 2008
Yeah, I am using the latest beta now, to download and encode in AppleTV format. I love this option because it works equally well with both SD and HD shows (it uses a percentage quality rather than a fixed bitrate). Adding Handbrake options was a great idea. Is there anyway around the inability to remove commercials? Or is that never going to happen with Handbrake encoding?
Dec 2, 2008
short version: to skip commercials, we run comskip on the source mpg, which generates a list of cut points where the movie needs to be split up. mencoder can take these cutpoints as input while it is encoding, so we use it with mencoder. Handbrake doesn't support cut lists (right now anyways). So as it is we can't work around it. However, it is in theory possible to use mencoder to do a 'dumb' re-encode which only copies frames over. However, this will cause a significant audio-video sync problem. So for now, I disable comskip for handbrake. If/when it becomes possible to do it, I'll re-enable it. I'm going to mark this bug 'fixed' since the 5mbps works for you as mpeg-2 (which is the point of this bug report). I see another bug report claiming that the AppleTV setting isn't working on AppleTV units though (sigh). So more 'stuff' to figure out with these darn encoders....
Dec 2, 2008
(No comment was entered for this change.)
Status:
Fixed
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Owner: yoav.yerushalmi