Smart Cutter problems

[lemmy999]

I have several .TS files recorded from television that I want to remove the commercials from. I found a free cutter that worked great, but it wasn't frame accurate. I then came across Smart Cutter. It works fairly well with the .TS files except that when the episode is fading out to black for the commercials, there will be a slight (one, maybe two frame) drop out of the audio just before the cut point if I play the .TS file in VLC. If I use handbrake to convert it to an mkv file (h265) the dropout is still there. But if I load the edited .TS file back in to Smart Cutter, it plays fine without the dropout. Anyone know what is causing this? I am using 1.9.6 (the latest version) with "Whole GOP Mode" disabled.

I have tried registering for the forum to ask the question, but the registration page doesn't work. I then tried to email them found that none of the emails work. This is odd considering the last update to the software was just last November.

Also, does anyone know what "Fix Video File" does, or the "Stream Fix" or "TME Mode" options? The Fix Video File doesn't seem to do anything in 1.9.6. It asks for the file name, then asks for the name you want to save it as, then it immediately says "completed" but there are no files saved.

[lemmy999]

Is there another frame accurate .TS file editor that works well?

[usually_quiet]

I use VideoReDo TV Suite V6, which can edit MPEG-2, H.264, and H.265 TS files.

[netmask56]

TS Doctor

[dellsam34]

I occasionally have the same bug on smartcutter but the reason why I prefer it is because if you have a m2ts file with 10 audio tracks and 12 subtitles it cuts through all of them with no problem, VideoRedo never worked for me on multichannel files and it doesn't support subtitles at least the last version I had.

[usually_quiet]

I occasionally have the same bug on smartcutter but the reason why I prefer it is because if you have a m2ts file with 10 audio tracks and 12 subtitles it cuts through all of them with no problem, VideoRedo never worked for me on multichannel files and it doesn't support subtitles at least the last version I had.

lemmy999 is editing ts files containing recorded TV broadcasts, which never have 10 audio tracks and contain N. American closed captions rather than subtitles. VideoRedo TV Suite v6 works quite well for editing recorded US TV broadcasts and preserves closed captions.

[lemmy999]

Everything I am editing is something recording over the air from a HDHomerun with NextPVR. Smart Cutter was working well except for the audio hiccup at a cut point. But now I have started having issues with the resulting edited .TS file not playing well in VLC. The file should be around 43 minutes but instead it might show as over 2 hours or maybe only 35 minutes. I assumed that the "stream fix" or "Fix Video File" options in Smart Cutter would help with this, but both seem to do nothing. I have had some luck with using TSMuxer and loading the edited .TS file and just muxing it again to a new file and the time will sometimes be correct and it will play better. However I have found that if I just load the .TS file in to Handbrake the resulting h265 mkv file plays just fine.

I think TS Doctor and VideoRedo would work great, but since this is something I won't be using long term I hate to spend the $100. I already have access to Smart Cutter and hoped there was something I could do to fix the big. Thanks.

[davexnet]

Everything I am editing is something recording over the air from a HDHomerun with NextPVR. Smart Cutter was working well except for the audio hiccup at a cut point. But now I have started having issues with the resulting edited .TS file not playing well in VLC. The file should be around 43 minutes but instead it might show as over 2 hours or maybe only 35 minutes. I assumed that the "stream fix" or "Fix Video File" options in Smart Cutter would help with this, but both seem to do nothing. I have had some luck with using TSMuxer and loading the edited .TS file and just muxing it again to a new file and the time will sometimes be correct and it will play better. However I have found that if I just load the .TS file in to Handbrake the resulting h265 mkv file plays just fine.

I think TS Doctor and VideoRedo would work great, but since this is something I won't be using long term I hate to spend the $100. I already have access to Smart Cutter and hoped there was something I could do to fix the big. Thanks.

Instead of re-encoding in Handbrake, did you try a simple remux in MKVToolnix ?

[lemmy999]

That is actually a good idea, but I am wanting it re-encoded because I want to save space. The file ends up about 30% of the size of the original .TS file.

[lemmy999]

TS Doctor

I tried TS Doctor because I think I could justify the 38USD price. It has some nice features and seems much more robust than Smart Cutter. But I found that manually locating the commercials was a bit more tedious than Smart Cutter (which happens to be the best tool I have seen for manually location the transitions). But I would have still have considered it, but on the test file I did it still had the little audio hiccup at the cut/transitions like Smart Cutter does.

Also, I am no subtitle expert, but I thought it would extract the subtitles from the .TS file to .SRT, but it doesn't seem to recognize the closed captioning at all so nothing is exported...or maybe I am doing something wrong. I also didn't understand much of the program because the included manual is terrible and doesn't cover most of the settings and it isn't clear what a lot of buttons do.

[Cwj]

Have you tried VidePub. I use both it and SmartCutter to cut commercials.

[lemmy999]

Have you tried VidePub. I use both it and SmartCutter to cut commercials.

No, I hadn't heard of that. I will give it a shot. Does it to frame specific or just I frame cuts? It seems that most of the free tools just do I frame cuts. If Smart Cutter could just fix some bugs and make it look like it made in the last 15 years it would be a great tool. It is the best user interface for cutting out commercials that I have seen. TS Doctor looks good and I like the preview feature that lets you preview the cut transitions and it is frame specific like Smart Cutter. But it just is a bit more cumbersome to find and mark the transitions.

[usually_quiet]

Also, I am no subtitle expert, but I thought it would extract the subtitles from the .TS file to .SRT, but it doesn't seem to recognize the closed captioning at all so nothing is exported...or maybe I am doing something wrong. I also didn't understand much of the program because the included manual is terrible and doesn't cover most of the settings and it isn't clear what a lot of buttons do.

The US uses ATSC for digital TV broadcasts. The closed captions included in ATSC broadcasts to meet the needs of the deaf and hard of hearing as well as Spanish speakers are text-like and stored in the video's GOP user data per the CEA 608 and CEA 708 specs. CCExtractor GUI can read ATSC closed captions and convert them to SRT subtitles.

TS-Doctor doesn't have the ability to extract ATSC closed captions. TS-Doctor is only able to extract DVB subtitles from TS files recorded from DVB broadcasts. DVB subtitles are graphical in nature and stored in their own streams within the file.

One of the reasons why I use VideoReDo TV Suite v6 is that I sometimes want to use closed captions and VRD includes the ability to preserve closed captions when it edits TS files. I don't re-encode my recordings to reduce their size, but VideoReDo TV Suite v6 can do that and copy the closed captions to the re-encoded file. I don't think that either TS-Doctor or Smart Cutter preserves closed captions.

[lemmy999]

Also, I am no subtitle expert, but I thought it would extract the subtitles from the .TS file to .SRT, but it doesn't seem to recognize the closed captioning at all so nothing is exported...or maybe I am doing something wrong. I also didn't understand much of the program because the included manual is terrible and doesn't cover most of the settings and it isn't clear what a lot of buttons do.

The US uses ATSC for digital TV broadcasts. The closed captions included in ATSC broadcasts to meet the needs of the deaf and hard of hearing as well as Spanish speakers are text-like and stored in the video's GOP user data per the CEA 608 and CEA 708 specs. CCExtractor GUI can read ATSC closed captions and convert them to SRT subtitles.

TS-Doctor doesn't have the ability to extract ATSC closed captions. TS-Doctor is only able to extract DVB subtitles from TS files recorded from DVB broadcasts. DVB subtitles are graphical in nature and stored in their own streams within the file.

One of the reasons why I use VideoReDo TV Suite v6 is that I sometimes want to use closed captions and VRD includes the ability to preserve closed captions when it edits TS files. I don't re-encode my recordings to reduce their size, but VideoReDo TV Suite v6 can do that and copy the closed captions to the re-encoded file. I don't think that either TS-Doctor or Smart Cutter preserves closed captions.

Thanks for clearing that up. I thought there was some differences in how CC was handled but I really wasn't aware of what they were. The odd thing about TS-Doctor is that I set it to ATSC since the .TS file was recorded off of broadcast in the USA, but TS-Doctor claimed it was a DVB broadcast stream.

I have been cutting commercials with Smart Cutter and the close captioning remains when I watch with VLC. Then after I re-encode with handbrake (really using an older Vidcoder, but it is based on handbrake), I select to keep the CC and the resulting .mkv file has subtitles.