544x480, etc: changing recording resolution

[saltydog4791]

Well, first off. Thanks to everyone who has helped me thus far. It was a battle but I am finally able to extract using tivoapp without any crashes. I am able to pull the ty's but not mpeg2, but that is fine. As long as the ty's are fine, that is cool.

I then use jdiner's excellent vsplit which is a great tool. Thanks jdiner. I am definitely looking forward to the future progress of this proggie.

My ultimate goal is to go straight to DVD, no tmpenc or any of that stuff. I was able to do it with DVD Studio Pro on my mac with part of a basketball game over the weekend. All I did was import the m2v file as a video asset and a converted m2a to aiff file as an audio asset. No prob and it looked pretty decent, exceprt for the green band on the left, and the fuzziness on the top. I would love to figure out a way to get rid of this. Before importing I faked out to 720x480 and then changed it back before building the disc using DVDPatcher. All good so far.

Until I tried to extract something else last night. I did the same process for Six Feet Under(god I love that show) but DVD Studio Pro said bad file format so it wouldn't import it at all. Also in DVDPatcher it said it was 544x480!!!! What is up with that? Although it was a preset in DVDPatcher, this isn't right, is it? I was under the impression that everything pulled off the Tivo was 480x480!!!! Could this be something specific to the show or the station? Has any one come acroos this before? Is anyone using DVD Studio Pro? etc, etc.....

Thanks to any who can shed some light.

saltydog

P.S. Sorry if I was a little long-winded. Sometimes I feel like I am rambling when I write these posts.

[saltydog4791]

was it something I said? nobody has any response for me.

saltydog

[artships]

Originally posted by saltydog4791

Until I tried to extract something else last night. I did the same process for Six Feet Under(god I love that show) but DVD Studio Pro said bad file format so it wouldn't import it at all. Also in DVDPatcher it said it was 544x480!!!! What is up with that? Although it was a preset in DVDPatcher, this isn't right, is it? I was under the impression that everything pulled off the Tivo was 480x480!!!!

Recording at "High quality" yields a 480x480 picture. Recording at "Best quality" yields 544x480. At a guess I would say that you did NOT program TiVo to record 6FU, but hit the Record button while you were watching it, as 544x480 is what TiVO shows live-TV at.

John

[saltydog4791]

artships,

thank you very much for clearing that up for me. I was hoping somebody would eventually answer my question. You are my knight in shining armor.

saltydog4791

[mpauley]

Hey there,

What I did was change my resource settings through TiVoWeb and now my TiVo just records at 720x480 5.8M.

[saltydog4791]

whoa, how do you do that? I am running tivoweb and I would love to do this. what are the pros and cons of this as well? Is it more taxing on the tivo?

saltydog4791

[mpauley]

I havent noticed a big difference in the way the TiVo runs since changing these settings. I only changed my Basic settings since I nevered recorded with it. To set it up:

1 - Got TiVoWeb on your TiVo
2 - Click Resource Editor
3 - Click on Bitrates
4 - Change RecordQualityBasic to 75
Hit Enter (then page back)
5 - Change CATVBasicResolution to 0 (zero, which is 720x480)
Hit Enter (then page back)
6 - CATVBasicMAXBitrate to 5960000
Hit Enter (then page back)
7 - CATVBasicVBRBitrate to 5215000
Hit Enter (then page back)
8 - Go back to Resource Editor and click AltBitrates.
9 - Repeat Steps 4, 5 and 6
10 - Go back to Resource Editor and Click Update Resources.

Reboot the TiVo and you are ready to pull DVD standard video. You can use this tool to see the size and bitrate of videostreams also. If you have any other questions email me.

BTW - I take no resposiblity if you mess your TiVo up, these settings work for me.

Mike

[Karpa]

Has anyone else tried this? mpauley seems to have it working, but also does not seem to confident in the process. I don't want to kill my unit and was wondering if anyone else had any success.

Thanks
Karpa

[mpauley]

Karpa -

Im confident in my process abd I've helped a few people get it to work too. I just didnt want someone to make a wrong keystroke and blame me. If you need anyhelp you can IM me on MSN.

Mike

mpauley73@hotmail.com

[Karpa]

Will this work only with a SA, or will it work with a Dtivo as well?

Karpa

[mpauley]

So far from what I've read, its for SA only.

[Attack]

mpauley, why do you set "RecordQualityBasic to 75" when Best is at 100?
What is the difference?

[mpauley]

Attack -

The 0 (zero) actually sets it to the size, the 75 sets "quality". My settings are now at 25, not much difference in quality but a helluva smaller file.

Mike

[Attack]

Thanks mpauley,
Is the setting CATVBasicMAXBitrate of 5960000 the highest the tivo can do? Also what does it do? Do you know of anyone that has documented what each of the setting do in the resource editor?

[artships]

Originally posted by mpauley
5 - Change CATVBasicResolution to 0 (zero, which is 720x480)

My Sony SA is more like Chris', where "0" is 480x480. At least, in DBSBasicResolution, it is. Is "0" different in CATVBasicResolution?

John

Update: Read my post later in this thread to see how I got it to change to 720x480.