ProjectX
From OpenWiz
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ProjectX for Beyonwiz
by Netmask
This guide is not comprehensive but does show the settings needed to demux a Beyonwiz TS format file – basically this is a cut and paste from other contributors plus my own screenshots and comments. Feel free to add sections etc. The advantage of demuxing is ProjectX cleans up a number of transmission errors in the process – but only if you demux, the other options do not attempt to correct errors.
Whilst there are a number of guides on ProjectX available on line, the purpose of this guide is more specifically geared toward trimming unwanted segments from the Beyonwiz TS file. There are 3 steps to getting your TS file processed after setting up your defaults.
1. add the files into ProjectX
2. set your edit points
3. process the file
As they say in any recipe book first get your ingredients, in this case a copy of ProjectX.
ProjectX is written in Java and is open source, so you can get it from several places and in several forms. The source code resides at SourceForge, but unless you can compile Java, it won't do you much good. Instead, I recommend you get the pre-compiled .jar from OoZooN, or VideoHelp.com or WatchersNET. To run ProjectX, you must first have the Java RE installed and then you just double click the .jar file.
Alternatively if you'd rather run an executable like any other program, OoZooN does offer one to their members, but VideoHelp.com and WatchersNET also offers a pre-compiled .exe for free.
The first time you run ProjectX, you will have to agree to the Terms and Conditions. Click "I agree" and in the future, this splash screen will just go away automatically and you'll be presented with a window that looks something like the second screenshot below.
First Time Configuration
Before we do anything, we must set up some basic options. After you've done this once, your settings will be saved on exit.
First click on 'prepare' to open the process window and go to the Edit menu
Select the options shown in the screenshot - this will allow for post processing if you need it but more importantly tells ProjectX to create a directory called whatever the file name is called with the date attached. Within this folder the demuxed video and audio files reside as shown in the following 2 screenshots
Then select menu item Messages and select all but the last box to log everything.
Open the PreSettings screen and select the following from:
Options: Set all three buffers to the following values. This should improve performance when scrolling through the video to set cut points. Also set your starting point for file selection. example H:\BeyonwizFiles
Output: I uncheck Subpicture and Generic_VBI. All other options ticked.
Specials: Default settings shown.
Video: Check "set resolution in SDE" and for "bitrate value in first sequence", pick option 2 for SDTV files and option 3 for HDTV
Audio: In the case of a file with AC3 audio, tick the boxes as shown.
On this page you can also indicate to decode to PCM including normalization if you wish.
Subtitle: Type in 801 and select SRT as the desired format. You could also tick the second box ‘hidden rows”
Extern: You can leave all of the options on this tab unchecked, but you might want to enable "autosave PTS values". This will create an .Xpl file which contains the Cutpoint's that you set for trimming the segment(s), and it might come in handy once in a while to be able to reload the exact same cutpoints in ProjectX at a later time. Also tick boxes 5 and 6 “rename MPEG audio and MPEG Video etc..”
Net: I haven’t had any use for this page and have left the default settings
Postprocess: Another tab I haven’t needed to use.
Now that we've got ProjectX set up, just hit the X in the upper right corner to close the PreSettings window and we're ready to begin. The next time you load ProjectX, all these settings will be preserved.
Preparing Sources
Using ProjectX can appear a little daunting at first. There are many options and buttons and text to read, but once you get the hang of it, you'll be able to become very proficient at using it. If you hover the mouse cursor over an item a brief message comes up – too brief….
The first thing we need to do is give ProjectX some source files to work with and the easiest way is to drag and drop the files from windows explorer into the ProjectX listview or go to File ---> Add. Select your TS file. When you hover the cursor over the listview item it will turn green. Drop the files and ProjectX will briefly parse the files to get some basic properties.
If you want to specify a specific Output directory, you can do so at this time otherwise the options we have already set will use the same location directory the first input file is in - no need to worry about overwriting as the new files will be contained within a new folder.
Cutting Segments
Now we're getting to the nuts and bolts of the exercise. We have the source files in ProjectX now it's time to cut out the unwanted video, and we do that by using the controls directly above the source files listview.
The first thing you need to do is set the method for placing cuts. You need to select "use BytePos for cuts" for editing to occur.
To begin setting your editpoints, click the slider. (if you double click the movie will play sans audio) or for editing you can drag it with your mouse or use some keyboard shortcuts. From DOOM document
-> moves to the next I-frame Shift -> advances at 1/10th the speed of the >> button Shift <- works like << but at 1/10th the speed Ctrl -> is the same as the >> button Ctrl <- is the same as the << button Alt -> works like >> but at 10 times the speed Alt <- works like << but at 10 times the speed Page up advances even more than Page down is the reverse action to page up Home goes to the beginning of the stream End goes to the end of the stream a adds a cut point d deletes a cut point n goes to the next cut point p goes to the previous cut point
Setting editpoints is pretty easy. Just navigate to a frame you want to cut on and press the + key located above “Number of Points”. The first editpoint you set will mark the video before it as "to be soft deleted" and the video after it (and including the frame you're previewing) as "to be kept". The editpoints and the status of "keep" or " soft delete" is represented on the bar below the preview window. Red segments will be soft deleted, green is kept. If you add a editpoint at the very beginning, the entire video will be kept up to the next editpoint. “Soft delete” means the actual original file is not affected just a notation in the EDL or edit decision list is noted not to transfer that section.
Once you have all your editpoints set, you should consider what type of audio your stream has. Is it AC3? Does it have only 2 channels? If it is, make sure your pre-settings for Audio are not set to patch the first frame to 3/2 (that's surround) and make sure it's not replacing all non-3/2 with silence or you won't get the audio you want. If it is a 5.1 (aka 6 channel AC3) clip, still a rarity on Australian digital transmissions, not counting the pretend situation some stations are resorting to, then you may want to enable both features. This was necessary if you uploaded a file to the Topfield 5000 – I haven’t tried a file uploading to the Contents folder of the Beyonwiz – it may be an unnecessary step.
