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DESCRIPTION

     pawl is a front-end to HandBrake which may be used to quickly convert
     your DVD collection into lightweight files. More specifically
     H.264/MPEG-4 AVC encoded video, a variety of audio formats (including
     ac3, dts, and vorbis), in an mkv container.

STORY

     I wrote this for the purpose of near-lossless conversion of my DVD
     collection so I may keep them in the closet, yet still have films
     immediately accessible. I live in a small apartment and did not want
     to have media piling up everywhere. Pawl is specifically designed to
     work with my personal workflow, I feel it could be equally useful to
     others in a similar situation.

USAGE

     Usage: pawl <option>

     Where option is:

     config       (Update or create project configuration file)
     showconfig   (Show project configuration)
     run          (run the encoding)
     scan         (scan the source with HandBrake and tcprobe)
     32detect     (check source for sporadic interlaced frames)
     compare      (compare size of source vs. project output)
     extractframe (extract one or more frames.  arg: f1,f2,f3-f4[,f4-f5])
     playsrc      (Play source)
     playout      (Play output)

REQUIREMENTS

     - A mostly POSIX-compliant Bourne shell. FreeBSD's (and likely all BSDs)
       Bourne shell works, as does dash (Debian and Ubuntu), bash might work
       (untested), Solaris works. HP/UX and AIX might work (untested).

     - "Typical" UNIX tools, such as sed(1), du(1), grep(1), rm(1). Unless
       you have a stripped-down system, you'll likely have everything
       already.

     - HandBrakeCLI
       At least version 0.9.6, trunk builds >= r4431 will also likely work.

     - transcode (optional)
       Used for some auxiliary features; 32detect, extractframe, scan,
       chapter count detection.

     - mplayer (optional)
       Used for playback features; playsrc, playout.

WORKFLOW

     - Insert DVD or rip DVD.

     - Create directory for the project.
       mkdir "Some Film" && cd "Some Film"

     - Create config file.
       pawl config

     - Edit config using a text editor,
       set dvd_source and output.

     - Scan DVD.
       pawl scan

     - Using handbrake-scan.log (if it looks fishy, sanity check using
       tcprobe-scan.log), your favorite player, or powers of technopathy,
       adjust, at least, title and angle if necessary.

       Normally the defaults for those are fine. You'll likely want to keep
       chapters set to all for the next step (unless your end-result will
       not include all chapters).

     - If the film is not interlaced, check for interlaced frames.
       Sometimes a few will slip through the DVD mastering shop's
       algorithms. All the chapters in your chapters setting will be
       checked. Note: This feature uses a different detection algorithm
       than HandBrake's decomb feature. Results will be summarized to your
       terminal and logged to interlaced_frames.log.
       pawl 32detect

     - If interlaced frames are found, you may extract the frames for
       visual inspection if you wish. If they're legitimately interlaced,
       you'll likely want to turn on decomb.
       pawl extractframe 1,2,3,4,5

     - Choose a chapter to test with. Edit config, change chapters.

     - Start the encode
       pawl run

     - Verify result, adjust config as needed, repeat as desired.

     - Edit chapters.csv if chapter names are desired.

     - Edit config, set chapters to 'all', process the entire film.
       pawl run

     - QA results, repeat last few steps as needed.

     - Verify that the size of the result isn't larger than expected.
       pawl compare

FUTURE

     - Support Theora.

     - Could use some clean-up.

TIPS

     - Vorbis 160 kb/s is excellent for stereo tracks.

     - Vorbis 80 kb/s is excellent for mono tracks.

     - It's best to passthrough ac3 or dts sound sources (unless you don't
       care about preserving the mix).

     - You can find scene lists for most DVDs at
       http://video.barnesandnoble.com/. Save yourself some transcribing
       effort.

       Use the following VIM-specific regular expressions to convert their
       scene listings into csv files. If you use another editor removing
       the \v and adjusting the first one a bit may be all you need to
       adapt it to others.

       %s/\v^[0-9]+\zs\. /,/
       %s/\v \[[0-9:]+\]$//

       Don't forget to look for commas that you may need to escape.

     - If the film is hard-interlaced, and deinterlace='adaptive' +
       deinterlace_params='slower' isn't working well, try
       deinterlace_params='1:-1:3:1'

       That enables the experimental mcdeint deinterlacer (as opposed to
       yadif), which tends to work better.

BUGS

     - No known bugs. Please report any findings.

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