Only move file into save-dir after muxing

[JohnVeness]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.

I am running freevine on my laptop and using --save-dir to save the output to a network mounted folder on my server, over WLAN. I was pleased to see that the individual chunk downloading (not sure if that's the right term) was done locally on the laptop, to avoid unnecessary WLAN traffic, but was disappointed that the muxing was done in the save-dir folder. I.e. first the .ts file and the .srt file were copied into the save-dir, then they were muxed together into an mkv, doing all that over the network.

Describe the solution you'd like
It would be great if you could do the muxing "locally" (i.e. in the temp folder) and only move into the save-dir as the very final step.

Additional context
Additional use cases of desiring such a feature might be people using media center software that is watching the save-dir folder. At the moment, such software might notice the presence of the .ts file and tag it, display it in a user-interface etc., only for it to disappear after a few minutes, replaced with an MKV. For this use case it would also be good for only the very final file to appear in the save-dir, not the intermediary files.

Thanks!

[JohnVeness]

As a specific example, with --save-dir set to my server, grabbing a 1.8 GB episode took 7 mins to download to my laptop, a further 11 minutes to do the "binary merging" (which created the .ts file on my server), and a further 8 minutes to do the muxing (resulting in the .mkv file on the server), or about 26 mins in total.

By contrast, not using --save-dir and downloading the same ep was the same 7 mins to download to my laptop, and about 30 seconds to binary merge and mux on the laptop. With a manual copy of the end .mkv file to the server taking about 9 minutes, the whole process was about 33% faster. Obviously I can just do that manual process, but it's awkward when downloading a whole series with limited disk space on the laptop, so --save-dir pointing to the server is preferable!

[stabbedbybrick]

Hi

The muxing process is being done by N_m3u8DL-RE giving the arguments to mkvmerge/ffmpeg, and there's unfortunately no way to change those arguments as it is now. You can change the locations of temp and save dirs, but the final mux would still always be performed in the save dir.

The solution would be to disable the muxing by N_m3u8DL-RE and handle the post-processing outside of that. Which is not a bad idea, but could get messy.

I'll think it over and see if I can figure out a good solution.

[JohnVeness]

Thanks for considering this. Is it maybe worth raising an issue with N_m3u8DL-RE?

[cagenuts]

Surely it would be easier to just use the file option (template called download.txt) where the last line is a robocopy command to move all the folders from 'downloads' to your network share?

[stabbedbybrick]

Surely it would be easier to just use the file option (template called download.txt) where the last line is a robocopy command to move all the folders from 'downloads' to your network share?

I don't have much experience with robocopy, but the file option is used to call python and freevine with the listed commands, so I'm guessing you'd need to create some sort of wrapper that uses robocopy after freevine has done its thing. It would also mean that you'd have to wait for a full series to be done before moving it, as opposed to having full control over the muxing output per file.

It's certainly one solution to the problem, though. And it's always good to have options.