MUX'ing, VSplit, and MPG2 files.

[jdiner]

Originally posted by FreydNot
Sorry, that's the next line in the "hole in the bucket" song. Didn't mean to confuse you with it.

You are most correct. Sorry. See what happens when there is too much sleep going on? The song stops and things are just not right.

--jdiner

[laserfan]

Originally posted by rc3105
getting a nice neat PROGRAM stream will require transcoding. (partial at least)...the mpeg coming out of the tivo is a TRANSPORT stream...find a good stream editor or a dvd authoring prog that accepts transport streams as input, problem solved

I can state with conviction that after some googling I still do not understand the difference . But I thought what jdiner was after was a way to store Tivo programs to DVD, which implies (I believe) a more-or-less "compliant" MPEG2 Program Stream. If instead it means he makes a more-or-less compliant Transport stream that some authoring program will accept & transcode & burn, well, whatever the shortest path is I will accept, even if it means from jdiner "you have to acquire thus-and-such Authoring program (that I use myself) for this to work".

Do I still not understand the difference between options 1 & 2... Ok, then I'll just take what I can get!

[jdiner]

Originally posted by rc3105


getting a nice neat PROGRAM stream will require transcoding. (partial at least)

whether you use dvd2avi or jdiner's app does it, that's the bottom line here

the mpeg coming out of the tivo is a TRANSPORT stream

they're pretty similiar, but it's still apple's and oranges

find a good stream editor or a dvd authoring prog that accepts transport streams as input, problem solved

You are correct. But do keep in mind that it is only "almost" a transport stream. There are mpeg-2 records that are missing that keep it from being a true transport stream. There are also some changes, depending on Tivo type, that make some of what is there incorrect. But it would be easier to go to a transport stream than to a Program stream.

However, you have to define your use of transcoding here. Nothing of what I am doing reencodes even a single frame of the stream. I am just changing how it is "blocked and mux'ed" to make it a program stream. The end result is a playable mpeg-2 program stream file.

--jdiner

[kyle]

If this is a TRANSPORT stream, the MUXing in MPEG2VCR allows for this--but wants me to speicify a PID. What is this? What values should I use? The defaults are

Video Elementary Stream 34
Audio Elementary Stream 33

Thanks,
-Kyle

[jdiner]

Yeah. Mostly playable would be pretty accurate. That is the last part that I am working on now. I will get it. Sadly I have been almost there for a very long time. "whee"...

--jdiner

[laserfan]

Originally posted by kyle
...If this is a TRANSPORT stream, the MUXing in MPEG2VCR allows for this--but wants me to speicify a PID...

kyle it is my understanding that the MPEG-VCR Transport Stream option is for the Creation of transport streams; the discussion was about "what kind of streams come out of Tivo" and I think the answer is "it's a kind of transport stream w/a few new wrinkles thrown-in". So the challenge before jdiner & others working this is to translate these streams into something that is useable for editing and burnable to a DVD (both of which require that certain rules are met). So I don't think using this option in MPEG-VCR buys you anything, but someone smarter than me here will correct me if I'm wrong!

My simplistic take-away from the "program stream vs. transport stream" discussion is that Transport streams are created such that they can be reliably "broadcast" (whether that means thru-the-air or across a network) given the interruptions that occur in the broadcasting process (whether that be a thunderstorm or an IP traffic problem). So I'm thinking of Transport streams in terms of pieces of information about the video/audio that can suffer interruptions yet be pieced-back together at the final destination (playback) point. Program streams OTOH don't have to fret about the possibility of major interruptions and thus aren't "packetized" like Transport streams. There's probably an overhead/bandwidth associated w/Transport streams that PS don't have to be saddled with/bound by. My story and I'm sticking to it until somebody explains it better/more accurately.

[jdiner]

Ahh... And the latest testing failures start to make sense finally. I was keying off of some values that used to be constant and now seem to be well... not constant. That makes what I was trying to do harder.

Not sure yet what would cause this. I have not upgraded anything on my tivo from one extraction to the next... Has there been a "stealth" upgrade done by anyone or anything on the DTivo front?

Trying to use another method to detect a good or bad status for the -1x4 failures. (When there is not PES information for either audio or video in an entire chunk...)

The good thing is that in doing some more exhaustive testing it is just "another set". So not random as I had first thought but rather just changed from what it has been for years. (Go figure...)

--jdiner

[jdiner]

OK. Well. I don't know if something changed or what it truly was. But I can see that there is something going. Good thing I have a large test bed. I ran through a ton of clips checking this out and found a few interesting things. There now appear to be 2 ranges of values used to indicate what it is, video header or body and audio header or body, and what is going on with it...

The old set worked in this range:

VIDEO HEADER RESETS AT	> 00 CB 10	-->	0 BB 20	== diff of FF0 (4080)

VIDEO BODY RESETS AT	> 31 8e 6c	-->	20 50 40

This was the norm for every clip I had older than about 5 months. But then I started grabbing clips from "The Dead Zone" on usa during the marathon. So no more than 2 weeks ago and for almost 2 full weeks 1 episode a day. On the 8 I got thanks to tennis, does anyone really watch that anyway? , I got 3 with this range scheme and 5 with the new one...

VIDEO HEADER RESETS AT	> 01 4f c4	-->	01 3f cc	== diff of FF8 (4088)

VIDEO BODY RESETS AT	> 6d 7d 9c	-->	5c 30 40	== diff of 11 4d 5c (1133916)

So 2 totally different ranges. I don't get it... But these are the only 2 ranges I have seen so far. The rollback point changes by a few bytes in either direction for both header and body but it stays in roughly the same range. So... if that remains the case we can still use this technique the fixing of the -1x4 problems...

--jdiner

[newlooper]

OK I have the thought planted in my head, let's see if I can get it out.

code:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
VIDEO HEADER RESETS AT > 00 CB 10 --> 0 BB 20 == diff of FF0 (4080)

VIDEO BODY RESETS AT > 31 8e 6c --> 20 50 40
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

If it the video header resets at FF0, could you use FFx to detect a video header reset? That would kind of cover all bases.

The video body would have to be > 11 3E xx though and I am not sure that would meet the criteria.

It seems that there still remains a constant, just a little different than normal.

[daveinfla]

Running a Phillips DTIVO w/
Extreme 2.5 Upgrade (TivoWeb1.93, noscramble, all the defaults)
TurboNet Card

Added mfswebmodule97 last night and was able to click on and download a single .ty stream. The file is a one hour show at around 1G in size.

I ran Vsplit13.exe filename.ty filename.m2v filename.m2a and after about 30 seconds, and a bunch of messages, vsplit stops and generates a Windows XP application error (you know the one that wants to report to Mickeysoft).

I tryed using Tytool5r2, opening an existing file and got the same results.

Any ideas?

[Wes]

Did you try to use Tytool5r2 to extract as m2v & m2a directly instead?

[daveinfla]

Wes,

I tried using Tytools after I had already extracted the .ty file with Tivoweb.

Are you suggesting I NOT use tivoweb to download the file and install TYtools on my Tivo and use the client to extract and split at the same time?

[jdiner]

Originally posted by newlooper
OK I have the thought planted in my head, let's see if I can get it out.

code:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
VIDEO HEADER RESETS AT > 00 CB 10 --> 0 BB 20 == diff of FF0 (4080)

VIDEO BODY RESETS AT > 31 8e 6c --> 20 50 40
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

If it the video header resets at FF0, could you use FFx to detect a video header reset? That would kind of cover all bases.

The video body would have to be > 11 3E xx though and I am not sure that would meet the criteria.

It seems that there still remains a constant, just a little different than normal.

Not quite. For the header counting it resets at 00 CB 06 through about 00 CB 1F. It fluctuates a bit.

The body counting fluctuates much more wildly. But I have these values through observations. What I don't like is that after having things all be in the same place I have now identified 3 seperate bands of values. This just makes it problematic to work on as these values if they are indeed changing are how I can tell when things line up and no "better" data is available.

--jdiner

[jdiner]

Originally posted by daveinfla

I ran Vsplit13.exe filename.ty filename.m2v filename.m2a and after about 30 seconds, and a bunch of messages, vsplit stops and generates a Windows XP application error (you know the one that wants to report to Mickeysoft).

I tryed using Tytool5r2, opening an existing file and got the same results.

Any ideas?

Find out where it is crashing in terms of the number of chunks. Use TyFileSplit to start roughly 40 chunks before that point and then cut a 100 chunk portion it and send it to me. I can at least stop the crashing, and maybe figure out what is wrong and help it continue to process correctly.

--jdiner

[wh1212]

OK I've alway's extracted from my SA,720x480 cbr etc, looks great to me, Have a dsr6000,give it a try.
Completly differant streams,Disney DVD like, Interlaced 48%-67% the rest progressive,sometimes top field first,or not. has the audio always been 4800 ?Mpg2 muxers &editors make a mess(Tmpegenc beta 12a best mux) So send streams to dvd2avi(gordian knot)Inverse Telicide, Perfect Mpeg4 23.976 and insync.
Need more keyframes for editing though,Anyone know of a frame acurate Avi editor,Also second extraction with Tytool5,got a .gl file,not text ? anyone know what it is, or want it.
Happy with streams, seem more crisp and vivid, Have the streams always been like this, or is it a merger thing.