Parsley Problem

G

Gripweed

Member
More and more stations seem to be switching over to mpeg4 at my cable company. Normally I deal with mpeg2 and use VAP to produce .mpg files which I process with an external program over to .mp4. With mpeg4 it is just faster and easier for me to use VAP to directly produce .mp4s.
Anyway, I happened to look at my logs the other day and noticed something funky with the .mp4 process. Until I looked it up I had no idea what an Atomic Parsley is. I do know I don't have Atomic Parsley options on in VAP's settings but it appears to run anyway. But I get the feeling that with regards to thumbnails (which I'm not really interested in anyway) it has the wrong show. Is it getting all the other metadata for the wrong show, too? I haven't looked into looking at that yet.
Here are some examples:

2/17/2019 10:19:38 PM VideoReDo completed QSF on input: R:\Recorded TV\The Walking Dead_AMCHD_2019_02_17_21_00_00.wtv
2/17/2019 10:19:38 PM Meta-renamed output file: The Walking Dead_S09E10.mp4
2/17/2019 10:19:38 PM Atomic Parsley started
2/17/2019 10:21:05 PM No thumbnail found with title = A Million Little Things_thumbnail
2/17/2019 10:21:05 PM Atomic Parsley completed

2/7/2019 9:15:04 PM VideoReDo completed QSF on input: R:\Recorded TV\Siren_FREFMHD_2019_02_07_20_00_00.wtv
2/7/2019 9:15:04 PM Meta-renamed output file: Siren_S02E03.mp4
2/7/2019 9:15:04 PM Atomic Parsley started
2/7/2019 9:16:47 PM No thumbnail found with title = Days of our Lives_thumbnail
2/7/2019 9:16:47 PM Atomic Parsley completed

2/9/2019 10:16:42 PM VideoReDo completed QSF on input: R:\Recorded TV\Victoria Gotti- My Father's Daughter_LIFEHD_2019_02_09_20_00_00.wtv
2/9/2019 10:16:42 PM Meta-renamed output file: Victoria Gotti- My Father's Daughter_MOVIE_2019.mp4
2/9/2019 10:16:42 PM Atomic Parsley started
2/9/2019 10:18:51 PM No thumbnail found with title = A Million Little Things_thumbnail
2/9/2019 10:18:51 PM Atomic Parsley completed

2/10/2019 10:21:44 PM VideoReDo completed QSF on input: R:\Recorded TV\The Walking Dead_AMCHD_2019_02_10_21_00_00.wtv
2/10/2019 10:21:44 PM Meta-renamed output file: The Walking Dead_S09E09.mp4
2/10/2019 10:21:44 PM Atomic Parsley started
2/10/2019 10:22:40 PM No thumbnail found with title = Victoria on Masterpiece_thumbnail
2/10/2019 10:22:40 PM Atomic Parsley completed

2/11/2019 10:15:17 PM VideoReDo completed QSF on input: R:\Recorded TV\I Am the Night_TNTHD_2019_02_11_21_00_00.wtv
2/11/2019 10:15:17 PM Meta-renamed output file: I Am the Night_S01E03.mp4
2/11/2019 10:15:17 PM Atomic Parsley started
2/11/2019 10:16:38 PM No thumbnail found with title = Days of our Lives_thumbnail
2/11/2019 10:16:38 PM Atomic Parsley completed

2/13/2019 10:14:02 PM VideoReDo completed QSF on input: R:\Recorded TV\The Magicians_SYFYHD_2019_02_13_21_00_00.wtv
2/13/2019 10:14:02 PM Meta-renamed output file: The Magicians_S04E04.mp4
2/13/2019 10:14:02 PM Atomic Parsley started
2/13/2019 10:15:19 PM No thumbnail found with title = Bull (2016)_thumbnail
2/13/2019 10:15:19 PM Atomic Parsley completed

Any ideas?
 
dlflannery

dlflannery

Administrator
VAP looks for a thumbnail image (which it does not provide) in a "thumbnails" subfolder of your VAP data folder. It looks for a .jpg or .png file with a title constructed based on the title of the video and (if available) the season/ep number. The messages you see just indicate it didn't find the image it was looking for so it didn't imbed a thumbnail in the output .mp4 video file.

The problem is that it appears to be looking for the wrong title (as you noticed), so why? Since your input videos are .wtv VAP would normally populate the title item of metadata by reading it from the WTV file's metadata. So the first diagnostic step will be to find out what WTV metadata is being read. I have a small utility program (toubmetareader.exe) that reads WTV (or DVRMS) file metadata, displays it and writes it to a text file that has the input video file name with a .txt extension. Please download this zip file:
ToubMetaReader.zip
Note it contains TWO files -- unzip both files into any convenient folder and run the toubmetareader.exe file.
Click the button and select a sample .wtv file. You can look at the popup data but it's probably easier to close the program and load the created .txt file into an editor. In particular look for the "Title" item, but please attach the entire text file to a post so I can look at it too.

Also: Metadata (other than the thumbnail image) should be imbedded in your output files. You can check this using the utility MediaInfo, for example.
 
G

Gripweed

Member
Unfortunately I don't see anything unusual. I'm baffled as to where Atomic Parsley got the "2/17/2019 10:21:05 PM No thumbnail found with title = A Million Little Things_thumbnail".
The Walking Dead was recorded on Sunday Feb. 17th and the last time A Million Little Things was recorded was Thurs. Feb. 14th. Plenty of shows were recorded between those two. Two different stations - AMCHD and our local ABC channel. Dead was MPEG4 and Million was MPEG2.

I checked the Walking Dead .mp4 file with MediaInfo and the little bit of metadata it shows (below) looks to be correct. So, basically no real harm done even if we can't figure out where the thumbnail title came from.

*** General
Complete name : http://127.0.0.1:59724/stream/0/The Walking Dead_S09E10.mp4
Format : MPEG-4
Format profile : Base Media
Codec ID : isom (isom/iso2/avc1/mp41)
File size : 1.86 GiB
Duration : 1 h 10 min
Overall bit rate mode : Constant
Overall bit rate : 3 758 kb/s
Collection : The Walking Dead
Season : 9
Album : The Walking Dead, Season 9
Album/Performer : The Walking Dead
Part : 10
Track name : Omega
Track name/Position : 10
Grouping : Adventure
Performer : The Walking Dead
ContentType : TV Show
Description : A new arrival at the Hilltop opens up about the leader of a group of mask-wearing savages; a search party sets out on a daring mission to find two missing friends.
Recorded date : UTC 2019-02-17 00:00:00
Tagged date : UTC 2019-02-18 03:19:38
Writing application : VideoReDo (Lavf56.25.101)
TVNetworkName : AMC HD
Part_ID : 910
 

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dlflannery

dlflannery

Administrator
I'm puzzled too. I've reviewed VAP code and can't see how this happens.

I am curious about one thing:
You have two different process flows for VAP depending on whether the input file is MPEG2 or mpeg4. How do you switch VAP between them? And for MPEG2 files do you do the conversion to mpeg4 in a vappostprocess batch?
 
G

Gripweed

Member
Actually it is pretty simple how to switch VAP between them thanks to the tools you gave us in VAP. I default to a profile of MPEG-2 Program Stream (MPG) because the vast majority of my cable channels are MPEG2. In the ProfileMatchList (see attached file) I have listed all the channels that are broadcast in MPEG4 and they result in MP4 files. Although I could use the vappostprocess batch for the conversion, I don't. I have a program that monitors the output folder and based on whether the file that shows up as a .mpg or a .mp4 it sends it along the right path for processing. I decided awhile ago that I wanted all my files stored away as .mp4 files. So, with actual .mp4 files coming out of VAP I don't have to do anything other than to move them over to the right subdirectory (based on title name) for storage. With .mpg files I send them over to an old converter program that I'm sure you can't even buy anymore (ArcSoft MediaConverter 8). It's fast and produces excellent quality .mp4s. Then, obviously, I move them over to storage, too.
From recording to storage it's all done automatically.
 

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dlflannery

dlflannery

Administrator
I knew ProfileMatching was one way to do it, was just curious. That's a big match list!

I suspect there is a suggestive pattern to these title errors, i.e., the bogus titles are all from mpeg2 input files, correct? That must be a clue of some sort.

What program do you use to monitor the output folder?
 
G

Gripweed

Member
Yes, the bogus titles are all mpeg2 files. But where it is picking those names up from I don't have a clue. And I've decided not to worry about it because I'm not really interested in thumbnails and it doesn't seem to affect the actual megadata for the title. Case closed as far as I'm concerned. Thanks for your thoughts on it.

The program I use to monitor is called Febooti Automation Workshop ( https://www.febooti.com/products/automation-workshop/ ). It does so much more than that. I purchased it a long time ago for a completely different project and it was on sale at the time. I think it is much more expensive than it should be but that is true for most business oriented software. If you know your way around Window's Task Manager you could probably get away without most of its features but it does make things easier.
 
dlflannery

dlflannery

Administrator
I tracked down the bug. The only bad effect is the incorrect messages, so fix will be in the next release. Thanks for your inputs.
 
G

Gripweed

Member
Gripweed said:
The program I use to monitor is called Febooti Automation Workshop ( https://www.febooti.com/products/automation-workshop/ ). It does so much more than that. I purchased it a long time ago for a completely different project and it was on sale at the time. I think it is much more expensive than it should be but that is true for most business oriented software. If you know your way around Window's Task Manager you could probably get away without most of its features but it does make things easier.
Click to expand...
It's funny that less than a month after writing the above I made a discovery that both pissed me off and made me very happy. As stated I bought this program that I love many years ago for a very expensive price. It was version 1.something, They are up to version 3.something now and their major upgrade policy still involves big bucks that I really don't have to spend. Unfortunately I really liked some of the new features and functions in version 2 and 3. Long story short I google stumbled over the fact that they have a free version (which they never mention on their website) who's only limitation is that it is 32-bit only and you can set up a max of 100 tasks (I currently use 7 tasks). I don't know when they came out with this free version but I'm pretending to myself that it was long after I paid full price for it.
Anyway, as a service to all that might read this, you can get it at ( https://www.automationworkshop.org/ ).
 
dlflannery

dlflannery

Administrator
Interesting. Seems like the free version is so capable that most users wouldn't have much incentive to upgrade to a paid version. Wonder what the catch is? Although only a 32-bit version, they say it will run on either 32- or 64-bit systems. Have to wonder what significant advantage a 64-bit version would offer?
 
G

Gripweed

Member
I think they just want to promote it to the freeware hobbyist audience with the hopes that it gets into the hands of someone that is now or someday will be a head IT guy (or woman) at some big company. I think the main limitation is the 100 tasks. As I said, I'm running 7 tasks now but with the additional features with version 2 & 3 I've got about 5 additional new tasks running through my head. I suppose that if I ran the IT for a company I would be able to come up with many more than 100 tasks. It's a real work/time saver by automating small repetitive tasks.
As for 64-bit vs 32-bit I haven't noticed a speck of difference in performance. My old paid version was 64-bit and the free version is 32-bit. Maybe if you get up to a high task count running at the same time it might be noticeable but not what I'm running right now.
 
G

Gripweed

Member
That's what I figured but wasn't totally sure because I was looking for something listed about Parsley. I would have just run it and found out but I don't have anything scheduled that is being recorded in MPEG4 until the weekend.
Thanks a bunch!
By the way, I struggled for awhile but I turned off VAP's theTVDB lookup and setup a renaming process using Filebot and the free Febooti Automation Workshop to handle both my WMC recording and torrent download processing. VAP is still a prominent element in the system.
 
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