[mythtv-users] Mythtranscode TRASHES file to 123KB when re-encoding with cut list

[Jeffrey J. Kosowsky]

Jeffrey J. Kosowsky wrote at about 16:13:00 -0400 on Monday, May 23, 2011:
 > I automatically run mythtranscode on all my new recordings (all are
 > originally OTA mpeg2 in HD or SD) to convert them to mpeg4.
 > 
 > Then after watching them, I manually create a cut list to eliminate
 > commercials and other unwanted stuff. Then I re-run mythtranscode
 > manually from within mythfrontend.
 > 
 > This always worked until just now when I notice that a 725MB file was
 > reduced to about 123KB (when I was just cutting about 5%). I tried
 > again just to make sure I hadn't mistakenly cut the whole file and the
 > same thing happened again.
 > 
 > I am running myth-0.24 fixes.
 > The only "new" thing is that I recently updated to include the
 > backported fix for the mythtranscode 6-channel audio problem though I
 > wouldn't think this would effect my problem (and the channel I am
 > dealing with is not 6-channels since it transcoded fine the first time
 > before the fix).
 > 
 > The only potentially unusual lines in the log are:
 > 1] "Found video height of 1088.  This is unusual and more than likely
 >    the video is actually 1080 so mythtranscode will treat it as such."
 > 
 > 2] "SampleRate: Attempted to add a rate 32000 Hz, which is not in the
 >    list of allowed rates." 
 > However, both of these messages have occurred before and never were an
 > issue (actually #2 always occurs)

OK... I did some more troubleshooting.

1. If there is no cutlist, then the transcoding works just fine (as it
   always did)

2. If there is a cutlist (whether generated manually or
   automatically), then mythtranscode terminates after a few seconds
   and gives a severely truncated (~123KB) file.

3. The same behavior occurs whether I run mythtranscode via the
   mythfrontend interface or directly from the CLI.

Specifically, running:

#mythtranscode --chanid 1021 --starttime 20101120163000 --outfile 1021_20101120163000.nuv-OUT2 --honorcutlist --profile 3

(where profile 3 = High Quality mpeg4/mp3)
Gives the following output:
	  2011-05-23 21:52:57.355 Using runtime prefix = /usr
	  2011-05-23 21:52:57.355 Using configuration directory = /home/user1/.mythtv
	  2011-05-23 21:52:57.372 Empty LocalHostName.
	  2011-05-23 21:52:57.426 New DB connection, total: 1
	  2011-05-23 21:52:57.447 Closing DB connection named 'DBManager0'
	  2011-05-23 21:52:57.495 Enabled verbose msgs: important
	  2011-05-23 21:52:57.787 Found video height of 1088.  This is unusual
	  and more than likely the video is actually 1080 so mythtranscode will
	  treat it as such.
	  2011-05-23 21:52:57.788 New DB connection, total: 2
	  2011-05-23 21:52:57.816 New DB connection, total: 3
	  2011-05-23 21:52:57.849 Using protocol version 63
	  Error in my_thread_global_end(): 1 threads didn't exit

Note that the last error line is a MySQL error that at least in other
past reported mythtv contexts may be benign... so I'm not sure that is
the root cause of the problem here.

The full verbose output from adding '-v all' is too long to post so I
have posted it to pastebin.com:
	 http://pastebin.com/5F9qPR3i

This seems to be a pretty severe bug in that it totally destroys
recordings without any warning...