[mythtv-users] Anyone record Comet network OTA?

[George Bingham]

Hello everyone,

   I am dealing with some weirdness that I bet others may have seen and
figured out before....

   One of the multiplexes here in Kansas City shows the "Comet" network -
and it is mostly old sci-fi movies and some shows. One of them is Stargate
Atlantis which I enjoy.

    When I first started getting that network in my area, it showed
Stargate SG1, which I also enjoy and so I set them to record, and found
that the commercial detection didn't work very well and that when I would
go into edit mode it would be difficult to find good cut points because
there were a lot of "blank" frames in the recordings. And when I would find
a good cut point and then watch the edited version, the cuts would be off,
like 30 seconds into the commercial, and then resume 30 seconds after the
ending cut point.

     So I gave up running commercial detection on that channel by calling
it "commercial free" in the channel editor and would just skip through the
commercials as I watched. That was weird ttoo, because I'd hit the forward
key when the commercial started, and then go back ~30 or 40 seconds before
the beginning of the commercial....

     Anyway, I finally figured out that if I "fix the seek table" on a
recording, that I could manually run a commercial edit and it would work
fine. That solved much of my problems with that channel. But then I decided
it would be nice to try to save an episode or two and that's where I am
having problems again.

    I can make a flawless recording, and then do the initial lossless
transcode to get the commercials edited out, but after that there is a lot
of pixelation in the resulting file that wasn't there in the original.

    I think what might be causing the problem is that possibly because
they've taken a 4:3 original show, reformatted it to fill a 16:9 hd screen
- without distorting the image, and also maybe because the show has been
formatted for streaming (the network is also streamed by their website and
things like roku boxes) there are some "blank" frames in there that mess up
even a lossless transcode.

    Has anyone else run into this and figured out a way to get a decent
transcoded video? Since the pixellation is introduced in the "lossless"
mythtranscode step that honors the cutlist, any filters for ffmpeg won't
work - I don't think.

    I routinely transcode and save other shows from other networks and I
have not run into this before, both HD content and SD. This network is new
and maybe they do things differently.

    I am just using the default lossless mythtranscode command to get rid
of commercials and I am seeing the problems. Are there other options for
transcoding from a mythtv recording that honors the cutlist that I can try?

    If anyone is curious about seeing what I am running into - I can supply
copies of the recordings before and after the transcode to remove
commercials if that would help.

Thanks for any insight or experience that you can share with me.


-- George
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