recoded WTV files don't follow MCE7 rules

[robnitro]

Hi,
I've been testing out the trial of 629 with VAP and recoding some test files to h.264 wtv to save space. The files are going to a second folder, and work fine in MCE under recorded tv.

However, media center rules, such as keep 10 episodes (anyone know how to change that to a higher number, btw??), do not apply to these files. So, newer files that were not even processed get marked as delete to keep episodes to 10.

Also, any way of making vap run the newer files first? I'd rather have the commercials stripped first from the newer files first.

[KryptoNyte]

Best I can tell, the only other option that 7MC will give you is to just keep all recordings. I'm not finding a reg hack for that option, and Remote Potato is also exhibiting the 10 show upper limit (except for the keep all shows of course).

Regarding 7MC re-adopting your TV shows AFTER they have been encoded, I'm afraid I'm a little fuzzy on the 7MC rules for this. It's possible that 7MC is actually checking the "Date Modified" when re-adopting a file, which would make any processed file the "newest" file, and would essentially supersede those shows that were in fact recorded more recently. This may be what's leading to the undesirable activity.

Although I see you can sort the list in the Monitored Files listbox, I'm pretty sure that VAP is hard-coded to process from oldest to newest. Understand that many of us [users] probably have VAP running whenever the computer is on and/or may be recording, so by the time we sit down to the machine, VAP has already completed QSF and Ad Scans. If the developer isn't keen on reversing file order processing, you may wish to consider using the "block processing" button on files you would like to wait, which effectively pushes up the files that you want processed sooner.

[KryptoNyte]

Rob, the more I think about this, the more we need to know your exact workflow, in detail. A couple other things that I'm curious about is how exactly 7MC re-adopts the encoded programs, and how much of the original metadata is left intact for 7MC to parse on the re-adoption, and also, would it be an option in your own workflow to delay the encoding stage as my mind tells me that the "time to encode" is potentially holding up your processing list.

[robnitro]

I have e:\recorded tv set up in mce.
Vap is set to watch that and recode to h264 1080i(6mbps),720p(5mbps), or 480p(1.5mbps) to folder e:\recordedTV264 depending on intelligent recode. All metadata remains, even the original time is shown even though ad-scan trimmed it. I don't rename the files or use tvdb.
In MCE I added the 264 tv folder to recorded tv and mce picks up the files fine. I even tried moving the completed 264 files (same name as originals) to recorded tv folder.

FYI, to recode a 30 min epon i5-2500k @ 4.1 ghz:
1080i - 22 mins
720p- 11 mins
480p- 4 mins
To do 1080i to 720p creates interlacing noise on auto unless I use smart or weave, which ends up taking a bit more time than 1080i!

If they had quick sync encoding support, that would make vrd a killer app.

[robnitro]

I forgot to mention that in MCE, recorded TV, the episodes that are recoded come up on their original recording date, regardless of the file modfied date. The metadata has the field for when it was recorded and originally aired.

[KryptoNyte]

I'm out of ideas on the 7MC auto-deletion issue, the reason for that doesn't jump out at me. I think you've exhausted my limited capabilities with 7MC, so perhaps a Media Center based forum could better answer the question, or maybe someone here will recognize the Media Center issue and enter the conversation.

My encoding (HandbrakeCLI) on 1080i currently runs about 1.5 times the actual length of the video, this includes two h264 encoding passes, and VAP waits until I'm sleeping to do the encoding step (when the computer isn't doing anything else). If there is *any* software out there that is Intel quick sync enabled, and can be automated via script to launch and encode a video file, we could simply call it up with VAPpostprocess. This would be a nice path while software developers are still deciding if a proprietary encoding solution is even worth pursuing.

Just out of curiosity, it seems like a larger hard drive might allow you to setup 7MC to never auto-delete your TV shows ... I'm still fuzzy on why a user would go through the trouble of encoding any video just to have it deleted in a few days/weeks.

EDIT: Note, I'm not so much trying to get you to change your way of doing things as I am intrigued by your process, and how it may help myself and others to improve on our own workflow.

[marvin-miller]

If the issue is that your series recordings are being deleted after being 'x' days old then the answer is simple, you can go into the properties of your series recording (one by one) and change the Keep up to: setting. That's the setting that tells Media Center when to delete them.

You can also change this on a global basis for all new series recordings (set the default age before deletion) by going into;

Green Button (aka start Media Center)
Go to Tasks/Settings and hit enter
Select TV
Select Recorder
Select Recording Defaults
Scroll down to SERIES ONLY RECORDING DEFAULTS
and the last option is Keep up to:
and you can set that to whatever you want from delete after watching to never delete etc.

For myself, I just set it to keep everything at all times and delete recordings manually when I see fit. For me, that's easier but I tend to archive everything anyway :-)

With respect to auto-deleting not working this is usually because all of your recordings, once processed by VAP, end up being considered Videos and not Recordings. So, you normally find them all in the Pictures + Videos section of Media Center.

Videos, from Microsoft's perspective, are things such as home-made movies from your camcorder etc. As such, they are not subject to the deletion settings in Media Center because they are not treated as TV recordings. Nor should they be, the last thing you would want is for Media Center to delete your wedding movies etc.

Edit: It looks like you added a folder to Recorded TV and it contains your processed files. Are you saying that those files are not being deleted according to Media Center age limits?

[robnitro]

Are you able to do postprocess and keep the metadata?

Ill take screenshots to show. Basically the show is exactly the same in wmc. However, it counts towards the max but it doesnt get erased...maybe a file permissions issue?

[dlflannery]

Are you able to do postprocess and keep the metadata? .......

Not sure if this is relevant, but VAP does its best to ensure metadata is in its output wtv files, although this is tricky and has been the subject of continual tweaking recently. However, what happens in a VAPpostProcess script is entirely the responsibility of the script -- it's beyond VAP's control at that point (other than waiting for the script to finish).

[KryptoNyte]

Would there be some way, either natively in VAP, or some other batch file/application that could be called up in VAPpostprocess, to check for metadata prior to the postprocess, store that metadata ifexists, and then write the metadata back into the file (say, mp4 and/or mkv) after postprocessing is complete?