How long should the proces take - trying to manage my expectation

#1

I searched and did not find anything about this. I am new here and trying to get my feet wet. I have MCEBuddy running on a Windows 10 PC and it seems to be working fine with the default settings. My question is how long should it take to convert a single MPEG-2 show to MPEG-4 without commercials? Right now it takes a day to process a single show and I am thinking maybe my PC is the source? I had the HDHomerun DVR running on another machine and I am copying those shows to this PC in order to convert and save them to my NAS raid array.

#2
#3

That’s long for sure. The speed depends upon a lot of factors

  1. Comskip processing speed (free version has a speed limitation of about 30fps that means it’s takes an hour to process an hour long show)

  2. Hardware vs software encoding. Software encoding for mpeg2 to mpeg4 is anywhere between 30 to 120fps where as hardware can be from 120 to 1200fps (you can see this in your conversion logs)

  3. Availability of CPU. If you’ve limited the number of processors MCEBuddy is using or set the priority to low then it slows down MCEBuddy

  4. Hard disk or NAS, if you’re using a slow hard disk or a network location as your source, temp folder or destination folder then that is the slowest chain the link.

The last 2 are most likely the culprits if you’re seeing it take a “day” to convert a file, the first two impact is max a few hours.

You can open your conversion log, scroll to the bottom and copy paste the conversion metrics which show you how long each activity took and that will help your pin point the slowest chain the link.

#4

Thanks RBoy for the detailed explanation. I am using a mini PC with a USB 3.0 RAID 5 array attached to ti. The metrics for one show are below. I looked through the rest of is and see FPS=5.3 in most of it. I wonder if doing a 2 step convert on these files would improve things. First covert show to smaller format then do the commercial skip… ? Any suggestions on where in these logs to look for information that will tell me if maybe the mini PC is not beefy enough for what I am asking it to do? I have restrictions for only 2 jobs and set to high priority.

–> Performance Metrics for the Current Conversion
–>

–> Source video duration (hh:mm:ss) -> 02:00:55
–> Source video codec -> mpeg2video
–> Source video height -> 1080
–> Source video width -> 1920
–> Pre-conversion video duration (hh:mm:ss) -> 02:00:55
–>

–> <Duration (hh:mm:ss)>
–> <12/08/2017 06:18:02> <00:00:00>
–> <12/08/2017 06:18:02> <00:00:10>
–> <12/08/2017 06:18:12> <00:00:00>
–> <12/08/2017 06:18:12> <00:00:00>
–> <12/08/2017 06:18:12> <00:12:26>
–> <12/08/2017 06:30:38> <00:00:00>
–> <12/08/2017 06:30:39> <02:44:27>
–> <12/08/2017 09:15:06> <00:00:13>
–> <12/08/2017 09:15:19> <00:23:15>
–> <12/08/2017 09:38:35> <11:19:42>
–> <12/08/2017 20:58:17> <00:01:07>
–> <12/08/2017 20:59:25> <00:00:00>
–> <12/08/2017 20:59:25> <00:00:00>
–> <12/08/2017 20:59:25> <00:00:00>
–> <12/08/2017 20:59:25> <00:00:00>
–> <12/08/2017 20:59:25> <00:00:01> <Success - All done!>
–>

–> Total time taken by conversion (hh:mm:ss) -> 14:41:24

#5

I think you missed copying the metrics description column. I see two big time taking activities. Maybe attach the entire log file so we can go through and analyze it.

#7

I can’t seem to get the logs to upload… maybe there is a size limit?

#8

So the original log file was way too large so I cut out all the redundent entries hopefully the required info is still there…
Stripped down Log Sample.log (211.6 KB)

#9

Okay I noticed quite a few things in your logs including comskip processes that have hung after running for 9 hours and had to be terminated amongst other and they would all be attributed to the fact that you’re running a very old release that has about a 1000 fixes and enhancements since.

--> MCEBuddy Current Version : 2.3.14.1

Please update to the latest version and then post back if you’re still facing issues.

#10

Wow how embarrassing … typical windows error I took the file at the top of the list instead of the bottom of the list when I opened the FTP server site… my bad… thank you @RBoy for having a look at my logs. Updating to stable version now… will update on my results which I am sure will be better.

#11

Yes sir like night and day… we are cooking with gas now… Thanks again @RBoy for your assistance.

#12

So it has been going a while and now have more log files but still no new converted shows… a current log file has been attached… am I once again missing the obvious?
The Christmas Note 20150101 [20171206-1000].mpg-Convert to MP4-2017-12-11T00-40-41.6592987-05-00.log (2.1 MB)

#13

The good news it’s now running 12x faster than before.

If you look at the end of the log it’s shows that I can’t find the Comskip file you’ve configured in your settings located in the temp folder and it’s failing. Not sure why you’ve put the Comskip in the temp folder. That’s cleared out by MCEBuddy after each conversion.

MCEBuddy.CommercialScan.Scanner --> Using Custom Comskip Path -> D:\Temp
> 2017-12-11T01:43:56 MCEBuddy.CommercialScan.Scanner --> Scanning commercials with Comskip
> 2017-12-11T01:44:00 MCEBuddy.AppWrapper.Comskip --> Application File Not Found or not accessible : D:\Temp
> 2017-12-11T01:44:00 MCEBuddy.CommercialScan.Scanner --> Comskip failed
#14

I did in error so I clear it out how do I get MCEBuddy to reprocess the folder… ?

#15

Drag and drop it onto MCEBuddy or Click in the history link in the app and delete the entries you want it to reprocess.

#16

Ok thanks before I do that though it seems that I am still having an issue with commercial cuts… that is not working. Am I reading this right it says comskip not enabled but I am using HDHomeRun Unprocessed. the description say it will remove commericals but maybe I am missing something… again… ?

A Gift to Remember 20170101 [20171210-1700].mpg-Convert to MP4-2017-12-12T19-55-29.8366344-05-00.log (2.2 MB)

#17

It’s working fine. You Logs look great and it’s moved the converted file to your G drive as a MPG file.

Here are logs showing it’s found and cut the commercials.

> 2017-12-12T20:40:46 MCEBuddy.CommercialScan.Remover --> Removing commercials using CutTS ext -> .ts
2017-12-12T20:40:46 MCEBuddy.CommercialScan.Remover --> ParseEDL: Skipping initial segment, too small Start:0.000 Stop:0.000
2017-12-12T20:40:46 MCEBuddy.CommercialScan.Remover --> ParseEDL: Keeping segment Start:40.170 Stop:1078.510
2017-12-12T20:40:46 MCEBuddy.CommercialScan.Remover --> ParseEDL: Keeping segment Start:1342.740 Stop:1825.290
2017-12-12T20:40:46 MCEBuddy.CommercialScan.Remover --> ParseEDL: Keeping segment Start:2101.570 Stop:2670.830
2017-12-12T20:40:46 MCEBuddy.CommercialScan.Remover --> ParseEDL: Keeping segment Start:2941.310 Stop:3367.960
2017-12-12T20:40:46 MCEBuddy.CommercialScan.Remover --> ParseEDL: Keeping segment Start:3604.070 Stop:3965.960
2017-12-12T20:40:46 MCEBuddy.CommercialScan.Remover --> ParseEDL: Keeping segment Start:4257.190 Stop:4753.850
2017-12-12T20:40:46 MCEBuddy.CommercialScan.Remover --> ParseEDL: Keeping segment Start:4994.620 Stop:5429.660
2017-12-12T20:40:46 MCEBuddy.CommercialScan.Remover --> ParseEDL: Keeping segment Start:5700.900 Stop:6350.140
2017-12-12T20:40:46 MCEBuddy.CommercialScan.Remover --> ParseEDL: Keeping segment Start:6670.000 Stop:7209.170
2017-12-12T20:40:46