[ale] OT converting old videos, cataloging dvds, storing forever

JD jdp at algoloma.com
Mon Oct 15 16:45:38 EDT 2012


> I also wanted to share a great way to track and catalog DVD's that 
> you've purchased.  It's an android app called MyMovies (free - limited 
> to 50 titles) and MyMovies Pro ($6 - unlimited).  It's ultra cool.  Just 

Hopefully, someone else has found a fantastic Linux video editor and will be
able to let us all know about it.



Previously I used a F/LOSS web server + back-end DB to catalog DVDs and
recordings.  Over time, that became too much effort and I didn't like that the
program forced me to a specific DB and the export was only to HTML files.  Tried
a Java desktop client too, but it was toooo damn slow.  It didn't play nice on
my network.

Ended up using the time-proven 'ls -Rl' technique with numbered DVDs.  With a
large number of data DVDs holding TV recordings in xvid/avi or h.264/mkv, a
quick 'egrep -i' searches by title for the specific numbered disk containing the
recorded show/movie.  As a CLI person, the most-used desktops all have a script
that will ssh over to the main box with all the dvd-0xyz.txt files and perform
the query.  For more information, XBMC has the catalog with actors, directors,
year, genre, title,  etc ....  grep is just so useful and text is so easy to
search.

I love that the grep clearly returns the numbered data DVD I need to load.

As to converting VHS to MPEG or XVID or h.264, almost any $20 USB TV adapter can
record SD content to MPEG2.  Just pick from a MythTV compatible device to be
happiest long term.  If you want to record OTA HD content, I'd suggest more
effort for the selected hardware.  I love the HD-Homerun network tuners. Those
work well with OTA except 1 channel that doesn't come in at my house. It is
hardly a major issue, since 69 other channels do come in OTA from Marietta.

For finding commercials and editing them out, I searched for Linux-based
solutions for years and finally gave up. Comskip does run nice under WINE, I've
never found a Linux-based editor that will accept the comskip created cut files
(there's like 6 different formats that comskip will create) as the starting
point for where to cut commercials.  Comskip is about 90% accurate.  Comskip can
output cut marker files that XBMC and mplayer will honor without altering the
source video file. That can be handy when you just want to skip commercials, but
not waste time actually modifying the file contents.

Instead of fighting it, I bought - yes, purchased a Windows tool called
VideoRedo TV Suite.  It appears to use comskip code internally to create cut
markers.  There's a point where $50 is worth it to me.  That $50 program has
been heavily automated here to generate the cut marker files overnight. It takes
about 45 seconds of human effort to confirm the cut locations and request the
modified file be saved.  If you are willing to live with 90% accurate cuts, it
could all be automated.  Networks have changed up the markers commonly searched
by VRDP and comskip to trick them into keeping commercials and removing some of
the desired content.  Older stations with less money like RTV are almost 100%
accurate with cut locations.

At this point, my systems are almost automatic with just a few manual
"confirmation" places.  WTV --> MPEG2 --> h.264/mkv with CC1 and CC3 closed
captions included.  If there are multiple audio channels in the stream, that can
require special processing, but that usually happens with a few PBS programs
with audio tracks for the deaf or background-only audio.

I've blogged about almost all of these solutions over the years. The most recent
articles are about building your own DB4 antenna for $20 or so that actually
beat some Antennas Direct models.


And just to be clear, I also wimped out and use Windows7 to record TV. It is
just so easy to setup with free schedule data. That OS runs inside a virtual
machine under KVM and has been doing it nicely for over a year.  THAT was not an
easy thing to accomplish to get satisfactory results. Microsoft did (does?) some
things trying to protect Joe-end-user from doing foolish things, like blocking
recording directly to NAS storage.

I suspect there are hundreds of years of knowledge lurking related to this problem.


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