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TMPGEnc 2.524 has been free for a while.

Among the goodies folks are finding is an undocumented one: A built in web server.

No, apparently not Apache but something else, what counts is it's there, it works, and it allows download of XML files containing show listings and the shows themselves. To get to it follow these steps:

1. Sign up for an early download of TiVo 7.1. Must have a Series 2, no DVD burner built-in (player is ok), DirecTV models aren't handled by TiVo. Basically TiVo Service Numbers beginning with 110, 130, 140, 230, 240, 264, 540, & 590.

2. While on TiVo's web site note your password and the "Media Access Key" (MAK) for your TiVo. You'll need these later.

3. Wait for 7.1 to be downloaded and installed on your machine. Continually forcing reconnects will not hurry this, indeed the cumulative server load by that sort of thing will only delay the rollout.

4. Once you've got 7.1 (it's downloaded, installed, you've rebooted) point a web browser at https://your.tivo's.ip.address/nowplaying/index.ht ml . For user supply tivo and the password is your "MAK".

5. Go wild.

Turns out you need to have TiVo's DirectShow decryption filter installed, and that only comes with their TiVo Desktop v.2 which is, for now, Windows 2K/XP only. You also need a decent mpeg2 codec, which MS doesn't include in Windows. TiVo recommends a couple of commercial ones but there are also free ones out there too. Or, you might have one that came with DVD software.

However, contrary to TiVo's marketing, once a .tivo file is pulled through this it can be edited, saved, even burned to DVD, with nothing more special needed. That's right, no waiting for Sonic's soon-to-be-shipped software, no magic mojo involved, trusty ole TMPGEnc and Nero and all the rest are perfectly fine. Indeed once passed through the magic DirectShow filter (and your password supplied) the .tivo files are free to be rendered into a more normal mpeg2 files.

Sure the $50 "custom" software will probably do more with automation, labeling, and such, but I'm betting nothing that can't be whipped up in a few days by TiVo's customers, likely beating the Sonic software to the punch.

Pretty Kewl, eh?

This would be very handy to me, since I use XP for Video

Transcode,
Cinelerra, ...

Try again... What do you need windows for?

Do you know of anything equivalent in quality and/or speed to TMPGEnc? As an alternative, do you know how to get TMPGEnc working under Wine? The last time I tried (maybe a year or so ago), I didn't get very far with it.

(While we're at it, something comparable to Avisynth would be nice. Access to Avisynth plugins would also be a Good Thing...though given that it's open-source, maybe the more interesting plugins have already been implemented in some other Linux-native software already.)

... why don't they use a better codec?
wmv9 is up there along with divx4/mpeg4. Take a look here

But I doubt that is the reason why they are using wmv, more probably it is due to its DRM capabilities more than anything and its ability to self destroy past its expiration date.

Still, it would be interesting to see if you can still convert it using TMPGEnc to any of your preferred DRM free formats.

With software programs like:

DVD Decrypter - DVD Decrypter is a CSS decryption tool that has most, if not all, of the features of current ripper/ripper GUIs like CladDVD, Smart-Ripper or VOBDec GUI, including CSS authentication/detection, multi-angle processing, Macrovision and Region removal. Also includes option to use either VOBDec or DeCSS Plus to decrypt the DVD.
NanDUB DiVX 3.11 ;-) encoder.
VirtualDubMod - VirtualDubMod is based on the famous video editing software VirtualDub by Avery Lee. Used for DiVX 5.x and XViD encoding
DVD2AVI - Takes a DVD and turns it into an AVI or AVI FrameServer for other programs like NanDub and VirtualDuB to encode with.
BeSweet - an audio transcoding tool. it lets you convert audio files from one format to another. supported formats : MP3,AC3,WAV,MP2,AVI,Aiff,VOB,Ogg Vorbis.
TMpegEnc - video encoding software. mainly used for the creation of MPEG's encoded for either VCD or SVCD
DVD2SVCD - Software Suite for converting a DVD into an SVCD (MPEG-2 encoded Video CD).
Gordian Knot - Gordian Knot started out as a simple bitrate calculator for DivX encoding but has evolved to become an integrated package or tool for the entire process of DivX encoding. It now has the ability to calculate the bitrates for XViD

And sites like

Doom9 - The definitive resource for DVD backup
DVDR Help - This site will help you to make your own VideoCDs, SVCDs or DVDs that can be played on your standalone DVD Player from video sources like DVD, Video, TV, Cam or downloaded movie clips like DivX, MOV, RM, WMV and ASF
DiVX Digest - a DiVX news and reviews site.

And many more like the ones above make it easy for encryption and DRM schemes to be broken or bypassed, but the process is far from trivial. These programs aren't exactly user friendly. The formats that come out of these programs while not very noticable do make a degredated (?sp) copy that is compressed more than the original. The files may look rather nice, but they are definantelly not as perfect as a standard DVD player.

People want to be able to plug their DVD's into their DVD players. I don't really know how many people rely on their computer solely for DVD playback, but I'm assuming not many.

Here's the kicker I know that I use my computer to watch videos that I own, but if I'm going to be traveling I will rip that DVD into a one disc XViD. So if I break it, who cares I'll just burn another one. And well someone isn't as apt to steal a blank CD-Rom as they would be for say, a DVD with a case and title on the disc.

It's plain to see just from visiting the links I posted above though that you are correct in saying that there will always be a time that someone comes around and completely bypasses or disables DRM. I know for a fact that my APEX DVD player has MacroVision and other BS taken off of it and it is also RCE (regionless) which means I can put any DVD I like into the player and it will play.

It's these sorts of things that make me wonder why all the effort for DRM is made, someone will truly crack it eventually. I still remember when DVD's were said to be uncrackable, and had some s

Ffdshow is a filter for most mpeg4 codecs. Works with divx 4,5, xvid and other mpeg4 implementations. If all you do is playback, no codec required. Also if use alpha xvid codecs and it doesn't playback properly with ffdshow, you know that your vid isn't mpeg4 compliant. Btw, I capture/encode shows all the time in windows and would like to do this in linux, but it seems really lacking. First off, avisynth is an indispensable tool for dealing with video. What first attracted me to it was the best ivtc plugin by Donald Graft. This processes telecined sources back to their original film frame rate which I use on toons/film sources.

But the versatility goes way beyond that. Here's an animated menu I made for batman tas for a vcd I was working on, which btw I authored with videopack 5 to include animated menus, galleries with audio and chapter selection (I love pimpin that :) ).

Also worth mentioning is Tmpgenc, probably the best mpeg 1 encoder, which is free. And not to shabby mpeg2 encoding. Also of course is virtualdub, which has come in handy on many occasions.

So where are the comparable linux equivalents? I couldn't find them. I'd love to see a write up on video encoding on linux, maybe I'll do one myself.

Don't think dual CPUs will help, as the production process is pretty much single-threaded.

Not sure about all aspects, but for MPEG2 encoding (making DVD's & SVCD's) it is a serious boost. Even Hyperthreading helps.

TMPGEnc w/ Hyperthreading

If you happen to own a Canon Elura 2MC (or similar), you have a miniDV camera that can record from analog inputs thus negating the need for a DV-bridge device.

My encoding solution has been:
1) record material to DV with videocamera;
2) transfer DV to AVI video through Firewire with DVIO
3) encode to some MPEG format with TMPGEnc

I haven't tried this personally, but there is also a product called MyDVD, which claims to transfer DV to DVD directly in one step (they call it "direct to disc" recording).

Since it's on the DVD in video format, they would also have needed a video editing suite (stand alone or PC based) which are never cheap unless you pirate them).

Not to say that it's cheap to produce DVDs, but the software doesn't necessarily need to be that expensive.

Video editing: Avisynth. Since it's a script-based NLE, it's not the most user-friendly thing around, but it's powerful and free.

MPEG2 encoding: Tsunami MPEG Encoder. MPEG1 encoding is free; MPEG2 encoding support costs $48 US. Considered one of the best encoders around for quality, especially for its price.

Of course, these tools may not have been available (or may not have been too usable) when this project was started.

They don't work in all, but MOST. (Since they are produced in countries where people have droves of VCD's) - Pioneers are generally good, Sonys are bad (they seem to stick to much to some 'standards')
Some players will only play commercial VCDs, and some (especially Sony's) will only work with certain brands of CDR/CDRW. If you have a difficult player, try buying one cdr of several different brands, and see what taste your player has.
Its easy to make one, get the tmpgenc mpg encoder from http://www.tmpgenc.net/ to encode a VCD. and get Nero http://nero.com to burn it on the cd.

The problem is they are selling a system, a course to learn how to copy DVD's.

You can do it now legally, it's called fair use. If you have the DeCSS code [which can be found most anywhere] or a closed source imitation [usually with an interface] you can extract the movie data.

Then simply convert to mpeg-1 and viola!.

There is an unlimited amount of tools to do this - but you could also get a DivX ;-) copy and convert that to mpeg-1.

I would suggest getting this for a Windows platform because it can handle any movie type that you can play in Media Player. There are two versions out there but the 'free' version's site looks to be down so the link above is to the "Plus" homepage.

Now that you have an mpeg-1 movie file simply convert it with GNU's VCDImager. There are versions for both Windows and Linux [Hell, even solaris and MacOSX of course, it's GNU]. I also see there are frontends for most platforms.

Works very well. Let me say though it's easier to download a DivX and break the law because fair use has been removed from the system.

Without taking any part in the debate of browser integration, I feel that it is an absolute necessity to speak out the facts about the Windows Media Player.

Basically, Media Player will play back any audio / video format for which a DirectShow filter is available. The API is completely published; anybody can go out and write their own DirectShow filter for any new audio / video format that (s)he might develop. It is also completely open in the other direction; anybody can go out and write their own media player that can take the full advantage of all the DirectShow filters installed on the system. Good examples are Zoom Player (good for crappy TV-out chips like in some Geforce2 MX cards), TMPGEnc (can read in any video format that is supported and write out MPEG-1 or 2) and AVISynth (virtualizes any DirectShow-supported video format into .avi that all video editing programs understand).

Additionally, Media Player 6.4 is the absolutely best media player program that there can be. It's light weight, fast, simple, easy to use and doesn't have any advertisements. It can also retrieve newly supported codecs automatically from a server in the Internet, although this feature hasn't been used much. Compared to RealPlayer and Quicktime Player, the superiority is obvious.

It looks more like Apple and Real are pissed off because they would lose precious advertising and branding revenues if any media player program could play back their files. As previously noted, *anybody* can write their own DirectShow filter so Apple and Real definitely have the technical abilities to make those, but don't want to do so. Of course, it would mean that anybody could use the DirectShow filters to re-encode the content from their proprietary formats to some open format like MPEG-1 or 2, and reduce Real's and Apple's exclusivity value. It would also mean that people wouldn't be limited to their crappy, ad- and spyware-ridden media player programs.

Incidentally, DivX was supported in Linux originally thanks to the DirectShow filters being available. It was relatively easy to hook them up to a media player in a completely different OS, even if the source code wasn't available. Not very surprisingly, neither the Realvideo/audio codecs nor the most common Quicktime codecs are supported in for example mplayer.

In other words, would you REALLY want to see the standard Media Player removed from Windows and have it replaced with RealPlayer and Quicktime Player that don't play half of the formats that Media Player does, and are slow, sluggish, difficult to use and filled with advertisements and spyware, and are basically dead-ends when it comes to video formats and video processing? I wouldn't.

VCD on the other hand doesn't work quite as well for me, mainly due to the constant bitrate (CBR) used in MPEG1 (SVCD uses variable bitrate (VBR) MPEG2). The CBR tends to make things extremely blocky/washed out with the poorly taped home videos (you know, we're not all human steadicams, jerky videos are a staple of modern living IMHO)...

About making an (S)VCD for free, it can be done. You use VirtualDub for video capture duties, TMPGEnc for MPEG1/MPEG2 encoding (as I think I said earlier, it also handles the sound duties, and has built-in templates for VCD, SVCD and DVD (in PAL and NTSC formats)) and GNU VCDImager for creating the BIN/CUE files to burn (advanced features include making semi-reasonable chapters and I think SVCD even supports using menus and stills). Two of the three tools suggested are even open-source/GPL'd (TMPGEnc is, unfortunately, closed-source, and the author(s) imply in some of the dialogues that they intend to charge $$$ for it in the future (they've been saying this for the past year, and they still do releases about once a month)). That leaves a video editting package (in the event you want to edit your videos or add titles, etc) and the actual CD burner hardware (which, with the prices of 16x/24x CD-RW drives hovering in the $100-170 range, is not an object generally). For video editting, the only viable option I've come across is Adobe Premiere.. if anyone has any suggestions on free/cheap video editting tools for Win32, I'm curious what other peoples experiences are. =) For more info on (S)VCD's, including compatibility with stand alone home DVD players, as well as tools and FAQ's on creation, I suggest the following--

VCDHelp.com

Doom9.org

There's other good sites, but those should be enough to get people going that are curious.