Help us keep the list up to date and submit new video software here.
Tool
Complete Version history / Release notes / Changelog / What's New for Video Monkey
Version 0.17 (2/14/2015)
Fixed a bug that TheTVDB no longer worked because VM was not sending the proper API key. Also added the ability to recognize file names with embedded season/episode number in 4 digit format (SSEE).
Bugs fixed:
Made TheTVDB search work again
Version 0.16 (10/12/2013)
The main motivation for this release is to fix the fact that themoviedb.org has changed its API. This gets that working again, and I’ve fixed a couple other bugs as well.
Note: Video Monkey now require OSX 10.7 (Lion)
Bugs fixed:
Switched to themoviedb.org v 3.0 API. Movie metadata searches work again. It’s faster and doesn’t hang, too.
Fixed bug where switch between themoviedb and thetvdb would not do a new search.
Added a check box to turn off the feature of snapping the video size to a 16 pixel boundary.
Removed DVD Image as an output format. I’ve decided that feature is out of scope for Video Monkey. DVDs are so 5 years ago.
Fixed bug where movies were getting placed in the Home Video category when adding to iTunes.
Version 0.15 (10/27/2012)
Another quick release, this time to fix a problem with encoding mkv files. The new version of mediainfo was not getting the correct framerate from the input file and was therefore setting it to 0, resulting in a bad encoding. So I added much more robust framerate detection, which will hopefully avoid all problems of this kind in the future. Also fixed a pix_fmt bug found during more extensive testing. Also switched to a 1.0 version of ffmpeg. I fear that this will have different problems than previous versions. But since it is a 1.0 version, I'm hoping it will be a reliable version going forward.
Bugs fixed:
Made framerate detection much more robust
Switched to 1.0 version of ffmpeg
Added pix_fmt yuv420p for all formats. This format can be read by Quicktime while others cannot.
Version 0.14 (10/20/2012)
Quick release to fix some bugs introduced in 0.13. The fastest encoding speed is now fixed. And a bug in selecting entries from the metadata search ComboBox, introduced by switching to a newer SDK, works again. I also switched to a newer version of mediainfo to fix a crash when examining some MP4 files. I also got rid of the logic which removed all non-alphanumeric characters from a typed-in search string. Thetvdb.com is very picky and leaving out special characters can sometimes make it not find a show.
Bugs fixed:
Fixed bad param in Fastest encoding
New version of mediainfo which does not crash when getting info from mp4 files
Selecting an item from the drop down list now fires off a search
Got rid of logic that removed characters from search string typed into search box
Fixed quality slider starting position. It now starts out in the middle rather than near the low quality end
Version 0.13 (9/28/2012)
There are 2 major enhancements in this release. First, all major encoding parameters can now be overridden. Just head over to the Output section of the Info Panel and you'll see a check box to the right of each item that can be overridden. The Movie Panel now shows the results of the current padding settings. Open the Movie Panel while you adjust padding and you can interactively see the results.
Note: some combinations of override setting will result in invalid output files. Please exercise care when using this feature. Remember, with great power comes great responsibility.
Video Monkey is now a 64 bit application. This includes the ffmpeg executable used for encoding. As a result, encoding speeds are significantly improved. It also means that this release requires Snow Leopard.
New in this release:
All major encoding parameters can now be customized for more flexibility in encoding output.
Padding can now be set on video output with padding results visible in the Movie Panel.
Replaced controls on movie player for greater flexibility in resizing.
Make the application 64 bit clean, including 64 bit version of ffmpeg.
Bugs fixed:
Made scrubbing, play and pause more consistent in movie player.
Fixed a couple of crashing bugs caused by overreleasing objects
Made movie player resize more consistently.
Fixed display of aspect ratio in output panel.
Fixed a bug where H.264 override for AVI didn't work
Version 0.12 (8/9/2011)
This is a quick release to fix the problem that 0.11 used the Lion SDK to build and therefore would not run on Leopard systems (but it does run on Snow Leopard). I've added a few other nifty fixes as well
New in this release:
Changed how bitrate is computed to give better results at more frame sizes
Made all formats (except DV) using half framerate at lowest quality setting
Make performance button always start out as normal to avoid it annoyingly always coming up as fastest
Bugs fixed:
http://bugs.marrin.org/show_bug.cgi?id=7 - Failure to encode dual pass in OS X 10.7 Lion
http://bugs.marrin.org/show_bug.cgi?id=5 - Crash for AVI with Lion
Use 10.5 SDK so VideoMonkey runs on Leopard
Fixed bug where quality slider was sometimes disabled in error
Version 0.11 (8/6/2011)
This is an intermediate release to fix many bugs causing issues for new formats (and some old ones). Added Growl support (thanks to Lars Koerkemeier). Added UI for advanced settings which is operational yet. This notably does not fix a couple of reported issues with certain file formats on Lion. Still waiting for responses from reporters. But I wanted to get the current fixes out.
New in this release:
Added Growl support
Added ability for many video formats (all non-Apple formats except DV and certain MPEG-1/2 formats) to encode to various frame sizes, up to full frame size
Bugs fixed:
https://github.com/cmarrin/videomonkey/issues/52 - No video on original appleTV
https://github.com/cmarrin/videomonkey/issues/61 - Overall Progress spelled incorrectly
http://bugs.marrin.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2 - Attempting to encode file with umlaut or Kanji fails
http://bugs.marrin.org/show_bug.cgi?id=3 - Avi framerate stuck on 29.97fps and 720x544
Javascript error when trying to move slider to high quality for Tivo
Tolerate missing video bitrate in input file. Use overall bitrate instead.
Version 0.10 (3/17/2011)
Changed back to 32 bit intel-only application, but still with the latest ffmpeg. Also fixed several bugs in the new Video Formats feature.
New in this release:
New version of ffmpeg, but 32 bit only
Bugs fixed:
https://github.com/cmarrin/videomonkey/issues/closed#issue/57 - Output Framerate stuck at 10fps
https://github.com/cmarrin/videomonkey/issues/closed#issue/42 - ffprobe and ffmpeg crashes with videomonkey 0.9
https://github.com/cmarrin/videomonkey/issues/closed#issue/44 - All Video Formats are obeying 320 Pixels Wide flag
https://github.com/cmarrin/videomonkey/issues/closed#issue/41 - resizing info box
Version 0.9 (2/15/2011)
New video formats and AV sync supported, plus a newer version of ffmpeg.
Note 1: New video format support is very fresh, so it may have kinks to be worked out. Try it out and see! Don't forget to let me know if it does or doesn't work for you.
Note 2: Now that Video Monkey supports more file formats, it is more important than ever to download and install Perian if you haven'talready. This adds support for all the new formats to Quicktime player. This not only lets you preview your newly encoded files, but it also lets you view files in the Show Movie panel and set their AV offset. Download it from http://www.perian.org/
New in this release:
Added new output video formats: AVI, MP4, Quicktime, WMV, Flash, MPEG, DV
New AV offset UI in Movie panel. Offsets audio relative to video to fix lip sync problems
New version of ffmpeg with many bug fixes and some new format support.
Added elapsed time of commands to console
Updated ffpreset usage.
Disable metadata panel for output formats that don't support metadata (all except MP4)
Fixed bugs in doing 2 pass encoding
Reduced the number of performance entries. Now only one 2 pass entry
Fixed bug in having special chars in file paths
Now use ffprobe to detect the number and order of streams, for AV sync feature
Can now select multiple files and type an entry in the search box. The search will be applied to all files
Even with multiple files selected, the search box will show a list of results from most recent search.
Fixed frame size setting bugs for Apple TV.
Bugs fixed:
2984591 - Metadata error message
3037146 - First time searching for metadata for multile files fails
Version 0.8 Released with better Metadata search
Well version 0.7 fixed the crashing problems, but introduced some instability in the metadata search feature. So I’ve gone through and fixed those problems. Along the way I’ve added bettererror reporting and improved the usability quite a bit. Now when you search using the search box (because the name of the show was not found in the filename) it will still use any season/episode information. This helps because many shows are in a folder with the show name, but each episode file just contains the sXXeXX string. You can also now use the search box to search on multiple files. So you can select all your files, enter the search box and it will give you the right season and episode for each.
Some shows have each season in a separate folder and only the episode number is in the filename. Video Monkey now handles these, too. Just select all the files, enter the show name in the search box, and Video Monkey will set the show name and the episode number. You just need to set the correct season on one file, right click on the “Season:” label and select “Use this value for all files”. Now you have the right show name, season and episode, and you’re ready to encode!
Enjoy, and as always please report any problems you find.
Version 0.7 Released with crashes fixed
Sorry it’s been so long since doing a release. This one is just a quick fix for the crash when trying to encode around 3 files. I’ve been able to successfully encode over 30 files, so I think the problem is gone. I hope to get on with some of the bugs and add support for XBox encoding and others.
Version 0.6 Released
There’s a new release of Video Monkey available. This is mostly to get rid of the automatic metadata search function, which was causing problems when the metadata search sites went down. Now by default automatic search is turned off. To search for metadata, open the Info panel, select the metadata pane and select the search menu at the bottom of the pane. Here you will find options to search for metadata on the currently selected file(s) or on all files in the list. You can also check the auto-search on load item to enable the old behavior. I still have a bit of work to do to improve the robustness of the search feature. But this should prevent annoying delays when loading files.
I’ve also added a preferences panel. It only has two values currently. You can set your default search site and the number of threads to use for encoding. You can use this both to reduce the number of CPUs you use, if, for instance, you have a new 16 core Mac Pro and want to reserve some CPU power for other tasks. Or you can use it use more threads than you have CPUs to see if that gives you any better performance. The auto setting will use the same number of threads as you have CPUs.
This release also adds a progress bar to the dock icon. Thanks to Lars Koerkemeier for the implementation.
Version 0.5 Released, with Snow Leopard Support
Check out the new 0.5 release of Video Monkey. This release is mainly to support the upcoming Snow Leopard release. But it includes a couple of important bug fixes to make Video Monkey work better.
Version 0.4 Released
Version 0.3 had a bad bug where it couldn’t write metadata. Thanks to all those who let me know. I have done a quick spin and now 0.4 has a fix. Please update and you should have the shiny new metadata features!
I’m very excited to announce the release of version 0.3 of Video Monkey. If you’re already a Video Monkey user, you can open the app and then just select Check for Updates... from the Video Monkey menu. If not, just go to the downloads section. I’m now just zipping up the application rather than using an installer. Thanks to those who suggested it. So after the file downloads and unzips, just drag videomonkey.app into your Applications folder (or wherever you’d like to keep it).
This release adds lots of metadata handling. It shows you the metadata embedded in the input files, lets you add new metadata (either manually or by searching thetvdb or themoviedb). Then you can either write the metadata back to the input file or have it automatically added after the file is encoded.
Version 0.3 Released
I’m very excited to announce the release of version 0.3 of Video Monkey. If you’re already a Video Monkey user, you can open the app and then just select Check for Updates... from the Video Monkey menu. If not, just go to the downloads section. I’m now just zipping up the application rather than using an installer. Thanks to those who suggested it. So after the file downloads and unzips, just drag videomonkey.app into your Applications folder (or wherever you’d like to keep it).
Version 0.2 Released
This release adds lots of metadata handling. It shows you the metadata embedded in the input files, lets you add new metadata (either manually or by searching thetvdb or themoviedb). Then you can either write the metadata back to the input file or have it automatically added after the file is encoded.
Video Monkey version 0.1 released
I've finally gotten the first release of Video Monkey out the door. I would call it fully functional, as long as you're interested in the iTunes devices (iPods, iPhone and Apple TV). I've disabled all the other devices for now. Please use it and post comments, bugs and complaints.
Here are the plans as we go forward:
More Devices
The biggest issue for adding devices is not the implementation. All devices are controlled by an easily edited XML file. But it's getting the right numbers to plug into the XML file for each device. It's hard to decipher the FilmRedux AppleScript to glean this information, and a bit painful to scour the log files from Visual Hub to extract it. If anyone is interested in a particular device and wants to help, either directly with patches to the XML file or indirectly by supplying the right numbers for bitrates, frame sizes, encoder, etc., it would be very helpful.
Metadata
After playing with things like MetaX, IDentify and others, I'm really sold on getting Video Monkey to be able to collect and store metadata. The TVDB XML format is great - it's easy to search and parse. That's good for TV shows. Movies are another matter. I have found no decent tools to allow machine scanning of IMDB to extract movie metadata. Help from anyone who undestands this would be great!
Movie Editing
I want to make Video Monkey able to do simple movie slicing, so you can eliminate commercials and extra runout from recorded shows. You can already preview the video and you can even slice it up. But I don't currently save any of that. One of the biggest issues here is that the MovieView only understands videos that QuickTime can play. So you will sometimes have to encode, then edit, the re-encode. I've tried playing with ways to do a quick low-res encoding just for editing. But that's not much faster on some source content.
The other alternative is to use ffmpeg or mplayer in place of a MovieView, but that's more work. Stay tuned.
Other Features
Here is a laundry list of features I want to get to:
- Time remaining display during encoding and overall progress bar
- Automatically add to iTunes
- Automatically convert files newly added to watched directories
- Advanced parameter setting (like Visual Hub, although hopefully not as snarky)
- Crop & pad frames, color adjustment and other filters
- Preferences (number of threads, iTunes settings, etc.)
- Detail pane for input file (probably as part of metadata interface)
- Simple DVD creation, like Visual Hub
Let me know about your interest in any of these or other features.
Have Fun with VideoMonkey!
Fixed a bug that TheTVDB no longer worked because VM was not sending the proper API key. Also added the ability to recognize file names with embedded season/episode number in 4 digit format (SSEE).
Bugs fixed:
Made TheTVDB search work again
Version 0.16 (10/12/2013)
The main motivation for this release is to fix the fact that themoviedb.org has changed its API. This gets that working again, and I’ve fixed a couple other bugs as well.
Note: Video Monkey now require OSX 10.7 (Lion)
Bugs fixed:
Switched to themoviedb.org v 3.0 API. Movie metadata searches work again. It’s faster and doesn’t hang, too.
Fixed bug where switch between themoviedb and thetvdb would not do a new search.
Added a check box to turn off the feature of snapping the video size to a 16 pixel boundary.
Removed DVD Image as an output format. I’ve decided that feature is out of scope for Video Monkey. DVDs are so 5 years ago.
Fixed bug where movies were getting placed in the Home Video category when adding to iTunes.
Version 0.15 (10/27/2012)
Another quick release, this time to fix a problem with encoding mkv files. The new version of mediainfo was not getting the correct framerate from the input file and was therefore setting it to 0, resulting in a bad encoding. So I added much more robust framerate detection, which will hopefully avoid all problems of this kind in the future. Also fixed a pix_fmt bug found during more extensive testing. Also switched to a 1.0 version of ffmpeg. I fear that this will have different problems than previous versions. But since it is a 1.0 version, I'm hoping it will be a reliable version going forward.
Bugs fixed:
Made framerate detection much more robust
Switched to 1.0 version of ffmpeg
Added pix_fmt yuv420p for all formats. This format can be read by Quicktime while others cannot.
Version 0.14 (10/20/2012)
Quick release to fix some bugs introduced in 0.13. The fastest encoding speed is now fixed. And a bug in selecting entries from the metadata search ComboBox, introduced by switching to a newer SDK, works again. I also switched to a newer version of mediainfo to fix a crash when examining some MP4 files. I also got rid of the logic which removed all non-alphanumeric characters from a typed-in search string. Thetvdb.com is very picky and leaving out special characters can sometimes make it not find a show.
Bugs fixed:
Fixed bad param in Fastest encoding
New version of mediainfo which does not crash when getting info from mp4 files
Selecting an item from the drop down list now fires off a search
Got rid of logic that removed characters from search string typed into search box
Fixed quality slider starting position. It now starts out in the middle rather than near the low quality end
Version 0.13 (9/28/2012)
There are 2 major enhancements in this release. First, all major encoding parameters can now be overridden. Just head over to the Output section of the Info Panel and you'll see a check box to the right of each item that can be overridden. The Movie Panel now shows the results of the current padding settings. Open the Movie Panel while you adjust padding and you can interactively see the results.
Note: some combinations of override setting will result in invalid output files. Please exercise care when using this feature. Remember, with great power comes great responsibility.
Video Monkey is now a 64 bit application. This includes the ffmpeg executable used for encoding. As a result, encoding speeds are significantly improved. It also means that this release requires Snow Leopard.
New in this release:
All major encoding parameters can now be customized for more flexibility in encoding output.
Padding can now be set on video output with padding results visible in the Movie Panel.
Replaced controls on movie player for greater flexibility in resizing.
Make the application 64 bit clean, including 64 bit version of ffmpeg.
Bugs fixed:
Made scrubbing, play and pause more consistent in movie player.
Fixed a couple of crashing bugs caused by overreleasing objects
Made movie player resize more consistently.
Fixed display of aspect ratio in output panel.
Fixed a bug where H.264 override for AVI didn't work
Version 0.12 (8/9/2011)
This is a quick release to fix the problem that 0.11 used the Lion SDK to build and therefore would not run on Leopard systems (but it does run on Snow Leopard). I've added a few other nifty fixes as well
New in this release:
Changed how bitrate is computed to give better results at more frame sizes
Made all formats (except DV) using half framerate at lowest quality setting
Make performance button always start out as normal to avoid it annoyingly always coming up as fastest
Bugs fixed:
http://bugs.marrin.org/show_bug.cgi?id=7 - Failure to encode dual pass in OS X 10.7 Lion
http://bugs.marrin.org/show_bug.cgi?id=5 - Crash for AVI with Lion
Use 10.5 SDK so VideoMonkey runs on Leopard
Fixed bug where quality slider was sometimes disabled in error
Version 0.11 (8/6/2011)
This is an intermediate release to fix many bugs causing issues for new formats (and some old ones). Added Growl support (thanks to Lars Koerkemeier). Added UI for advanced settings which is operational yet. This notably does not fix a couple of reported issues with certain file formats on Lion. Still waiting for responses from reporters. But I wanted to get the current fixes out.
New in this release:
Added Growl support
Added ability for many video formats (all non-Apple formats except DV and certain MPEG-1/2 formats) to encode to various frame sizes, up to full frame size
Bugs fixed:
https://github.com/cmarrin/videomonkey/issues/52 - No video on original appleTV
https://github.com/cmarrin/videomonkey/issues/61 - Overall Progress spelled incorrectly
http://bugs.marrin.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2 - Attempting to encode file with umlaut or Kanji fails
http://bugs.marrin.org/show_bug.cgi?id=3 - Avi framerate stuck on 29.97fps and 720x544
Javascript error when trying to move slider to high quality for Tivo
Tolerate missing video bitrate in input file. Use overall bitrate instead.
Version 0.10 (3/17/2011)
Changed back to 32 bit intel-only application, but still with the latest ffmpeg. Also fixed several bugs in the new Video Formats feature.
New in this release:
New version of ffmpeg, but 32 bit only
Bugs fixed:
https://github.com/cmarrin/videomonkey/issues/closed#issue/57 - Output Framerate stuck at 10fps
https://github.com/cmarrin/videomonkey/issues/closed#issue/42 - ffprobe and ffmpeg crashes with videomonkey 0.9
https://github.com/cmarrin/videomonkey/issues/closed#issue/44 - All Video Formats are obeying 320 Pixels Wide flag
https://github.com/cmarrin/videomonkey/issues/closed#issue/41 - resizing info box
Version 0.9 (2/15/2011)
New video formats and AV sync supported, plus a newer version of ffmpeg.
Note 1: New video format support is very fresh, so it may have kinks to be worked out. Try it out and see! Don't forget to let me know if it does or doesn't work for you.
Note 2: Now that Video Monkey supports more file formats, it is more important than ever to download and install Perian if you haven'talready. This adds support for all the new formats to Quicktime player. This not only lets you preview your newly encoded files, but it also lets you view files in the Show Movie panel and set their AV offset. Download it from http://www.perian.org/
New in this release:
Added new output video formats: AVI, MP4, Quicktime, WMV, Flash, MPEG, DV
New AV offset UI in Movie panel. Offsets audio relative to video to fix lip sync problems
New version of ffmpeg with many bug fixes and some new format support.
Added elapsed time of commands to console
Updated ffpreset usage.
Disable metadata panel for output formats that don't support metadata (all except MP4)
Fixed bugs in doing 2 pass encoding
Reduced the number of performance entries. Now only one 2 pass entry
Fixed bug in having special chars in file paths
Now use ffprobe to detect the number and order of streams, for AV sync feature
Can now select multiple files and type an entry in the search box. The search will be applied to all files
Even with multiple files selected, the search box will show a list of results from most recent search.
Fixed frame size setting bugs for Apple TV.
Bugs fixed:
2984591 - Metadata error message
3037146 - First time searching for metadata for multile files fails
Version 0.8 Released with better Metadata search
Well version 0.7 fixed the crashing problems, but introduced some instability in the metadata search feature. So I’ve gone through and fixed those problems. Along the way I’ve added bettererror reporting and improved the usability quite a bit. Now when you search using the search box (because the name of the show was not found in the filename) it will still use any season/episode information. This helps because many shows are in a folder with the show name, but each episode file just contains the sXXeXX string. You can also now use the search box to search on multiple files. So you can select all your files, enter the search box and it will give you the right season and episode for each.
Some shows have each season in a separate folder and only the episode number is in the filename. Video Monkey now handles these, too. Just select all the files, enter the show name in the search box, and Video Monkey will set the show name and the episode number. You just need to set the correct season on one file, right click on the “Season:” label and select “Use this value for all files”. Now you have the right show name, season and episode, and you’re ready to encode!
Enjoy, and as always please report any problems you find.
Version 0.7 Released with crashes fixed
Sorry it’s been so long since doing a release. This one is just a quick fix for the crash when trying to encode around 3 files. I’ve been able to successfully encode over 30 files, so I think the problem is gone. I hope to get on with some of the bugs and add support for XBox encoding and others.
Version 0.6 Released
There’s a new release of Video Monkey available. This is mostly to get rid of the automatic metadata search function, which was causing problems when the metadata search sites went down. Now by default automatic search is turned off. To search for metadata, open the Info panel, select the metadata pane and select the search menu at the bottom of the pane. Here you will find options to search for metadata on the currently selected file(s) or on all files in the list. You can also check the auto-search on load item to enable the old behavior. I still have a bit of work to do to improve the robustness of the search feature. But this should prevent annoying delays when loading files.
I’ve also added a preferences panel. It only has two values currently. You can set your default search site and the number of threads to use for encoding. You can use this both to reduce the number of CPUs you use, if, for instance, you have a new 16 core Mac Pro and want to reserve some CPU power for other tasks. Or you can use it use more threads than you have CPUs to see if that gives you any better performance. The auto setting will use the same number of threads as you have CPUs.
This release also adds a progress bar to the dock icon. Thanks to Lars Koerkemeier for the implementation.
Version 0.5 Released, with Snow Leopard Support
Check out the new 0.5 release of Video Monkey. This release is mainly to support the upcoming Snow Leopard release. But it includes a couple of important bug fixes to make Video Monkey work better.
Version 0.4 Released
Version 0.3 had a bad bug where it couldn’t write metadata. Thanks to all those who let me know. I have done a quick spin and now 0.4 has a fix. Please update and you should have the shiny new metadata features!
I’m very excited to announce the release of version 0.3 of Video Monkey. If you’re already a Video Monkey user, you can open the app and then just select Check for Updates... from the Video Monkey menu. If not, just go to the downloads section. I’m now just zipping up the application rather than using an installer. Thanks to those who suggested it. So after the file downloads and unzips, just drag videomonkey.app into your Applications folder (or wherever you’d like to keep it).
This release adds lots of metadata handling. It shows you the metadata embedded in the input files, lets you add new metadata (either manually or by searching thetvdb or themoviedb). Then you can either write the metadata back to the input file or have it automatically added after the file is encoded.
Version 0.3 Released
I’m very excited to announce the release of version 0.3 of Video Monkey. If you’re already a Video Monkey user, you can open the app and then just select Check for Updates... from the Video Monkey menu. If not, just go to the downloads section. I’m now just zipping up the application rather than using an installer. Thanks to those who suggested it. So after the file downloads and unzips, just drag videomonkey.app into your Applications folder (or wherever you’d like to keep it).
Version 0.2 Released
This release adds lots of metadata handling. It shows you the metadata embedded in the input files, lets you add new metadata (either manually or by searching thetvdb or themoviedb). Then you can either write the metadata back to the input file or have it automatically added after the file is encoded.
Video Monkey version 0.1 released
I've finally gotten the first release of Video Monkey out the door. I would call it fully functional, as long as you're interested in the iTunes devices (iPods, iPhone and Apple TV). I've disabled all the other devices for now. Please use it and post comments, bugs and complaints.
Here are the plans as we go forward:
More Devices
The biggest issue for adding devices is not the implementation. All devices are controlled by an easily edited XML file. But it's getting the right numbers to plug into the XML file for each device. It's hard to decipher the FilmRedux AppleScript to glean this information, and a bit painful to scour the log files from Visual Hub to extract it. If anyone is interested in a particular device and wants to help, either directly with patches to the XML file or indirectly by supplying the right numbers for bitrates, frame sizes, encoder, etc., it would be very helpful.
Metadata
After playing with things like MetaX, IDentify and others, I'm really sold on getting Video Monkey to be able to collect and store metadata. The TVDB XML format is great - it's easy to search and parse. That's good for TV shows. Movies are another matter. I have found no decent tools to allow machine scanning of IMDB to extract movie metadata. Help from anyone who undestands this would be great!
Movie Editing
I want to make Video Monkey able to do simple movie slicing, so you can eliminate commercials and extra runout from recorded shows. You can already preview the video and you can even slice it up. But I don't currently save any of that. One of the biggest issues here is that the MovieView only understands videos that QuickTime can play. So you will sometimes have to encode, then edit, the re-encode. I've tried playing with ways to do a quick low-res encoding just for editing. But that's not much faster on some source content.
The other alternative is to use ffmpeg or mplayer in place of a MovieView, but that's more work. Stay tuned.
Other Features
Here is a laundry list of features I want to get to:
- Time remaining display during encoding and overall progress bar
- Automatically add to iTunes
- Automatically convert files newly added to watched directories
- Advanced parameter setting (like Visual Hub, although hopefully not as snarky)
- Crop & pad frames, color adjustment and other filters
- Preferences (number of threads, iTunes settings, etc.)
- Detail pane for input file (probably as part of metadata interface)
- Simple DVD creation, like Visual Hub
Let me know about your interest in any of these or other features.
Have Fun with VideoMonkey!