I'd like to convert my vhs tapes to something more convenient (and
smaller!).

I tried using mythtv to do it. I setup a second video source
on channel 1 that switches to the composite input. There's no simple
way to start a recording using that setup. If I start a recording it records
the remainder of an hour or some other non useful amount of time.

Next I tried recording them with another pc. That works fine but
I haven't found a good video editor to cut out the commercials.
tmpgenc edits but the audio is out of sync.

Any suggestions for using myth, or a separate video editing solution?

I'm trying to do a similar thing, but using "Live TV" to record the dummy Video channel. The problem here is that it splits the recording into half hour parts with the programme name "Unknown".

You should be able to edit out the commercials using the built in "Edit Recording" functionality, unfortunately in the stock KM R5D1 the "Lossless" transcoding does not appear to work.

Bruce S.

_________________
Updated 2019/10/26: AthlonII X2 265 Gigabyte GA-970A-DS3P
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Hauppauage Nova-T 500, Nova-T LinHes R8.6.1

I used this thread http://mysettopbox.tv/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=36675
(3rd post down by MJL) for setting up the Video input as a source on my PVR-150.

1. I go into Manual Record and setup a recording starting in minute or 2, and estimate however long the recording is on Video Input channel, over estimate a little bit not to cut off the recording.

2. I then goto Live TV on Video Input and wait for recording to start. (Myth frontend will pop up a message saying about to record on video input), then push play on my VCR.

3. I then edit the finished recording though frontend fixing the beginning and end "over recording" caused by my estimates.


4. I add any cutpoints in the center if necessary.

5. Finally in job options I do a lossless transcode. However I am using R5B7 on my production box, I recall reading as uzik mentioned that lossless transcoding does not work on R5D1.

Another way to do this would be move the MPEG2 files you created somewhere else to /myth/tv and run myth.rebuilddatabase.pl to import the new recordings into the recording DB. Do some research on this, I recall have to get latest version of myth.rebuilddatabase.pl for it to work though.

Thanks, I'll give the manual recording a shot.
I'm also trying out a program called 'comskip' but so far it hates
mpg's created by my ATI all in wonder card.

Hi,

Might try Ubuntu 6.10 Edgy + LiVE, install is real simple follow sourceforge for the home. Haven't had a chance edit with it yet however looks very promising.

If you use a seperate tv / monitor on the vcr (for real time) to "que" to the beginning then pause, as soon as you go into the record mode simply press play.

If you estimate too long for a recording, and you watch the recording you could stop it when it hits the end. Esc out of the show and a right arrow on that show should open a menu with stop recording option. Note it only appears when recording

Mike

Well, I got the recordings to work fine, and I put in my cut list for
the commercials. Then I find out transcode really does not work
for R5D1. Nuvexport fails with a division by zero error. Anyone
know how to export the cutlist so I can try mencoder? I tried
updating to mythtv 0.20 as suggested but that does not fix the
problem. I get an 'error 247' when trying a transcode job now.
There's no man pages on it so I guess it's off to google for help.

mythtranscode doesn't always seem to fail. With the new version
they've screwed up the priority so when it runs the box grinds to
a halt. This is the same hardware that 0.19 ran on just fine.
The 'upgrade to the latest untested set of bugs' mentality is really
getting old.

@uzik. What goal is your final output?

Take a look at this howto & accompanying thread on converting to XviD, it uses nuvexport and transcode engine to convert the recordings. I just recently modified the HOWTO heavily to account for ffmpeg issues introduced in R5D1. Poking around some of the key parameters in the script for format may help you in getting the recording in a more suitable format.
http://www.knoppmythwiki.org/index.php? ... iDEncoding

The KM developers are aware of the issues related to lossless transcoding and are working tirelessly to get it ironed out in the next release along with moving from .19 to .20. The .20 update is a big undertaking in itself. Just stick with it.

Thanks! I'll give that a look. Sorry, it's been a frustrating and long
week for me.

My final goal was anything VLC would play. It would be nice to be
able to cut the commericals too.

I tried out what I later found was probably a sister, or ancestor, of
myth's commercial cutting code called 'comskip'. The windows version
throws an exception and quits on anything recorded from my ATI video
card (either mpeg1 or mpeg2). The author seemed interested in
looking at it so I uploaded him a sample to play with. His code uses
a half dozen methods for detecting commercials. It's interesting but
disappointing it didn't work.

I see the mythburn python script gets cutlists from the database.
I may try and write something to export the cutlist to edl and use
mencoder while they're working on it.

Take care.

Is it just me or does anyone else have problems
with the "just upgrade to the latest version" suggestions?

You have to look at the directions closer. With R5D1 ffmpeg is NOT used, transcode is used. So no need to compile ffmpeg under R5D1. Use --transcode instead.



my $nuvoptions ="—transcode --mode=XviD --nice=19 --cutlist --nodenoise --nodeinterlace --crop –multipass --force-aspect=1.33";

I'm sorry, you lost me there. It's been a while since I looked at this.
Are you saying you edited mythtv to use transcode instead of ffmpeg?

I got disgusted with it and wrote a script of my own to extract the
cutlist and transcode. I used mencoder and it seems to be working
fairly well.

http://www.reddawn.net/~jsprenkl/mythtv/

Is memcoder already loaded in Knoppmyth R5D1 or do you have to install it yourself? Do you have to compile source or is there an apt-get package for it?

Eric

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It's already compiled and installed with the default installation.
The video player they use in the 'watch videos' section uses
mplayer. mencoder is part of the mplayer package
so you get it, and all the codecs, already installed.

The XviD conversion howto on the WIKI uses nuvexport at it's core to convert recordings to other formats.

Nuvexport in turn can use 3 encoding engines either

ffmpeg - http://ffmpeg.mplayerhq.hu/

transcode - http://www.transcoding.org/cgi-bin/transcode

mencoder - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MEncoder

With R5C7 a recompile of ffmpeg was needed and everything worked (but XviD files were not 100% compatible). With R5D1 the recompile of ffmpeg didn't work becuase of diffrent version of ffmpeg on R5D1. So I tried to update the WIKI to reflect using the transcode engine rather than ffmpeg.

nuvexport is really a nice project within MythTV
http://mythtv.org/wiki/index.php/Nuvexport

I got your x.264 script but have not given it a shot yet.