VDRsync

News

14.03.2005
Hello,
I just uploaded another VDRsync snapshot that fixes recent bugs. Have a look at the Bugs/TODO page.

Cheers

Peter

02.03.2005
Hello,
I just uploaded new snapshots of VDRsync and VDRsync-GUI, please have a look at the Bugs/TODO page. If you are using VDR > 1.3.19 (or so) and want to convert recordings that contain Dolby Digital Audio, this snapshots might solve your problems.

Cheers

Peter

10.01.2005
Hello,
I have spent quite a bit of time on the VDRsync-GUI recently, you might want to have a look.
I finally got around to set up a small Bugs/TODO page, please check whether your favourite Bug / Feature is listed there.

As always, let me know what you think.

Peter

Here you should always find the latest version of VDRsync. Direct link to the Download Section

I will also put the older versions in an archive section, and try to publish some background information about VDRsync, what it does and what it is good for. Please be patient with this web site, since I will only maintain it in my spare time, and only if I am not hacking VDRsync.

Comments, Feedback, Corrections always welcome at peter@vdr-portal.de.

Overview

VDRsync was programmed to allow conversion of a VDR recording into a DVD compatible format. This conversion requires the "unpacking" of Video and Audio data from the native VDR format, and the repacking into a DVD compatible format. During this packing steps important timing information is lost, leading to Audio-Video synchronisation problems. In other words, audio is a bit too early or too late for the video. Watching such a "desynced" movie is a pain.
Not too long ago an excellent tool named ds.jar was available, which took care of the problem by aligning Audio and Video during the first "unpacking" step. This tool was unavailable for a certain period and therefore I decided to try to write a replacement for it (ds.jar is now available again under the name Project X).
In the meantime I added some features to VDRsync, like cutting the movie while syncing, and developed some additional tools, like the sharemarks project.
The latest addition to VDRsync is the VDRsync-GUI that allows VDR independent processing of recordings, and together with the ability to create DVD-Menus this is far more than I planned in the first place ;-).

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Download

Note: I can not really recommend the latest stable version any more, since too many bugs have been fixed in the meantime. I definitively recommend a developer version, 0.1.2.2dev2 has seen wide testing, and the current 0.1.3 PRE1 needs some more ;-). The best thing would be to jump to the Bugs/TODO page, and give that latest version at the bottom of that page a try.
The current version is vdrsync-0.1.2.2
This is a partial rewrite with lots of bugfixes and optimizations. For details have a look at the file CHANGES.
Even older versions can be found here.
Developer releases can be found at the Developer Page.

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Documentation

There is not too much documentation available, I just linked the text files bundled with the distribution here.

INSTALL
MANUAL
MANUAL-DE
CHANGES

Which Perl Version do you need?

A Version >= 5.6.0 with support for large files (> 2GB)
Future Versions might also require Perl > 5.8.0 with large-file and thread support

A short list of programs you need if you want VDRsync to automatically process the demuxed streams

at least one multiplexer, either tcmplex, txmplex-panteltje or mplex from the mjepg-tools (the latter is recommended)
dvdauthor if you want VDRsync to automatically create a dvd-compatible file structure
mkisofs for the creation of ISO-Images

Want to help?

If you use VDRsync and it works for you, please let me know. If you report a problem, please provide some detailed information, otherwise I can not help you. I might also ask you to send me a debug log (the -d option), or even a bit of the recording.
If you want to help making VDRsync better, you are more than welcome. You do not need to be a Perl programmer to contribute, I am also looking for testers, translators, documentation writers, web designers etc.

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Known Bugs

If you find a bug that is not listed here, please let me know.

VDRsync expects a the audio-format to be same in the recording. If the audio-format changes, the behavior is as follows:
If the change occurs right after the start of the movie, audio until the change is discarded and the remaining gap is filled with silence
If the change occurs just before the end of the movie, audio until the end is discarded and the remaining gap is filled with silence
If the change occurs in the middle of the movie, the audio stream is deleted

This behavior was introduced to eliminate problems with some multiplex programs, that can not multiplex audio-streams that contain different formats. In future version I will introduce a configuration option for this problem.
There is also a new Bugs/TODO Page that will replace this section in the future.
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Acknowledgements

I want to thank:

All the hackers that helped turning Linux into what it is today
Larry Wall and all other Perl hackers
Klaus Schmidinger for programming VDR
Dimitri for writing vdrconvert, and hosting the first web-site
Genka for running www.vdr-portal.de and hosting this site
All Testers, Users, Bug-Reporters