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Archiving Content from a PVR?
ayden asks: "Now that the universe has conspired to keep me unemployed for the foreseeable future, I'm taking the time to fill in the gaps in my Babylon 5 collection thanks to the
SCI-FI channel. I'm frustrated the linear nature video tape and the problems associated with recording directly from broadcast to tape. It occurs to me that there has to be a better way. I've thought about using my ATI All In Wonder Radeon to record the program directly to my hard drive and editing the resulting file to remove commercials. Should I then record the file to video tape? Or would it be better to make a Video CD I could play back on my DVD player? Are there other options should I consider? How are people archiving shows from their Personal Video Recorders? What techniques are people using to accomplish these tasks?"
there's ExtractStream to pull the MPEG data off the hard drive. Don't ask about it in the TiVo forum though, video extraction is a banned topic.
Record it using your all-in-wonder, and then burn the eps onto a DVD. If you have a Mac and a superdirve, iDVD is supposed to be great. There are probably similar alternatives on Linux or Windoze.
http://www.naildrivin5.com/davec
I disagree - a high quality VCD is as good as broadcast quality. And the ability to watch it on a DVD is a big plus. Only problem is, you're limited to the space on a CD - about 74 or 80 minutes. That's only enough for two one-hour episodes, and that's with commercials, credits, and opening scenes cut out.
I've gotten quality that rivals ExtractStream from the TiVo by recording S-Video onto Mini-DV tapes through either a Sony DV Watchman or a Canon digital video camera.
Once on MiniDV, you can go firewire into your machine. From there, it goes onto DVD via mi iMac.
Easy, no weird cropping (like you have to do with ExtractStream), and the quality is top.
ReplayPC (C, cross-platform, commandline, scriptable) and DVArchive (Java, cross-platform, user-friendly UI) can archive shows from ReplayTV 4000s and 4500s. DVArchive or ReplayServer can stream the archived content back, so you can watch on your tv, or you can burn VCDs or DVDs or whatnot.
You say the universe is conspiring to keep you unemployed, yet what you want to do with your time is fill in gaps in your Babylon 5 collection?
What's wrong with this picture? Could it be that YOU are part of the conspiracy? Perhaps, say, the leader?
That's only *ONE* thing I'm doing with my time - and that's only 1 hour a day, four days a week.
I've been working hard to find a job as a UNIX SysAdmin in Boston, but the tech sector sucks and the recovery is slower here than in other parts of the country. My contact sheet for this week (required for unemployment in MA) is already over 32 lines this week. I've had several interviews already, but no job, yet. I'm also talking to someone about a contracting position tomorrow morning that came through the Boston Linux User's Group discussion list.
But then again, why am I defending myself against a troll?
"I'm The Bounty Bear. I will find him anywhere. I'm searching."
mmm... I dont think you understand how RAID works.
Maybe not as well as others.
Loosely, I do understand the concept of RAID. I know there's even number qualifiers to describe the different variations of mirroring and striping strategies.
The problem, from what I understand, is addressing limits built into the specifications of the IDE interface. So, even if you have a 2 TB RAID system, if you interface it through an old IDE connector, you can't make it seem larger than a pre-set limit. Likewise, if the OS doesn't support the newer, better IDE interface, then you can't gain the size benefits of the RAID.
Maybe the limit is 137 GB (not 128 that I mentioned earlier), but newer IDE disks of 160 GB are out there.
I don't know if a TiVo can be made to support those larger drives in hardware (it uses a UDMA-66 connector) or software (they use some tested (i.e. old) version of Linux for PPC).
This site suggests that newer Linux kernels can take advantage of the ATA-6 specification that allows sizes greater than 137 GB.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
TivoApp will work again if you update your ShowList.tcl -- I can send you the updated version if you'd like.
TivoApp works on some shows, but ones that are long end up bombing out or being corrupt TyStreams. Haven't figured out a solution yet.
Not All Who Wander Are Lost
ATA/33. ATA/66 and ATA/100 are limited to 137 GB. ATA/133 extends the limit by at least a few orders of magnitude.
There's a few ways you can do this. My easiest solution was to set my All In Wonder to record to high-bitrate MPEG1, then use VirtualDub to load the MPEG and edit out the commercials, saving each chunk out to AVI (Using the HuffyUV lossless codec). This takes up a bit of hard drive space, but the quality is great. Then I'd load the AVI's into TMPEGEnc and encode them into an SVCD program.
I haven't dealt with SVCD in a while, though, as now I am ripping video right off of the TiVO and deinterlacing/processing it, then compressing it using DiVX. I've found I can fit a 30 minute show inside of around 250 megs and it still looks great.
Something else you might want to try it TMPEGENc's "cut" feature, where you can cut out portions of an MPEG2. It works 90% of the time (and the other 10% it bombs out), but it may work for you.
Hope these suggestions help, let me know if you need anything.
Not All Who Wander Are Lost