Using .ts.meta files Beyonwiz recorder

[Bubbles]

I've been using VideoReDo and VAP for many years now. Until now I have always recorded on Windows Media Center machine and VAP just read the metadata from the file. So I added my .ts files into VAP6 from my new Beyonwiz recorder and VAP shows "no metadata available for this file" when I right-click the filename. And looking at the file property's in File Explorer there isn't any.

The recorder also writes a .ts.meta file for everything recorded. This seems to be a plain txt file separated by lines. Does anybody know if it's possible to insert the metadata from these files into the .ts recordings so VAP can read it, and work with the movie titles and episode data?

Thanks

 

[dlflannery]

I don’t think TS files can contain metadata. Could you use a VAP (TVSuite) output file container of .mp4 or .wtv? VAP can insert metadata in those. VAP would have to get the metadata via theTVDB (for tv series episodes) or tmdB (for movies). To do this it needs a couple of keys (e.g. title, episode name, or movie year), which it may be able to parse from the input file names using user-defined templates. If you want to pursue this approach, please post several examples of input file names for both series episodes and movies.

Just out of curiosity please attach one (preferably several) exanples of the .ts.meta files. Not promising anything but I might consider having VAP read those.

 

[Bubbles]

Thanks for the reply.

I didn't thinks .ts files could support metadata either, but I'm far from an expert in this.
The recorder only outputs as a .ts file so i guess the workflow would be:
"Quick Stream Fix" from .tx to .mp4
insert the file data (episode, movie name) from the .ts.meta files into the .mp4
VAP should then be able to handle it.

Unfortunately the input filenames only have the Series name (not episode), so templates would not work (if I'm following right).

Other than reading from the video file, does VAP read from any other meta side file that maybe I could convert to?

I've attached a sample of the recorded files .ts.meta files for you to have a look at, maybe you can think of an easy way:

Thank you for your help.

 

[dlflannery]

I’ll look at the meta files later. Meanwhile are we really ruling out input file name parsing? VAP can do theTVDB lookup using any of three possible combinations:
1. Series name plus episode name.
2. Series name plus episode original air date.
3. Series name plus Season and Episode numbers.
So your file names don’t support any of these combos?

 

[Bubbles]

Currently the filenames only contain the series name (or movie name) and record time, so in the current format I don't have any 2 combos. I'm in Australia and mostly record repeats so I don't think the "original air date" would help at all (from record time).

I have renamed some test files to include Series name plus Episode Name and am able to use the templates to get VAP to successfully lookup. Just one question with that, for VAP to know it's a movie you need the movie year, or is there another way for VAP to know it's a movie?

I'm currently trying to work out renaming the .ts files using a batch command and reading the metadata from the .ts.meta files. I have no idea what I'm doing so it's going to take a while but hopefully I'll get there in the end.

 

[dlflannery]

Yes, movie year is the only way VAP decides it’s a movie, and that plus the title are needed for TMDb metadata search.

The .meta files provide only 2 items useful to VAP (name and description) . Thus the only way for VAP to do metadata searches is using suitably formatted input file names and parsing templates. You can have more than one template, e.g. one for TV series (as you have already done) and a second one for movies. VAP goes down the template list and uses the first successful match.

Once you have metadata, VAP will insert it into output mp4 or WTV files and can do metadata-based renaming and folder creation/placement using distinct templates for movies and TV series,

Just FYI, the following is the only description I’ve found of the .meta files:

==== .meta FILES ====

.meta files have currently up to 10 lines:

<service reference>
<name>
<description>
<recording time>
[<tags>]
[<length>]
[<filesize>]
[<service data>]
[<packet size>]
[<scrambled>]

The <service reference> contains the Service-ID of the recorded service. With
that ID, you can find the PMT and the elementary streams. As a backup method,
just find the first available PMT and use that.

Strings are always UTF-8 encoded.

<name> and <description> contain the event name and short description of the
recorded event.

<recording time> contains the start time of the recording as UNIX integer time.

<tags> is a space-delimited list of tags assigned to this recording.

<length> is the length of the recording, in PTS-units (1/90000s).

<filesize> was the filesize at the time the length was calculated, so you can
validate if this is still up-to-date or must be recalculated.

<service data> is a private service data cache string that identifies various
aspects of the stream, including audio and video PIDs.

<packet size> is the size of the transport stream packets

<scrambled> is used to indicate whether the service is scrambled

 

[Bubbles]

Just wanted to thank you for all your help dlflannery.

Currently I have a batch file which mostly works. Been working on it for the least few days, still need to do a bit more work but I'm no programmer.
It extracts the <name> <description> from the .ts.meta files, then inserts the names at the beginning of the files.
I then search up the year for movies and insert that into the filename.

Then run VAP6 with the files and woohoo!!! it works.

When I finish the batch file I'll post it up here just incase anyone else needs to do something similar.

 

[dlflannery]

Glad things are working for you!