TyTool Alpha #5, a Client/server with internal VSplit...

[jdiner]

Ok. I was asked by someone here on the forum to try and make it easier for people by starting the thread over with this new version. For those who are not familiar with TyTool and are wondering about this tool please see the "TyTool Alpha #1" thread... It is long but there is a lot of good information in there.

So here it is folks at long last... TyTool #5.

This version of TyTool DOES NOT CONTAIN ANY MUX'ING CODE!!!! it is in the same chain as the last 4 version. Splitting yes, downloading yes, but no mux'ing. That is in the works and coming but slowly...

So what is new in this release:

1- The * character has been added to the list of things to filter in file names. So that M*A*S*H can be extracted and others.

2- Fixed the networking once again. Somehow in moving things around the fixes in either #2 or #3 had gotten lost in #4. They are back in a new and improved form in #5. It now works 100% for me under XP and 2000. Hopefully it will for you as well.

3- Fixed the NoShowing.tcl scripts (this was already released seperately) to check and run correctly for 2.5 (DTivo) and 3.0 (SA Tivo). So no need to hack or edit the script. Just copy it over and bingo. You are running. This file was transfered in Binary mode so no more editing is needed like a past version...

4- A new version of the tserver_mfs is here. It is labelled at tserver_mfs5 to sync with the TyTool version number. It has a few new features in it. Just make sure you get it online with the new NowShowing.tcl script.

5- Added deleting to the tool. BE CAREFUL WITH THIS! There is no "are you sure" ***** check. If you hit it with 1 or more shows highlighted they are gone. Maybe I should have added the popup check... but I didn't. If you are going to fast and wipe out your shows, it is your own fault.

6- The "roll to a good name" is fixed. Thanks to the logging it had problems in #4. It is once again working correctly.

Thats it.

--jdiner

[Wooly]

I copied over in Binary, did chmod 777 on the 2 files, yata yata yata - just like in the prior versions.

I did a mass delete of approximately 5 Farscapes - worked fine. Then, in the same session after it refreshed the NowShowing I did another mass delete - this time roughly 20 Farscapes. It completed the deletions, and in the telnet session it got to refreshing the Nowshowing, which it showed completed. The TyTool5.exe, however, crashed. I've attached a ZIP file which shows the capture from the Telnet session as well as the error information from WinXP.

Details:

DSR6000, running 2.5.1, stock kernel (not extremed).
WinXP Pro
TurboNet
noscramble

PM me if you need more info

[jdiner]

Never seen anything like that. Hummm. Can't think why doing more would be a problem. Most I have ever deleted at one time I think was... 5. I don't normally do 20 of anything at a time on the Tivo.

Did they all get deleted?

As for why it would crash. It is possible that it had something to do with the automatic refresh of the play list. But I just call the same code that everything else uses.

--jdiner

[SR712]

Hey JD.... thanks for all of your hard work and dedication. :D

[jemenake]

Thanks for the upgrade. It now works with my WinXP box... woo, hoo!

Just a few suggestions:

1 - Could you allow the user to select the extension that goes on the ends of the files? BBMpeg recognizes ".mpa" files as mpeg-audio, but not "m2a", so I end up having to change the file type to "all files" and that makes it harder to pick the right file.

I guess this wouldn't be all that important if the muxing is right around the corner. If it's not, then it would be great to be able to set custom file extensions to what are now the m2v and m2a files.

2 - Could we have a little browse button in the "Local Dir" field, so that I could hunt around for where I want to stick the files.

3 - Lastly, when you get the muxing code working, is there any way you could let it mux the files that have already been split by earlier tytools? I've got a whole mess of shows that have already been split and it would be nice to be able to select them all and have TyTool mux them.

Of course, it would need to be able to read the A/V shift number from the txt file that the earlier tytool generated, but that's not that difficult (heck, you should be able to take your printf() format string and drop it right into scanf().

If this is too much bother, I could make a Perl script that could parse the txt files and run some command-line driven muxer. So, perhaps, when you have the muxing code done, you could also release a standalone muxer for use in batch/script processing.

Thanks for all of your work so far....

- Joe

[Vinnie Dee]

Interesting...When I run tytool5 (this has also occured in tytool4) with VSplit it detects my box as a standalone tivo when, in fact, it is a Dtivo. I get the following message:

Detected Tivo Type: Standalone

Detected Audio Stream Type: MPEG Layer II

Final standardAudioSize = 604

Final standardFrameLength = 0

Final standardAudioDiff = 6480 or 00:00:00.072

First Video PTS: 00:02:22.881

Error. We did not find an embedded audio header!

Error. We did not find an embedded audio header!
(this error continues until the extraction is done)

I get an audio file of 0 bytes. The funny thing is I've only seen this twice. It has only happen when I have tried to extract my StarTrek recording. When I do any other program it works fine. Any sugguestions to fix the problem? Thanks.

[SR712]

JD- Hey bud. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but whenever I try to extract a M*A*S*H episode now in TyTool5, the proggy crashes.... with an "TyTools5.exe has encountered a problem and must close" error. I'm running in XP, and TyTool 5 has no problem extracting any other shows. Are you parsing show names, and just throwing out illegal windows file characters? Thanks again for all your help. Let me know if I can do anything for you. I'm here.... :D

[SlipShod]

Hello and thanks for a great program. I was just wondering why there is some boxes in the upper right corner of the the video that comes out of this program. Not a complaint just wondering what it is. Thanks again for a great program.

[jdiner]

Originally posted by SlipShod
Hello and thanks for a great program. I was just wondering why there is some boxes in the upper right corner of the the video that comes out of this program. Not a complaint just wondering what it is. Thanks again for a great program.

You are probably using the Elecard playback codec to display the output. That is there "this is a shareware/freeware version" indicator.

Nothing in my code could or would put the little boxes there. Do a search here on the forum for Elecard and you will find more information on it.

--jdiner

[jdiner]

Originally posted by SR712
JD- Hey bud. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but whenever I try to extract a M*A*S*H episode now in TyTool5, the proggy crashes.... with an "TyTools5.exe has encountered a problem and must close" error. I'm running in XP, and TyTool 5 has no problem extracting any other shows. Are you parsing show names, and just throwing out illegal windows file characters? Thanks again for all your help. Let me know if I can do anything for you. I'm here.... :D

Crap. I tested the code but you never know. I am indeed parsing the names and stripping several bad filename characters. I will have to grab a few mash episodes and make sure. I am not removing the characters. Instead they become '-' characters. This way spacing is maintained etc...

--jdiner

[jdiner]

Originally posted by Vinnie Dee
Interesting...When I run tytool5 (this has also occured in tytool4) with VSplit it detects my box as a standalone tivo when, in fact, it is a Dtivo. I get the following message:

Detected Tivo Type: Standalone

Detected Audio Stream Type: MPEG Layer II

Final standardAudioSize = 604

Final standardFrameLength = 0

Final standardAudioDiff = 6480 or 00:00:00.072

First Video PTS: 00:02:22.881

Error. We did not find an embedded audio header!

Error. We did not find an embedded audio header!
(this error continues until the extraction is done)

I get an audio file of 0 bytes. The funny thing is I've only seen this twice. It has only happen when I have tried to extract my StarTrek recording. When I do any other program it works fine. Any sugguestions to fix the problem? Thanks.

This is bad. Basically it means that the start of the file is not as expected. Please try grabbing it with a jump offset of say 10-20. and see what happens.

Further, if that does not work then try extracting it in TyStream mode, i.e. no splitting. Then grab the first 100 chunks off of the file using TyFileSplit, found elsewhere on this forum in the Alpha #1 thread, and let me know. I will tell you where to send it.

--jdiner

[bronco13]

jdiner,

I've followed the previous posts regarding the issue with 0 bytes but can't seem to find anything in terms of a fix. Every time I extract a show (the simpsons, seinfeld, etc.) my two output files are 0 bytes. Is there anything I can do???

Thanks

PS. One feature request: Is there any way modify the title information (Name, Date, desc., etc) from the TyTool Client?

[captain_video]

You need to make sure that scrambling is turned off BEFORE any programs are recorded. Shows are recorded on a DirecTivo in scrambled mode by default. If scrambling has not been deactivated, all extracted and split tystreams will show up as zero bytes. Refer to the How-To's for directions on turning off scrambling. Once you have turned it off you do not need to turn it back on again. However, if you have shows that were recorded prior to turning off scrambling, you will need to turn scrambling back on to watch them. Get some exercise in using the search button. This question has been posted and answered many times.

[Vinnie Dee]

Originally posted by jdiner


This is bad. Basically it means that the start of the file is not as expected. Please try grabbing it with a jump offset of say 10-20. and see what happens.

Further, if that does not work then try extracting it in TyStream mode, i.e. no splitting. Then grab the first 100 chunks off of the file using TyFileSplit, found elsewhere on this forum in the Alpha #1 thread, and let me know. I will tell you where to send it.

--jdiner

jdiner,

Setting the jump offset worked! Thanks a bunch. Thanks for this awesome program. If you still need the first 100 chunks for tyStream file let me know. I will send it to you.

[WJBode]

JD,
I also had the problem where TyTool crashes after clicking the Delete button. I saw that my Tivo had recorded about 20 episodes of Saturday Night Live yesterday, so I selected a group of seven shows and clicked Delete. It deleted the shows, said it was refreshing the list, and then crashed & burned. Unfortunately, I didn't save the error message so this may not be much help. Here's my system info:

- Philips HDR-212 SA Tivo
- upgraded to two 40GB drives
- TivoNet adapter installed

- Computer
- Athlon XP 1600+
- 512 MB DDR RAM
- Windows 2000 SP2
- Extracting to a NTFS volume

Hope this info helps! TyTool is a superb program. Keep up the good work!

-- Wyatt Bode
http://www.AmnesiaGraphics.com

[Wooly]

Yup, got deleted just fine - looks like the problem occurred when the NowShowing got sent to the TyTool5.exe - perhaps a bug crept in during repetitive refreshes of the NowShowing? I would suspect that before looking at a relationship between the # of deletions and a crash, as I can't see what the difference would be to the client how many got deleted - plus, it didn't crash during reporting deletions, but rather during the refresh of the NowShowing.

That being said, I bow to what you think, as you're the programmer. Checkout what I posted, you'll see what I mean (look at the Telnet capture vs. the program error report).

Originally posted by jdiner
Never seen anything like that. Hummm. Can't think why doing more would be a problem. Most I have ever deleted at one time I think was... 5. I don't normally do 20 of anything at a time on the Tivo.

Did they all get deleted?

As for why it would crash. It is possible that it had something to do with the automatic refresh of the play list. But I just call the same code that everything else uses.

--jdiner

[jdiner]

Originally posted by bronco13
I've followed the previous posts regarding the issue with 0 bytes but can't seem to find anything in terms of a fix. Every time I extract a show (the simpsons, seinfeld, etc.) my two output files are 0 bytes. Is there anything I can do???


If it is every time then you do not have the noscramble patches running.


PS. One feature request: Is there any way modify the title information (Name, Date, desc., etc) from the TyTool Client?

No. Sorry. That is not what the tool is about. It is about downloading and extraction. There are already a ton of tools, TivoWeb being the most notable, that do that.

--jdiner

[jdiner]

I will look at the delete problems. For now I guess just don't use it. There are other techniques although not quite as fast.

--jdiner

[jdiner]

Ok. For those having problems with deleting things try this version.

BTW, for those keeping score this is once again an XP only bug.

--jdiner

[Wooly]

Personally, I couldn't care less about the deletion problem - it's nice, but not necessary. What's MORE necessary (and where your programming skills shine, BTW) is in the efficient downloading, vspliting, and (soon, I dearly hope) muxing of the video. Deletion is something I could do from the Tivo itself, and also from TivoWeb v1.94b3, so if you ask me (which you aren't, but seeing as I'm a rude American snob) it's something that should be near the bottom of the priority list. Not that I don't appreciate your adding it.

I'll now extract my nose from your As*......unghhhhh....POP!


Originally posted by jdiner
I will look at the delete problems. For now I guess just don't use it. There are other techniques although not quite as fast.

--jdiner

[newlooper]

Ok here is my scenario. I would like to mention first that it has happened in all versions of TyTool.

I have the AC/DC free concert that I want to extract. I start the tool and refresh the list. I highlight the AC/DC and hit the GET button. It starts as normal but the the TyTool closes. It does not crash (no errors) it just closes. I played the AC/DC concert to make sure it was intact and it is. Are they getting smarter and adding something to the stream to close the tool?

[wolkowh]

The "/' is a bad character for a filename, use EditTitle to change the program's name to "Brittany Concert" and it will extract perfectly.

Howard

[jdiner]

Oh man. I never thought of the '/' character. Never saw it in any names. I will be in #5r3 sometime in the next few days.

--jdiner

[SR712]

Originally posted by wolkowh
use EditTitle to change the program's name.
Howard

And where is this EditTitle command that you speak of....? I am still having problems with the "*" character. Thanks. :)

[SR712]

Originally posted by jdiner
Oh man. I never thought of the '/' character. Never saw it in any names. I will be in #5r3 sometime in the next few days.

--jdiner

Hey JD- Why don't you run the showtitle through a parser and look for any of the illegal file name characters. That way you'd be all set, and never would have to worry about this issue again. They are...

/ \ : * ? " < > |

Thanks. Just thought I'd help....:D

[wolkowh]

You can not use:

\ / | * ? < > or |

Howard

[coloneljulius]

I am trying extraction for the first time. Here is what I am running:
DTivo:
T-60 w/ extreme and the update
no scramble kernel hack from the Alphawolf Enhancement
turbonet card

computer:
Athlon 850 w/ 768 mb ram
XP Pro

All hacks were done prior to any recording. When hitting the get button after selecting a program TyTool crashes and closes and the following is what shows in the telnet session. Several programs were chosen and none have non-alphanumeric characters.

bash-2.02# ./tserver_mfs5
Doing the Lowest PriorityFix...
Priority set...
Waiting for an incomming connection!
SERVER: We got a message! buf = 'SHOWING'
Waiting for an incomming connection!
SERVER: We got a message! buf = 'TYSTREAM 150496/150503'
-> '150496'
exporting fsid 150496 of size 536870912 to stdout
#1 failed to write to stdout
Waiting for an incomming connection!

Any ideas?

[Frogbutt]

ok im stumped :( I cant seem to get it to connect to my tivo. Iv got 2.5extreme with Kravens upgrade.

I put both the files tytool needed in a folder chmoded them to 777 and ran ./tserver_msf5 and get


bash-2.02# ./tserver_mfs5
Doing the Lowest PriorityFix...
Priority set...
Waiting for an incomming connection!



I added the below to the rc.remote-login file as the Kraven upgrade instructions said to optain a static ip.



IW rc.remote-login Row 1 Col 1 5:17 Ctrl-K H for help

ifconfig net0 192.168.1.03 netmask 255.255.255.0
route.tivonet delete default 2> /dev/null
route.tivonet add default gw 192.168.0.1 netmask 0.0.0.0 dev net0

#!/bin/bash
echo "Starting Telnet"
tnlited 23 /bin/bash -login &.............................................................


I try connecting to 192.168.0.3 in the tytool app but just get


Reading list from the server...
Clear Now Showing List...
Connecting to '192.168.0.3'
ERROR: Failed to Connect!



I cant see what iv left out casu its not working? Mabye someone can see what im doing wrong.

[fredisdead]

If I remember my unix shell programming correctly, the code needs to be added AFTER the first line with the:

#!

which signals that this is a shell script....

that said, I also had a similar problem and wound up adding the ifconfig and route commands to the end of rc.sysinit and all worked fine....

[newlooper]

Thanks wolkowh that was it.

[jdiner]

Originally posted by SR712


Hey JD- Why don't you run the showtitle through a parser and look for any of the illegal file name characters. That way you'd be all set, and never would have to worry about this issue again. They are...

/ \ : * ? " < > |

Thanks. Just thought I'd help....:D

I do. I just didn't put the * in it. I had never seen it in any show names. R3 has been updated to have the full list.

--jdiner

[jdiner]

Originally posted by Frogbutt

ifconfig net0 192.168.1.03 netmask 255.255.255.0
route.tivonet add default gw 192.168.0.1 netmask 0.0.0.0 dev net0

I try connecting to 192.168.0.3 in the tytool app but just get



Your tivo is on 192.168.1.3, with a route of 0.3 which won't work.

But your PC client tried to find it on 0.3 which also won't work. Make the all the same and it should work.

--jdiner

[jdiner]

Originally posted by coloneljulius
computer:
Athlon 850 w/ 768 mb ram
XP Pro

Any ideas?

Yeah. I feel like stopping supporting 2k or XP altogether...

--jdiner

[Fugg]

Originally posted by jdiner

Yeah. I feel like stopping supporting 2k or XP altogether...
--jdiner

no argument here!!!
...especially if it holds up the release of the holy muxer!!!
;)

[Frogbutt]

Originally posted by jdiner


Your tivo is on 192.168.1.3, with a route of 0.3 which won't work.

But your PC client tried to find it on 0.3 which also won't work. Make the all the same and it should work.

--jdiner


Fixed it and got

bash-2.02# ./tserver_mfs5
Doing the Lowest PriorityFix...
Priority set...
Waiting for an incomming connection!
SERVER: We got a message! buf = 'SHOWING'
Waiting for an incomming connection!

It connect for a sec and listed my shows in the Now playing area but then it lost the connection.

If i try to connect i just get
Connecting to '192.168.0.3 '
ERROR: Failed to Connect!


oh and on win2k so mabye thats the problem

[Frogbutt]

Originally posted by fredisdead
[B
that said, I also had a similar problem and wound up adding the ifconfig and route commands to the end of rc.sysinit and all worked fine.... [/B]

where at the end did you put it? Im gonna give it a try in the rc.sysinit since im having trouble still.

does it go at the very end like this

echo "rc.sysinit is complete"

exec < /dev/ttyS3 >& /dev/ttyS3; bash --login

ifconfig net0 192.168.0.3 netmask 255.255.255.0
route.tivonet delete default 2> /dev/null
route.tivonet add default gw 192.168.0.1 netmask 0.0.0.0 dev net0


or does it need to be before somthing,

[fredisdead]

My rc.sysinit has a line which has a reference to rc.author or something like that before the echo "is done" statement. I put the lines before that one....

[jemenake]

Originally posted by jdiner
Ok. For those having problems with deleting things try this version.

BTW, for those keeping score this is once again an XP only bug.


Okay... you're going to love this one....

I'm running on XP and TyTool5r2 *fails* to delete the shows while the original release *was* able to do it.

When rev2 fails, tserver always reports something about not being able to find tystream 8000000 or something. I don't know how many zeroes are at the end, but, for every show, it always had the same number... an "8" with a mess of "0"s after it.

Personally, I don't need this fixed because I can just use rev1, but I figured it might help you with some debugging...

- Joe

[Frogbutt]

Thanks for everyone that helped me I finally got it working

[kilroy]

Sony T60, 25xtreme (dual 100Gb drives), Turbonet, etc...

I'm running tserver_mfs5 with TyTool5r.
PC is running Windows 2000 Pro SP2

Like some of the other posts, I can't seem to delete any entries in the NowShowing using TyTool.

Not looking for or expecting a quick fix. I realize this is alpha software -- just posting my results for the author.

Also, not sure if launching the tserver_mfs5 should be supported from the rc.sysinit, or if it MUST be invoked manually via Bash? Each time I try to automatically start it, it doesn't seem to run. Perhaps I ma jumping the gun here, and once hte product is out of alpha/beta, this method will be supported?

Keep up the great work,
-Kilroy

PS. If you need any assistance on the Windows programming part, PM me.

[captain_video]

The ReadMe file included with the TyTool app tells you how to set it up and run it. You must run the program manually each time you want to use it. Transfer the files to the /var/hack directory and do a chmod 777 on both the NowShowing.tcl and tserver_mfs5 files. Open up a telnet session using TeraTerm and navigate to the /var/hack directory (i.e. cd /var/hack). Execute the program using ./tserver_mfs5 + <enter> and you should get a message "Waiting for an incomming connection" (yes, the typo is also there but I figure jdiner is allowed). Now, open up TyTool5. Select the method of extraction from the pull-down menu and make sure your destination directory and IP address for the Tivo has been setup. Click on Refresh and wait for the NowShowing list to update. Select the programs you wish to extract and then select Get. Close out TyTool and end the Telnet session when you are done extracting the files. Now you can patch the header to 720X480 with DVDPatcher and use SpruceUp, DVDMaestro, or TMPGEnc to do with them what you will.

[jdiner]

Originally posted by jemenake

When rev2 fails, tserver always reports something about not being able to find tystream 8000000 or something. I don't know how many zeroes are at the end, but, for every show, it always had the same number... an "8" with a mess of "0"s after it.


Oh crap. Yeah. That was my test code. Somehow I left it in the release version. Darn it. I was doing that so I could try deleting in a loop without constantly wiping things off of my tivo and having to go put them back on. It will be back to working in R3.

--jdiner

[Wes]

Originally posted by Fugg


no argument here!!!
...especially if it holds up the release of the holy muxer!!!
;)

hehe, I can't agree more. Forget supporting all different versions out there yet. We want the holy muxer. ;)

[AlphaWolf]

Originally posted by jdiner


Yeah. I feel like stopping supporting 2k or XP altogether...

--jdiner

Honestly I have always liked gosquads method; having a plugin to tivoweb and nothing special on the client side other than a simple web browser :cool:

[jdiner]

Originally posted by AlphaWolf


Honestly I have always liked gosquads method; having a plugin to tivoweb and nothing special on the client side other than a simple web browser :cool:

Not me. But then I hate using web browsers. All different. All kinds of instabilities etc... But to be honest I begin to wonder if my solution in general is any better. It started as something just for me. And I released it before I really wanted to and look what happened...

--jdiner

[AlphaWolf]

Yeah, I hear the complaints about the browsers, some of them (especialy internet explorer IMO) are just plain messy. I guess just the thing with me is I am not always using the same PC, kind of a pain to have a client side app running on all of them, especialy when some are linux and some are windows.

[captain_video]

But to be honest I begin to wonder if my solution in general is any better. It started as something just for me. And I released it before I really wanted to and look what happened...

Josh, how can you say that, man? Without your efforts, a lot of us would still be futzing around with TivoApp or some other such nonsense. I was totally unable to perform an extraction of any kind until you came out with TyTool. It's simple and clean and a snap to use. Kudos for all you've done. I rank your programs right up there with PGM and his SLE. Keep on truckin' dude!

[Frogbutt]

what does the verbose level do?

[jdiner]

Originally posted by Frogbutt
what does the verbose level do?

There is alot of work that goes on to split things. In the early days of my work on it I needed to know tons of things to make it work. At each verbose level the .txt file that is created get more and more data. At level 2 it produces about 8 million lines of text for an SA Tivo TyStream. At level 3 about 20 times that.

--jdiner

[rd001]

First: jdiner is Da Man!

I don't care that much about putting TivoApp abilities into TyTool at this time. I want extraction and splitting and I want muxing. Anything else is a frill that should come later.

I would suggest that you might at some point consider splitting the development. We probably have a dozen coders here who could develop the TyTool GUI. But your work on splitting and muxing is pretty irreplacable.

Maybe you should get a partner or two to develop the GUI and just stick with your extraction/muxing for now. You could just release a code module for them to link to. I don't really want to see you release vsplit/muxing code soon because I don't want to see a bunch of incompatible versions of vsplit around.

I'd like these other TivoApp features but don't want them in a web interface. The less memory taken up on the Tivo, the better.

[jdiner]

Ack. Found another file bug. TyTool #5 R3 is on it's way. I am just testing a few more things.

--jdiner

[jakegrove]

jdiner

First, Thank you. I have never been able to get extraction to work with any other tool. At first I couldn't get this to work on my system either. But Tytool5 now works for me.

My system:

P3 duel 733
Win2000
LincSys router

One question: I extracted a half hour show. It took 10 hours. Because this is my first try, I don't know what is normal. I suspect it was a little slow, the way people here talk about extracting 20 hours of shows at a time. At my rate it would take 16 days to do that.

Is 10 hours normal for a half hour show?

Thanks, Jake

[newlooper]

Is 10 hours normal for a half hour show?

Jakegrove,

my guess is that is way too long. with a 733 laptop, I can extract a 2 hour show in about 10-20 minutes. sounds as if you are having maybe some network congestion (if everything else is ok). Are you on a hub?

[jdiner]

A 2 hour show in 10-20 minutes? Dang. How on earth did you get that fast. Best I do is a 1 hour show in 15 minutes on average from my DTivo and 42 minutes round about for a 1 hour show on my SA Tivo.

Both of these machines have a TurboNet card in them now.

NewLooper what if anything did you do to get that kind of speed? Also what was the output file size when all was said and done. it is possible it was a lower bitrate that made the difference but that is way outside my realm of experience.

I wonder if there is a new driver out...

--jdiner

[AlphaWolf]

You know, in theory thats the speed you should get, if my math is correct.

Turbonet=22mbit, divide that by 8 and you have 2.75 megabytes per second max transfer speed.

Say a 2 hour movie is 2.5 gigs, or 2500 megs. 2500 divided by 2.75MB/s = 909.09 seconds, divide that by 60, and you have 15.15 minutes. There are a lot of variables in there to consider but thats the fastest it could possibly be. (well for 2.5 gig anyways)

[jakegrove]

I never expected such a fast reply. I wasn't paying attention. :)

My system is pretty simple:

SA series 1 Phillips tivo -> TurboNET -> Lynksys 4 port router -> duel P3-733 Box

The Tivo is also running TivoWeb, and it was upgraded with an extra drive.

The LinkSys is also on my cable modem, and is providing DHCP

My comp is using 10/100 eathernet card.

TyTool was set at VSplit mode

I was browsing the web at the time, but i don't think that should have caused a problem.

I just checked: the file was 820m on the Tivo. On my comp it became two 520+meg files. Attached is the txt log that was produced.

Hope this helps, Jake

[AlphaWolf]

Ah thats why then, you are using a standalone so you can reduce the image quality a lot to save on size. DTivo only has one compression size, max quality (actualy doesn't compress it at all, stores the origional directv videostream strait to the hard drive), so we are used to 2 hour movies being ~2 gigs.

[jakegrove]

AlphaWolf

That was a half hour show @ 'Best Quality' = 820m on Tivo = 10 hours to extract.

If it's 2.75 megabytes per second max transfer speed, that file should take about 5 hours to extract.

I started it up again, this time with a one hour show @ best Quality' =1572m. At my rate it should be done in about 20 hours.

I've noticed something. When I run TyTool it is naturally on top of my desktop, as soon as go to another window (i.e. writing this message) the looping total stops. When I go back to it, it stays stuck where it stopped at. There is no activity on the Ethernet card. I've don this three time so far.

I wonder if that was why I was getting such bad times.

I believe there is a priority setting in Win2000 that makes front/top windows higher priority and back/bottom windows lower or nil priority.

Before I switched windows I was getting 36m per min. At that rate I should have extracted the 820m file in 22min.

I'm going to start it up again to see if can sustain the high speed if I leave it alone.

I'll post after this run with the results.

Jake

[newlooper]

NewLooper what if anything did you do to get that kind of speed? Also what was the output file size when all was said and done. it is possible it was a lower bitrate that made the difference but that is way outside my realm of experience.

Ok I know I am going to screw up the order, but here goes.

DTiVo with TurboNet card

I have a linksys 1 port router with a seperate linksys 8 port SWITCH. Hubs suck! For those that are network challenged, hubs will only provide a half duplex network.

NT4 and 2000 require a registry hack to increase speed when using a hub. you can find it on microsofts website if you look for "slow networking".

All of the cards I use are 100Mb, full-duplex compliant. Some linksys especially ISA cards, even though they are 10/100 cards are not 100Mb, Full-duplex compliant.

A couple of interesting things about W2k and XP. Win2k and XP may not configure the NIC (Network Interface Card) for 100Mb Full-Duplex. You should always, under every circumstance, check that manually. with every OS

The output size was 2.55GB for the vid and 109MB for audio.

Hope this helps. If not let's look deeper.

[jakegrove]

I just finished a 1.5gig extraction @ 45min

TyTool def needs to be on top and undistrubed. I'll def be running this at night when I'm done for the day.

newlooper

With Win2000 I've always had trouble getting my net card to say they are running full dup. What I mean is, they say thay are half/dup, but when I set it for full/dup the connection is broken.

Is this a case of the net card not being "full-duplex compliant"?

I believe my card is pretty generic, "Realtek RTL8029(AS)-based PCI Ethernet Adapter" I picked up a bunch of them for $5 a piece a few years ago.

Jake

[AlphaWolf]

er, oops, was thinking that jakegroves post was from newlooper at first...guess I should read the posts more closely before responding.

I am actualy using pretty much the same setup as newlooper and the best I see is 1.5MByte/sec. Perhapse if you use mfs_export with highest priority you will get the full bandwidth of the tivo? (but remember that increasing the thread priority means slowing your video)

That said, jakegrove, you might want to make sure that your CPU resources aren't being consumed all the way. You should no doubt see slower speeds on a standalone than a directivo however, bearing in mind that the standalones have less memory and a slower CPU.

[BubbleLamp]

Full duplex doesn't buy you much unless the traffic is completely bi-directional. I used to beat up the vendors all the time that tried to convince people FD is twice as fast, it ain't. That said, I do recommend switches over hubs because they are non-blocking.

Some hubs/NICs don't properly negotiate full-duplex, but that was mainly a problem some years ago.

If Josh's tool stops altogether when sent to the background, that's a problem. It should relinquish cycles, but not stop all together. JD?

[newlooper]

Could not have said it better myself Alphawolf/BubbleLamp. I do suggest that for TCP communications, it will make better use of full duplex than a non-guaranteed transmission protocols

[BD38]

For some reason I've never been able to get more than 2MB/min from TyTool. Spent a lot of time trying to figure out why w/o a solution. TivoApp gives me 90MB/min.

[jemenake]

Originally posted by BD38
For some reason I've never been able to get more than 2MB/min from TyTool. Spent a lot of time trying to figure out why w/o a solution. TivoApp gives me 90MB/min.

And I wish you the best of luck if your TiVo needs to start recording something while you're sucking 90MB/min from it.

TyTool purposely switches itself to the lowest priority level (actually, tserver is the thing that gets the low priority... but anyway...). Personally, I want to have as little impact on my TiVo's load as possible. If that takes longer, I don't care. I don't care HOW long it takes as long as I don't have to babysit the process. I just select about 10 shows, click "Get" and then I go watch a movie or go to work or go to bed.

- Joe

[jdiner]

Originally posted by BD38
For some reason I've never been able to get more than 2MB/min from TyTool. Spent a lot of time trying to figure out why w/o a solution. TivoApp gives me 90MB/min.

What? That makes no sense... Hummm. I wish I had an answer for you. But I took a look at the nc code recently to see if they were doing something I am not. And they aren't.

So unless you are doing something else with it, then something is wrong in my code I just have no idea what. I am running about 65 meg/min with my installation.

--jdiner

[jdiner]

Originally posted by BubbleLamp

If Josh's tool stops altogether when sent to the background, that's a problem. It should relinquish cycles, but not stop all together. JD?

Hehehe. STD DISCLAIMER: It doesn't do that for me. END STD DISCLAIMER.

What OS? What settings? I always run it minimized in the background when extracting, since I am compressing in the foreground using VirtualDub's idel priority setting. Takes about 5 minutes longer to compress and I still extract at full speed.

--jdiner

[BD38]

Originally posted by jemenake


And I wish you the best of luck if your TiVo needs to start recording something while you're sucking 90MB/min from it.

TyTool purposely switches itself to the lowest priority level (actually, tserver is the thing that gets the low priority... but anyway...). Personally, I want to have as little impact on my TiVo's load as possible. If that takes longer, I don't care. I don't care HOW long it takes as long as I don't have to babysit the process. I just select about 10 shows, click "Get" and then I go watch a movie or go to work or go to bed.

- Joe

I've got TivoApp using jdiner's mfs_stream_withpri1. No problem using the Dtivo while dl'ing.

[Frogbutt]

What do yall use to edit out commercials without losing quality?

[Fugg]

Tmpgenc's merge and cut under mpeg tools.

It cuts on gop frames, but it do workie!

[Frogbutt]

Is it normal not to see the video in the preview window under mpger tools -- merge and edit. makes it hard to cut when you cant see what your cutting.

[Wooly]

I run into this problem with TyTool also, but found an interesting thing - I have a file server, and if I start uploading files to the file server (anything, doesn't matter) the speed of TyTool shoots up to "normal" again. When I'm done uploading to the FS, the speed of TyTool goes down to turtle status again.

Normally, I would blame this on Windows XP's bloatware and poor networking, but I don't have this problem with TivoApp, so it has to be rooted in part with TyTool #5.

So you're not alone, and you're not crazy.

Originally posted by jakegrove
AlphaWolf

If it's 2.75 megabytes per second max transfer speed, that file should take about 5 hours to extract.

I started it up again, this time with a one hour show @ best Quality' =1572m. At my rate it should be done in about 20 hours.


Jake

[newlooper]

jdliner,

I got to thinking about the TiVoapp and Tytool. Are you "acking" every packet you receive. If so maybe it would be quicker if you get several before "acking". That should increase speed significantly.

[jdiner]

No packets, it is a simple single TCP stream. I have a standard server on the tivo. So I don't break it up into packets. It is written in 128k chunks but from there splitting and recombination is a feature of the tcp layer and my own "128k chunk" code in the client. So it is ack'ing when and as the TCP layer needs to/wants to.

Standard for the server being:

socket
bind
listen
accept
(pump data here)
close

Then on the client I do much the same thing.

socket
connect
select (to make sure there is something to read)
(pump data here)
close

I have recently tried replacing the select call with WSAEventSelect and WaitForMultipleObjects calls. And then a similar combination with more threads. Under 95/98 the above works perfectly. Select call and all. Under XP it is so wierd. I get to a point where the select just fails. So do the other 2 techniques. It doesn't matter how long I let it sit. i.e. what the timeout value is. It just fails and blocks for the full time out. Then if you check the socket at the end it at times has data, and at other times does not.

I did networking for a living at HP for over 6 years. I know what I am doing with all of this. At least with the BSD style of sockets. But I can't explain for the life of me what is going on with XP/2k. I can't believe the socket substructure, Winsock etc..., is that badly broken. Nothing else would run.

But do notice one and all that it is only people on these new versions of the OS that report any problems at all. I use it daily on 95/98 and I see no problems. No failures. No network issues at all. Unless the fact that I am a little slower than some is an issue.

So if there is a networking genius out there. Someone that does Windows style network development give me a shout. I will take all the help I can get right now.

--jdiner

[v8q]

Originally posted by jdiner
But do notice one and all that it is only people on these new versions of the OS that report any problems at all. I use it daily on 95/98 and I see no problems. No failures. No network issues at all. Unless the fact that I am a little slower than some is an issue.

--jdiner

Well - just to stir the pot a little...
Microsoft has a well known dislike for open standards that they do not make money off. They also have a well know habit of putting code in their OSs that will cripple whatever they don't like so their "improved" methods (which also just happen to be propritary) seem to work just fine.
It seems hard to believe they would be so brazen - but then again nothing ever happens to them even when they get caught red handed.
In this case maybe you are subtly being pushed into buying XP and the latest visual studio??

[newlooper]

jdiner,

Trust me, I believe that you know what you are doing. I am just trying to figure what is going on. Sometime when you have some time (hee hee), maybe we can sort this out. I too, have no problems. I run ME and it all works flawlessly.

Like I said, when you have time...., I will send some sniffer software to you and we can take some snaps and see what we can see.

-newlooper

[zqfmbg]

For what it's worth, FTP speed tests from a Linux box to my TiVo get about the same speed as tytool does.

I'm having loads of fun trying to get a stupid cross compiler chain made so I decided I'd try my own hand at a muxer first. Working for a company that specializes in MPEG decoder chips has its advantages :)

[jdiner]

Originally posted by v8q

In this case maybe you are subtly being pushed into buying XP and the latest visual studio??

Umm. I have the latest visual studio. I do after all do this for a living... :) Maybe it is compiler related. You never know... I have C++ Builder laying around here somewhere. Oh you know what. I still have watcom installed on this machine from way back when. I will try it with that and see if it is a VC++ issue or if it is an underlying dll issue.

--jdiner

[SR712]

Hey JD-

Just a thought... is the compiler you are using a new enough version to include XP? Maybe there is a selection for the build that makes the executable XP compliant? Just a thought.

[laserfan]

After a couple of extractions and simple muxes (using TMPGEnc) that were perfect, I've now had some out-of-sync ones. One where the extraction seemed particularly "clean" and yet the audio sync (for this music concert program) was quite bad. TyTool had reported "17ms early" and using bbMPEG I tried to adjust, first using 180-17 (in Audio area) then in increasing multiples until I got to 51ms (180 less 51 = 129) and it still looked "off". So I guessed at a tenth of a second, changed the offset from 180 to 80, and it's much better (though still not "dead on").

Anyway, fiddling with offsets on a 3gig file is very time-consuming, and while waiting for the mux to complete I wondered, since I think one of jdiner's posts said 14ms was as far off as he's ever seen a sync (or some such), whether some files might be SO OUT OF SYNC that the XXms calculation might be done wrong e.g. should TyTool have reported 117ms not 17ms.

Ideas? Honestly I've only done 2 extractions that were out-of-sync but in neither case did TyTool's reported ms offset do the trick; I had to greatly increase the offset...

[laserfan]

Originally posted by me
...I wondered...whether some files might be SO OUT OF SYNC that the XXms calculation might be done wrong e.g. should TyTool have reported 117ms not 17ms.Well, I tried what should perhaps have been an obvious setting given my suspicion i.e. I subtracted 170 from 180 in bbMPEG and the audio sync is dead-on perfect.

Did I stumble upon an issue w/TyTool's offset calc, or did I just misunderstand how to load the offset into bbMPEG?

In any case I'll continue to use 10x the offset TyTool reports until it stops working (I <rarely> argue with success!).

[laserfan]

Guess I'm talking to myself here but I've gotten excited! Couple frustrating things and one revelation. My idea to "times10" the tytool offset doesn't always work. Also I ran into one other very bad sync problem related to editing. I've been intending to marry some 720x480 video to PCM or AC3, on the hunch that "DVD Spec" vid & aud would run on my generation one DVD player.

I found that if I de-mux an edited-and-perfectly-synced mpg stream, convert the audio file to AC3, and then mux it back again, that at each of the edits the program loses more sync until it is unintelligible. My next idea is to convert the m2a file right out of tytool (to wav then ac3), mux and *then* cut, with the AC3 in the program stream.

Before I got that far, in playing w/SpruceUp and getting frustrated that it doesn't like most of my files, as I was looking for a file it DID like I imported an "original" 720x480 m2v file, AND IT AUTOMATICALLY GRABBED MY COMPANION AC3 FILE ALONG WITH IT! In other words, I had converted the m2a to wav then ac3, and I assume because I left the filename the same as the m2v SpruceUp found it and incorporated it. I just started w/SpruceUp but didn't see this in the manual anywhere--do others know about this? I made a quick menu and burned to DVD-RW, and was surprised to see it play beautifully on my gen1 Sony (the DVP-S7000 is not supposed to play DVD-R or RW--it does!). An hourlong music program where the slightest sync problem is intolerable--looked/sounded great.

Anyway I still have to figure out how to edit the files, but right now what works is:

- Grab & vsplit a 720x480 recording using TyTool
- Use dBpowerAMP Music Converter to convert the m2a to wav
- Use SoftEncode to convert the wav to .ac3 (save as same filename)
- Import the m2v file into SpruceUp, the ac3 "comes along"
- Insert a disc and click "Write"; a "standard format" DVD!!!!

Pretty slick, but how to edit this easily and retain audio sync?

[zqfmbg]

Find a good editor. :D

In all seriousness -- it should not be impossible to arbitrarily edit a file. The editor may have to create I-frames where none existed before, but it should be okay. I'm quite surprised at all the problems with muxing; I've always felt it's a simple operation, but hey :)

[chimera]

Anyway I still have to figure out how to edit the files, but right now what works is:

- Grab & vsplit a 720x480 recording using TyTool
- Use dBpowerAMP Music Converter to convert the m2a to wav
- Use SoftEncode to convert the wav to .ac3 (save as same filename)
- Import the m2v file into SpruceUp, the ac3 "comes along"
- Insert a disc and click "Write"; a "standard format" DVD!!!!

Pretty slick, but how to edit this easily and retain audio sync?

You can skip the step to convert from m2a to wav, just rename the .m2a file to .ac3, and import into softencode using "decode to pcm". Once it's in, you can code to .ac3.

Maestro complains about the timestamps I put in using Softencode don't match the video timestamps. Therefore Maestro can't sync up the audio just right. I have to do it manually (change the audio start time) which is a real pain. Anyway have a different way to sync up audio in Maestro?

[laserfan]

Originally posted by chimera
You can skip the step to convert from m2a to wav, just rename the .m2a file to .ac3, and import into softencode...Wow, great, thanks chimera. BTW I tried the "include time stamp" setting of SoftEncode once and it sure hosed the sync big-time on the resulting mux'ed file. Did not try it w/SpruceUp.

As this is jdiner's TyTool thread, I guess I should try to make my digressions relevant by indicating:

1. Some of us are trying to make DVD-standards files & need always to convert at least the audio streams somehow, and still remain in sync.

2. If you Josh will eventually auto-mux the files, if you gain from this the knowledge/insight to advise us (me!) on the issues of de-muxing and re-muxing the resultant files please do so. Check's in the mail...

I've been real close to abandoning the whole idea that Tivo file extraction is worth the effort, but after my successful DVD burn last night, which was relatively painless, "I got a new attitude"!

[JoeRod]

Everything seems to work well untill the extraction part. I get as far as this.

SERVER: We got a message! buf = 'TYSTREAM 68190/68369/68371'
-> '68190'
exporting fsid 68190 of size 536870912 to stdout
-> '68369'
exporting fsid 68369 of size 310378496 to stdout
-> '68371'
exporting fsid 68371 of size 38797312 to stdout

after this it sends me an error.

Anyone know what I can do??

Attached is the error I get.

[laserfan]

Originally posted by chimera
You can skip the step to convert from m2a to wav, just rename the .m2a file to .ac3, and import into softencode using "decode to pcm". Once it's in, you can code to .ac3...Chimera I tried it and she's a no work; stops immediately w/invalid Frame 1 or something.

My m2a is from an SA Tivo (32000Hz sample rate mpeg-1 layer 2). Maybe this is only for DTivo? I realize I'm in a DTivo thread here, but, this is the hotbed of TyTool action also...

Is there some magical incantation I have to utter at the same time?

[lmurray]

Hi all,

Thanks for tytool. It rocks!

A suggestion on muxing. I've been using mplex from the mjpegtools package for muxing streams together. I've been doing this on Linux for a few months, and recently compiled mplex for windows. Anyway, can this core mplex code be sucked into tytool?

Think its worth a look.
The mplex code can be found here:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/mjpeg/


Thanks
-lloyd-

[chimera]

My m2a is from an SA Tivo (32000Hz sample rate mpeg-1 layer 2). Maybe this is only for DTivo? I realize I'm in a DTivo thread here, but, this is the hotbed of TyTool action also...

:( Oh, I guess I should pay attention to what system you have. Sorry about that, I was trying to save you a step.

[skorous]

Hi Lloyd,

I'm not speaking for JD, but I"ve got a couple of clues that might help. I've heard him mention a couple of times that he's writing all of this himself so he doesn't inherit wierd issues from other code. He's also trying to guarantee that he's going to get 100% "according to Hoyle" MPEG streams so they'll be able to be imported in to just about any editor.

Well, and he does do this for a living so I tend to trust him.... :-)

Skorous

[JoeRod]

Anyone know why I would be getting this error.

failed to write to stdout..

Please help, I'm so close but I can get anything off my tivo..

[sendero]

When I saw this, it was because TyTool running on my PC had an invalid local directory. I had it set to "D:\TivoExt", but that directory did not exist on my machine. Double check that and see if it fixes it.

[newlooper]

Anyone heard from jdiner?

[ursa99]

When I delete single or multiple shows, TyTool5 deletes the shows then closes. Is this normal? Anyone else seeing this?

Extraction and all else seems fine. I'm running XP pro and have an Xtreme25 box with Kravens update on it.

[rd001]

Originally posted by chimera
You can skip the step to convert from m2a to wav, just rename the .m2a file to .ac3, and import into softencode using "decode to pcm". Once it's in, you can code to .ac3.

Maestro complains about the timestamps I put in using Softencode don't match the video timestamps. Therefore Maestro can't sync up the audio just right. I have to do it manually (change the audio start time) which is a real pain. Anyway have a different way to sync up audio in Maestro?
How do you change the audio start time in Maestro? I've been trying to do this. Just dragging the audio track to a new position on the timeline doesn't change the Offset in the Properties for the M2A track.

[captain_video]

When I delete single or multiple shows, TyTool5 deletes the shows then closes. Is this normal? Anyone else seeing this?

Yes, I see it all the time. I believe there was another post about this. It shouldn't be anything to worry about and is apparently normal behavior. It doesn't happen every time but I'd say probably 3 out of 4 times I select a program for deletion.

[Tha_mailman]

Hey guys if I am missing something here please let me know...

When ever I refresh using TyTool I get the following:

Reading list from the server...
Clear Now Showing List...
Connecting to '192.168.0.4'
Connected...
Getting NowShowing data...
Total Size = 685kbytes in 1.813000 seconds...
Unknown tag <166>
tag data <l 25 02:18:31 tcl[329]: Tcl created pool of 1458176 bytes>

I can get the streams off of there with no prob, but when I try and delete on I get:

Connecting to '192.168.0.4'
Connected...
Deleting 'Ripley's Believe It or Not!'... Done.
Clear Now Showing List...
Connecting to '192.168.0.4'
Connected...
Getting NowShowing data...
Total Size = 685kbytes in 1.613000 seconds...
Unknown tag <166>
tag data <l 25 02:20:33 tcl[331]: Tcl created pool of 1458176 bytes>

And the show is still on there...

If i use the mfs_stream web module it deletes fine.

If it helps I attached a screen shot.

[captain_video]

Are you using the latest version of TyTool? You need to make sure the latest version of NowShowing.tcl has been uploaded to the Tivo for the delete feature to function properly. The DELETE button will show up in the UI window if you're using the TyTool5.exe file but it also needs the newer companion files on the Tivo to work correctly.

[Tha_mailman]

I should have exerimented a little before posting previously...

NowShowing.tcl is the right version. My problem it turns out is with TyTool5r2. TyTool5 works like a charm. I didn't mind using mfsstream to delete I just wanted to pass my findings along.

[jdiner]

I live... but barely.

Work suddenly ramped up to taking 14+ hours a day from me. I had to slow down and the for the moment pretty much drop the Tivo stuff I was doing. I do need to sleep you know.

I still have plans to get back to things. I really do. :) I just need to get some time again.

There have been people asking about the mux'ing and that is fine. I don't mind questions just be patient as I try to get the answers back out.

A question I have gotten tons of times is "why not use someone else's muxing code". The reason for that is this. We have timestamp information in the TyStream from the tivo. To get to what other programs mux, we have to remove it. In fact we have to remove all of it. What I am doing is making a mux'er that uses it so the small little skips in audio or video that we get will work seemlessly.

I am almost there. I have been almost there for a long long time. I am just running out of time badly. It won't always be this way. It won't be this way for long. But for right now... I am burning the candle at both ends.

I do promise that as soon as I get some time I will get the latest versions out the door. I have the next release pretty much ready to go I just have not had time to test anything in it.

--jdiner

[laserfan]

jdiner, I hope that most people here have other options (I feel I do, e.g. direct-to-SpruceUp/DVD, bbMPEG, TMPGEnc, et. al.) including enjoying [what in my case is a very brief] summer, so I say.... Don't Sweat It.

When you're done I'm sure it will be Good and that many/most of us will be deliriously Happy, especially as we will have gotten something very valuable for Nothing because of your hard work and Philanthropy. Thanks! :cool:

[rd001]

Originally posted by jdiner
I am almost there. I have been almost there for a long long time. I am just running out of time badly. It won't always be this way. It won't be this way for long. But for right now... I am burning the candle at both ends.

You've already done so much for us, only an ingrate would make the smallest complaint. You do have a real life and a family to support.

But I'm still drooling over your final muxing code. And in the meantime, burning plenty of satisfactory DVD's even if not the perfected streams which your new code will make possible.

I can wait, content in anticipation of your final software.

[bbarry]

TyTool worked great but when I view the m2v in Windows Media Player the video is very dark. Is there any way to correct this? I'm using a sa with 3.0.

[smokeman]

jdiner,
I know you are a linux guy...
any chance you have a linux client for your tytool tivo server?
I try to stay away from windows as much as possible.
Tytool is a great peice of work!

[smokeman]

I know some people have been having problems with muxing streams together, and I wanted to report my success with tytool->.m2a/m2v->mplex from (mjpegtools on linux)

I have set out to break the mold....
I am trying to go linux all the way with my extracted videos....(other than using tytool in windows in the first place)
I got the .m2a, and .m2v files, which xine(a linux video/audio player) played both seperately right away...

I rigged a script to launch 2 xine players starting at the same time...
playing the .m2a, and .m2v....
and this gave me great respect for the work jdiner has done....
they were perfectly in sync. dead on!!!

so, I tried tcmplex, which comes with transcode(the linux video swiss pocket knife...pretty much does everything)
and, it muxed the files together, and the first few mins of video, and audio were in sync....but then they jumped off dramatically....

so, I tried mplex from mjpegtools, and it worked perfectly....I can't notice audio, and video being off...

I am now encoding the resultant .mpg file into divx, and next, I will make svcd's...

then, I will dive into taking the original .mpg file, and making a dvd+rw, and see if it will play in any of my dvd drives/players...
and finally, I will use transcode to make my 480x480 video 720x480, so it is compatable with as many players as possible.

I will keep posting my results...but I intend to use linux all the way.

smokeman

[chimera]

I will keep posting my results...but I intend to use linux all the way.

I'm eager to watch your results. The more I can do in Linux the better!

[zootie]

Media Player (7.0 up, not sure about 6.4) has brightness controls. Check in "View\Now Playing Tools\Video Settings" (might need o be using the standard full mode skin for the controls to show up). Other players also have adjustment controls (like the tab key in ATI's MMC).

[lmurray]

a java version of tytool would solve the operating system problem. That way the mac people and linux guys would be happy. (And of course, it would run on windows)

If the source code for the client was made public, I'd take a look at a java client.

I have a feeling all the magic is done in server portion.


-lloyd-

[Pr.Sinister]

I think this thread should never be out of the 1st page
of the forum! :)

[jdiner]

Originally posted by lmurray
a java version of tytool would solve the operating system problem. That way the mac people and linux guys would be happy. (And of course, it would run on windows)

If the source code for the client was made public, I'd take a look at a java client.

I have a feeling all the magic is done in server portion.


I have been giving a lot of thought to this as well. I have had a few people offer to do the GUI for me. I have just had no time to work on anything reguarding the tivo lately. However the nature of the beast is massively cpu intensive. And with Java being interpretted I think that it could really really really really slow things down to run it that way.

--jdiner

[jdiner]

Originally posted by smokeman
jdiner,
I know you are a linux guy...
any chance you have a linux client for your tytool tivo server?
I try to stay away from windows as much as possible.
Tytool is a great peice of work!

Ummm. About half of one. I planned to do more but I ran way out of time. I have had some offers from others to do it. But I have not had time to really talk with anyone about it in detail. I am just here at work waiting for something to copy over the network so I took a moment to look at all of this.

--jdiner

[bato]

I just started using this tool and is great, thanks.

I have a problem with all recordings that are saved with secondary audio option enable. When I try to get the show I get hundreds of OOB errors, TyTool say it finished XXXMB but in my hard drive only less than 3MB. Any show that is recorded with primary audio I can get ok, even if the show is from the same channel but recorded with primary audio then all goes great.

Any way I can help to fix this? Thanks.

[bato]

If I change to TyStream mode then the file transfer ok to my computer (all MB 500-600), then when I Process File then all errors shows and onlye a 1.6MB file is written.

Thanks.

[AlphaWolf]

jdiner: I hate to cross examine here, but throwing out the first chunk of a tystream during the extraction process is probably a bad idea:

http://alt.org/forum/index.php?t=msg&th=15&start=0&rid=23&S=1c3b9bf76e23317ac22a2a5d74c62ad1

[smokeman]

I had someone from the transcode mailing list reply back to me on why my audi/video was out of sync....even when my mux'ed together file was perfectly in sync.

The audio was like 9 seconds longer than the video....
I guess transcode, instead of starting them both at the same time, takes every second, and sync's it with the video, and the fact that the audio is 9 secs too long threw it off...

[laserfan]

smokeman you said before that:...I tried tcmplex, which comes with transcode...and it muxed the files together, and the first few mins of video, and audio were in sync....but then they jumped off dramatically....

so, I tried mplex from mjpegtools, and it worked perfectly....I can't notice audio, and video being off...I'd understood from this that mplex works for you, so why use tcmplex (transcode) at all? I guess I will research these separately but your two posts have confused me and I hope you can elaborate.

I'm not anxious to set-up a Linux box to help w/extraction, but in the absence of jdiner getting his muxing code out-the-door I'm trying to find something that works better than bbMPEG for muxing w/audio offset.

[smokeman]

mplex is for getting the 2 files, into one mpg file....
and it works for getting one file, perfectly in sync....
then, you have to do something with it....
put it on VCD, or encode to divx...

This is where transcode comes in...
and what I said about the audio being a bit longer...
this is probably why tcmplex made the mpg file out of sync as well...

It wasn't until I tried to encode to divx, that the audio, and video was out of sync again....
I would have thought, once I got them into a single mpg file, that they would have stayed in sync...

jdiner....
can you check your extraction code, and see if there is a way to make sure the 2 files end up being exactly the same length(time length that is)?

[bato]

I just recorded a show half in primary audio and half in secondary audio. File size is 820MB (as shown by Tytool). I get the show and the first 450MB write ok but just when I switched to secondary audio I get a lot of OOB errors and nothing then is added to the file, so the 450MB is the part with primary audio and the secondary audio is lost.

It will help if I include the .txt file that show the errors?

Thanks.

[jdiner]

Originally posted by AlphaWolf
jdiner: I hate to cross examine here, but throwing out the first chunk of a tystream during the extraction process is probably a bad idea:

http://alt.org/forum/index.php?t=msg&th=15&start=0&rid=23&S=1c3b9bf76e23317ac22a2a5d74c62ad1

They are not arbitrarily dumped. They are checked to see what is really going. And then skipped if they contain no usefull starting data.

--jdiner

[jdiner]

Originally posted by bato
I just recorded a show half in primary audio and half in secondary audio. File size is 820MB (as shown by Tytool). I get the show and the first 450MB write ok but just when I switched to secondary audio I get a lot of OOB errors and nothing then is added to the file, so the 450MB is the part with primary audio and the secondary audio is lost.

It will help if I include the .txt file that show the errors?

Thanks.

Umm. You are gonna have to explain primary and secondary audio to me? The terms means nothing to me. I also no of no way to switch audio modes in the middle of recording. The Tivo does automatically at some points when using Dolby audio but beyond that I know of nothing.

--jdiner

[bato]

Originally posted by jdiner


Umm. You are gonna have to explain primary and secondary audio to me? The terms means nothing to me. I also no of no way to switch audio modes in the middle of recording. The Tivo does automatically at some points when using Dolby audio but beyond that I know of nothing.

--jdiner

Thank your for reading, I'll try to explain better. I have a DTiVo unit when I go to a channel that I can change audio to Spanish (Toon disney, Cartoon Network, PPV, HBO, etc.) it show an option to change the audio you press "display" button and down arrow just below the second tuner some yellow icon shows, you select there and change to secondary audio (Spanish) and then the audio is changed to Spanish and recorded that way.

I beleive you can also change the preference for audio Spanish in some menu and then all shows that have a secondary audio will be recorded that way.

I beleive the icon changes when the movie have Dolby Digital and you change for normal audio to dolby digital, this is the same in other channels from normal audio and secondary.

Thanks.

[IndieRockSteve]

jdiner-
I'm trying to get the Tytools app to run in linux under Wine, but when i load it up, the font is wrong. I was wondering what font you selected to use for the buttons, etc. Or if you could change the font being used to the standard font windows uses?

thanks!
(now what we really need is a native QT interface for tytools on linux... I just wish I new how to program =)

[jdiner]

Originally posted by IndieRockSteve
I'm trying to get the Tytools app to run in linux under Wine, but when i load it up, the font is wrong. I was wondering what font you selected to use for the buttons, etc. Or if you could change the font being used to the standard font windows uses?

thanks!
(now what we really need is a native QT interface for tytools on linux... I just wish I new how to program =)

I have been planning to work with a unix dev guy for the GUI. The code itself has and will continue to cross compile just fine.

As for the font it is the standard system one. I make no changes to it at all. Everything is purposefully a standard Win32 control.

--jdiner

[jdiner]

Originally posted by bato


Thank your for reading, I'll try to explain better. I have a DTiVo unit when I go to a channel that I can change audio to Spanish (Toon disney, Cartoon Network, PPV, HBO, etc.) it show an option to change the audio you press "display" button and down arrow just below the second tuner some yellow icon shows, you select there and change to secondary audio (Spanish) and then the audio is changed to Spanish and recorded that way.

I beleive you can also change the preference for audio Spanish in some menu and then all shows that have a secondary audio will be recorded that way.


You changed what it was recording in the middle and you are surprised that things get out of sequence? All I can say to that is "well... duh!"

I am sorry. But the process is based on figuring out where start and keeping everything in it that is correct and in sequence. When you change audio there will be a gap. Further the DTivo does not "record" like the SATivo does. So the timestamps and how they line up are based on the signal from DTV. I would have been amazed if it lined up with the other audio track, rather than having it be out. All it has to do is be off by 1ms, which would be rediculously accruate, and it still would not be close enough.

It works like:

Audio1 == 1ms --- Audio2 == 33ms --- Audio3 == 65ms

If you lose a chunk you get this...

Audio4 == 97 -------- Audio6 == 161ms.

How do you tell if it is in line and in sync? Because even though the gap is too large. The step value is correct. 161 - 97 divided by 2 is still 32ms for the step.

When you change audio types you get off. i.e.

Audio 7 = 200... A change of 39ms. Even if everything from there is right at 32ms each step it is "wrong" because it no longer lines up.

--jdiner

[smokeman]

Any clues on that...
That is why transcode gets out of sync on doing anything with resultant video files...

[bato]

Originally posted by jdiner


You changed what it was recording in the middle and you are surprised that things get out of sequence? All I can say to that is "well... duh!"

I am sorry. But the process is based on figuring out where start and keeping everything in it that is correct and in sequence. When you change audio there will be a gap. Further the DTivo does not "record" like the SATivo does. So the timestamps and how they line up are based on the signal from DTV. I would have been amazed if it lined up with the other audio track, rather than having it be out. All it has to do is be off by 1ms, which would be rediculously accruate, and it still would not be close enough.

It works like:

Audio1 == 1ms --- Audio2 == 33ms --- Audio3 == 65ms

If you lose a chunk you get this...

Audio4 == 97 -------- Audio6 == 161ms.

How do you tell if it is in line and in sync? Because even though the gap is too large. The step value is correct. 161 - 97 divided by 2 is still 32ms for the step.

When you change audio types you get off. i.e.

Audio 7 = 200... A change of 39ms. Even if everything from there is right at 32ms each step it is "wrong" because it no longer lines up.

--jdiner

Thanks, that was just one of my test, I think other shows were recorded without changing to Spanish not even a second later in the show, but I'll try this, please tell me if this is ok:
- select Toon Disney
- change to Spanish (secondary audio)
- let it run for 1 hour (so all buffer is in spanish)
- record a show (without changing to/from spanish)
- tytool the show and look for errors

after this if no errors I guess all my shows were changed from normal audio to secondary in the middle of the recording. Doh!

If I record this 99.9% shows in secondary audio to a SA then I can extract without problems right?

Thanks again, and I'll be posting back tonight.

EDIT: the check is done since the first frame in the stream, even if I only want to extract 5 min after? With this information I can try to get the show after the change, cause I have a couple that changed channel, then audio (no more than 15 sec), but then again maybe this is not possible.

[Ellipse]

Ok, this should be a easy request. Maybe even already done, just not documented.

Could you document a way to make a change to the rc.sysinit to have the TiVo side of this tool lauch upon startup? I am sure I could figure it out, but for those that are not as Linux savy....

[Ellipse]

Whoops....rapid fire finger today...

[newlooper]

Ellipse,

Put both of the files NowShowing.tcl and tserver_mfs in the var/tmp directory on the DTivo and then add the


sleep 300
exec /var/tmp/tserver_mfs > /dev/null &


lines at the end of the rc.sysinit

I put the sleep in there to make sure the TiVo settles down a bit before starting this service.

[rd001]

I'm sure many of us got tired of the manual startup for the tserver on the DTivo.

I didn't like consuming any CPU cycles or memory on the DTivo side so I looked at using TeraTerm's macro features.

In my TeraTerm Pro directory, I added the following line in the appropriate section to TERATERM.INI:

; Startup macro
StartupMacro=TYTOOL.TTL

Then I created a text file named TYTOOL.TTL in the TeraTerm directory on the PC with the following contents:

connect "192.168.1.100"
wait 'bash-2.02#'
sendln 'cd /ty'
wait 'bash-2.02#'
sendln './tserver_mfs3'

Keep in mind that my DTivo directory for storing the Tytool server scripts is named '/ty' (a directory named 'ty' in the root of the filesystem) and my IP address is 192.168.1.100 and you will probably have to change those.

The upshot of all this is that I just launch TeraTerm on the PC and the terminal window appears with the DTivo server, all ready to run. Then I run Tytool on the PC side and when I get done, I just close TeraTerm. No resources or scripting involved on the DTivo side and you can still see the tserver error messages if needed.

This solution might be preferable for many DTivoids over that of more scripting at the expense of memory and CPU cycles.

[laserfan]

Originally posted by rd001
...I looked at using TeraTerm's macro features...VERY NICE! I've been using TeraTerm for a while but didn't know about/never thought to use macros with it. Thanks!

[jdiner]

I am glad someone came up with a way of doing it. I have had a number of people ask me for that. I have left it alone because as I test I commonly need to restart the server for new versions etc... And bottom line, it doesn't bother me at all. I watch the text output from it all the time to see what is going on. This fits into the catagory of "to each their own".

--jdiner

[CyberMop]

BUG in TYTOOL5

I searched for this, but did not come up with any results... But then again, it's hard to search for this problem..

TYTOOL5 keeps crashing on me... There is only 1 show what I could not extract all other would work fine... I finaly see what the problem is...

I was trying to extract "9/11"... Well in the windows world you can not have a file with a "/" in it... I think thats the cause...

I was going to rename it in TivoWeb, but I keep getting a database error, so thats a whole new problem....

Anyways, there should be something in TYTOOL to tel it to convert a "/" to something else.... Thanks for all the hard work you are doing on this..


Thanks!

[dlang]

There are a number of characters that have special meanings as filenames, and they do differ slightly from OS to OS.

there's usually a way to use them anyway if you are determined enough.

I recently had a file I had to dealwith who's filename was a single carrige return character, try putting that into your GUI (I was working at a command line, but it was still an interesting job to figure out what the file was called so that I could look inside it and make sure it wasn't something left by a hacker :-)

[koreth]

Not a substitute for a nice GUI, of course, but if I had a command-line interface where I could specify a starting and ending time (preferably in minutes-and-seconds form with optional fractions of a second) and the muxer would give me a playable MPEG file of just that part of the show, that'd be enough for me to archive all the shows I record on Showtime and HBO. In those cases I just want to trim off the padding before and after the show, never anything in the middle.

Then as a second step, I'd want a utility (which probably already exists out there) to concatenate two MPEG files with whatever timestamp tweaking is needed to make them look like a continuous piece of video. With that tool and the clip extraction feature, you'd be able to do commercial zapping, albeit in a cumbersome way.

Seems like that'd be doable much faster than an editing UI, though of course I'd love one of those eventually too!

BTW, speaking of UIs, it might be worth contacting Blight, the author of ZoomPlayer, who has tons of experience building a very functional user interface around third-party MPEG playing apps. He's in Israel so probably has no use for TiVo video extraction, but if his past development habits are any indication, he could probably be convinced to add hooks to ZoomPlayer to let the user mark in and out points and dump the timestamps to a file afterwards. Then you could feed that file into a wrapper around the pair of tools described above and get a nice edited MPEG file, end of problem. I won't post his E-mail address here but if you do a Google search on ZoomPlayer it's easy to find.

No sense reinventing the wheel...

[laserfan]

I, too, would be happy with such a command-line operation as koreth has suggested, i.e. to trim the ends and also to concatenate two files... would be very good.

[phrend]

I'm using TyTool5r2 and tried to download an ep. of M*A*S*H and it crashed the Windows app every time... I thought that the invalid filename chars issue was resolved already?

I renamed the Title to "MASH" (removed the "*"'s) and was able to extract the video without any problems.

No emergency, just wanted to report the issue. :)

[markwilliams]

First, Tytool is the greatest. I've been downloading and burning
DVD's for over a month now.

I have some programs from 9/11 that I can't download because the title contains the '/' character. The version of TyTool5.exe I have is dated 7/4/2002. Is that the latest version? If not, where can I get a newer version, and does it deal with the '/' character?

Thanks.

[jdiner]

Yeah. It appears that it does have problems with it I am just not sure why. Make sure to grab the TyTool #5r2 release. It has some GUI fixes along with other things.

More is coming fixes and new features... Hang onto it on the Tivo for now or go onto the Tivo Using the TivoWeb or some similar program to rename the shows on the tivo itself. Then you can download it successfully. It is just an issue with creating the file on the file system.

--jdiner

[phrend]

jdiner, I just wanted to say thank you for the great app!

I only wish that converting the streams into SVCD complient MPEG's were as simple...

[markwilliams]

So how do I know if I have Release 2 or not,
and if not, where can I get it?

[FreydNot]

Originally posted by jdiner
Yeah. It appears that it does have problems with it I am just not sure why. Make sure to grab the TyTool #5r2 release. It has some GUI fixes along with other things.

Did I miss the release of 5r2? Where can I download it?

[SR712]

Its a file attachment earlier in this thread, around page 2 or 3, I think. :)

[slackerVCD]

Originally posted by jdiner
I am glad someone came up with a way of doing it. I have had a number of people ask me for that. I have left it alone because as I test I commonly need to restart the server for new versions etc...
--jdiner

Here's my method, a small contribution. . . I use a perl script from XP to start tserver on the tivo. Just make sure you have the net::telnet module installed on the machine that launches this script ;)

The script connects to 'tivo' (ip address is in my host file) spawns bash -c and launches tserver_mfs5 (never did figure out why it wouldn't work without -c). You could probably create a shortcut to wperl.exe and target this script, then no dos box would be opened -- if I get SUPER bored one day I may try that.

use Net::Telnet;
$telnet = new Net::Telnet (Timeout => 10,
Errmode => 'die');
$telnet->open('tivo');
$telnet->waitfor('/bash-2.02# $/i');
print $telnet->cmd('cd /var/hack/tytool');
print $telnet->cmd('bash -c ./tserver_mfs5 &');
print $telnet->cmd('exit');

[salewit]

Has anyone been able to get Tytool v5 working with a DTivo 3.1? Mine craps out at the very beginning trying to get the Now Showing list.

[mrblack51]

3.x has a different mfs structure. the nowshowing.tcl needs to be changed

[mrblack51]

here is an updated nowshowing.tcl that should work. basically, the current version was checking for '3.0', this one checks for '3.'

let me know if it works/doesnt work. remove the .txt extension, and be sure to chmod a+x NowShowing.tcl once it is back on the tivo

[salewit]

That worked perfectly! Thank you.

One more question. When I'm extracting, I notice the collision light on my ethernet hub is lit almost constantly. This never happens in any other situation. If I'm copying between two computers on the hub it doesn't happen at all. I'm just curious if anyone knows why it would do it between the Tivo and a computer. The file is copying, but I can't help but think that it's transfering much more slowly because of the collisions.

[koreth]

How do you copy between two computers on the hub? If you're using a shared filesystem, then there wouldn't be any collisions since each computer waits for a request/response from the other before sending anything. If you use ftp you'll probably see similar behavior to the TiVo, because on a TCP connection the sender transmits data before the receiver has acknowledged getting everything up to that point (a big performance win in the face of network latency.) You're quite correct that the collisions are potentially slowing down your transfers.

My recommendation: replace your hub with a full-duplex switch. You'll probably see a substantial performance boost in transfers from your TiVo, and possibly in other situations too depending on how you use your network. Small switches are reasonably priced these days.

[salewit]

Thanks for the info Koreth. Sorry to go off topic here. I live in a house with a bunch of housemates. We have a router to share our broadband. In my room, I set up a hub to connect to my desktop, laptop and Tivo. I can't just replace the hub with a switch, right? I need to put the switch between my Tivo and desktop only? And then how do I get my laptop in there?

Yes its taking about 15 minutes to extract a 30 minute show.

[BubbleLamp]

There will ALWAYS be collisions on a shared Ethenet network, that's part of the CSMA/CD spec. Koreth, your comment relates to layer 3 of the stack, not layer 2.

You can replace the hub with a switch. This will give each node a full bandwidth connection to any other node. IOW, traffic between your Tivo and PC will have no effect on any other traffic passing through the switch.

Just adding a switch will buy you marginally better performance, since it eliminates the collision's effect on performance. However, to see the full benefits of a switch you'd need to run your NICs in full-duplex mode.

[koreth]

Anywhere you have a hub, you can have a switch instead. You'll get maximum performance if you hook everything in your house up to a single switch (assuming all your hosts are on the same subnet, anyway) but you'll also benefit from just putting your personal machines on a switch. Unfortunately while small switches are reasonably cheap, prices go up fast once you get above 8 ports or so.

A switch is more or less just a smart hub that keeps track of what's connected to each port. With a hub, any packet that any machine sends is broadcast to *all* the other machines on the hub, whereas with a switch only the intended recipient gets the packet. That means that machines A and B talking won't have any effect on machine C's network traffic or vice versa.

A full-duplex switch can send and receive data at the same time, which is how you'll avoid collisions between data and acknowledgements between a pair of hosts. Make sure your PC has a full-duplex network card; both the switch and the host need to be full-duplex to do simultaneous send/receive. I believe the TurboNet card supports full-duplex operation so you should be safe there.

[jdiner]

Originally posted by mrblack51
here is an updated nowshowing.tcl that should work. basically, the current version was checking for '3.0', this one checks for '3.'

let me know if it works/doesnt work. remove the .txt extension, and be sure to chmod a+x NowShowing.tcl once it is back on the tivo

Sweet. Many thanks for the fix you posted. I will include it in the next release. Glad someone took up the slack while I have been so out of it.

--jdiner

[Agrabren]

JDiner,
We usually do the pulls at night, before bed. Our DTivo records approx 19 shows a day, with 10 hours of recording. At night, before bed, I try to pull huge batches to be processed on my machine in the morning while I'm at work. The problem is, tserver_mfs5 crashes at random while transferring blocks. Worse, I have no idea why. What should I do to get useful information to you for future revisions of tserver_mfs5. I know if I restart the tserver, it will work again, but I have to restart the transfer, and that is a pain, cause I'm asleep when it crashes. Any ideas or steps? Thanks

Kevin

[nilknarf]

Jdiner....I have been told to seek the wizard.

I'm running 2.5 xtremed DTivo with Kravens upgrade. I've tried about 20 times to download a video with Tytool5, but the Tivo freezes up every time at anywhere from 10% to 70% finished. I then have to reboot the tivo.

I've tried putting both channels on non-channels (00 and 01).

Here's my rc.sysinit (http://mywebpages.comcast.net/oyez/rc.sysinit). I'm running an airnet if that makes any difference. If there is any thing that you can think of for me to try, I'm all ears.

[jdiner]

I know of nothing that would cause the rebooting. But if you are willing to commit some time to all of this then we can dig into it.

I can provide versions of tserver_mfs that segment out the work. And we can try and identify what segment is causing the crash. And once we know that, hopefully a solution will be forth coming. Sadly for me it doesn't crash. And I run a standard 2.5xtreme DTivo with tivoweb and tserver_mfs as pretty much the only extras.

But it means that I need people will to spend some time testing things that do have the problem.

--jdiner

[nilknarf]

Thanks Jdiner! I'm totally committed to figuring this thing out. So I'll start with the alternate version of tserver_mfs that segments out the work?

As far as others having this problem, I did run across this recent thread: Tytool rebooting problem (http://www.dealdatabase.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=20358). I'll pm the others and see if they'll contribute.

[nilknarf]

Just to provide some background regarding my unit, here's whats been done to it:

1. Installed xtreme 2.5
2. Installed MVChannels
3. Added Kraven's Upgrade
4. Installed Airnet adapter (lost ftp, telnet, noscramble in the process)
5. My rc.remote-login file was full of daemons for ftp, telnet, noscramble, etc. so I copied all of that info over to my rc.net file, rebooted and all was working again.
6. Replaced my sc.tcl file with PGM's updated file in November, trying to get showcases and tivolution mag back (didn't work).
7. Installed tytools5......tivo crashes on first try
8. Tried tytools5r2, but same problem
8. TivoWeb was not starting up, so I installed again per DarkWings howto and it works fine
9. Installed Mfs_stream per DarkWings howto, it displays all shows, but when I try to download, it just gives me an instant download of 0k. (I know noscramble is working because, I get partial files with tytool.)

I probably missed a couple of minor things, but that's most of what I've done to it.

[jdiner]

Ok. Attached is the first new release for the tserver_mfs and mfs_stream programs.

This version is a non-testing version. It is the full thing. But it has a few minor minor changes. I was asked to release some of this stuff a long time ago by... someone here. I forget who.

But it has the change so that the priority changing code dumps to stderr instead of stdout. This means that this version of mfs_stream can be used in the middle of another command via pipes or whatever your preference is.

This is also the version of tserver_mfs I use. It should be what everyone else is using baring only the change to priority printing but it gives us a starting point.

Again this .zip file contains both tserver_mfs5r2 and mfs_stream.

--jdiner

[jdiner]

Ok. The attached archive contains 3 testing releases. Each of the files is named tserver_mfs_test1/2/3 and the features in them are as follows:

test1 = No MFS processing at all of any kind. This is just a test for the parsing code in the servers front-end. I.e. the calls from the TyTool client. Nothing is sent back across the network.

test2 = Full setup for doing the real MFS work. Buffers are obtained, the front-end processing is done, the size of the FSID is obtained and so on. But NO reading MFS of the data is done in anyway, and nothing is sent back across the network.

test3 = Full setup for MFS process, and FULL reading of data from the MFS. But no writing to the network of any kind.

The goals and methods to use here:

1- Each version is a "stage" in testing things to find the problem area within the server program. You need to determine a test bed that fails with the full server (the one you are already using) and then test with the same set on each server.

2- It almost begins to sound like the failure for some is when large numbers of things are chosen. (19 shows 10 hours of data etc...) That is fine. Go with it.

3- To run these tests, since no data will be coming back, it does not matter if TyTool is in the TyStream mode or the VSplit mode.

4- At this point run the test versions of the server (see below). Be sure to highlight/pick all of the shows that caused the problem and hit get. You will get no data but it will fully test the parser code for getting the shows.

5- In each of the versions of the server more will be done but there will be no data sent back over the network. So in order to "watch" what is going on and see what is happening you will need to look at the telnet window the server is running in.


To do the testing:

1- Shutdown the currently running, if any tserver_mfs program. Wait 5-20 seconds and restart the test1 server. Run your tests (see above) and record the results.

2- Shutdown the currently running, if any tserver_mfs_test1 program. Wait 5-20 seconds and restart the test2 server. Run the same tests (see above) and record the results.

3- Shutdown the currently running, if any tserver_mfs_test2 program. Wait 5-20 seconds and restart the test3 server. Run the exact same tests (see above) and record the results.

4- Report the results on the DealDatabase forum.

--jdiner

[MartinC]

I have a 10 hour recording with 20+ parts, this causes the tests to fail. It looks like a buffer overflow as the part of the string is repeated.

It works for small numbers of parts on all the tests.

I have attached the console results, so you can see the problem in the command string.

SERVER: We got a message! buf = 'TYSTREAM 131438/131440/131441/131442/131443/131
444/131445/131446/131447/131448/131449/131450/131451/131452/131453/131454/131455
/131456/131457/131458/131459/131460/131461/131462/131463/131464/131465/131466/13
1467/131468/131469/131470/131471/131472/131473/131474/1314TYSTREAM 131438/131440
/131441/131442/131443/131444/131445/131446/131447/131448/131449/131450/131451/'

[jdiner]

Woah. What on earth did you record that was 10+ hours long? Crud.

The server itself can handle way more than that. It looks like TyTool itself is putting together the request wrong. You have 2 tyStreams in the same thing. That is not ever supposed to happen. Did you try to get more than 1 show with that or just 1 show with 20+ parts?

--jdiner

Yep. The server can handle a 100 part stream. I figured that was more than enough. But I overloaded the use on a buffer in TyTool that was only 256 bytes in length. This is bad. I will have to build a new TyTool version for that fix.

Anyone else still having issues with a more reasonably sized get 5/10 parts?

--jdiner

[MartinC]

I am using my Tivo to move stuff off my Sky+ box which has 100+ hours on it.

So far everything works fine on single parts/low numbers its only when the string gets too long thats its been failing.

[jdiner]

Originally posted by MartinC
I am using my Tivo to move stuff off my Sky+ box which has 100+ hours on it.

Just out of curiosity. What is the Sky+ box? I have never heard of it.

--jdiner

[MartinC]

Its like a DTivo, ie its a bitstream recorder for the Satelite TV service in the UK. Its a closed system with encrypted files, so no way of getting the video out as digital.

[AlphaWolf]

Ah MartinC, I believe I have talked to you before on skybusters?

[nilknarf]

ok....i've run all three tservers. Nos. 2 and 3 gave me some errors while getting the nowshowing list, but surprisingly the file transfers seemed to work. No Tivo crashes.

I've attached my log.

[nilknarf]

Alright, now I've attached my log.

[jdiner]

Woah. Scarily enough. In going over the crashes it looks like it is the driver for the ethernet card. But I am not sure how that could be the case.

The reason I am thinking this is that the test versions do a full extraction. On my DTivo I extracted everything and over about an hour it pulled darn near 35 hours of recorded material from the MFS but it sends it nowhere. No one else reported a real crash of the system either. The only missing in version 3 was the write to the network. Literally just 1 commented call, the socket send() call. Which means I am somehow overloading the socket sub-system. Not supposed to be possible.


Could everyone that is having crashes during extraction please list out all of the information they have with reguards to the ethernet driver itself...

I have a driver file (ax88796.o) that is 8,104 bytes that I put on on Mar 24 2002...

But in checking the latest driver install from Nick's website the driver module is now: 8,384 bytes. So something has obviously changed.

These