MCEBuddy

My First post here.  Idle never starting fix.I got McEbuddy about a month ago 1.06 and had problem with it going idle and staying there so I updated to 1.07 This did not fix anything so I reinstalled Net 1,2,2.5.3 Still it remained Idle, I checked to see if there was a hard ware conflict,cleaning logs,checked registry, AHH NO GO!

At this point I was obsessed and crazy .

And then I had a hunch and tried some think simple. I Changed my Video age (days) before conversion from 30 days to 4 days Rebooted problem solved.Sort of as in it went away.

Now understand ALL the Video Was OLDER THAN 30 day some like 2 years older on my system. But McEbuddy seemed to get confused by stuff that was dated a certain way As in old stuff(I think) and jam up and think every think was well less than 30 days old or newer.

There's your BUG! I hope this helps. Thank for the software! I love this thing!

dragondeathlord:

My First post here.  Idle never starting fix.I got McEbuddy about a month ago 1.06 and had problem with it going idle and staying there so I updated to 1.07 This did not fix anything so I reinstalled Net 1,2,2.5.3 Still it remained Idle, I checked to see if there was a hard ware conflict,cleaning logs,checked registry, AHH NO GO!

At this point I was obsessed and crazy .

 

And then I had a hunch and tried some think simple. I Changed my Video age (days) before conversion from 30 days to 4 days Rebooted problem solved.Sort of as in it went away.

 

Now understand ALL the Video Was OLDER THAN 30 day some like 2 years older on my system. But McEbuddy seemed to get confused by stuff that was dated a certain way As in old stuff(I think) and jam up and think every think was well less than 30 days old or newer.

There's your BUG! I hope this helps. Thank for the software! I love this thing!

That sounds like a real bug to me.  No idea how it happens, but I'll see where it does.  Thanks for telling us.

As for obsessed and crazy.  It seems to go with video transcoding somehow.  :-S

Derek 

My first post as well. I just got a Nokia N810, and want to take my recorded tv with me, so mcebuddy is on paper perfect for me.

I've worked through one issue, still hung up on another. My first was like dragondeathlord- I had dvr-ms files I had recorded on a older PC (running mce2005) that I had copied across my network to a new pc (also running mce2005). I put them in the shared tv directory with the rest of new dvr-ms's that the new pc was creating.

For some reason, mcebuddy would only recognize and convert the 'newer' dvr-ms files- the one created by that PC. It totally ignored the other files from the older machine. I tried the date change that dragon talked about, but got nowhere. Then I noticed that those dvr ms files I had copied over had somehow been set to 'read only' while the new dvr ms files did not have this flag set - as soon as I changed the older files (disabled 'read only') and restarted mcebuddy, it picked them up and began transcoding. Yeah!

My current problem is that allowing mcebuddy to transcode to recommended wmv files resulted in a file that played fine on the pc but the N810 complained that it didn't recognize the codec. WMV IS a support coded on the N810, so not sure what to think. I'm reencoding the files as h264. Given the uniqueness of the N810's screen resolution (800x480) but relatively meager cpu, it would be useful to add it (once we figure out the best format and resolution) to your list of hardware like the ipods and psps you have listed. I'll let you know what I find with the h264 on the N810.

waxman:

My first post as well. I just got a Nokia N810, and want to take my recorded tv with me, so mcebuddy is on paper perfect for me.

I've worked through one issue, still hung up on another. My first was like dragondeathlord- I had dvr-ms files I had recorded on a older PC (running mce2005) that I had copied across my network to a new pc (also running mce2005). I put them in the shared tv directory with the rest of new dvr-ms's that the new pc was creating.

For some reason, mcebuddy would only recognize and convert the 'newer' dvr-ms files- the one created by that PC. It totally ignored the other files from the older machine. I tried the date change that dragon talked about, but got nowhere. Then I noticed that those dvr ms files I had copied over had somehow been set to 'read only' while the new dvr ms files did not have this flag set - as soon as I changed the older files (disabled 'read only') and restarted mcebuddy, it picked them up and began transcoding. Yeah!

My current problem is that allowing mcebuddy to transcode to recommended wmv files resulted in a file that played fine on the pc but the N810 complained that it didn't recognize the codec. WMV IS a support coded on the N810, so not sure what to think. I'm reencoding the files as h264. Given the uniqueness of the N810's screen resolution (800x480) but relatively meager cpu, it would be useful to add it (once we figure out the best format and resolution) to your list of hardware like the ipods and psps you have listed. I'll let you know what I find with the h264 on the N810.

Yes, I'm looking at the time issue for 1.0.8.  I think it relates to the app checking last modified time. 

As for WMV, there are different versions of WMV and for some very dumb reason most product documentation doesn't identify which version of WMV it supports.  MCEBuddy produces WMV2.  The current version is WMV3/9. I suspect this is the issue.  If you can get h264 to work (use the apple one) that would be the best path.

Cheers

Derek 

Hi Derek- 

I went back and reset the read only property but changed the modified date to see if it would jumpstart mcebuddy to 'see' the file. No dice. Seems the critical factor in my case was that moving a dvr-ms from one system to another somehow set the read only flag and mcebuddy then ignores the file- timestamp was not a factor.

(Sorry for not posting this under another topic)

It seems the optimal video format/settings for the N810 are at 400x240 resolution (1/4 the native 800x480 support), vid bitrate around 512k and audio bitrate around 128k. Avi, MP4 (h264 supported). Supposedly the bandwidth of the video controller is what prevents this device from smooth video at the screen-native 800x480 resolution, and that's why 400x240 is the defacto standard.

So, my question is what choice in the configuration screen would be my best fit, i.e. do any of your platform specific options that don't specifically call out resolution support 400x240? And secondarily, any thought to creating an option that would encode at 400x240?

More info on the n810: Same 4.13-nch WVGA (800 x 480), 65k color display
* 400MHz OMAP 2420 CPU, 128MB RAM, 256MB ROM
* Plays back video: 3GP, AVI, H.263, H.264, MP4, ASF, WMV, MPEG-1/4, Real video;

audio: MP3, WMA, AAC, AMR, AWB, M4A, MP2, Real audio, WAV

waxman:

Hi Derek- 

I went back and reset the read only property but changed the modified date to see if it would jumpstart mcebuddy to 'see' the file. No dice. Seems the critical factor in my case was that moving a dvr-ms from one system to another somehow set the read only flag and mcebuddy then ignores the file- timestamp was not a factor.

 

(Sorry for not posting this under another topic)

It seems the optimal video format/settings for the N810 are at 400x240 resolution (1/4 the native 800x480 support), vid bitrate around 512k and audio bitrate around 128k. Avi, MP4 (h264 supported). Supposedly the bandwidth of the video controller is what prevents this device from smooth video at the screen-native 800x480 resolution, and that's why 400x240 is the defacto standard.

So, my question is what choice in the configuration screen would be my best fit, i.e. do any of your platform specific options that don't specifically call out resolution support 400x240? And secondarily, any thought to creating an option that would encode at 400x240?

More info on the n810: Same 4.13-nch WVGA (800 x 480), 65k color display
* 400MHz OMAP 2420 CPU, 128MB RAM, 256MB ROM
* Plays back video: 3GP, AVI, H.263, H.264, MP4, ASF, WMV, MPEG-1/4, Real video;

audio: MP3, WMA, AAC, AMR, AWB, M4A, MP2, Real audio, WAV

Regarding the read only, yes that is expected behaviour.  MCEBuddy will only process files it can perform a read/write non-shareable lock on to ensure conversions occur reliably.  The files being read only, they will never be converted.

As for sizing, portable devices almost always have weird and wonderful quirks specific to themselves (irrespective of what their documentation might claim) and as such almost always require a custom profile, not just a resizing.  For example to provide an N810 conversion you'd need things like maximum bitrate for audio and video, maximum refresh rate and any implementation specifics for the codecs.  For example there are multiple levels of H.264 and even WMV (v3).  So are we talking low complexity (LC) H.264 or what?  Most of the really important information you need for transcoding to a device is often not readily available.  If you can get the above information together I'll knock a profile up for you and you can give it a go.

Cheers

Derek 

Cool Derek, thanks!

Hopefully getting the optimal info is easy in this case.  I’m not sure how familiar you are the with N810, but as I’m learning the linux community (including support from nokia employees) absolutely rocks. Guys are off building new shells, adding extremely useful apps, and in general being able to do anything they want because of the open source nature of the device’s OS.

One app they’ve got is called ‘internet tablet video converter.’ (http://www.nokia.com/betalabs/videoconverter) I’ve been exchanging posts on a forum with one of their developers, VBrilon, because the tool does great with my other avis and mpgs but can't handle dvr-ms files. In addition to being very cool and explaining possible dvr-ms codec distribution issues in 'official' nokia software, he’s linked me to their api docs so I could possibly do it myself. Unfortunately I'm not much of a developer, but these docs list 3 compression algorithms. 

api docs  http://maemo.org/community/wiki/internettabletvideoconverter/

By the way Derek- In leiu of an optimized option in mcebuddy, I've been using your lowest divx settings to convert dvr-ms's and have been getting watchable video on the n810- so thank you. Your tool is already wonderful and I'm glad you decided to build it, and even if you don't change a thing I'll keep using it.

Hmmm.  Loading DVR-MS onto a portable device is a waste of time as it is too space inefficient, so a conversion is the way to go.

Try this profile:

 [Nokia-N8xx]
profile-desc="Nokia N800/N810"
vf=pullup,softskip,pp=fd,scale=400:-2,crop=400:200,harddup
lavdopts=threads=2
ovc=xvid=yes
xvidencopts=bitrate=860:threads=2:chroma_opt=yes:trellis=yes:max_bframes=0:vhq=4:noqpel=yes:nogmc=yes:autoaspect=yes
ffourcc=DX50
oac=mp3lame=yes
lameopts=cbr=yes:br=128
af=volnorm=2
#FileExtension=avi

If you're running Vista, please check some of the other posts regarding how to change your mencoder.conf 

Cheers

Derek 

awesome Derek, I'll give it a try and report back.

Reporting back-- everything looks awesome using the new option in the conf file. The only change I made was that you had set resolution to 400x200, while 400x240 is the optimal for the n800 and n810 so I made that small change and went a transcoded my dvr-ms files.

 I had been taking a 3GB dvr-ms to a 400 MB divx lowest quality setting, but now I'm only slightly increasing size (to 500 MB) using the N8x0 setting in the .conf but getting much better visual and sound quality, perfectly formatted for my screen. I'm getting on a plane Saturday and I've got 4 episodes of battlestar to watch now :)

 Thanks Derek- I'll post a link to you page in the internettablettalk forums to help out fellow n8x0 users!

waxman:

Reporting back-- everything looks awesome using the new option in the conf file. The only change I made was that you had set resolution to 400x200, while 400x240 is the optimal for the n800 and n810 so I made that small change and went a transcoded my dvr-ms files.

 I had been taking a 3GB dvr-ms to a 400 MB divx lowest quality setting, but now I'm only slightly increasing size (to 500 MB) using the N8x0 setting in the .conf but getting much better visual and sound quality, perfectly formatted for my screen. I'm getting on a plane Saturday and I've got 4 episodes of battlestar to watch now :)

 Thanks Derek- I'll post a link to you page in the internettablettalk forums to help out fellow n8x0 users!

Groovy.  200 instead of 240 was a typo.  I'll include this is in the next update then.  You should be able to transcode other stuff with that profile as well, though as usual that's not supported.

Cheers

Derek 

Hmmm-- so of the file formats that are unsupported, are some more 'unsupported' than others? 

(I feel like I'm writing a line from 'animal farm' (orwell) "all animals are equal, but some are more equal than others")

waxman:

Hmmm-- so of the file formats that are unsupported, are some more 'unsupported' than others? 

(I feel like I'm writing a line from 'animal farm' (orwell) "all animals are equal, but some are more equal than others")

 

Unsupported means that most of them should work but if they don't then there won't be any bug fixing to make them work.  So nothing is equal, DVR-MS is the source format king and all others are a bonus.

A lot of people put movie AVIs and VOBs into the source directory to get MCEBuddy to transcode them.  I do it too, as one of the beta testers came up with a good way to extract VOBs.

Cheers

Derek 

You've given me access to the beta program, but I think some of the beta forum catagories are closed to me. Do you mind reposting or linking to the thread of a good way to extact vob's (per your previous note)? I've read through all eight threads I found by searching 'vob' and didn't find anything that fits. thanks!