Issues/Feedback Transcoding (Recording) Network Stream

[steve333]

I am using VLC to record a network video stream (from an IP camera) to hard drive.

I have made it work, but with some issues / observations.

1) When I enter a URL into the "Please enter a network URL:" box under "Network" it shows me a list of remembered recently-used URLs.
I cannot see any place to clear this MRU list.
I have cleared the list of "Recent Media" and cleared the Playlist. But it still remembers the URLs.

2) When I transcode / record a network stream VLC uses an arbitrary "time" on the GUI display and starts the recorded file at "0:0:0" which is reasonable enough.
It would be nice if I could select VLC to use real time (local PC clock) for the recording / GUI.
Better still it would be nice to have a filter which could add the timestamp to the video in one corner (or like a subtitle).

3) When I select "Convert/Save" I get a window with "Convert" options.
Here I set the "Destination file:"
For some reason it expects me to enter the full filename including the file extension.
However the file type is defined by the "Profile" below.
This means I could select a ".ts" file type by Profile and save it to a ".ogg" file by Destination file name, which seems wrong.
I think that the "Profile" should determine the filename extension.

Note that the Browser in Windows 7 does not include all the possible file name types in the list of searched files (eg. ".avi" is missing as a possible file type).
Also in Windows 7 it is not possible to just view "all files" at this point. This makes it more difficult than necessary as I can't see everything.

4) When I edit / view a Profile I can select "Keep Original Video Track" or "Keep Original Audio Track".
When I do this I can still adjust all the Codec / Bitrate / Framerate / Resoluton / Scale / Channels / Sample Rate parameters.
I don't understand this.
I would assume that "Keep Original" means that I can't change any of the stream parameters (otherwise I would be transcoding?).
I would expect all these options to be greyed-out and have no function if I select "Keep Original".
Or maybe there needs to be some explanation of what this means?

5) If I transcode to an AVI container I get a file which has time values (starting at 0:0:0) when I play it back.
If I transcode to TS I get no time values (the GUI shows "-:-:- / -:-:-").
How do I get the time into the TS (or other formats)?
I would much prefer to use TS as it's easier to find a decent free editor (AVIs seem to have all kinds of peculiarities).

6) My network stream has a variable frame-rate (when the cam swtiches from night to day mode it increases rate).
This confuses VLC when it's making the AVI file.
I think that this is (partly?) a problem of the AVI format.
When I play the AVI, VLC tells me it is broken and "fixes" it (every time it needs to be "fixed" again). Then it plays OK.
But the duration shown on the GUI is wrong and the playback frame rate is incorrect after the point where the camera frame rate changes.
For example at the end of play back the GUI shows "6:42:04 / 3:01:23".
A TS should not have any such problems.

7) I can enqueue several "transcode" operations in the playlist.
But I cannot distinguish between them as I can't view the detailed properties of the enqueued items (for example the file name or format they are writing). They are all called "streaming" and all have the same URL (my camera).

8 ) I cannot set an end-time or duration for a "transcode" operation.
Ideally I would like to record my stream in chunks, with helpful filenames so that I can manipulate them more easily later.
At present I can use "Convert / Save" to record and it will run for ever.
I must manually stop it (unless something goes wrong with the stream).
I could enqueue several chunks with different file names (so as to seperate them).
But I can't tell the "transcoding" when to stop.
Maybe it would be possible to set a "stop" time or duration for streaming items in the playlist?
Or set an option in "Convert / Save" for Streams such as "Duration" (measured in real time from the PC clock).

[steve333]

With reference to (1) above.

The MRU list of recently opened URLs for Convert/Streaming is stored in a VLC configuration file.
In WIndows this is located at:

"C:\Users\<user name>\AppData\Roaming\vlc\vlc-qt-interface.ini"

(and probably other similar places too depending on how your machine is configured).

It is a variable called

"netMRL= ......."

This is a text object and can be edited manually eg with notepad.

However it seems that there is no way to edit or clear this from the VLC GUI.
Each time a new network URL is opened it gets appended to this MRU list.