Zitat von ck.

When I am in the movie-list, cursor on a film, pressing menu-button, I get a recording-menu, showing options like delete, sort movies alphabetically, standard list... nothing with cutting.

Yes, that is the right menu. But there should be an alternative "Cutlist editor" right after "delete", and if you have installed MovieCut correctly, there should be a "Execute cuts" in the same menu too. I do not know why they aren't there. It was a while since I installed my dreambox now, but I believe the "Cutlist editor" was there from the start. Check anuway in the plugins manager (Main menu -> Plugins -> Manage Extensions -> Recordings) that both the "Cutlist editor" and "MovieCut" is marked as installed. I am not certain whether it is necessary, but to make sure you can restart the GUI, to make all installed packages take effect.

(By the way, what is NewNigma?)

Anders

The manual you refer to is for burning DVD:s. If you want to cut the movie without burning you should start "Cutlisteditor" instead in the same menu. Just follow the instructions above in this thread, for example my reply to the very first post above.

Best Regards
Anders Holst

I have now analyzed two example movies that I got (thanks DarthMaul40 and HelgeBS). There were in total three different problems with them. Below are the technical details for those who care about such things.

For those who don't, here is the synopsis: Download a new ReconstructApSc with the plugin manager. It should at least make the movies playable. Patches have been sent to DMM for the problems with winding and length calculation.

Details:

One of the movies did not play at all with the .ap file constructed by ReconstructApSc, although it could be played without that file. The movie was SD but very loosely packed so it was large as a typical HD. The problem turned out to be that normally the sequence start markers and picture start markers are in the same ts-frame, whereas in this case they were in consecutive ts-frames. ReconstructApSc has up to now stored the position of ts-frames with picture starts, but apparently it has to store it to sequence starts instead to work properly. I have updated ReconstructApSc to reflect this, and it is available for download the normal way.

But there was another problem too with this movie: After having corrected the .ap-file, it was possible to play it, but not rewind it nor wind faster that x8 forward. For this the .sc-file is used. However, the problem is not with the contents of that file, which is correct, but with the way it is used by enigma2: It jumps to consecutive I-frame picture starts when fast-forwarding or rewinding, but just as above it should jump to sequence starts instead. I have prepared a fix for this and submitted to DMM. It may as usual take some time until it takes effect though.

Now to the second movie. This was a HD movie (or at least it was in the H264 format) but very highly compressed so it was not larger than a typical SD. It played alright, but the problem was that with the .ap-file from ReconstructApSc the displayed movie length was far too short, and the position gauge jumped back and forth during playback. It turned out that this was because the I-frames was very far apart, up to almost 10 seconds simetimes. Currently enigma2 interprets gaps between I-frames over 5 seconds as a "discontinuity" in the movie, and when an .ap-file exists, it is used to find those gaps and compensate for them in the length calculation and position gauge. Compare a situation when this feature works as intended: A movie with a two hour discontinuity in the middle, which without the .ap-file would seem two hours longer than it is, but with the .ap-file this gap is detected and compensated for. However, if up to 10 seconds can occur normally in the movie, the threshold for when it is considered a discontinuity should be increased to (at least) 10 seconds. I have submitted such a patch too to DMM, and again it may take some time before it is applied.

Something I have not done is to make ReconstructApSc construct the .meta file as well when it is missing. This might possibly be done some day in the future.

Best Regards
Anders Holst

Zitat

Sehe ich das richtig, dass man die *.ts.sc-Dateien gefahrlos löschen kann, wenn eine gleichnamige *_ts.sc - die infolge des Schneidens kleiner ist - vorhanden ist?

Yes, or rather, all the "*_.ts.sc" should be renamed to "*.ts.sc" . There are of course many ways to do that. One is to log in on the dreambox (with telnet or ssh or similar), cd to the directory with the movies, and write the cryptic command:

for x in *_.ts.sc; do y=`echo $x | sed 's/_.ts.sc/.ts.sc/'`; mv "$x" "$y"; done

where all the quotes, backquotes, and doublequotes are significant (better cut and paste the above line to get the quotes right). Sure someone can figure out a shorter, more cryptic, one. Another way is just to rename them (with mv) one by one by hand of course, but that is not in the true unix spirit.

Edit: Eh, well, the above command would of course only work as intended if there are no movie names that ended in _ from the beginning, for example a truncated channel name containing an underscore. Better check that first...
Best Regards
Anders Holst

Zitat

If you want, I will cut a few seconds from one of those movies and send it to you.

I tried to send you an email, but maybe it failed.

Yes please, but if you first email me the full .ap file I can check it to find an interesting section to cut out, and email you an appropriate command to cut it out from the movie.

Best Regards
Anders Holst

DartMaul40 wrote:

Zitat

I don't have a .meta file either! That is the problem?

No. A corrupt .meta file could be a problem. A missing .meta should not.

Anders

I have tried to look into this, but have not been able to repeat it, mainly because I have no access to a movie of the kind that causes problems. (HelgeBS didn't have any suitable movies for the moment, unfortunately). If anyone can offer me a small piece of a problematic movie, some 20 seconds or so would be sufficient, I could look into it again.

There were some speculation on another forum that it had to do with a missing or corrupt .meta file, but that seems not to be the case - that should have slightly different symptoms. My guess is that the movie has a format that is not recognized by the current version of ReconstructApSc, and that the .ap file gets too small, maybe empty. My guess, without being able to confirm it, is that removing .ap only, but leaving .sc, will make the movie viewable again.

Anyway, the behavior is not as designed, so if I can have a look at the format, I could at least make ReconstructApSc recognize it and just skip .ap if it can't produce it correctly.

Best Regards
Anders Holst

Thanks for reporting this bug. I have checked in a new version now, to be downoaded by the menus.

Best Regards
Anders Holst

Zitat

where can I get the mcut 1.3 again?

It appears that the way to download plugins has changed in images from the last few days. I managed to find my own various plugins under:
Main Menu -> Setup -> Software Management -> Manage Extensions -> Recordings

Or you can just fetch them directly from http://dreamboxupdate.com/open…/1.5/dm7025/experimental/

Best Regards
Anders Holst

Zitat

But where exactly can I download it?

If you use the "experimental image" (as opposed to the more stable "official release"), then the Plugins menu will automatically give you plugins from the experimental feed. With the Plugins menu I meant:
Main menu -> Plugins -> Download -> Extensions -> reconstructapsc

Alternatively you can fetch it directly from http://dreamboxupdate.com/open…/1.5/dm7025/experimental/
Scroll down to "enigma2-plugin-extensions-reconstructapsc_experimental", select the version of latest date, and install it manually on the box.

Best Regards
Anders Holst

There is a new plugin, ReconstructApSc, which makes it possible to reconstruct missing or corrupt .ap and .sc files of recorded movies. These files are used for precise seeking and winding in the movie, and also for finding the cut positions when using the plugin MovieCut to cut movies. This plugin scans through .ts files, and stores the structural information into the .ap and .sc files.

Examples of situations when this plugin may be useful include:

• Movies recorded with Enigma2 from before the spring of 2009 doesn't have .sc files, so rewind/fast forward won't work properly.
• The previous version of MovieCut did not know about .sc, and therefore produced no such files for the cut movies.
• If you have cut your movies on a PC, or downloaded movies from the web, you may not get any .ap or .sc files.
• If a specific movie is impossible to seek correctly in, or just gets black or a frozen picture when trying to fast forward or rewind, then one may suspect that the coresponding .ap and .sc have got corrupt for some reason.
• After a disk crash it may be possible to rescue the .ts files (because their specific structure) but perhaps not the others.
• Maybe you have removed the .ap and .sc files because they took up disk space and you didn't know what they were used for.

Once installed, the plugin shows up in the menu in the movie list, as "Reconstruct AP/SC". When started, it will give you three alternatives:

The plugin is available from the Plugins menu (the experimental feed). I hope that it can be of use.

Best Regards
Anders Holst

As is already hinted by the above posts, there is a new plugin, ReconstructApSc, which may be useful for those who have used an old version of MovieCut (1.2 and earlier). Those versions of moviecut didn't produce any .sc files for the cut movies, making fast forward and rewind less precise (and even painful at slow speed rewind). The new plugin reconstructs those missing files for you. It also reconstructs the .ap files, necessary for cutting with all versions of MovieCut, in case you have lost them for a movie you want to cut.

Available for download from the plugins menu (experimental feed) as usual.

For more information, see this thread .

Best Regards
Anders Holst

There is a new version of MovieCut, 1.3. It is available for download from the Plugins menu (the experimental feed as usual). It requires an Enigma2 not older than 2009-10-14.

This version of mcut can now cut movies on both DM7025 and DM800/DM8000, and both normal and HD movies, i.e. the separate version in the post above is not required on the DM800/DM8000 platform any more.

The new version also cuts the recently introduced .sc files (making precise fast forward and rewind possible), and copies the .eit as well (making the info button work on cut movies).

There may still be some flickering at the cut points, especially on DM800/DM8000, but it is rather limited. It is hard to do better than this without remuxing.

Note: Due to a recent driver update on the DM7025, older movies cut with the previous version of mcut and previously playing without flickering, may now start showing flickering at the cut points when played with the new driver. The new version of mcut is adjusted to cause minimal flickering with the new driver, but a separate conversion program would be needed to convert older movies to remove the flickering. I can't promise anything, but I may in the future try to provide such a conversion program, along the lines of the msplice program posted somewhere above in this thread. By the way: don't use that old version of msplice any more because it is adjusted to the old driver and will thus introduce flickering rather than remove it!

Best Regards
Anders Holst

Just in case someone hasn't noticed: The recording paths patch has (after some half year delay) been included in the experimental release for about a month now. In the Main menu -> Setup -> System -> Recording paths... you can now configure the different paths.

Unfortunately there were a bug in it causing a crash when setting tag filters with the green and yellow buttons in the movie list. A bugfix for this was committed yesterday, so now everything related to this patch should work.

Best Regards
Anders Holst

Zitat

Plugins "cutlisteditor" und "moviecut" sind installiert, ich sehe aber kein Menüeintrag, wie bedient man die?

They are in the movie list menu (i.e. pressing menu button while standing on an entry in the movie list). First specify the cut points with Cutlist Editor. This is sufficient to make the cut-away parts be jumped over while watching. If you also want to release the disk space taken up by the cut-away parts, then select "Execute Cuts" in the same menu.

Best Regards
Anders Holst

The possibility to rewind with low speeds (less than 8x ) is only temporarily disabled (as far as I understand), until the recently introduced more precise winding code has stabilized.

It was for a while possible to achieve low rewind speeds by combining a skip-count and a repeat count (patch written by me ). That is, the movie jumped backwards one GOP or so at a time, and then waited at that frame a suitable while before taking the next jump. However, the actually achieved rewind speed was far from precise (up to a factor of 2 wrong). With the introduction of the new more precise fastforward/rewind code, the possibility of combining skips with repeats was disabled. There are however good hopes that it can be introduced again, as soon as everything has settled. Now, I have not had much time to look into this myself for a while, but it is on the list.

Whether or not 1x rewind is useful, I leave to each individual to decide. Many DVDs and Video players offer it, and since it is possible to configure Enigma2 to use only those speeds you find useful, I see no reason to not offer this possibility in the configuration options.

Best Regards
Anders Holst

If you want to stay in the forefront I recommend downloading the daily experimental image from http://www.dreamboxupdate.com/opendreambox/1.5/dm800/images/

It has only the "official" stuff of course, but that contains quite much nowadays, and is what I use without problems.

Otherwise you will have to wait until the other image makes a new release, and you will usually not get support in this forum about it...

Best Regards
Anders Holst

Synopsis
The TagEditor plugin is an alternative to MovieTagger for setting movie tags. It is adapted to the current enigma2, in that it supports multiple locations for movies, and allows you to specify tags in timers. And, it is (in my opinion) much easier and more intuitive to use than MovieTagger.

Background
As you may have noticed, in the end of the summer of 2008 multiple locations support was added to enigma2, and later in the fall the tag functionality was enhanced: The tag filters changed appearance and got more configurable, and functionality to have tags in timers was added. However, to use the full tags functionality, you need a recent tag editor plugin. TagEditor is exactly such a plugin (and currently the only one, unless for example MovieTagger is updated).

Features
The TagEditor is intended for both changing tags of movies (possibly in different locations) and specifying tags in timers.
It has a rather simple interface with a single list of tags where you can toggle them with "OK".
On the menu button, there are options to e.g. rename a single tag, remove a single tag, clean up all unused tags, or search for new tags in all movie locations and timers (possibly created by other plugins).
For efficiency all tags are saved in /etc/enigma2/movietags.

Caveat when using TagEditor and MovieTagger together
TagEditor and MovieTagger uses the file /etc/enigma2/movietags differently. MovieTagger distinguishes between predefined tags, stored in that file, and "user tags", which only exist as long as any movie has them. User tags can be created and removed, whereas predefined tags can not be changed from within enigma2. I think this distinction
is confusing and inconvenient. Therefore TagEditor saves all tags alike in the file, and any tag can be removed or added from within enigma2.

However, this means that using TagEditor will blur the distinction between user tags and predefined tags for MovieTagger. So if you for some reason (unlike me) are really fond of this distinction, you should not use TagEditor.

In all other cases I strongly recommend to switch over to TagEditor!

The plugin is available for download from the plugins menu (experimental feed). For convenience I also attach it below.

Best Regards
Anders Holst

enigma2-plugin-extensions-tageditor_2.6cvs-r0_mipsel.ipk

I have now submitted the patch to enigma2-devel. It may take some time, and maybe some modifications, before it is approved though. For those who don't want to wait, and understands how to use a patch (expressed relative to the directory tree in the development sources, not the installed directory structure), the patch (relative to enigma2 of 2009-03-23) is also included below.

Please tell me if you find bugs.

Best Regards
Anders Holst

diff-distr090323.txt

As far as I understand this bug should be fixed since almost a month (Feb 26). Try a more recent image (from the experimental branch). (Rewind doesn't yet work for HD movies though.)

Best Regards
Anders Holst