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View Full Version : Tivo to DVD, quick and dirty!!!!!


gcercone
07-31-2002, 11:52 AM
Ok, now I'm happy. I've burned 2 successful DVD-R's that work
as best as I can tell perfectly and at a quality that I like.

I'll post a full HOWTO on it, once I get it doc'd.

My goal was to fit 2 hours of Video onto a DVD-R 4.7GB

Quick run down of what I did.

1. Installed TurboNet Card.
2. setup telnet, ftp, tivo-web and tytool. (all start on boot)
3. Figured out the ration of VBR and CBR that Tivo is setup with.
4. Set CATVBestResolution to 0 = 720x480 on Philips SA
5. Set CATVBestVBRBitrate to 4200000
6. Set CATVBestMAXBitrate to 4800000 (This is what is used)
7. Made the same setting changes on the altresource page.
8. Fried my A drive, cloned my other tivo to this and did it all over
again. 3 days of frustration and 50 hours of farscape gone!
-----------------------
At this point what the Tivo now does is a 720x480
(standard DVD? None of the DVD auth programs complain about)
at just under 5Mb/s, the audio is the only thing out of spec.

***The resulting file is 2092 I think this is just at the 2GB border
and should work fine on fat/fat32/ntfs etc.

9. Download via TYTool (what a great program!!!) and have it
auto split.
10. Run the audio through TMPGenc.
(If you do audio only and change it from the 320000 to 480000 this will then import cleaning no issues with the bitrate being 192.
I set the bitrate to 48khz and 224bits. This takes 15 minutes per hour to convert.)

11. I then load the files into spruceup, make simply chapter points to skip commercials and compile.

12. I use Nero to burn it to DVD-r.

On my system which is not a powerhouse except for RAM.
(p3 800mhz 100mhz bus, 1.5GB Ram and a 7200 rpm disk.)
It takes the following amount of time per hour of video.

30 minutes to download via turbonet and tytool
15 minutes to import and author title screen and chapters.
15 minutes to compile.
30 minutes to burn on a 2x DVD-r

So about an hour of work for an hour of video which was my goal.

No transcoding of the video, or cuting, the audio sounds great.
Since the Tivo is running at HIGH and only recording at HIGH by getting that bitrate to a level that was acceptable was the key for me. It is 500MB shy of the normal HIGH quality. I'm sure this could be tweaked to get the size down, but 2 hours of video fits nicely onto a 4.7GB dvd.

Thats the long and short of it. I'll post a more detailed howto soon, but wanted to share this, give something back.

-Aries

gcercone
07-31-2002, 12:41 PM
One quick note on the av sync.
one file had a 1ms time the other 13ms. I didn't see a spot
in SpruceUp to adjust for this, if anyone knows how to do it, that would be cool, but 13ms is the largest offset I've seen and it was readily apparent on playback on the TV.

-G

laserfan
07-31-2002, 04:30 PM
Originally posted by gcercone
One quick note on the av sync.
one file had a 1ms time the other 13ms. I didn't see a spot
in SpruceUp to adjust for this, if anyone knows how to do it, that would be cool, but 13ms is the largest offset I've seen and it was readily apparent on playback on the TV...Good summary! But in yr first post you said your DVDs played "perfectly" but then your sync problem was "readily apparent". I've had sync probs to SpruceUp as well but haven't found the answer yet...

It seems obvious from your filesizes that you are running VBR but I just have to confirm: You have the "save disk space" option selected on your Tivo? I have yet to try this and now am anxious to do so. What do you have the Quality setting at?

I'd love to find settings that I'm happy with at 352x480 as I suspect 720 is overkill for most of my signal quality...

gcercone
07-31-2002, 05:50 PM
oops. sorry at 13ms it wasn't readily apparent.
Maybe just a smidge, it's not enought to notice if your not looking for it. But it kept the same sync all the way through.

I wasn't sure is 352x480 dvd compliant?
I'm still learning this stuff I figured well 720x480 went into SpruceUp w/o a problem so that must be good.

Again I was going for speed and ease.

-G

gcercone
08-01-2002, 08:43 AM
that little, then why the big to do about the sync being off.
I haven't seen more than 13ms sync diff's on my SA's.

Does this become an issue when transcoding?

I'm just happy that It worked out the way it did.
I bought a 5 pack of DVD-r's to test with and 3-5 worked great.

The other 2 were things I transcoded overnight.

laserfan
08-01-2002, 12:09 PM
Originally posted by gcercone
...why the big to do about the sync being off...Some of us have had trouble w/sync being different (worse) than reported by TyTool. One program that was reported as 16ms off I found to be correctable by 160ms (10x). So it's a mystery; some are fine and some are not, and editing an mpg created w/muxed m2a and m2v files results in unacceptable loss-of-sync at edit points.

I'd say you've been lucky not to run into a problem yet as I was the first couple times...

gcercone
08-01-2002, 01:24 PM
I am not editing the files.
That was something I wanted to avoid.
The only massaging of the data is the audio upconverting.
Not sure if that counts as editing.

I use the chapter points to skip commercials.

I'll keep a count of good disc's to coasters.

-Aries

bato
08-01-2002, 01:42 PM
352x480 is DVD compliant, all the latest version of DVD creation software work with it without problems (don't know old versions), the audio restriction still apply so you have to change it.

at vcdhelp I read the S-video input realy can only take video at 352x480 (don't know if true) but I've seen video at 352x480 that you can't tell apart from 720x480 in normal TVs, the key is a good bitrate and great source for the video.

you have video at 720x480, try 352x480 at a lower bitrate, say 2500-3000 and look at the result, maybe the diff in size is a big plus to put another hour in those DVDs.

I'll test as soon as I get turbonet.

laserfan
08-06-2002, 12:22 PM
Has anyone here got the "full" version of this authoring program? I d/l'ed the trial version and was impressed to note that it's very Premiere-like (you have timelines that you drag video and audio clips to for editing) but appears to allow editing of MPEG2 files. Unfortunately when I try to import an MPEG2 mpg or m2v file I get a "MPEG2 not supported in this version" message.

Looks real promising but I don't wanna spend $120-150 on it until I'm sure it does MPEG2 editing...

FreydNot
09-02-2002, 04:22 AM
Originally posted by gcercone
No transcoding of the video, or cuting, the audio sounds great.


What was your secret to getting great sounding audio?

Whenever I use TMPGEnc to convert 32k to 48k, it sounds like grabage. Lots of scratchy clicking. I haven't even tried using the TMPGEnc converted audio files to verify sync because they sounded so bad.

I'm using TMPGEnc Plus V 2.57.41.146 if that makes a difference.

I can use BeSweet or GoldWave to convert 32k to 48k and it sounds great, but I loose sync with the video files :(

I'm currently using TyFileSplit to split out the program from the commercials. I'm using Maestro for authoring and patching the video to 720 so I don't have to transcode. The 32k audio is the only thing between me and burning good DVD;s.

Does anyone have any suggestions?

mpauley
09-02-2002, 09:08 PM
opps... double post

FreydNot
09-02-2002, 09:42 PM
Originally posted by mpauley
opps... double post

I only see your message about the double post.