[mythtv-users] mythtranscode in V31

[James Abernathy]

> On Apr 4, 2020, at 2:09 PM, Jonatan Lindblad <lindbladjonatan at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Den 2020-04-04 kl. 19:07, skrev James Abernathy:
>> 
>>> On Apr 4, 2020, at 12:14 PM, James Abernathy <jfabernathy at gmail.com <mailto:jfabernathy at gmail.com>> wrote:
>>> 
>>> I wanted to test transcoding on v31 on the RPi4 but first I need to better understand how to properly use it on v31 on my production backend which is a Core i7 PC so no performance issues. Source is OTA MPEG2 programs from HDHR.
>>> 
>>> 1.  The concept is to have a recording that is automatically flagged for commercials. 
>>> 2,  Then after the Commflagging is done use Mythfrontend to manually edit the cutlist to be correct for all commercials and save it.
>>> 3.  Use the builtin Job Option -> Begin Transcoding -> [Default | Autodetect | High Quality | Medium Quality | Low Quality] I used Autodetect for my test.
>>> 
>>> While this works, the transcoded program is really messed up.  What I want is lossless MPEG2 (.ts). I envision a simple copy function where the source is copied to a .tmp file dropping the commercials but no compression. So the file would be smaller and the quality the same. No changing of interlacing.
>>> 
>>> I’m not doing this right. So any help would be appreciated.
>>> 
>>> Jim A
>>>   
>> In an effort to get more data, I tried mythtranscode from the command line and was even less successful there.  Console log with error below:
>> jim at mythbuntu:~$ mythtranscode --infile /mnt/md0/recorded-tv1/11701_20190529020000.ts --mpeg2 --honorcutlist -o /home/jim/Videos
> 
> Did you read the help? It says:
> 
> -o OR --outfile             Optional output file for transcoding.
> 
> 
> /home/jim/Videos looks like a directory.
> 
> Cheers
> Jonatan

Well that was a stupid mistake on my part. Thanks for catching it. However, my test did bring up a few questions:

My default recording rule doesn’t have commercial flagging set to run.  So I manually ran it using the menu in mythfrontend -> Media Library -> Watch Recordings. I selected the recording and under job options I chose Begin Commercial Detection.  Once that completed I exited mythfrontend and ran the mythtranscode command:
 mythtranscode --infile /mnt/md0/recorded-tv1/11701_20190529020000.ts --mpeg2 --honorcutlist -o /home/jim/Videos/test2.ts

The first time I ran it correctly, it produced a file with the same length in time as the original, 60 minutes.

Then I went into mythfrontend and started playing the program in questions and hit ‘e’, ‘m’ and loaded the detected commercials. Saved the cut list on exit. Now I ran the same mythtranscode command above from the console and it produced  a file 15 minutes shorter.

I guess a detected commercial list is different from a cut list????

Jim A