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View Full Version : Treat Recorded Tv as a Special Case



steve109
10-04-2011, 06:11 AM
Hi

I am currently evaluating Mezzmo and I shall definitely be purchasing it! I had thought DLNA to be a rather useless feature of my Tv but not any more...

My primary interest in Mezzmo is for the viewing of Recorded TV from my media centre PC in a second room. The PC runs Windows 7 and thus records using Windows Media Center in wtv format. The TV is a Pansonic Viera 2011 model.

I woud like to suggest that you consider treating Recorded Tv as a special case separate from Video with different configuration options for the following reasons:

Recorded Tv is much more dynamic as recordings are added and deleted than say a relatively static music library. Also the number of files involved is likely to be small say < 100. Media PC are often set to only wake up to perform recordings and when needed for playback. I find the current library update schedule in Mezzmo a little limiting as it is at most once per day and if the PC is asleep doesn't actually run. It seems to me that Record Tv really needs a very much much more frequent directory scan looking for adds and deletes that is perhaps active the whole time that the PC is running.

Thumbnails. Well I was going to mention that on H264 video that the image is often just a grey swirl but I see that you have added a -ss 3 parameter to ffmpeg in the latest version that resolves this - so thanks! On a separate issue I normally set TV recordings to start a few minutes early as some channels do occasionally start early and clocks can drift out of synchronisation. Unfortunately this means that the thumbnails that I see are usually of the previous program. I would like to be able to set a thumbnail initial offset for recorded tv to match the PC recording start padding.

Recorded Tv meta data. I only know about Window Media Centre. The title delivered to the DLNA renderer is the file name and the date shown is I think the file system modified date (which is not necessarily the date of the recording if its been part played by media center and the position updated).

Copuld you consider parsing the names of Wtv files in oder to show the tite and recording date?
If the file name is 'The Drowning Pool_BBC ONE_2010_08_24_23_30_00.wtv'- then the data before the first underscore is the title whilst the date and time of the recording follow the channel.

Alternatively ffmpeg reports all the embedded meta data -e.g for the recording above there is a title and genre - see below.

Steve.



[mpeg2video @ 025dbb00] mpeg_decode_postinit() failure
Last message repeated 10 times
[wtv @ 002a8b00] parser not found for codec dvb_teletext, packets or times may be invalid.
Input #0, wtv, from 'C:\Users\steve\Record Tv from Pc\The Drowning Pool_BBC ONE_2010_08_24_23_30_00.wtv':
Metadata:
WM/MediaClassPrimaryID: db9830bd-3ab3-4fab-8a371a995f7ff74
WM/MediaClassSecondaryID: ba7f258a-62f7-47a9-b21f4651c42a000
Title : The Drowning Pool
WM/SubTitleDescription: Tense thriller. A private detective finds himself embroiled in sin and corruption when he is hired by his ex-lover to trace the source of a mysterious blackmail letter, accusing the woman of cheating on her wealthy husband. But as the private eye begins h
genre : Film;Crime
WM/OriginalReleaseTime: 1975
WM/MediaCredits : Paul Newman/Joanne Woodward/Anthony Franciosa/Murray Hamilton/Gail Strickland/Melanie Griffith/Linda Haynes/Richard Jaeckel/Paul Koslo/Joe Canutt;Stuart Rosenberg;;
service_provider: BBC ONE
service_name : BBC1 West
WM/MediaOriginalChannel: 1
WM/MediaOriginalChannelSubNumber: 0
WM/MediaOriginalBroadcastDateTime: 2002-07-20T23:00:00Z
WM/MediaOriginalRunTime: 71968205483
WM/MediaIsStereo: false
WM/MediaIsRepeat: true
WM/MediaIsLive : false
WM/MediaIsTape : false
WM/MediaIsDelay : false
WM/MediaIsSubtitled: false
WM/MediaIsMovie : true
WM/MediaIsPremiere: false
WM/MediaIsFinale: false
WM/MediaIsSAP : false
WM/MediaIsSport : false
WM/ParentalRating: ***
WM/Provider : MediaCenterDefault
WM/ProviderRating: ***
WM/VideoClosedCaptioning: false
WM/WMRVEncodeTime: 2010-08-24 22:30:03
WM/WMRVServiceID: !Generated!094fe6ee0bd94787ac5b15624763f397
WM/WMRVProgramID: !MCProgram!1696328
WM/WMRVRequestID: 0
WM/WMRVScheduleItemID: 0
WM/WMRVQuality : 3
WM/WMRVOriginalSoftPrePadding: 600
WM/WMRVOriginalSoftPostPadding: 600
WM/WMRVHardPrePadding: -300
WM/WMRVHardPostPadding: 0
WM/WMRVATSCContent: false
WM/WMRVDTVContent: true
WM/WMRVHDContent: false
WM/MediaThumbType: 3
Duration : 73496716366
WM/WMRVEndTime : 2010-08-25 00:32:32
WM/WMRVBitrate : 3.848659
WM/WMRVKeepUntil: -1
WM/WMRVActualSoftPrePadding: 1011
WM/WMRVActualSoftPostPadding: 600
WM/WMRVContentProtected: false
WM/WMRVContentProtectedPercent: 0
WM/WMRVExpirationSpan: 9223372036854775807
WM/WMRVInBandRatingSystem: 255
WM/WMRVInBandRatingLevel: 255
WM/WMRVInBandRatingAttributes: 0
WM/WMRVWatched : true
PRIVATE/VideoWidth: 1024
PRIVATE/VideoHeight: 576
PRIVATE/dwAspectRatioX: 1
PRIVATE/dwAspectRatioY: 1
Duration: 02:02:30.01, start: 2.106589, bitrate: 3848 kb/s
Stream #0:0[0x67](eng): Subtitle: dvb_subtitle
Stream #0:1[0x68](nar): Audio: mp2 (P[0][0][0] / 0x0050), 48000 Hz, stereo, s16, 256 kb/s (visual impaired)
Stream #0:2[0x69](eng): Audio: mp2 (P[0][0][0] / 0x0050), 48000 Hz, stereo, s16, 256 kb/s
Stream #0:3[0x6a](eng): Subtitle: dvb_teletext
Stream #0:4[0x6b]: Video: mpeg2video (Main), yuv420p, 720x576 [SAR 64:45 DAR 16:9], 15000 kb/s, 47.73 fps, 25 tbr, 10000k tbn, 50 tbc
Stream #0:5[0x0]: Attachment: mjpeg
Metadata:
title : TV Thumbnail
At least one output file must be specified


---> DB Level Info: 8, 4
---> Frame rate: 47.73
---> Aspect ratio: 16:9

Paul
10-04-2011, 08:33 AM
Hi Steve,

Thank you for the suggestion. We actually already have plans to expand on the metadata we store/use, so once that's all implemented (and we'll process FFmpeg's metadata as well), then you'll be able to sort these out using all the new keywords in playlists.

steve109
10-04-2011, 04:09 PM
Hi Dennis

Thanks for replying - that sounds good.

Steve

Dillster
10-05-2011, 05:59 AM
Steve,

I also use WMC to record TV - may I suggest using something like MC-TV Converter (http://mctvconverter.vivolum.net/content/site/en/support/index.html)

It can modify filenames as it converts the WTV to other media formats.

I've been using this kind of set up to convert and re-organize my WTV recordings for Mezzmo.