Lightning Talk:
Save Time and Storage by
Removing Commercials from TV Recordings
JD P
http://blog.jdpfu.com - jdp [at] algoloma . c o m
https://identi.ca/thefu
Time and Storage? Really?
- 20 min of commercials in every 60 min show
- 8.1G of storage for 1 hr of 1080i HiDef recording
- 5.3G after commercials are removed
- 1.1G after transcoding to h.264 720p
Over 50% Less Storage
Steps Involved
- Record the TV show
- Convert to mpeg2, if necessary
- Mark Cut Points
- Validate location and Cut the commercials
- Dump Closed Captioning files, if desired
- Transcode into h.264 video and a compatible container adding CC files
My Tools
- Windows7 Media Center
- SiliconDust HD-Homerun network TV Tuner
- VideoRedo Plus TV Suite ( commercial-Windows only )
- HandbrakeCLI - ffmpeg-based - apt-get
- ccextractor - Closed Captions
- Strawberry Perl on Windows AND Perl Linux
- Comskip.exe (sometimes) - works under WINE
- Bash on Linux
- TeraCopy
- mkvmerge - apt-get
- Mencoder - apt-get mplayer
Inputs and Outputs
- Input: mpeg2 recording from 7MC - file.wtv
- Output: h.264 file with all commercials removed which includes multiple audio tracks and multiple closed captioning streams file.mkv
*The files move from
- Win7 VM -- WTV -->
- Win7 Laptop -- MPG -->
- Linux Server -- MKV.
during processing.
Record the TV show
- Automatic (1-2 hrs)
- Use whatever hardware and software you like
- MythTV
- Video4Linux
- TiVo
- MS-Windows7 Media Center
Output: a file for each recorded show - .MPG or .WTV
Convert to mpeg2
- Automatic (5-10 min for HiDef)
- Mpeg2 is the easiest format to edit
- Recorded files are usually mpeg2 with different containers
- Mpeg4/h.264 files cannot be edited to frame accuracy with non-professional tools
Output: .MPG file w/ commercials
Mark Cut Points - VideoReDo
- Automatic (5-30 min)
- Find likely cut locations
- Need a cut file format EDL, vprj, or some others.
- The perl command looks like this:
"cscript //nologo \"C:\\Program Files (x86)\\VideoReDoTVSuite4\\AdScan.vbs\" \"$in_wtv\" \"$out_vprj\" /q"; - run this command on all .WTV files to generate .vprj "cut" files for each
Output: Cut points in .EDL or .vPrj file
Validate Cut Locations
- Manual Step (30-120 sec)
- About 90% accurate
- No commercial locating tools are perfect
- Manual cut location tweaking is almost always needed in every file
- VideoRedo Plus works best with mpeg2 files
- Save requires 2-20 min
Output: Commercial Free .MPG file
Validate Cut Locations
Dump Closed Captioning files, if desired
- Automatic (1-2 min per file)
- Use ccextractor to dump any closed caption files.
- To dump CC1 and CC3: -12 -cc1 --nofontcolor -utf8
- Result is 2 .srt files being created. If zero length, no captions.
- {file}.1.srt and {file}.2.srt
Output: Closed Caption File(s) .SRT (about 76K)
Transcode into h.264 video and a compatible container adding CC files
- Automatic (15-120 min)
- Many ways to transcode video files.
- handbrakeCLI Constant Quality the easiest way.
- Build the command:
- HB_ADV="cabac=0:8×8dct=0:psy-rd=2|0:bframes=0:me=umh"
- QUALITY=19.5; Y=720
- HB_OPTS="-e x264 -O -r 59.94 --pfr -f mp4 -x $HB_ADV -Y $Y --loose-anamorphic -m -q $QUALITY
- nice -n 20 $HB_CMD $HB_OPTS --srt-codeset UTF8 --srt-file "$SRTOUT1,$SRTOUT2" -i "$IN_MPG" -o "$OUT_MP4"
- mkvmerge creates .MKV file.
Output: Single .MKV file w/audio, video, and multiple captions
Batch Queuing Jobs
Task Spooler - 'nuff said.
$ ts -h
Learn more:
References:
- blog.jdpfu.com/2011/10/23/controlling-filenames-in-windows7-media-center-recorded-tv
- blog.jdpfu.com/2010/04/02/automatic-quickstream-fix-processing-for-videoredo-plus
- blog.jdpfu.com/2010/03/11/mce-buddy-rocks
- blog.jdpfu.com/2012/06/06/cc3-closed-captions-solved-i-feel-dumb
- blog.jdpfu.com/2011/10/20/commercial-removal-from-wtv-recordings
- blog.jdpfu.com/2010/11/02/mkv-containers-why-use-them-scripts