MFSStream Tivo-web extract problem

[Simprini]

I have searched all over this forum for 2 days. I can't find a single other person with this problem but I can't believe I'm the only one. I installed the tivoweb 1.9.4 beta 3 and mfsstreamweb97 with the mfsstream3x-IRS updated itcl for Tivo OS 3. It installed correctly I can extract streams. I get a huge .ty file that looks like it is the right size for the time and quality I recorded it at. The problem is that at this point I can't get anything to convert it. Not vsplit or splitstream under Linux or tyconvert for windows. Since I am 0 for 3 in this aspect I am assuming I am not getting a good extract but I have no idea how to test it to see what is wrong with this process. Can anyone point me in the right direction as to what I have done wrong? TIA.
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Todd

Without me, my computer is useless
Without my computer, I am useless.
We are the Saviour of my life.

[Attack]

Do you have a DTivo or a Standalone TiVo?

[Simprini]

I am using a SA Tivo HDR212

[lmurray]

Try tytool available here:

http://www.dealdatabase.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=8092&pagenumber=2


tytool extracts and splits, and doesn't depend on tivoweb.


good luck,
-lloyd-

[IndieRockSteve]

What OS?
I don't see how it could matter, but I would be interested if it did.
What browser?
Some older versions of Netscape(4.x) and IE(<5.0) don't save binaries correctly in certain situations.

I'd also be interested to see if tytools works and MFS_Stream doesn't.

[Simprini]

I used both Windows XP with IE 6 and saved it localy and over Samba as well as Konqueror and Galeon and saved it in Linux directly under KDE 3.
I actualy went step by step using your website. When I found it I was so happy that someone had done the guide you did. No idea whats wrong but I will definitly keep the group updated with my progress.
I'm going to try the tytool when I get home tonight.

[Simprini]

I am completely confused by this whole mess. Using tytool in vsplit mode works. The audio file and video file are both playable. If I extract it to a .ty with tytoolI still can't splitstream, vsplit or tyconvert it. As long as it works I'm happy but Im dying to know why it isnt working the other ways.

[Simprini]

Now this is a hard email to write but closure is necessary. It turns out I have been using some of the tools incorrectly. TyConvert is now working with MFSStream as long as I skip the first chunk. vsplit13 is working as long as I have the -j1 option. It wasn't working originally and was segfaulting so i DLed some source and compiled it. The problem is that I got an older version of the source evidently that didn't support the -j option so it wasn't working at all. Skipping the first chunk is evidently a more important step than I was led to believe. I am not sure what happened next, but in all my futzing around jsplit13 no longer segfaults and works beautifuly. I think I prefer the TyTool method anyway. Download/split in one step is very nice. So now my entire process is

TyTool with vsplit
Winamp diskwriter to get the audio as a wav
DVD2AVI on the video to get the d2v file
VFAPI to get the frame feed avi
Virtualdub the avi and the wav with a resize/crop filter for the video (resize to 640 X 480 with a -8 left edge and -2 top edge crop) and sometimes I do and sometimes I don't have to shift the audio interleave to make it match.

At this point the sky is the limit for what to do with the files. Personally I watch all these on my PC to Divx is my choice. The SVCD thread looks very interesting though. I may have to give that a shot.

[IndieRockSteve]

Simprini, glad you figure out the problem. I agree, tytools is great, much easier than mfsstream in windows. but until gtivo is into beta, us linux users are stuck using it.

out of curiosity, does tytools do the split on the tivo or on the desktop computer?

[Simprini]

Actualy I really wish for Linux scripting in this entire process. Windows blows in this respect. All these steps on dozens of shows gets tedious. Especially since none of the steps require my input until the very end to delete comercials and sync the audio. But my Windows machine is faster than the Linux box so it gets to do the encodes :-) As for where the TyTool is doing the split, thats an excellent question...I've used it a lot in the last few days and I have no idea. Idle curiosity leads me to the documentation...

3- It contains the latest VSplit #12 code for internal splitting.
4- It contains a custom server that has the mfs_stream code burried in it.

To me this sounds as if it happens client side but this is purely a guess. I looked at my windows process list as I was doing an extract and it was hardly touching the CPU at all but really I don't know how CPU intensive the split process is. Once a stream is started the client starts spitting out messages that look just like the vsplit output but I notice in my tivo shell the only thing it shows is

exporting fsid 520838 of size 385875968 to stdout

So I am still guessing client side. All I know is that by the time the extract is done I have 3 files on my PC and can move on to the next step of the process. Now if I could stream faster than 1MB/sec I could die happy

[lmurray]

tytool splits the file on the client box (windows) using vsplit13.

-lloyd-

[mss]

I was having a similar problem with vsplit on Window and Linux. So I am now using tytool. Now I am having a problem getting dvd2avi working under Windows. I seem to get zero byte AVI files. Am I missing something obvious? I am doing File->Save AVI. Any help would be appreciated!

-- Mike

[Simprini]

In the docco for DVD2AVI he says that save as AVI is almost useless and he recomends using it with VFAPI. This is what I do

Make sure you have VFAPI and don't forget to run the vfpset.bat before you try to use it otherwise nothing can open the files.

1. Open the video file in DVD2AVI, don't change anything just click save project

2. Start VFAPIConvEN.exe click on add file and add the .d2v file you made with DVD2AVI

3. Make sure the video output and the video output by VFAPI reader codec are both checked and hit OK

At this point you have a very small .avi file that you can open in any video editing software that can handle avi's Personally I use virtualdub. I convert the .m2a file to a wav and usualy have to use a -100 or -200 ms offset to get the audio to sync.
Hope this helps. I am working on a more in depth tutorial on this particular process but it isn't quite done yet. I found a lot of this information in a couple posts here on dealdatabase but hell if I can find that post now. That post went on to make it an mpeg which I didn't want to do but it was extremely helpful.