HOWTO: Auto transcode MYTHTV recorded shows to DVD, XVID or DIVX cutting out the co

[canzi]

anyone know how i can use nuvexport and cropping to remove the black borders broadcast with shows, ie 4:3 broadcast in 16:9, the crop_left, right top and bottom seem very limited.
cheers

[rocketscientist69]

Delete as solved

[bthoward]

Why couldn't one just add "&& rm %file% -rf" to the end of their transcode script?

And also for those of you who have this working if you set it up to write back to your recordings dir do they show up as shows or do they go into your videos section?

[ehula]

I have asked a couple of times...let me try again.

1. I would like to automatically transcode my recordings to xvid, place them in the recordings directory, delete the original .mpg file and be able to play the xvid through mythfrontend. Is this possible? How do you get around the fact that the database will be pointing at the .mpg file which will no longer be there?

2. Is anyone willing to tackle the following? (Assuming you are transcoding to save space on your hard drive) Because automatically transcoding every recording is taxing on the CPU, wouldn't it be great if there was a way to transcode only files that are some prescribed age or older (say one week)? In other words, if you watch the show and delete it within that time period, you watch the original .mpg, but if it sits around for longer than that, it gets transcoded to save space! Any takers? The solution will have to allow for reboots and restarts of myth-backend.

I know the second request is probably quite complicated, but I would love someone to at least comment on the first request.

Thanks.

[CyberPunk_1000]

Any solutions to the termcap error:



I ran into while trying to use a nuvexport from a user job. I think it has something to do with the session variables for the mythtv user that mythbackend is run as. that is my only thoughts...

When and if I su to the mythtv user and start bash (I don't get a bash prompt straight away). and run the nuvexport from there, it seems to work, but run it from a user job and no go.

Hi,

I managed to fix this by using a simple hack in my /etc/init.d/mythtv-backend file, i added the following:

TERM=vt100
export TERM

so my /etc/init.d/mythtv-backend now looks like:

DAEMON=/usr/bin/mythbackend
NAME="mythbackend"
DESC="MythTV server"
TERM=vt100
export TERM

this seems to fix the problem, its hacky but it seems to work well. Hope that helps any one else with the Termcap problem.

[Rayn]

I'm trying to setup a MythTV user job to encode my recorded programs to xvid using mencoder (Too many problems with ffmpeg, even after a recompile from the latest CVS -- the divx files it produces have huge, random colored blocks all over the recording, no idea why)

It has been working nicely, but the file size of the output files is completely random and unpredictable. Sometimes an hour show is about 350 MB (well, 44 minutes minus the commercials) and sometimes it's 900 MB ... all using the same settings. It seems like the variable bit rate function is wildly unpredictable. I tried to set it up using a constant bit rate, but the command line it generates for mencoder is wrong (it adds the bitrate to the lameopts paramater instead of the xvidopts or whatever it is so the job crashes out) ..

Looking at the output of two files created by the job right now in windows explorer here's file one:
Duration: 00:48:51
Data Rate 302kbps
File size: 867 MB

and here's another encoded a few hours before:

Duration: 00:41:33
Data Rate: 116kbps
File Size: 283 MB

I'm happy with the quality of the second file, and there's no way I can archive 1 GB for a 45 minute video, that's just ridiculous. Is this due to the achieved bit rate fluctuating heavily for VBR? Is there a way I can fix it to make it closer to what I request (I'm looking for 1296). If not, is there a way to make nuvexportrc-xvid with using a CBR?
This is my xvid nuvexportrc set up:

<XviD>

    vbr          = yes   # Enable vbr to get the multipass/quantisation options
                         # (enabling multipass or quantisation automatically enables vbr)
    multipass    = yes   # You get either multipass or quantisation; multipass will override
    quantisation = 4   # 4 through 6 is probably right...  1..31 are allowed (lower is better quality)

    a_bitrate    = 144   # Audio bitrate of 256 kbps
    v_bitrate    = 1296   # Remember, quantisation overrides video bitrate

    width        = 512   # Height adjusts automatically to width, according to aspect ratio
    height       = auto

</XviD>

[jba6511]

did a fresh upgrade to gutsy and trying to sort this out again.

blake:/usr/local/bin$ nuvexport-xvid
Can't locate Date/Manip.pm in @INC (@INC contains: /usr/local/bin /usr/share/nuvexport /usr/local/share/nuvexport /etc/perl /usr/local/lib/perl/5.8.8 /usr/local/share/perl/5.8.8 /usr/lib/perl5 /usr/share/perl5 /usr/lib/perl/5.8 /usr/share/perl/5.8 /usr/local/lib/site_perl .) at /usr/local/share/nuvexport/mythtv/recordings.pm line 18.
BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at /usr/local/share/nuvexport/mythtv/recordings.pm line 18.
Compilation failed in require at /usr/local/share/nuvexport/nuv_export/ui.pm line 20.
BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at /usr/local/share/nuvexport/nuv_export/ui.pm line 20.
Compilation failed in require at /usr/local/bin/nuvexport-xvid line 38.
BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at /usr/local/bin/nuvexport-xvid line 38.

Cleaning up temp files. 

any ideas what needs to be done?


********SOLUTION***************
sudo apt-get install libdate-manip-perl

[rorzik]

was a solution ever found to this problem? I changed to schedules direct and now i get the following in the logs, similar to the previous poster:

OSPEED was not set, defaulting to 9600 at /usr/local/share/nuvexport/nuv_export/shared_utils.pm line 61
Can't find a valid termcap file at /usr/local/share/nuvexport/nuv_export/shared_utils.pm line 61
Compilation failed in require at /usr/local/bin/nuvexport-divx line 36.
BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at /usr/local/bin/nuvexport-divx line 36. 

I came up with a simple solution, which uses the shell command "clear" to replace the buggy Term::Cap module.

Just save the following patch to /usr/local/share/nuvexport/ as termcap.patch, then run:

patch -p0 <termcap.patch

After that, nuvexport (and mythexport) should run fine.

--- nuv_export.orig/shared_utils.pm     2007-12-17 01:39:41.000000000 -0800
+++ nuv_export/shared_utils.pm  2007-12-17 01:26:45.000000000 -0800
@@ -50,15 +50,16 @@
     }

 # Set up the terminal commands we need to send a clear-screen character
-    use Term::Cap;
-    my $OSPEED = 9600;
-    eval {
-        require POSIX;
-        my $termios = POSIX::Termios->new();
-        $termios->getattr;
-        $OSPEED = $termios->getospeed;
-    };
-    our $terminal = Term::Cap->Tgetent({OSPEED=>$OSPEED});
+ #    use Term::Cap;
+ #    my $OSPEED = 9600;
+ #    eval {
+ #        require POSIX;
+ #        my $termios = POSIX::Termios->new();
+ #        $termios->getattr;
+ #        $OSPEED = $termios->getospeed;
+ #    };
+ #    our $terminal = Term::Cap->Tgetent({OSPEED=>$OSPEED});
+    our $clearscreen = `clear`;

 # Gather info about how many cpu's this machine has
     if (-e '/proc/cpuinfo') {
@@ -99,7 +100,8 @@

 # Clear the screen
     sub clear {
-        print $DEBUG ? "\n" : $terminal->Tputs('cl');
+        print $DEBUG ? "\n" : $clearscreen;
+#        print $DEBUG ? "\n" : $terminal->Tputs('cl');
     }

 # Byte swap a 32-bit number from little-endian to big-endian

[jba6511]

tried the patch and it is still giving me errors. This is from running nuvexport manually:

Now encoding:  5 (Adding Channel 5):  Sun Dec 16 17:38:00 2007
Encode started:  Mon Dec 17 17:31:07 2007
2007-12-17 17:31:08.644 Using runtime prefix = /usr
2007-12-17 17:31:08.732 New DB connection, total: 1
2007-12-17 17:31:08.781 New DB connection, total: 2
Use of uninitialized value in concatenation (.) or string at /usr/local/share/nuvexport/export/ffmpeg.pm line 254, <STDIN> line 15.
Use of uninitialized value in concatenation (.) or string at /usr/local/share/nuvexport/export/ffmpeg.pm line 254, <STDIN> line 15.
Waiting for mythtranscode to set up the fifos.
Starting ffmpeg.
processed:  0 of 113 frames at 0 fps (~%, eta: unknown)  
ffmpeg finished.
processed:  0 of 1695 frames at 0 fps (~%, eta: unknown)  

ffmpeg died early.Please use the --debug option to figure out what went wrong. 

and from the logs:

2007-12-17 17:31:09.148 MainServer::HandleAnnounce Monitor
2007-12-17 17:31:09.159 adding: UbuntuDesktop as a client (events: 0)
2007-12-17 17:31:09.165 MainServer::HandleAnnounce Monitor
2007-12-17 17:31:09.168 adding: UbuntuDesktop as a client (events: 1) 

[jba6511]

this seems to have cleared up the issue running nuvexport as a user job but when running manually it still does not work. I do not really care now that it works for my purposes, but just curious as to why.

so my /etc/init.d/mythtv-backend now looks like:

DAEMON=/usr/bin/mythbackend
NAME="mythbackend"
DESC="MythTV server"
TERM=vt100
export TERM