[mythtv-users] Problem(s) transcoding with cutlist on MythTV 0.27

[faginbagin]

On 5/19/2020 3:48 PM, Craig Huff wrote:
> First, I _know_ I need to update to the latest MythTV, and I really should have already moved on from Ubuntu 14.04.6, but I've been busy and what ain't broke don't get fixed.
> 
> I have only now been interested in converting an off-the-air recording by removing the cutlist and putting it onto a DVD.  I made all the cuts at keyframes.  When I tried running mythtranscode manually with:
> mythtranscode --chanid 1265 --starttime 20200518025900 -m --honorcutlist -o \ ~/vid/test.mpg
> I got an empty test.mpg file and a _lot_ of "Warning: partial frame found!" messages followed by:
> No more queue slots!
> Transcoding /video1/recordings/1265_20200518025900.mpg failed
> 
> Looking at various pages in the MythTV wiki pointed to possible alternatives, but they seem to depend on other programs that no longer exist or at least aren't available from the package managers.
> 
> The video in question has five internal cuts to be made, along with trimming off the beginning and the end, so there are a manageable number of cutpoints to enter manually if I knew how to get the right data and what to do with it.
> 
> Any suggestion on how to get this done that won't involve reinstalling a newer version of MythTV and/or upgrading from the last great Mythbuntu distro would be welcome.
> 
> --
> Craig.

I used to use mythtranscode (via mythburn.py) all the time to copy recordings to DVDs when I was on 14.04 and 0.27. The command line was essentially the same as what you are using, for example:
mythtranscode --mpeg2 --honorcutlist --chanid 2200 --starttime '2015-04-15 01:00:00' --outfile /video/test/newfile.mpg
In fact, I just ran it on my 18.04 v29 system, and it worked just fine.

One thought, when I was copying to DVD, I always made sure the cut points were at key frames. Maybe that's your problem? If so, you can go back into the cutlist editor and fix that. See:
https://www.mythtv.org/wiki/Editing_Recordings
to find out how to navigate to key frames.

The other possibility is that the recording is not MPEG2 (assumed by the -m/--mpeg2 option of mythtranscode). In that case, you will have to use something other than mythtranscode to cut commercials. You can use the mythffprobe command, which is installed by mythtv-common package, to find out what video codec is in a given recording, e.g.:
mythffprobe /video1/recordings/1265_20200518025900.mpg

Here's what mythffprobe v29 reports for the file I used on mythtranscode:
ffprobe version 3.2 Copyright (c) 2007-2016 the FFmpeg developers
  built with gcc 7 (Ubuntu 7.4.0-1ubuntu1~18.04.1)
  configuration: --compile-type=profile --prefix=/usr --runprefix=/usr --disable-mythlogserver --enable-crystalhd --enable-lirc --enable-audio-alsa --enable-audio-oss --enable-dvb --enable-ivtv --enable-firewire --enable-joystick-menu --with-bindings=perl --enable-ffmpeg-pthreads --enable-pic --perl-config-opts='INSTALLDIRS=vendor' --enable-libvpx --enable-sdl --enable-libmp3lame --enable-libx264 --enable-vdpau --enable-opengl-video --enable-vaapi
  libavutil      55. 34.100 / 55. 34.100
  libavcodec     57. 64.100 / 57. 64.100
  libavformat    57. 56.100 / 57. 56.100
  libavdevice    57.  1.100 / 57.  1.100
  libavfilter     6. 65.100 /  6. 65.100
  libswscale      4.  2.100 /  4.  2.100
  libswresample   2.  3.100 /  2.  3.100
  libpostproc    54.  1.100 / 54.  1.100
[mpegts @ 0x55d62659f2c0] PES packet size mismatch
Input #0, mpegts, from '2200_20150415010000.mpg':
  Duration: 00:59:58.40, start: 93985.453344, bitrate: 11931 kb/s
    Stream #0:0[0x1bb1]: Video: mpeg2video (Main), yuv420p(tv, progressive), 1280x720 [SAR 1:1 DAR 16:9], 59.94 fps, 59.94 tbr, 90k tbn, 119.88 tbc
    Stream #0:1[0x1bb2](eng): Audio: ac3 (AC-3 / 0x332D4341), 48000 Hz, 5.1(side), fltp, 384 kb/s
    Stream #0:2[0x1bb3](spa): Audio: ac3 (AC-3 / 0x332D4341), 48000 Hz, stereo, fltp, 128 kb/s

The 0.27 of mythffprobe should produce something similar.