timg11 : technical support thread

[admin]

Dear timg11:
Hello, old friend. Please allow us several more minutes on this issue. The original thread was lost when we moved it into this sub-forum, so strange, but fortunately we have backuped our answer.

The screen update is very slow - it takes 15-20 seconds to update the screen after moving the slider.

The slow response is most likely related to display adaptor. Try this, click button 'Options', lighten up the button 'Auto De-interlace', then open the movie again, see if this could help.

Is Smart Cutter optimized for multi-core systems?

Yes. Smart Cutter does use multi-cores.

Could you please tell us your hardware configuraion, including the cpu and video adaptor type?

it is about 2.3Gbytes in size.

The size does not matter. We tested on files larger than 16GB many times.

how to cut it into a manageable size to upload

You can use tsMuxerGui for this, pretty easy to use, cutting into 10 seconds will be nice. Here is its link to download
http://www.videohelp.com/tools/tsMuxeR

Womble's MPEG Video Wizard

We surely know 'Womble". And we love it. Womble's Mpeg VCR and MPEG Video Wizard are great softwares. The scan through H.264 is slower than Mpeg2, but 15~~20 seconds latency, there must be something wrong. Let's find it out.

EDL or VPRJ files from Comskip or ShowAnalyzer.

We are also eager to support them. The major problem is, we can not find a sample EDL or VPRJ paired with the movie file correctly. Could you please afford us one? Thank you. We will keep on working on them.

Is there any way to save my cut list and reload it?

Yes, Smart Cutter does support project saving and loading. After you set up all the in and out points into record list, 'right click' on the record list, select the menu item 'save project' and 'load project'. You can also output all the edit points into a text file by 'output points'.

If Smart Cutter(not Framer) is really this slow

Definitely not! The seek latency is no more than 500ms, just half a second. So there must be some problems we should clear out.

Dear timg11, thanks a lot for your concern! We are so impressed. We think all the problems you mentioned, basically the problem of scan through speed, surely can be fixed.

Beside posting here, you can always contact us by
support@fame-ring.com or famering@gmail.com

Best Regards,
FameRing Support Team

[timg11]

Thank you for the response. Here are the answers to your questions:

1) Auto De-Interlace: I clicked the Auto De-interlace button. A dialog popped up that said "this will cost more system resources". I then opened 1 hour TS file again. The response to movements of the main slider is somewhat better, but still very slow. I estimate about 10-15 seconds before the preview video and the time indicator have updated. This is still difficult doing editing (trying to find commercials). During this time, the screen may update more than once, and there is no indication that it is still working (for example, cursor changing to hourglass or something). I have to use the Task Manager CPU usage to know when it is done moving. It would be helpful to update the time location _first_ so if the user is trying for a particular time, they can know without waiting.

2) My hardware configuration: CPU Intel Core 2 Duo E6850 3GHz, 4G RAM, Display NVIDIA GeFOrce 8600GT at 1920x1200 resolution. I am seeing both cores used in Task Manager, but they are not used 100% by Smart Cutter. The total use is about 50% each.

3) EDL and VPRJ: I can provide you many samples of EDL or VPRJ, but the problem is the large size of the video that goes with it. I ran ShowAnalyzer on my short 300Mb segment that I already uploaded, but it only has one transition point, and ShowAnalyzer might not work with such a short segment.
I have already uploaded a 300Mbyte sample TS file here: http://www.synthify.com/39477281/684268 ... 84822-0.ts
I ran ShowAnalyzer on this short file, and have uploaded the commercial skip files (all varieties supported by ShowAnalyzer v1.0 - EDL, VPRJ, TXT, and XML) to here: http://www.synthify.com/39477281/684268 ... mples1.zip. (Note that there are no transitions in this short segment that were detected)
I also captured the commercial skip files from another 30 minute show, that has several commercial segments identified (but the show itself is too big to upload):
http://www.synthify.com/39477281/684268 ... mples2.zip

4) Other suggestions that might have been lost from original thread:
a) Please a provide movement by exact time button (for example 30s) since commercials are usually an exact multiple of this length.
b) Please allow the row of views below the main slider to be at other spacings in time (for example, 5 seconds, 20 seconds, 3 minutes). Multiple rows at different spacings would be very helpful, especially if you could click between the images to go to that point in time.
c) When EDL and VPRJ are imported, please provide a button to jump to the next transition point in the file. Often the EDL and VPRJ is generated by a program such as ShowAnalyzer, and the detection is not always accurate. Therefore the user must check every transition point to be sure it is correct.

[admin]

Hi timg11:
Thanks for your information.

1.We downloaded the sample BruceSpringsteenandtheEStreetBandLiveinNewYorkCity-2184822-0.ts
We have it tested with Smart Cutter. The seek speed is as fast as our other samples, the scan through lantency is no more than 500 ms, even faster. We have it cutted and merged for a test, the result movie can be downloaded here
http://www.fame-ring.com/test/timg11test.ts

2.Since your hardware configuration is even better than our test machine, the slow scan through happened on your computer is strange. May be we are talking about different programs? Our updated version can always be downloaded from
http://www.fame-ring.com/smart.cutter.rar

3.Thank you so much for the EDL samples. We have sent them to our developers, they will take some research on them. We surely will support the EDL list.

4.'movement by exact time button' and 'the row of views below the main slider to be at other spacings in time' are great ideas! Actually they are already on our to-do list.
'Multiple rows at different spacings' surely is nice, but may cost too much resource, the developers would take more time considering it.
In the programming level, 'a button to jump to the next transition point' is just the same as 'movement by exact time button', although they are not on the user interface.

Anyway, thanks a lot for so much help.
Please keep in touch with us.

Best Regards,
FameRing Support Team

[timg11]

I am still puzzled why my machine is so slow. I thought maybe a different operating system would give better results. I tried running smart.portable.exe from the same machine booting from Windows 7 partition.

Smart.portable.exe runs normally at first, but when I load any TS file, Smart.portable.exe immediately crashes. (or as Windows 7 says "smart.portable.exe has stopped working"). Another dialog pops up in the notification area that says "the windows color scheme has been changed to basic. A program is running is incompatible....).

Here are the details:

Code: Select all

  Problem signature
Problem Event Name:	APPCRASH
  Application Name:	smart.portable.exe
  Application Version:	0.0.0.0
  Application Timestamp:	4b1a697c
  Fault Module Name:	smart.portable.exe
  Fault Module Version:	0.0.0.0
  Fault Module Timestamp:	4b1a697c
  Exception Code:	c0000005
  Exception Offset:	0019dabc
  OS Version:	6.1.7600.2.0.0.256.1
  Locale ID:	1033
  Additional Information 1:	0a9e
  Additional Information 2:	0a9e372d3b4ad19135b953a78882e789
  Additional Information 3:	0a9e
  Additional Information 4:	0a9e372d3b4ad19135b953a78882e789

Then I got a warning from Microsoft Security Essentials anti-virus. It says "SmartCutter\smart.cut\msvc60.ini" is infected with VirTool:Win32/Obfuscator.C.
I looked at the file with a text editor, and it is kind of suspicious. Normally a file of type .INI is a text file with settings. But this file is binary, and appears to be a DLL. Can you explain what it is for, and why it has the .INI file type?

I am running your latest portable version. The EXE file is dated 14 December 2009.

[timg11]

Just to be sure, I completely deleted my Smart Cutter installation, and re-downloaded the executable from the link you provided yesterday.
In fact, it turns out that this is a new version - the EXE file is now dated 17 December. It does not crash in Windows 7.
Also, the msvc60.ini file is no longer present, so there are no virus warnings.

Finally, the movement through the file is much faster now! It behaves like you said - about 500mS per jump.

I downloaded the Smart Cutter portable version from your web site just a few days ago. Was there a "bad" version available for a time to download?

I will continue testing and try to edit some actual files, and I'll let you know how it goes.

[timg11]

I booted back into XP, and the virus warning about msvc60.ini is back. On XP I'm running AVG, and it says the threat is "Runtime packed upack Detected on open".
The msvc60.ini binary file is again present in the same folder as smart.portable.exe.
Is this a real threat? If not, it may be that antivirus programs are interfering with Smart Cutter and causing problems.

[admin]

FALSE ALERT!
'msvc60.ini' is our initialization stub file. We already know that Microsoft security softwares, such as Essentials and OneCare, always raise false alert on Smart Cutter. We are still seeking for a solution.

One of our users, even post it to Sophus, the result is clear now, definitely a false alert.
Below is the reply from Sophus

Hello Again FameRing,
At the same time I sent the file to Sophus, and here is their reply:
..and again thanx for yr effort.

---- Quote --------------------------

Hello P----,

Thanks for submitting the file sample. The labs have determined this is a false positive and has been fixed. Please ensure you have the latest virus definitions and let us know if it is still being detected. Thanks.

Regards,
Ben Lim
Sophos Technical Support

http://www.sophos.com/support/
SOPHOS - simply secure

Smart Cutter has been tested okay with Mcafee, Norton, Nod32. It is also tested clean by Download.com and Softpedia.com.

Thanks for your information, glad to know that it runs faster on your computer now.

Best Regards,
FameRing Support Team

[bluelilis]

I have the same problem as reported here (I run it on Win7 Home Premium x64). MS Essentials is reporting msvc60.ini as a virus. It's a "severe alert" and it will not allow me to take any other action but deleting the file. I want to add that this only happens (until now) with my demo version of movie framer, not with the bought version of Smart Cutter (1.2.5). It also only seem to happen when opening .TS files, not .mpg's (do you use a differnt module for different types of files?).
I'm considering using Movie Shop Framer just to transform .TS files from the Hauppauge pvr, so this is a no-go.
Also, I cannot find the msvc60.ini in your distribution; timg11 says that it appeared as a .dll, which I don't see either. It should also be reported to MS as a false positive of Essentials; unfortunately I cannot get a copy of the file to do this.
Please let me know if the situation changes.
Thanks,
Liliana

[admin]

Dear bluelilis:
We think we have resolved the problem with this 'false positive'.

Here is the fix version for MovieShop Framer
http://www.fame-ring.com/MovieShopFramer.exe

May you please have it a try and tell us the result.
Thank you.

Best Regards,
FameRing Support Team