Thought I had taken out all the logs. Missed two. Try the attached version.
So your Done folder had both AAC and MPEG audio and
Done2 folder had only AAC audio correct?
If so it did work even if you did get screen errors. Try running version C and lets’s see if you get any screen errors.
BTW, if you play the original version how loud was the mpeg audio?
No…in version “B”, it only went to the done folder with just the AAC audio. The audio is substantially lower, almost a whisper compared to the original audio. Nothing appeared in the done2 folder.
Will run this in a few, not at the computer right now. Does it matter running with python 27 instead of 3?
Thanks again for all the help
Version of Python shouldn’t matter as powershell isn’t using it. Only the normal script uses it. So if the python scripts were working your version of python is fine. I only through this together for you quickly and tested the first version which did work for me. It was meant to be a starting point for you to get you working and then you could build on it. I didn’t try B or C. Just made changes based on what you saw.
Let me know how C works and I’ll try it on my side as soon as the current set of videos get processed I’ve got queued up.
Carlo
OK so that is good news. Did the original file start with only AAC?
Try checking the source file before processing it to see if it has something other than AAC to start with. The file in DONE should have AAC plus the other track (if not AAC). Done2 of course should only be AAC.
Carlo
Looking good so far. Do you have any files with DTS or anything with more then 2 channels audio to test with? With more than 2 channels you should have more than 1 audio track in DONE and then just AAC in DONE2.
Hey, don’t worry about it, didn’t take long to put together and was kind of fun and will give you or anyone else wanting to do multiple things or move files, etc a foundation to work from going forward. Powershell is good for this type of thing compared to a batch file as you can create functions and setup sections of code to do specific things and still keep things highly readable.
Carlo
Will find a file with extra audio and post results.
You got me intrigued with powershell, may be a new hobby to play with …
Thanks,
Rick
Yea, kind of why I choose it since it’s pretty powerful compared to batch files. Kind of sits half way between a high level programming language like BASIC and the old DOS batch files but made for windows. It’s perfect for running headless windows systems as well.
Anyway, let me know how this works with a multi-audio file to see if we need to make any additional tweaks,
Carlo
Here is the result from file with DTS audio from done folder:
And from done 2 folder:
Looks like you hit it out if the park!
If I want some people to be able to use the subtitles, I just need to add to the file folder, correct?
But this will also make plex transcode due to the subtitles?
Thanks again for all your help,
Rick
PS believe it or not, but was a programming student WAY back ( early 80’s), did basic, fortran, pascal, but assembler knocked me out of that career path ( old punch cards sucked!). Now wish I had stuck with it, oh well.
Very Nice!
You could add a new function to copy any SRT files from Done to Done2 or just manually grab them. Nothing needs to be done for them. If you don’t have the SRTs and want them the python scripts can pull these down for you (ini setting), otherwise they will be extracted from the video.
If the client device can play SRT files then the file + subtitle will still direct play which is the beauty of SRT files (ie Roku, PMP, Shield TV, etc).
So you should be good to go now,
Carlo
Hi Cayers,
I have a quick question regarding the video encoding options on the tweeked scripts (I tested with 2.1)
I want to encode video using a CRF setting.
With the original mp4 automator scripts there are 2 settings in the autoprocess.ini that effect this :
video-bitrate and video-crf
With the original scripts as per the instructions if the video is higher than “video-bitrate” it re-encodes to that bitrate unless “video-crf” is set in which case the “video-bitrate” forces an encode using the crf number.
With the 2.1 script it seems to ignore the “video-crf” setting and hard encode to the bitrate setting. Is this intended?
Yes, people were driving me crazy with questions about it that were unwarranted.
It’s presently set so it works for both software and hardware encoding. Due to these two different mechanisms I don’t want to open a can of worms. 
But I’ll say this, if you are hell bent on wanting to change it then search the python code.
I just happened to look at the Op post and this reminded me how much my system has grown since the last time I updated file stats in that message.
My Libraries:
186 - 3D Movies (Bluray Quality and growing quickly)
202 - 4K Movies
379 - Christmas Movies
332 - Documentary Movies
1,168 - Educations
126 - Home Movies
9,019 - Movies
21,400 - Music Videos
215,562 Music Tracks, 27903 Albums, 8008 Music Artists
1200 - NFL Games
640 Recommended Movies
10 Screeners
30,201 - TV Episodes (351 Shows, 1819 Seasons)
711GB Metadata file size
I’m starting to notice that as I add a few hundreds shows/movies I have to run Optimize more often on my database. I don’t know if it’s in my head or not but it also seems that my library listings aren’t quite as snappy as they used to be either. This is probably due to the size of the Metadata directories which are pretty big as well.
I’ve noticed some bugs that were recently introduced in a recent Plex version that duplicates the first music track of new music media added. My system hardly gets any use of it’s Music unless it’s around Christmas time.
So I’ve decided to remove my music library to see how much this would reduce the metadata sizes as well as database entries. Plus I wouldn’t mind giving the music section a good overhaul since it’s my least touched section of the system. I’m presently copies the metadata to another drive and it’s almost done (over a day) and I’ll have a copy of the database so I could “restore” if I decided to in a day or two.
Wish me luck,
Carlo
All I can say is WOW! Didn’t know there was sooo many Christmas movies…
sounds like you have been doing this for awhile. Bet you have some oldies that can’t be found anymore.
Good luck with your reorganization of that massive collection.
would love to know your setup and drives you trust with all the material.
Are you using a NAS system or internal / external drives for storage and plex servers?
Yes been doing this for quite a while. I used to be a developer of a PVR system so some of my films go back a ways. I’ve replaced many of my old recordings with DVR or Bluray if available for better quality.
Setup is actually quite simple. 8 Bay DAS StarTech units attached to Windows 2012 Server. Using StableBit DrivePool to have one drive letter for all combined drives and using SnapRAID for parity. Pretty well documented throughout this thread.
It’s starting to feel big and it seems like I add media at a good clip. Since I posted that above yesterday around this time I’ve processed and added the following in the last 24 hours:
5 - 3D Movies (30 in progress)
13 - Movies
135 - TV Shows
1 - 4K Movie
I also just realized I didn’t include my 4K movies in the above post which I just edited to include. Granted not to many (202) but if I don’t see an improvement over the 1080p version I don’t keep them online.
@cayars How are you getting 88TB out of an 8 Bay unit? Also, when you say processing do you mean ripping? Or are you reencoding/muxing etc.? (not to get specific on where your media comes from, just learning new things) The StarTech units, are they usb? Is it like 4 dual drive or does StarTech make an 8 bay single unit? I ask because i’m looking for a better option to my internal P410 Raid5 (I’d like to downsize my tower to mini-itx)
You could install qty 8 of 12 TB drives for a raw total of about 96TB in just one 8 bay enclosure. That would put you close to 88 TB after formatting.
But I never said I only have 1 8 Bay DAS unit.
Truth be told I’ve got a couple of them. 3 Computers stuffed with drives plus USB drives, two “small” NAS boxes that make up my Plex system. One server runs Plex for the DVR services plus processing of files. Another is my main server and the third is my “utility” server that handles things like file transfers. I may make the utility server my Plex Music server as well since I just deleted this from my main server (for now). One i7 and two older XEONs. I have two setup with AMD video cards and one with nVidia for HW transcoding testing.
I mostly use the separate NAS boxes to store parity for SnapRAID. SnapRAID can store parity on local drives, NAS boxes, files server, USB drives, etc So it makes it easy to have separate parity drives spread out on (linux, windows and NASes).
88TB is only a guess at this point. Would easily be well over 100 TB if you count the total drives dedicated to Plex in one form or another but I previously only counted the storage I have cut out for plex storage. But I’ve changed things up recently so I’m not sure how much dedicated space I have for it right now. Maybe I count it tomorrow. I probably don’t want to know.
I moved my NFL Games, Music and Home Video files off to a file server since these get the least play to make the most room on DAS drives for movies and TV shows.
The units I like for storage vs price for Plex use are the StarTech 8 bay units which sell for about $320 each. These aren’t RAID, no memory, no fancy controllers. They are simple JBOD type enclosures you can hook up via USB3, UASP or eSATA. They are hot swap able and each drive can show up as a drive letter. If you think about them as being an 8 drive WD MyBook you are close in thinking. I like this because I can pull drives or move them to any other system and immediately read/write to them which is nice if you ever have a problem or want to replace the drives with something bigger.
By processing I mean running them through the scripts I provide to get the media in the format I always recommend that will direct play to the largest amount of devices via direct play without having to transcode.
Carlo
That’s pretty sweet. You’ve inspired me to try something new with a pile of HDDs I have collecting dust. SnapRAID and DrivePool are the game changers here. I dig it. Thanks for sharing.
Agreed, DrivePool is really cool for combining a bunch of disks directly attached in some way to the computer. It won’t combine network drives however so be aware of that. There is a way to “force” network drives as well to be part of the pool but it’s not straightforward and not worth the effort IMHO.
On the other hand SnapRAID can be setup to create parity for any drive letter, path, junction point whatever and can write said parity anywhere. So with SnapRaid you could have 10 local drive and 10 network drives used for storage and create parity for all 20 and then write this parity to 1 or 2 disk that are local or network based. You can have up to 8 parity disks. You can add parity or storage disks at will.
You could run 50 storage disks with 1 parity disk if you choose to but would be better server with at least 2 or possibly 3 parity disks. Unlike typical RAID if you did loose a disk in a 50 disk system (assuming no SnapRAID) you only lost 1/50th of your info and not the whole thing.
DrivePool has advanced features as well but I don’t use them to much. The only “feature” I use is the duplication feature for my Home Movies. I have this directory set to replicate on 2 disks.
Makes for a very flexible system.
