 |
pyTivo Discussion Forum
Answers and the development of pyTivo a TiVo transcoding server
|
|
| Author |
Message |
TheBayer
Joined: 23 Aug 2009
Posts: 33
|
 Posted: Tue Oct 27, 2009 7:56 am Post subject: |
 |
|
Please note that there are not 7 titles on Young Frankenstein, there are 6 including the main movie. If you are imagining every menu item is a title/"sub-title" then you are misinformed. There is a very specific part of the DVD spec that is called a title. If you want to get an idea, there is a tool called PgcEdit that might shed some light. I will not be simulating Menus any time soon, and that is more or less what I'd have to do to make this work like you think. Menus contain a bytecode program that is executed by the DVD player (which can be conditional), also each title/part-of-title contain bytecode programs too. I took the simplistic approach in just providing a way to get at the titles without simulating the DVD too much. I took this approach as this was good enough for the title features, but for any other features it may fall woefully short. As for all lumped together, from what I've seen, most of these lump all of one type of feature into a title. (That is if they don't use separate titles per clip.)
As a side note, if I were to try to simulate DVDs I'd not be using pyTivo--much of what I'd need to do would require streaming and I'd have to build on to streambaby. I suspect to do this would take months (possibly a year) of full time work. Rather than a week and change that the current project took. |
|
| Back to top |
|
 |
lrhorer
Joined: 04 Mar 2008
Posts: 153
|
| Posted: Tue Oct 27, 2009 8:41 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| TheBayer wrote: | Please note that there are not 7 titles on Young Frankenstein, there are 6 including the main movie. If you are imagining every menu item is a title/"sub-title" then you are misinformed. There is a very specific part of the DVD spec that is called a title. |
Well, OK. There is often a dissonnance between a UI and the underlying software engines. The simplest example is when a single engine is presented to the user under different guises to make things easier to understand or to manage for the user. I have no problems with this sort of utility, but that's not what is happening here. Another category of mismatch occurs when two or more very different engines are presented to a user in what appears to be a single, seamless application. Both as an engineer and as a user I have significant issues with thsi sort of approach, but the vast majority of people seem to prefer, or even demand, this sort of treatment, and evidently this is precisely what has been done with thse types of DVDs. To wit, they diplay both actual titles as defined by the DVD spec and also these pseudo chapters all the same way. In short, at the UI level there is no distinction between a title and one of these chapters.
| TheBayer wrote: | If you want to get an idea, there is a tool called PgcEdit that might shed some light. |
No, I understand, and I am familiar with PgcEdit. In fact, using PgcEdit and DVD authoring software, one could without question break up these DVDs into sections which more properly aligned on title boundaries, but such an undertaking would require me to learn a significantly greater amount about the DVD spec than I now know, and would require a great deal of time and effort to achieve the desired results over a large number of DVDs. This is not really a task I relish. Indeed, the reason I have not converted my DVD library to .mpg files prior to this is the large amount of time and trouble it would take to re-author all the DVDs. The attraction of your software is that it potentially eliminates that onus. Now I am not intending to imply the lack of these features destroys the attractiveness of your software. 'Far from it. You have done an excelent job of producing the primary feature set for your software. What is truly remarkable is how well you have implemented these features in what is essentially a first rush effort. Also please note I alluded to the fact in my first post of this sub-thread I realizeed this may not be a particularly high priority for you given the effort it may entail. If going to the extra effort to make these features work on the user side is dautning to me, a veteran engineer, however, I can only believe the average user would find the notion downright apalling.
| TheBayer wrote: | I will not be simulating Menus any time soon, and that is more or less what I'd have to do to make this work like you think. |
I am not familiar enough with the underlying formats to comment on this, and I certainly am not going to presume to tell you how to write your software. All I am saying is the ability to access these features is of value to me, and not having at least some ability to distinguiush and choose between items that are logically distinct - however physically indistinct they may be, diminishes that value. Once again, I reiterate, these features are not the most important in the feature set, and any decision you make concerning their disposal is not only fully your prerogative, but also will not "ruin" the software, but they do have the potential to add what I consider to be significant value to the software.
| TheBayer wrote: | Menus contain a bytecode program that is executed by the DVD player (which can be conditional), also each title/part-of-title contain bytecode programs too. I took the simplistic approach in just providing a way to get at the titles without simulating the DVD too much. |
Yes. Not only does this make sense, but from the user's perspective there are also a number of IMO positive effects engendered by tihs approach, not the least of which is the ability to jump straight in to the main title without commercials, warnings, and other bric-a-brac.
| TheBayer wrote: | I took this approach as this was good enough for the title features, but for any other features it may fall woefully short. As for all lumped together, from what I've seen, most of these lump all of one type of feature into a title. (That is if they don't use separate titles per clip.) |
Since I haven't really looked at any other DVDs, yet, I can't really say one way or the other. This weekend I will try to find some time to look at a few others that are "misssing" features to see how they handle it. On my end, if we are only talking about re-authoring 4 or 5 DVDs, then it's no big deal. If it's 40 or 50, well....
| TheBayer wrote: | As a side note, if I were to try to simulate DVDs I'd not be using pyTivo--much of what I'd need to do would require streaming and I'd have to build on to streambaby. |
No, for myself at least, I really don't want to have the DVD interface duplicated. From a high level user's view, your approach is far more appealing to me. If in the end it is simply not practical to employ yout approach and have all the lower level features, then I vote to give up the lower level features. Since this is a feature request, however, I see no reason not to ask for the best of all worlds.
| TheBayer wrote: | I suspect to do this would take months (possibly a year) of full time work. Rather than a week and change that the current project took. |
Hey, what do I care? I'm not the one who has to do the work. 
Seriously, if it isn't practical, then it isn't. However , longer term though it might be, in the long wash it might come out easier to plan for whatever hooks might need to go in place now, rather than face a major rewrite down the road. Of course, not having looked at the code at all, I really don't know one way or the other. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
TheBayer
Joined: 23 Aug 2009
Posts: 33
|
| Posted: Wed Oct 28, 2009 8:50 am Post subject: |
|
|
| Part of the issue as well is the DVD spec is not free and from what I know requires NDAs etc. So though I'm not cutting new ground, there's a lot of sifting of opensource projects, unofficial info, and an unofficial spec that I went and bought (noth the thousands of dollars for the official one though.) I'm certainly learning the ins and outs of the DVD spec as I go. I'm not suggesting you re-author the DVDs, that is indeed a huge amount of trouble. I was more pointing you at pcgedit as a way of showing you the complexity. I'd actually love the DVD interface duplicated myself (sans Restricted Operations), and along with a download main title option. I'll do what I can practically, and trust me I'm keeping a mind towards the future, but some things will require a very different approach to ever do "right". For the most part I make the titles available because some discs have multiple versions of the movie. The fact that any special features work is gravy, but I will try to get the "dis-contiguous" titles to work in some manner as I do see a value in them, and I think that is reasonably doable. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
shutterfriend
Joined: 23 Oct 2009
Posts: 2
|
| Posted: Wed Oct 28, 2009 11:31 pm Post subject: dvdvideo plugin in pytivoX |
|
|
I have added the dvdvideo folder to the plugins directory but in the options the type still does not show dvdvideo and it won't display dvd folders. Again this is in pyTiVoX not pyTiVo.
Should this work? |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
audiodane
Joined: 20 Sep 2009
Posts: 50
|
| Posted: Sun Nov 01, 2009 1:06 am Post subject: |
|
|
I feel so silly for just stumbling on this subforum.. I have a few basic questions:
I am currently using dvdfab to rip a dvd, then mpeg streamclip to cat the segments into a contiguous mpeg and fix any timecode errors. I then push the contiguous movie file to the Tivo (using x.mpg.txt and default.txt metadata files for title and seriesId values)
Q1) am I to understand properly that this plugin would allow me to skip all the mpeg streamclip stuff, and it will handle all the segment reassembly automatically?
Q2) does this plugin utilize the metadata files to maintain that functionality?
Q3) does this plugin still allow pushing, or does this plugin only allow Tivo-based navigation and pull'ing?
thanks,
..dane |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
TheBayer
Joined: 23 Aug 2009
Posts: 33
|
| Posted: Sun Nov 01, 2009 4:38 pm Post subject: Re: dvdvideo plugin in pytivoX |
|
|
| shutterfriend wrote: | I have added the dvdvideo folder to the plugins directory but in the options the type still does not show dvdvideo and it won't display dvd folders. Again this is in pyTiVoX not pyTiVo.
Should this work? |
There may be issues, I don't know how recent of a fork pyTiVoX is. I am aware that the way administration is handled has chanced since some of the prepackaged distros. I believe that the better solution (though I'd back up your current install) is to replace the whole pytivo section of your pyTivoX with my own fork. My fork is very similar to William's and my plugin will work with his, I just have some additional refinements to the togo module. Then copy in the configuration file and if the admin section is separate then adjust your config in the way that is in the forums here. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
TheBayer
Joined: 23 Aug 2009
Posts: 33
|
| Posted: Sun Nov 01, 2009 4:43 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| audiodane wrote: | Q1) am I to understand properly that this plugin would allow me to skip all the mpeg streamclip stuff, and it will handle all the segment reassembly automatically?
Q2) does this plugin utilize the metadata files to maintain that functionality?
Q3) does this plugin still allow pushing, or does this plugin only allow Tivo-based navigation and pull'ing?
|
Hey, glad you stumbled in here.
A1) Yes, though I have recently become aware there are still a few issues with some vobs, most are working quite well.
A2) Yes, though the current support is for only one metadata file (The txt based one, placed along side the VIDEO_TS called details.txt). All the metadata is the same for all titles within a DVD.
A3) I believe so, but admittedly I've not tried this extensively. If not, let me know and I'll attempt to get it working. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
dlaporte
Joined: 01 Nov 2009
Posts: 5
|
| Posted: Sun Nov 01, 2009 9:04 pm Post subject: letterbox issue? |
|
|
I'm having an issue where the widescreen DVDs transferred by pyTivo are playing as letterboxed 4:3 on my 16:9 television. I have defined a [_tivo...] section for me TivoHD and set aspect190=true.
The Tivo is set to use gray letterboxing, but the vertical/horizontal bars I'm seeing are black, which leads me to believe the issue is on the pyTivo side. Any ideas?
thanks!
Dave |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
TheBayer
Joined: 23 Aug 2009
Posts: 33
|
| Posted: Sun Nov 01, 2009 11:49 pm Post subject: Re: letterbox issue? |
|
|
| dlaporte wrote: | I'm having an issue where the widescreen DVDs transferred by pyTivo are playing as letterboxed 4:3 on my 16:9 television. I have defined a [_tivo...] section for me TivoHD and set aspect190=true.
The Tivo is set to use gray letterboxing, but the vertical/horizontal bars I'm seeing are black, which leads me to believe the issue is on the pyTivo side. Any ideas?
thanks!
Dave |
Have you tried the aspect button? I know this one got me. I spent a few days trying to figure what I was doing wrong with the mpeg stream... man I felt dumb. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
audiodane
Joined: 20 Sep 2009
Posts: 50
|
| Posted: Mon Nov 02, 2009 2:34 am Post subject: |
|
|
| TheBayer wrote: | | audiodane wrote: | Q1) am I to understand properly that this plugin would allow me to skip all the mpeg streamclip stuff, and it will handle all the segment reassembly automatically?
Q2) does this plugin utilize the metadata files to maintain that functionality?
Q3) does this plugin still allow pushing, or does this plugin only allow Tivo-based navigation and pull'ing?
|
Hey, glad you stumbled in here.
A1) Yes, though I have recently become aware there are still a few issues with some vobs, most are working quite well.
A2) Yes, though the current support is for only one metadata file (The txt based one, placed along side the VIDEO_TS called details.txt). All the metadata is the same for all titles within a DVD.
A3) I believe so, but admittedly I've not tried this extensively. If not, let me know and I'll attempt to get it working. |
Interesting-- I will have to look into this. a few more questions...
q4) Does wmcbrine's fork support your plugin or like for the person using pytivox do I need to convert to your fork? (for some reason I still have a hard time wrapping my head around just how pytivo is organized, forks, etc..)
q5) so it sounds like the plugin is mainly done through tivo's browsing and using the 'pull' technique -- if that's the case, I assume it supports the standard metadata tags that pull uses?
q6) does the plugin force ffmpeg to do transcoding, or is it just used for segment assembly? (I don't *need* that answer, per se, ... just curious) In other words, is there much quality loss?
I'm sure I'll have more questions, but I'd like to try playing with it. As soon as I figure out what I need to do to install it, I'll give it a whirl...
thanks!!
..dane |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
dlaporte
Joined: 01 Nov 2009
Posts: 5
|
| Posted: Mon Nov 02, 2009 3:08 am Post subject: Re: letterbox issue? |
|
|
| TheBayer wrote: |
Have you tried the aspect button? I know this one got me. I spent a few days trying to figure what I was doing wrong with the mpeg stream... man I felt dumb. |
I have, but it doesn't seem to do anything. The "full", "zoom", "panel" thing toggles in the lower-left of the screen, but the video remains the same. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
TheBayer
Joined: 23 Aug 2009
Posts: 33
|
| Posted: Mon Nov 02, 2009 5:44 am Post subject: |
|
|
| audiodane wrote: | q4) Does wmcbrine's fork support your plugin or like for the person using pytivox do I need to convert to your fork? (for some reason I still have a hard time wrapping my head around just how pytivo is organized, forks, etc..)
q5) so it sounds like the plugin is mainly done through tivo's browsing and using the 'pull' technique -- if that's the case, I assume it supports the standard metadata tags that pull uses?
q6) does the plugin force ffmpeg to do transcoding, or is it just used for segment assembly? (I don't *need* that answer, per se, ... just curious) In other words, is there much quality loss?
|
a4) Yes. I use wmcbrine's fork as the basis of mine. I've found his to be the most stable and full featured.
a5) Work in progress, but fairly "done" in many respects. Yes, it uses the same exact code that the other parts of pytivo use for metadata. I hate duplicating more code than I have to.
a6) It uses ffmpeg to rewrite the vob container (needed after processing interleaved video), strip additional audio, and remove subtitles which can't be used with the tivo (being graphical frame style.) |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
TheBayer
Joined: 23 Aug 2009
Posts: 33
|
| Posted: Mon Nov 02, 2009 5:52 am Post subject: Re: letterbox issue? |
|
|
| dlaporte wrote: | | TheBayer wrote: |
Have you tried the aspect button? I know this one got me. I spent a few days trying to figure what I was doing wrong with the mpeg stream... man I felt dumb. |
I have, but it doesn't seem to do anything. The "full", "zoom", "panel" thing toggles in the lower-left of the screen, but the video remains the same. |
It is possible that this title has the black bars encoded into the video frame. Sometimes they'll even encode 16:9 content into a 4:3 frame. Please note that the only aspects that DVD directly handles is 4:3 and 16:9. Any other aspect you find listed means that they've encoded black bars into the video to some degree. Try playing it in windowed mode on your computer and see if it has black bars there by trying to shrink the window to exactly fit the video. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
dlaporte
Joined: 01 Nov 2009
Posts: 5
|
| Posted: Mon Nov 02, 2009 7:00 pm Post subject: aspect ratio |
|
|
| I viewed one of the DVDs in the Apple software DVD player on my Mac and, sure enough, there are black horizontal bars. The player listed the aspect ratio as 16:9 at 720x480 (which is strange, since that isn't 16:9). So...the horizontal bars are explained, but not the vertical ones. They are black and my Tivo is set to gray, so I assume it's something with ffmpeg? Would the "par" setting help? |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
TheBayer
Joined: 23 Aug 2009
Posts: 33
|
| Posted: Mon Nov 02, 2009 7:19 pm Post subject: Re: aspect ratio |
|
|
| dlaporte wrote: | I viewed one of the DVDs in the Apple software DVD player on my Mac and, sure enough, there are black horizontal bars. The player listed the aspect ratio as 16:9 at 720x480 (which is strange, since that isn't 16:9). So...the horizontal bars are explained, but not the vertical ones. They are black and my Tivo is set to gray, so I assume it's something with ffmpeg? Would the "par" setting help? |
Possibly. When I had my strangeness happen I tried explicitly setting it in my ffmpeg command and it didn't change anything, but it could be because it was passing through properly already. Never know till you try it, you could just hardcode it in vobstream.py and try that video. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
|
|
You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot vote in polls in this forum
You cannot attach files in this forum
You can download files in this forum
|
|
FAQ
Search
Memberlist
Usergroups
Register
Profile
Log in to check your private messages
Log in
