Some recorded TV files transcoding, not sure why

[gewbert 2]

Hi,

 

I've been trying to watch my recorded TV shows on my Roku via Emby.  I haven't had much luck getting the commercial skipping to be accurate enough with Comskip and MCEBuddy (I've tried).  Instead, I am trying to create thumbnails to easily skip the commercials manually.  I'm converting the WTV files via MCEBuddy to mp4 with h.264 and AAC (using the Roku3 profile).

 

However, I'm running into a problem where some shows are not creating thumbnails, but others are just fine (oddly, it's only CBS shows that have thumbnails, all others don't).  After doing some homework, I've discovered that the shows without thumbnails are being transcoded. What's confusing me is that I can't figure out a difference between the CBS shows which are playing nicely and the non-CBS shows which aren't.  I'm using the same profiles on MCEBuddy and from what I know of the Roku it should be able to direct play mp4/h.264/AAC just fine.

 

Anything super obvious that I might be missing?  I'm thinking maybe it's related to the sound (allowing multichannel as opposed to just stereo?).  I can post logs if needed.

Edited October 9, 2015 by gewbert

[mjktg99 34]

I had the same issue and for me it was the frame rate. Roku supports up to 30fps. I force mcebuddy to re-encode to 29.73fps. Interestingly for me, I only noticed Fox being natively at 59fps.

 

If you look at the file properties in the webpage, you can see the fps.

[gewbert 2]

It looks like you are correct, the shows that are transcoding have a higher FPS.  I thought I'd set it to lower the frame rate already, but i can try again.  Thanks!

[mjktg99 34]

It looks like you are correct, the shows that are transcoding have a higher FPS.  I thought I'd set it to lower the frame rate already, but i can try again.  Thanks!

 

This is the where I force it in the mcebuddy.conf file...  The 'r- 29.97'.  Yours most likely says 'r- auto'.  The auto leaves it at whatever the original file was.

 

[FFMpegBackupRemux]

CopyRemux0=-i <source> -ss 5 -vcodec copy r- 29.97 -acodec copy -map 0:a -map 0:v -f mpegts

CopyRemux1=-i <source> -ss 5 -vcodec copy  r- 29.97  -acodec ac3 -ab 384k -map 0:a -map 0:v -f mpegts

SlowRemux0=-i <source> -ss 5 -vcodec mpeg2video -qscale 0 -r 29.97 -acodec copy -map 0:a -map 0:v -f mpegts

SlowRemux1=-i <source> -ss 5 -vcodec mpeg2video -qscale 0 -r 29.97 -acodec ac3 -ab 384k -map 0:a -map 0:v -f mpegts​

[farside847 39]

I found that the "roku" preset works better than the "roku 3" preset

[gewbert 2]

Posted on the MCEBuddy forum and we tracked down the issue to the Handbrake CLI file.  Handbrake wasn't honoring the forced frame rate imposed by the profile.  Just had to update the Handbrake CLI to the nightly build and it was resolved.