Can Smart Cutter fix corrupt time codes?

[highc]

Hi,

I have a movie (h.264, mpg container) here, recorded from DVB-S2. It seems that the time code is broken. When loading the movie, smart cutter (1.3.1) shows a length of -85,070.16 seconds. Initial time code is 01:35:32:203, last time code is 01:57:42:044. The movie as such is almost 3 hours, and the time code goes across 00:00:00:000 in the movie. Also when progressing this movie (cutting, fixing) smart cutter seems to rely on the time code information and shows, e.g., total times of -2:-29:-35 until the movie has been transcoded.

I can still cut the video, but time codes in the cut video are still broken, leading to some issues when watching the movie. Smart Cutter's "Fix Video File" function doesn't help. Is there any way to fix the time code? Could Smart Cutter do this automatically when it realizes that, by negative total length or when the 00:00:00:000 mark is in the middle, the time code is not really usable?

Thanks.

[admin]

Dear highc:
Thanks for your posting.

Smart Cutter's "Fix Video File" function doesn't help. Is there any way to fix the time code? Could Smart Cutter do this automatically when it realizes that, by negative total length or when the 00:00:00:000 mark is in the middle, the time code is not really usable?
Thanks.

We will talk to our developers about this, to see what we can do about that.
We will keep you posted if we get any news about this feature.

Please feel free to send us your further advice and suggestion.
Thank you very much.

Best Regards,
FameRing Support Team

[highc]

Thanks for looking into this. I just tried with v1.3.3 and a movie in which time code is reset somewhere in the middle. Even if I set the option "TC 0 Base", while the cut movie starts at 00:00:000, where there is the time code reset in the movie, the time code in the cut movie turns negative.

Also when progressing a movie with a time code reset in the middle, smart cutter still shows numerous strange time values, including negative total times for transcoding, 0.0x speed in transcoding, a negative length, etc.

Thanks.

[admin]

Dear highc:
Sorry for the latency.

We have tried many times, but we can not re-produce such a problem on our end. We tried to re-write the time code manually, resetting it to zero in the middle of the stream, but the program still did not show the problem.

We will keep on trying for the last several possibilities.

We will keep you posted about the progress.

Please feel free to send us your further advice and suggestion.
Thank you very much.

Best Regards,
FameRing Support Team

[highc]

I can upload another sample the next time I come across this issue. However, please be advised that normally just cutting relevant areas out of the movie does not help to reproduce the error. So I would need to upload the entire stream recorded from DVB-S2, which is typically a few gig.

[admin]

Dear highc:

Could you please use the Smart Cutter then cut the sample from 1 minutes before the zero point till 1 minute after the zero point?

Thank you very much.

Best Regards,
FameRing Support Team

[highc]

Yes, I can (will in a few mins) upload such snippet.

That snippet will show that smart cutter still shows some strange values about video length, remaining time to cut the video, etc. What does not happen with this short snippet is the even bigger issue: Scrolling to big movies with a TC 0 somewhere in the middle takes ages. After I scroll to some point, my HDD LED lights continuously for 1 to 3 mins, then smart cutter becomes responsive again. And that's on an i7 930 with a SATA3 Seagate and Win7 64 bit.

[highc]

Thanks for version 1.3.8f, which I just realized was made available. It fixes the issue which could be seen from the small snippet - thank you for the excellent support!

However, I'm still seeing the issue that scrolling in the big "mother file" with the big scroller takes ages: The big preview window updates rather instantaneously, but the small windows below and the time code only update after appr. 90 seconds of heavy HDD activity. This is kind of annoying, as it takes ages to cut a movie.

I'm not experiencing this with files having a correct time code when recording, by the way. And in terms of hardware, I'm still running Win7 Prof 64 bit on an i7-930 with a single SATA3 HDD.

I know you're concious of bandwidth. But if you'd like me to, I'm happy to upload, for debugging purposes, the entire ts stream recorded for the movie from which the small snippet was taken (7.5 gig).

[snipsnip]

Ver 1.3.8f: "fix for negative time code in ts" isn't successful! Now problems appear which did not exist with version 1.3.8!

I have a new ts-video recorded from TV, size 10,5 GB.

SC 1.3.8f shows in the Input Property Len(sec): -89028.7, the time code is (large slider on the right side) 00:-43:-48:-697.
SC 1.3.8 shows in the Input Property Len(sec): 6415.020, the time code is (large slider on the right side) 01:46:55:020.This is correct.
TSSniper shows 01:46:55:060, this corresponds to 6415,060 sec
MediaInfo shows 1h 46min

After cutting off beginning and end of the video the file size is 8.7 GB.

SC 1.3.8f shows in the Input Property Len(sec): -90118.01, the time code is (large slider on the right side) -1-58:-08.
SC 1.3.8 shows in the Input Property Len(sec): 5325.711, the time code is (large slider on the right side) 01:28:45:710.This is correct.
TSSniper shows 01:28:45:692, this corresponds to 5325,692 sec
MediaInfo shows 1h 28min

The bug doesn't seem to depend on the length of the video, at an another ts-video (the same TV channel, the same recording program) with 10.2 GB size Input Property length and time code are correct.

Question:

Why the video length in the Input Property is shown unfortunately in sec? HH:MI:SS.nnn is much better readable!
I would appreciate it very much if you would change it.

Edit in boldface 2011 Apr 26

[admin]

Dear highc:
Thanks for your active feed back.

still seeing the issue that scrolling in the big "mother file" with the big scroller takes ages

Please disable the 'audio VU meter' in Options dialog, and test this movie again. If the problem still exists, please upload this (7.5 gig) file to our ftp server. We are eager to re-produce this issue so we can resolve it.

Looking forward to your further message.
Thank you very much.

Best Regards,
FameRing Support Team