dennisoderwald / plex-dvr

Remove commercials, add chapter markers, convert captions to subtitles, and compress files recorded from the Plex DVR

plex-dvr

PLEX DVR POSTPROCESSING

This script accepts a transport stream as an argument [FILE] and does the following:

1. Copies the original ts to a subdirectory within the system tmpdir
2. Runs comskip to find commercial boundaries*. If found, it
   1. Deletes them using comcut
   2. Generates chapter boundaries at commercial breaks
3. Extracts closed captions as subtitles
4. Remuxes to mp4 to add chapter markers
5. Transcodes to mkv to compress and add subtitles
6. Cleans up after itself
   1. Deletes original ts
   2. Deletes temporary files
   3. Moves mkv to source directory (presumably .grab/)

It does all of this while respecting quiet hours and ensuring only one file is being processed at a time. It also produces detailed logs on its own and adds begin/end lines to the PMS logs.

PREREQUISITES

• comskip: https://github.com/erikkaashoek/Comskip
• comcut: https://github.com/BrettSheleski/comchap
• ccextractor: https://github.com/CCExtractor/ccextractor
• ffmpeg: https://ffmpeg.org/
• HandbrakeCLI: https://handbrake.fr/downloads.php

You can likely get some or all of these programs from your package manager.

Using in Plex

As of Plex Media Server v1.19.3, the postprocessing script must be called from the Scripts directory inside the application data directory. For easy setup, use the quick start.

Usage

$ plex-dvr [options] [FILE]

Options

option	type	description
--debug, -d		Include stdout and stderr from all tools in logs (overrides verbose flag)
--encoder, -e	string	Video encoder string to pass to Handbrake. Run HandbrakeCLI --help to see available encoders.
--help, -h		show CLI help
--quiet-time, -q	string	Quiet time, in the format of NN-NN where NN is an hour on the 24-hour clock (0 being midnight, 23 being 11pm). Default value 03-12
--verbose, -v		Verbose logging to the console.
--encoder-preset	string	Video encoder preset to pass to Handbrake. Run HandbrakeCLI --encoder-preset-list <string encoder> to see available presets.
--ignore-quiet-time		Process file immediately without checking against quiet time hours.
--[no-]keep-original		Prevent original .ts file produced by Plex's DVR from being deleted. Default is false, prepend with --no- to flip.
--[no-]keep-temp		Prevent temporary working directory from being deleted. Default is false, prepend with --no- to flip.
--sample-config		Print default config values & config directory location and exit.

Examples

plex-dvr /path/to/video
plex-dvr -q 22-06 -e vt_h264 /path/to/video