evtEdit for Windows - Page 2  

Problem: I copied a 2hr home video onto my replay at medium quality. Then I downloaded it to DVArchive. When I ty to run it through EVTEdit it shows up as a 33 minute video. DVArchive and the replay I recorded it on list it as 120 mins and 2 hrs respectively. How do I get EVTedit to recognize the whole thing?

This sounds like the same problem I have had with a couple of longer recordings.

I added an edit point near the end, and then changed the Segment End Time of the newly created segment to be very close to the actual end (it will let you keep adding time via "+ min" (use shift and then "+30m" a couple of times) even though it initially says its shorter.

The reason for the new edit point is that the LAST edit point End Time is "End", and you can't add time to that!

BTW: something I noticed with long recordings is that I could fine tune the skipped commercials using "Check Segment: Both" and find that the final video was not exactly as I had tuned. So for each segment, when I thought I was done, I went back and did a "Check Segment: Complete", which WAS an acurate indication of what the generated new mpeg would look like, so I retuned based on those results.

skleiser,

I tried what you said but the real difficulty is that I gave you an incomplete description of my problem.

Not only does it show the time as 33 min 22 sec, that's all of the video it shows. The last 1 hr 26 min 38 sec, are missing. It is not just a time reporting issue.

It plays fine when viewed with "Intervideo Win DVD". All 2hrs of it. I'm stumped.

It appears that Intervideo is showing that the last 1:26:38 are NOT missing, so it MUST BE a time reporting problem, no?

You said you tried what I suggested. What happened when you tried to extend the End of the new next-to-the-last segment?

It reported The time for that segment increased by 1hr 30min but it still had the same content as before. the missing video has never been viewable using EVTedit.

I'm assuming you did a "Check Segment Complete" and the result was not 90 minutes - so, I've got to say that I'm stumped too! Sorry ...

I've been using evtEdit for about a week now and for the most part I like the tool and it works well, but I've had had it delete my original mpg files twice. The first time, it was no big deal. It wasn't a critical file. The second time (just now) it was a critical file (Eagles victory over the Packers). Here's what happened:

- used evtEdit to view some of the blocks and change some some of the red blocks to green and vice versa.
- when I was done and ready to create a new mpg, it said it couldn't find the source file.
- sure enough the files are gone (.mpg, .evt, and .ndx) and nowhere to be found on my system

I know this is "pre-release" software and in hind-sight I probably should have backed up the files myself before using evtEdit, but has anyone else seen this, and better yet can my files be recovered?

Here's some more info:

1. I was pretty much using the default settings. My "edited mpeg options" is set to "Backup and Overwrite Original" and "New Name Addition:" is set to "_backup". [Note: In hindsight, this doesn't seem to be a safe setting and I will change it to "Leave Original" from now on...]
2. "work directory" was set to "F:\\Temp". The F: drive had 19GB of free space. The MPEG file that I was editting was about 8GB.
3. I had "use same directory as input file" checked under the "output directory tab".
4. Under the "Batch" tab, I have a delay of zero minutes set.
5. After doing my editing using evtEdit, I hit the bit "Generate New MPEG with rtvEdit" button. A console window popped up and displayed:

F:\\Temp>"C:\\Downloads\\ReplayTV\\RTVTools\
ev4\\bin\\win32\
tvedit.exe" "F:\\Temp\\evtEditIn_3928.txt"
Can't open file F:\\DVArchive\\Local_Guide\\NFL Football - NFC Divisional Playoff- TBA at Philadelphia Eagles.mpg

F:\\Temp>pause
Press any key to continue . . .

6. I did a search on all my hard drives for nfl*.mpg with no luck. I did notice that there are the following three files in f:\ emp:

evtEditPlayClip.bat
evtEditPlayClip.evt
evtEditPlayClip.ndx

JenEric,

WMP shows it as a 2:00hr video and will play the whole thing. I don't get it. I also tried ReVue and it said it was a 2hr video but when I converted it I had only the 1st 14 minutes left. I'm really stumped.

I'm glad to hear I'm not the only Seahawk fan! Next year watch out!

BTW, here's the contents of evtEditPlayClip.bat (in case that might help figure this out):

FF:\\DVArchive\\Local_Guide\\NFL Football - NFC Divisional Playoff- TBA at Philadelphia Eagles.mpg
TF:\\Temp\\evtEditPlayClip.mpg
A179:22.435
D179:32.435
A192:53.713
D193:03.713
E

JenEric,

I did the edit and it came up with multiple stream errors & unsupported streams (02 and B2). I don't know what this means but I'm sure it's not good.

Both of these videos are VHS tapes of some old super 8 home movies. The quality is poor and there is no sound. I think this must have some how confused the ReplayTV. When I use programs (like WMA and InterVideo WinDVD) that don't care about .ndx or .evt file it playes the way it should. Is there a program (Womble?) that will take the mpeg file and change it to an authorable format, without using the .evt file for reference?

Before I hit the "generate mpeg" button, I spent about an hour viewing segments (using VLC) and properly marking the commercial vs. real program content. I also had DVArchive running in the background, but I wasn't doing anything with it. One strange thing that happend prior to hitting the button (and I can't remember if it happened just prior, or if I still did some viewing of segments using VLC after that) was that I started up a Windows Explorer window. I then browsed to the directory where the mpeg file was located. Then strangely, while I was just sitting there viewing the screen, Windows Explorer spontaneously closed and evtEdit was given focus. Whatever caused that to occur could be related to this problem.

I do have a network set up with my ReplayTV (a 5508) and 3 other PCs running DVArchive (my PC, my son's, and my daughter's). No one was using the 5508 at the time (and it was turned off). I talked to my son and he was downloading a show directly from the 5508 to his PC via DVArchive. This shouldn't have affected anything on my PC. I don't think anyone was deleting any shows at the time via DVArchive.

Unfortunately, I can't remember anymore what the other show was that got deleted. I've only been using evtEdit for about a week now. I edited around 10 mpegs, with 2 being deleted mysteriously. Could running DVArchive in the background have something to do with it? Also, I noticed that when I view a segment in evtEdit that the VLC window doesn't close after viewing. After viewing multiple segments in a row, I usually wait until about 10 copies of VLC have accumulated before I close all of them as a group and continue on. Not sure if I closed all the copies of VLC before I hit the "generate mpeg" button or not. Could this have something to do with the problem?

Wasatch Rider

I've made DVD compliant videos from VHS transferred from Hi8 recordings and it was quite the task. The problems come from evtedit which gets hung up on errors from the VHS to replaytv transfer. I found that evtedit chopped up my recordings at these errors instead of the cut times I wanted. Or it would not cut where I wanted because of errors. I had to go through and cut before/after every one of these errors. I don't recall but I thought I had some success by running rtvconvert first then rtvedit and then rtvconvert again. Good luck.

In my first attempt at using EvtEdit for Windows, the same thing happened to me....my video files were deleted.
I edited the file, changed the classification and length of a few blocks and clicked the button to run EvtEdit. It came back with an error indicating it couldn't find the files. I checked the directory and they were gone.
Then when I double clicked on one of the segments (the same segments I had just been working on) it gave an error too.

So something happened when I clicked evtEdit that deleted the files.

That's the first time I've seen Windows Explorer crash like that. It just closed without any warning. Also, I may have been mistaken when I said earlier that evtEdit was given focus. It may have been DVArchive. Anyways, could you point me to the other threads that discuss this problem with Windows Explorer crashing like this?
Sometimes, I've also noticed that when I go to view a segment with VLC, that the video doesn't start. It rarely happens, but when it does, I simply close that instance of VLC and try again and it works fine. I've also wondered if there was an option in VLC to open a new mpeg in the current instance. Maybe someone else reading this thread knows???

Anyways, in the meantime I'm going to be much more careful when using evtEdit. Not that I know that evtEdit was directly responsible for my mpg getting deleted. It could have been rtvEdit, DVArchive, VLC, XP, or something else. Just to be safe, when I'm doing editing I think I'll copy my .mpg, .evt, and .ndx files to a work area and edit them from there. Thanks for your help and I'll let you know if I see the problem again.

Well, at least I'm not alone... To help us try to figure out what is causing this, I would wonder:

1. Were you running DVArchive in the background?
2. Are you using VLC to view segments in evtEdit?
3. Did you have any copies of VLC left open when you hit the "generate mpeg" button on evtEdit?
4. Are you using NTFS or FAT as your file system on disk that the files reside on? (I'm using NTFS)
5. How big was the mpeg you were editing? (mine was around 8GB)

JenEric, I just thought of something that maybe you could answer... Remember I said that all 3 files were deleted (the .mpg, .evt, and .ndx). That makes me think VLC is not the culprit (it only knows about the .mpg). DVArchive is a suspect (if somehow a "delete" in DVArchive was initiated, it would delete all 3 files). But I wonder if rtvEdit is really a suspect, based on the fact that all 3 files got deleted. When evtEdit spawns off a copy of rtvEdit to do its thing, does rtvEdit use all three of the files? If not, I would think evtEdit is the suspect.

1. I suspect I was running DVArchive in the background....in fact...I'm pretty sure I was. I will try to recreate tonight.

2&3. I was not using VLC, and I'm pretty sure I didn't have any media windows open when I did the evtEdit.

4. NTFS

5. 850 megs.

So how do you make evtEdit just run the tools on the whole file, rather than trying to edit segments out? Surely there's a little checkbox or something that I'm missing that will not force me to unselect (make green) all those little slices if I want to use Womble to edit out the commercials later.

No matter what I've tried, I always seem to miss a little sliver that gets taken out (that I don't want deleted in the edited final product).

JenEric,

Thanks for pointing me to the explorer crashing thread. I skimmed it and it looks like it offers some theories about the cause. Anyways, not sure if it is related to the file deletion problem I'm having with evtEdit/rtvEdit or not...

Yes, when the problem occurs, it happens right after hitting the "generate mpeg" button. You don't see any of the normal rtvEdit generated messages as it parses the "A" and "D" entries in the edit script file.

Since my last post, I've read more about rtvEdit and understand it a little better. It seems that evtEdit is generating the edit script file for rtvEdit. The critical entries in that file that could be coming into play are the "T" and "F" entries. The documentation for RTVTOOLS (i.e. rtvtools.txt) talks about the ability to use "T" and "F" to "rename the source fileset" and later says to "be careful using this since existing files are overwritten". However, it doesn't give an example of this technique. What does rtvEdit generate for "T" and "F" entries for my configuration where I was using "backup and overwrite original"?

In the meantime, I'm going to try to reproduce the problem without changing my configuration and use the version of evtEdit you posted that does logging. I will manually backup my .mpg, .evt, and .ndx files prior to any testing so I don't lose anything. I'll let you know...

JenEric,

I just reproduced the problem!!! I'm collecting the diagnostic info right now and will include it in a follow-up posting shortly...

OK, here's what I did:

1. Downloaded and used Version 12 of evtEdit that JenEric posted earlier.
2. Kept my configuration settings the same (except pointed evtEdit to a new "WorkArea" directory for the .mpg, .evt, and .ndx files.
3. Copied the files for my largest video from DVArchive (Blues Brothers at about 7GB) to this special WorkArea directory.
4. Ran evtEdit and changed a few segments that were incorrectly marked as commercials (red) and changed them to valid content (green), and vice versa.
5. Hit the "convert mpeg" button.
6. Immediately got the following displayed on the console windows that popped up:
----------------------------
F:\\Temp>"C:\\Downloads\\ReplayTV\\RTVTools\
ev4\\bin\\win32\
tvedit.exe" "F:\\Temp\\evtEditIn_3724.txt"
Can't open file F:\\DVArchive\\WorkArea\\The Blues Brothers.mpg

F:\\Temp>pause
Press any key to continue . . .
----------------------------
7. At this point I checked my temp directory (i.e., F:\\Temp) and found the following files (which are included in the zip file attached to this posting):
evtEditIn_3724.txt
evtEditLog.txt
RunEvtEd_3724.bat
8. I checked F:\\DVArchive\\WorkArea and it is completely empty (the original .mpg, .evt, and .ndx files were deleted).
9. Inspecting the evtEditLog.txt file, the last line says:
----------------------------
1/13/2004 8:39:13 PM: Deleting F:\\DVArchive\\WorkArea\\The Blues Brothers files. (EditMpeg DMG1)
----------------------------

So it seems to me that evtEdit is deleting the files and it's doing it before rtvEdit even got started.

JenEric, do you need any more info to debug this? I'm going to leave evtEdit at the state it's in for a while (console window still displayed, sitting on a pause) in case there is any other info I can collect for you. I believe if I continue on from the pause, the evtEditIn*.txt and RunEvtEd*.bat files will get deleted.

Let me know...

JenEric,

Just saw your post, after I submitted mine. I've included the evtEditIn*.txt file in the zip file attached to my previous posting.

One thing I forgot to mention that happened (follows in sequence between steps 5 and 6 from my previous posting):

5.5 Got a dialog box asking if I wanted to overwrite my mpeg file. I hit the "Yes" button. [Note: I didn't think to check at that point before I hit "Yes" if the files were still there. My guess is they were and they got deleted after I hit "Yes".]

...ooops. I thought it was attached to my previous posting and it wasn't. Just tried again and it seems to not let me attach the file (it's a zip file and I'm supposed to be allowed to post attachments).

Anyone know why I can't post an attachment?