Automatically cut commercials! Cutads script posted here.

[Cayars]

Here another site with win32 binarier. You can download just the mencoder.

I found a binary copy at the following website http://armory.nicewarrior.org/projects/cygmp/

You can find download link down towards the bottom of the page. Now off to try it. I suspect however that it won't like the headers very much in the mpg files the way SS writes them.

Carlo

[zealot]

mencoder handles the mpeg2 files SS creates just fine. I use it now to re-encode the recordings to Xvid format.

For those interested, here is the script I wrote to do my mencoder encoding on Linux. It brings a 2 gb/hour file down to about 400mb without any perceptible loss of quality (atleast to me :))

#!/bin/bash
BITRATE=750
MOTIONEST=6
VHQ=4
QUANTIZER=h263
CARTOON=1
TWOPASS=1
RAND="$(dd if=/dev/urandom bs=1 count=8 2>/dev/null | od -An -tx8 | tr -d ' ')"
TMPDIR="mpg2avi.tmp${RAND}"

if [ -z "$@" ]; then
   echo "$0 <filename>"
   exit 1
elif [ ! -f "$1" ]; then
   echo "Doesn't exist: $1 - check the file name"
   exit 1
fi

ENCOPTS="bitrate=${BITRATE}:me_quality=${MOTIONEST}:vhq=${VHQ}:quant_type=${QUANTIZER}:cartoon=${CARTOON}"

ARGS="-ovc xvid -vf scale=640:480 -sws 2"


if [ $TWOPASS -eq 1 ]; then
   mencoder ${ARGS} -xvidencopts ${ENCOPTS}:pass=1 -oac copy "$1" -o /dev/null && mencoder ${ARGS} -xvidencopts ${ENCOPTS}:pass=2 -oac copy "$1" -o "${1/.mpg/.avi}" && rm -f xvid-twopass.stats
else
   mencoder ${ARGS} -xvidencopts ${ENCOPTS} -oac copy "$1" -o "${1/.mpg/.avi}"
fi

[zealot]

In file format

[impeyr]

Great. It least mencoder works on Windows.

Of course, you can use SmartSqueeze to transcode to other formats. The real question is can mencoder cut commercials without introducing any problems (ie, audio is out of sync from the video). I am not worried about keeping the TV guide data associated with the recording, since I use my PRISMIQ box to play the BTV recorded file. All I see is the name of the MPEG file. This is why I need the cutting tool, the cut list generated by SmartChapters is useless to me on the PRISMIQ box.

I will try tonight. Not sure if I can reminder enough Perl to write the script to extract the cut times from the XML formated SmartChapters file. But I will try!

[BenH]

I had the whole mplayer to work. Mmencoder could be a nice command mpeg2 cutter. Did any one test it ?

PS , the other mpeg2 cutter "mpgtx" worked ok to me in under 2 gig files . I did not test Mmencoder .

This thread got burried. I used search for mplayer to find it.

[Soundman]

Not sure if I can reminder enough Perl to write the script to extract the cut times from the XML formated SmartChapters file. But I will try!

impeyr,

The script I posted at the beginning of this thread parses the XML files and translates that into an asfcut command line. You can just modify that code for mencoder.

Soundman

[Cayars]

Originally posted by BenH
I had the whole mplayer to work. Mmencoder could be a nice command mpeg2 cutter. Did any one test it ?

PS , the other mpeg2 cutter "mpgtx" worked ok to me in under 2 gig files . I did not test Mmencoder .

This thread got burried. I used search for mplayer to find it.

mpgtx is what I've been using.

[Soundman]

Hi, All.

I have posted Version 2 of Cutads in this new thread:
http://discuss2.snapstream.com/vb/sh...threadid=12421

In addition to alot of cleanup, it can now copy the program description & other attributes by POSTing to Beyond TV's web server.

I have not yet added MPEG-2 support via mencoder, but I hope to do so later. If someone else wants to contribute this, please feel free.

Enjoy!
Soundman

[davebootsma]

I ended up with all my ads still in the tmp file First line of output after my command line was
Use of uninitialized value $_ in pattern match (m//) at cutads.pl line 123

My command line was perl cutads.pl -i "Alfred.wmv"

Initially had problems with longfilenames even when using quotes so simply renamed both the wmv file and it xml counterpart. Output file was smaller but had all the ads tested on a half hour alfred hitchcock just for a quick test