mpeg toc maker

I got tired of having Cinelerra hang while create table of contents files for a list MPEG videos. So I wrote my own script to create the table of contents files for a list of MPEGs in a directory. Once you specify the LIST, the script plops the table of contents files in your users' .bcast directory in ~/.bcast.

I output the file name, start time, end time and elapsed time for the table of contents creation. This output looks like this:

SCRIPTSTART:                  20100130_121201
       FILE:                     mvi_0703.m2t      START: 20100130_121201        END: 20100130_121204    TIME(s):       3
       FILE:                     mvi_0705.m2t      START: 20100130_121204        END: 20100130_121222    TIME(s):      18
       FILE:                     mvi_0706.m2t      START: 20100130_121222        END: 20100130_121255    TIME(s):      33
       FILE:                     mvi_0708.m2t      START: 20100130_121255        END: 20100130_121325    TIME(s):      30
       FILE:                     mvi_0709.m2t      START: 20100130_121325        END: 20100130_121341    TIME(s):      16
       FILE:                     mvi_0710.m2t      START: 20100130_121341        END: 20100130_121347    TIME(s):       6
       FILE:                     mvi_0711.m2t      START: 20100130_121347        END: 20100130_121401    TIME(s):      14
       FILE:                     mvi_0713.m2t      START: 20100130_121401        END: 20100130_121403    TIME(s):       2
       FILE:                     mvi_0714.m2t      START: 20100130_121403        END: 20100130_121415    TIME(s):      12
       FILE:                     mvi_0715.m2t      START: 20100130_121415        END: 20100130_121415    TIME(s):       0
       FILE:                     mvi_0716.m2t      START: 20100130_121416        END: 20100130_121416    TIME(s):       0
       FILE:                     mvi_0717.m2t      START: 20100130_121416        END: 20100130_121421    TIME(s):       5
       FILE:                     mvi_0718.m2t      START: 20100130_121421        END: 20100130_121442    TIME(s):      21
       FILE:                     mvi_0719.m2t      START: 20100130_121442        END: 20100130_121442    TIME(s):       0
       FILE:                     mvi_0720.m2t      START: 20100130_121442        END: 20100130_121446    TIME(s):       4
       FILE:                     mvi_0721.m2t      START: 20100130_121446        END: 20100130_121449    TIME(s):       3
       FILE:                     mvi_0722.m2t      START: 20100130_121449        END: 20100130_121454    TIME(s):       5
       FILE:                     mvi_0724.m2t      START: 20100130_121454        END: 20100130_121455    TIME(s):       1
       FILE:                     mvi_0725.m2t      START: 20100130_121455        END: 20100130_121507    TIME(s):      12
       FILE:                     mvi_0727.m2t      START: 20100130_121507        END: 20100130_121515    TIME(s):       8
       FILE:                     mvi_0728.m2t      START: 20100130_121515        END: 20100130_121531    TIME(s):      16
       FILE:                     mvi_0730.m2t      START: 20100130_121531        END: 20100130_121534    TIME(s):       3
       FILE:                     mvi_0731.m2t      START: 20100130_121534        END: 20100130_121535    TIME(s):       1
  SCRIPTEND:                  20100130_121535 RUNTIME(s):             213

*** Update 2010/05/28 ***
I added a little logic to the beginning of the script that checks for the presence of a single argument to the script. That argument is the name of a single file to convert. So now, you have two choices:
1) convert a list of mpeg files as specified in the LIST variable or
2) convert a single file via the command line like so:
./tocMaker.sh videoToConvert.m2t
*** end update ***

Here is the script:

#!/bin/bash
#
# tocMaker.sh
# Author: SCF
# Website: http://crazedmuleproductions.blogspot.com
#
# Purpose: This script builds the table of contents files for a list of mpeg files
#
# Input: List of mpeg files as specified in the LIST variable or a single file via command line like so:
#  ./tocMaker.sh videoToConvert.m2t
#
# Output: Runs mpeg3toc and puts toc's in your users' .bcast directory
#
DEBUG=
if [ $1 ]
then
 LIST=$1
else
 LIST="*.m2t"
fi
echo "converting $LIST"
TOTALTIME=0
function dt {
       DATE=$(date +"%Y%m%d_%H%M%S")
       echo $DATE
}
function st {
       SECONDS=$(date +%s)
       echo $SECONDS
}
PWD=$(pwd)
DIR=$(echo $PWD | sed 's/\//_/g' | sed 's/^_//g')

SCRIPTSTART=$(dt)
printf "%13s %32s\n" "SCRIPTSTART:" $SCRIPTSTART

for FILE in $(ls -1 $LIST)
do
       START=$(dt)
       COUNTBEGIN=$(st)
       NEWFILE=$(echo $FILE | sed 's/\./_/g')
       FULLPATH="${DIR}_${NEWFILE}.toc"
       ORIG_PATH="$PWD/$FILE"
       if [ $DEBUG ]
       then
               echo "$FILE was: $FILE, is: $NEWFILE"
               echo "FULLPATH is $FULLPATH"
               echo "command is mpeg3toc $ORIG_PATH ~/.bcast/$FULLPATH"
       fi
       mpeg3toc $ORIG_PATH ~/.bcast/$FULLPATH
       END=$(dt)
       COUNTFINISH=$(st)
       ELAPSED=$(expr $COUNTFINISH - $COUNTBEGIN)
       printf "%13s %32s %11s %15s %11s %15s %11s %7d\n" "FILE:" $FILE "START:" $START "END:" $END "TIME(s):" $ELAPSED
       TOTALTIME=$(expr $ELAPSED + $TOTALTIME)
done
SCRIPTEND=$(dt)
printf "%13s %32s %11s %15d\n" "SCRIPTEND:" $SCRIPTEND "RUNTIME(s):" $TOTALTIME

cheers,
the mule

rebuilding the workstation: lost my damn RAID set!

I *almost* had a minor tragedy last night while rebuilding my Fedora Core 4 box. The *almost* tragedy occurred while reinstalling Core 4. While going through the process, I told the installer to use my existing RAID set, but do not reformat it. I figured what harm could come to the drive if it doesn't get formatted? Well, a lot, apparently. Since I was rushing through the install, I neglected to take proper care of the 40GB of MPEG2 files on the RAID set. Here's what happened.

After the FC installer finished, it asks to reboot the box, so I rebooted. On bootup, the system gave me errors regarding an unrecognized filesystem and dropped me to a filesystem shell to fix what was wrong. I didn't know what was wrong, so I rebooted into a linux rescue disk and simply took the RAID filesystem out of /etc/fstab and rebooted.

On the second bootup, I started fdisk to look at the drives. To my dismay, fdisk did not recognize the RAID set partitions. Agh! I did some preliminary research online. I came to the determination that I figured I had lost my data, though I did have it backed up. But it would be a pain to retrieve the 40GB or so of videos from my backup system. Damn it. So I bit the bullet and created new partitions of type "fd", a Linux RAID autodetect partition as I had done when I setup the RAID set initially. When I wrote the partition table, fdisk gave me some error saying that the drives will resync after the box reboots. I rebooted and looked at the output of "fdisk -l". Things seemed alright, as the drives were recognized as Linux RAID autodetect. So I then reenabled /dev/md0 in /etc/fstab and made sure that /etc/mdadm.conf was correct. Dejectedly I rebooted.

When the system started, it dropped me into a prompt complaining of filesystem problems again. Now what? This time, I looked at the man pages for fsck and figured out the commands I needed to repair the disk. They ran something like this:
fsck -t ext2 /dev/md0 -V -r
-t filesystem type
-V verbose
-r prompt for each repair

A couple of inodes were missing or corrupt. OK. Fsck seemed to continue on with the different stages of the five stage check procedure. About five or ten minutes of this, I was getting worried. Happily, it finished the checks and dropped me to a prompt in order to exit and reboot. OK..that's progress! Also, the box came up clean with no errors. Sweet. I now went to view the filesystem, and to my shock and surprise, my original files were there! Awesome!! But now the real test is reading from and writing to files. I first viewed one of the videos in mplayer. This worked! I then performed an extensive write test. Cinelerra needs table of contents files for each video. These are index file, essentially. So at a prompt, I generated a bunch of toc files for the 30GB or so of video I had by using this one command:
for i in `ls -1 *.m2t` ; do echo $i ; mpeg3toc $i $i.toc ; done

The file creation took about twenty minutes but worked! I then loaded the files into Cinelerra, started editing and wouldn't you know they are good to go! Hooray! But I'm still an idiot.

Moral of the story is make sure you do your research on RAID before you decide to implement it.

created iTunes-ready movie from MPG!

Very happy to say that I was able to create an iTunes/iPod-ready movie from an ffmpeg produced mpeg1video! Hoohah! On my second FC4 box that has all the codec libraries, I was able to use the following ffmpeg string to get the iTunes file to work:
ffmpeg -i sourceMpeg -b videobitrate -ab audiobitrate -f mov -vcodec mpeg4 -acodec aac output.mov

So, now my workflow is looking like this:
1) bring in HDV footage
2) run mpeg3toc (or rename files to .MPG)
3) edit video (make sure no hanging or truncated video tracks are there!)
4) render audio file as WAV
5) render video file as MPG and add a -i for the audio
6) outside of Cinelerra, convert to iTunes with the above command
7) convert to DVD with script

Not bad. I'm pooped. Goodnight.