[mythtv-users] Deleting commercials and transcoding

[Nick Kaijaks]

> Marking commercials and marking cutpoints are two different 
> things.  You turn on commcercial flagging in the setup
> section of the frontend.
> 
> The "m" key lets you mark cut points (sections to be skipped 
> over during playback / transcode). You can load your
> automagicly marked commercials as cutpoints, tweak them and
> what not.  Pressing the space bar while in this edit mode
> allows you to mark a point as a cut point. You block out 
> sections by creating high/low water marks of "Delete after 
> this frame" / "delete before this frame" cutpoints.

Hi,

This looks really cool, but I've only just tried it out last night. Is
it just my setup, or are there some weird UI things?

When I set or delete cutpoints, it doesn't always mark them correctly in
the coloured timeline at the bottom of the screen. Sometimes I have to
hit escape and then E again to go back in before I see the cuts
correctly.

Also, it doesn't automatically remove the translucent overlay after
choosing an option from the cutpoint menu. I have to hit escape to go
back to playback.

Finally, there's something odd about leaving edit mode - if I hit escape
to return to playback, then my left and right keys no longer skip by my
default 30 seconds, nor by the edit mode setting (which might be
anything from 1 frame up), but instead skips straight to the nearest
cutpoint!

> If you press "X" during playback it will mark the file to be 
> transcodeded to MPEG4 (in your case).  Anything marked with 
> the cutlist will be removed from the transcoded file.

My last entertainment with this is that it doesn't seem to transcode yet
- mythbackend.log shows:

2004-02-05 21:48:33 Transcoding from
/home/fileshare/video/5026_20040203215900_20040203230000.nuv to
/home/fileshare/video/5026_20040203215900_20040203230000.nuv.tmp
Input #0, mpeg, from
'/home/fileshare/video/5026_20040203215900_20040203230000.nuv':
  Stream #0.0: Video: mpeg2video, 720x576, 25.00 fps
  Stream #0.1: Audio: mp2, 48000 Hz, stereo, 384 kb/s
Unknown video codec: strange error flushing buffer ... 

after getting 1.4% through the transcode.

I guess this feature is one of the areas where the docs are a bit thin
at the moment...

Best,
Nick