Editing tivo files in iMovie?

[Abone9]

Hello,

Sorry for the long post but I am looking for a way to streamline my editing process of freed .tivo files from TTG. Currently I use Direct Show dump (Great Program Masnark!) to free my tivo files on my XP laptop and then copy them over to my mac where I then convert them to .mp4 so that they can be edited in iMovie. This works but it is a very long process. ~50 minutes to copy > ~40 minutes to encode > ~ 1 hour to import into iMovie for each 1Gb File.

I am looking for a way to streamline the process by using Automator or any other way that might work in OS X. Ideally I would like an action that would connect to a networked drive on another computer and copy a specified folder over to a local drive (easy part) and then launch ffmpegx to automagically encode the file to .mp4 or another file format supported by iMovie, import the newly created files into iMovie, and save as a new project for editing later. To save a couple steps instead of copying the files over, if ffmpegx supports it, the files could be opened into ffmpegx directly over the network for encoding dumping the newly created file to the local drive. I am not sure what the demand for something like this would be, but I know I would be willing to donate or contribute to a project like this. I would love to be able to just run an automator action before I go to sleep and have it ready to work with the next day.

*Update* I know there are much simpler ways of doing this if I do everything on my XP machine but I am a mac guy so I like to spend as little time as possible in windows. I am not one of those Mac Evangelists I just prefer OS X to XP.

Thanks!

[Tropinkill]

The fastest way that I've found is a shareware program called DropDV (2.0).
After directshow dump, just drag and drop your movie onto drop DV. This will create a project folder for imovie and encode the video to DV (imovies preferred format) then open the project file and your ready to go. It still takes awhile to encode, but you eliminate the import time into imovie.

Are you using imovie HD ? I've seen an option to base projects in there on MP4, but havent found the correct settings in ffmpeg that imovie accepts. That may be another option, but I havent had time to explore further.

I've been trying to find a faster solution to this for a while, and thought I was the only one. If anyone has any better/faster solutions, contact me.

Good luck
MacRob@mac.com

[Abone9]

Yeah I found DropDV right after I posted that message and I have been using that as well. I got ffmpeg to work with .mp4 and it does convert a little faster than DropDV but iMovie still converts it on import so I must be having the same problem as you. Even substituting DropDV for Ffmpegx in my suggested automator action would be acceptable for me. I would just run the workflow and by the time I woke up the next morning I would have an imovie project for each show waiting for me.