So playing around with MCEbuddy and wondering what are the best settings people have found for the smallest files size and still have good quality say at 720p? I have been using the MP4 medium and a one hour 1080P show ts file is about 5 gig and after procession without removing comjical,just tagging ends up around .75 to .7 gig. I would like to get into the .3 to .5 gig if possible.
I have a pretty good comskip.ini file so this is mainly about MCEbuddy settings. I have read through most of the threads on comskip etc but really did not find best MCE settings.
So anyone have a good config or settings they are willing to share?
So… I have some questions too… just downloaded MCEbuddy…
My source file is an MKV, with subtitles, processed from the recorded TS file/
I want my output to be an MKV, with subtitles, and with chapter markers for the commercials (I don’t want tor remove them)
MCE buddy in the case is taking a gawd awful amount of time… 8+ hours for a one hour show. Is this normal?
I have been running tests with 720 mp4 and 1280 mp4 at low, normal and high. High takes way too long for any real benefit. Normal setting on both still looks good, takes a 5 gig file down to .7 gig for 720 and at 1280 is about 1.2 gig. The process time was about an hour for the 720 and hour and twenty for 1280. The fast for both did not look quite as good as the normal but for me it was “acceptable” but noticeable artifacts and tiling with fast action or full screen moments. File size was .5 on the 720 and .85 for the 1280. Process time was like 40 minutes or less.
I did another test where I manually removed the commercials and then ran the same 5 gigish file through handbrake with my custom profile. I got much better quality results keeping the 1920x1080 resolution and still got the files size to .9 gig with very good quality, no artifacts or tiling at all and just a much better picture quality with a higher resolution. Problem is not sure how to process in a simple way like MCEbuddy does. May have to do more reading on CLI for MCEbuddy to fine tune the encode process.
Interesting discussion. Currently trying to get MCE Buddy to monitor my Plex NAS folder to process new recordings but it cant. Says file path to long. Ugh.
@jwaltrip4 said:
So… I have some questions too… just downloaded MCEbuddy…
My source file is an MKV, with subtitles, processed from the recorded TS file/
I want my output to be an MKV, with subtitles, and with chapter markers for the commercials (I don’t want tor remove them)
MCE buddy in the case is taking a gawd awful amount of time… 8+ hours for a one hour show. Is this normal?
The free version of Comskip which comes with MCEBuddy is rate-limited for MKV input files. Either purchase the full version of Comskip or pass the.ts files to it directly. Is there a reason you are transcoding twice? Your best bet is to leave Plex doing nothing, it will dump the .ts at the end of the recording, MCEBuddy will pick up the .ts, run Comskip and then transcode to .mkv.
Worth noting that the free version of MCEBuddy is also limited, the paid version is much faster.
It’s also useful to use the donator version of MCEBuddy. The newest beta (2.4.6 10/20/16) allows for directory exclusion - this allows you to select your entire DVR folder, but exclude the .grab directory. MCEBuddy would sometimes process a file that Plex was still recording.
Both MCEbuddy and comskip I’m using are donor versions but I am on the release 2.4.5. At least for me I have just been pulling manually to play with them. But yeah pulling from the grab folder would not be a good idea.
I would still like to know if anyone is using any special settings for the video output?
I played with Plex transcoding and did not like the results. They were okay but I got better results with MCEbuddy and handbrake. DVR being in beta the developers may not have fine tuned the built in transcoding and maybe it will be better in the final release. I really hope they pick up reading EDL files for commercial skip as I doubt they will have a built in commercial skip.
My ‘issue’ is that plex does not play the CC. so I use ccextraxtor to pull the subtitles, then I mux into an MKV with only subtitle and English soundtrack (usualy there is Spanish as well)
if I did not care about subtitles, I would not bother.
I read somewhere that the developers turned off CC for the beta because different fonts types were causing issues. I’m sure they plan to turn them on in the full release since it is required by the FCC.
@jwaltrip4 said:
I am doing transcoding with mkvmerge
My ‘issue’ is that plex does not play the CC. so I use ccextraxtor to pull the subtitles, then I mux into an MKV with only subtitle and English soundtrack (usualy there is Spanish as well)
if I did not care about subtitles, I would not bother.
Like mbppg said @elan stated subs were causing conflicts so they are turned off for now.
As for MCEBuddy not having the donators version of it or comskip will be slow. I think comskip is rate limited to 0.5x or something along those lines. For files that you have already processed are you using the option of MKV unprocessed that will skip any transcoding and just do the commercial cutting and merging. As for subs MCEBuddy can extract a .srt file from the .ts files and reinsert it.
The donator versions of both are great using I’m converting to h.265 and most 1080 shows take about the same amount for time to process as their play length. A few of the more fast paced shows take a little longer. Older shows that are only 480 take about 10 minutes to process. I’m using Nvidia hardware encoding for mine though.
My experience with the free version is that it is unusably slow. Is the purchased version a LOOOTTT faster
Here is what I want;
don’t change my source file
add chaptering links around the commercials so I can skip over them
seems to me is should only need to san the file for commercials, and then create a chapter file and remux it all together.
with my limited understanding, it looks like the free version wants to completely process the whole file like it is trying to reencode it like handbrake.
It should only have to remux. For the conversion task what profile are you using? I know when I ran a test of comskip on the nondonater version it looked like it was going to take 2 hours or more to process a 1 hour show.
@jwaltrip4 said:
My experience with the free version is that it is unusably slow. Is the purchased version a LOOOTTT faster
Here is what I want;
don’t change my source file
add chaptering links around the commercials so I can skip over them
seems to me is should only need to san the file for commercials, and then create a chapter file and remux it all together.
with my limited understanding, it looks like the free version wants to completely process the whole file like it is trying to reencode it like handbrake.
I believe the free version is limited on amount of threads and processes which is why it can be slow.
In most cases it does remux the video depending on the profile you select. So if you pick the TS MPEG2 profiles it should only add chapters and generate an EDL file for commercials and not take the long. However I have not tested for time to process. I am processing to reduce the size so mine always remux and they do take time even with the donor version but still better than the free.
I am hand braking a bunch of files today. Once I am done I will turn my attention back to this and try it out again. I may be back here asking questions at that point
@jwaltrip4 said:
I am hand braking a bunch of files today. Once I am done I will turn my attention back to this and try it out again. I may be back here asking questions at that point
The donator versions of both are great using I’m converting to h.265 and most 1080 shows take about the same amount for time to process as their play length. A few of the more fast paced shows take a little longer. Older shows that are only 480 take about 10 minutes to process. I’m using Nvidia hardware encoding for mine though.
How are you doing h.265 with MCEBuddy? Unless you’re using something else? Also curious how you’re doing Nvidia hardware encoding, as I thought I read special drivers were needed by the encoding application. Although I doubt it’ll matter for me since I have an AMD APU (although will probably upgrade to a discreet GPU in the near future).
According to MCEbuddy facebook page, version 2.4.3 back in Dec 2015 he added support:
“MCEBuddy 2.4.3
December 23, 2015
After 6 months of going at it like a pack of hungry wolves we bring you the shiny new blazing fast MCEBuddy 2.4.3.
Thanks for your support to keep us motivated, you guys rock! Share this with your friends and family.
48 new features, enhancements and bug fixes
Improve quality and stability of hardware accelerated conversions, upto 3000% (8x - 30x) faster conversion (vs 2.3.13)
Added support for NVidia NVENC and Intel QuickSync for H.264 and H.265/HEVC hardware accelerated encoding with automatic encoder selection (mix and match hardware)
Added support for Silicon Dust HDHomeRun DVR…”
