Mac / TivoToComeBack / Properties File - how to set the group?

[baronworm]

I'm using Tivo Desktop to upload MPEGs from my mac to my TiVo. (i.e. "GoToTivo" or "TivoToComeBack" :) )

When sharing these videos, the Tivo Desktop software creates a ".properties" text file for each MPEG being shared. Editing this text file allows me to change the Title and Description of my MPEGs, which is quite handy. (otherwise the TiVo presents the MPEG as "filename.mpg" with no description)

But I'd really like to ALSO be able to organize these uploaded files into groups. (so they can be sorted into folders on the TiVo) It seems to me that this would require me to somehow specify the group that the MPEG belongs to. The obvious guess of adding a "group=Home Movies" line to the .properties file didn't work for me.

Does anyone have any suggestions on how to do this?

TiA!

[bedelman]

When I first became aware of the .properties files, I did some checking against it and never could get anything more than the title and description to come over.

[burbanknate]

I'd be interested to learn if anyone else could get the properties file do do anything.
All of my files show up as 0h0m duration.
Anyone got a clue?

[riddick21]

anyone?

[Dennis Wilkinson]

When I initially poked around at this, I found strings referring to the following fields:

isEpisodic
episodeNumber
sourceChannel
duration
programId
sourceStation
title
episodeTitle
description
seriesId
captureDate
startTime
duration
channel
format
resolution

I don't recall if these were all parsed, but title, episodeTitle, and description seem to be. seriesId is most likely the grouping identifier, but I don't know what the format of the property should be or if it needs to resolve to a real ID in the TiVo's program info database.

[Dennis Wilkinson]

Looking at things a bit more closely, a .mpeg file will only have its title and description set from the .properties file, as Bob mentioned above -- the other pieces are derived from other attributes of the file. Only a .TiVo file will use the other fields, which will be parsed out of XML embedded in that file and not a .properties.

Given that others have sussed out the format of a .TiVo file, it might be possible to build a tool that would package up your MPEG with the other relevant data, but it seems there's no way to do what you want solely with the .properties file.

[Dan203]

I've actually experimented a bit with this myself and I have successfully take a .TiVo file, decrypted the metadata to plain XML, modified the XML, then re-encrypted it and reinserted it back into the .TiVo file. After which both TiVo Desktop and my TiVo's themselves picked up the modified data correctly. However my process was very involved and took several pieces of software to accomplish, including a hex editor. So it's far from a workable solution. However it does work as a proof of concept. Although this process only works for modifying guide data in an existing .tivo file as the encryption scheme depends on two XML headers in the .tivo file labeled salt and figerprint, and I don't know of any way to generate those from scratch. You could copy them from an existing TiVo file and it would work. However that adds a level of complexity to the process.

When I get some free time I'm going to try to throw together a TiVo data modifier program.* If it works then you could use TiVoAttach to copy the header form an existing TiVo file to a standard MPEG, then modify the data in this program.

Dan

* If there are any programmers out there with more free time then myself who want to take a stab at this feel free to PM me and I'll walk you through the steps.

[Dennis Wilkinson]

It's also worth noting that if you're writing your own server, this data goes back to the TiVo in the XML the server returns. So, the pyTiVo and TiVo.NET people could add whatever they wanted for this metadata.

Theoretically, you could use the built-in Apache server on Mac OS X to write a proxy around the built-in TiVo Desktop server that injects the information (I've done similar things in the past, when I was first screwing around with HD Photos on the Mac.) Again, though, without knowing what the expected format of some of the metadata should be or if the IDs involved need/want to be present in the TiVo's own database to be useful, it may prove to be a dead end anyway.

[Dan203]

When TTG was first released they required that the series be available in the TiVo's guide data for grouping to work correctly. However in the more recent versions of the software they added a bit to the XML which allows for programs to be grouped even if the program is not currently in the guide data.* That should theoretically allow someone to create their own group for their personal files. However I've never actually tried it, so I could be wrong. :)

Dan

* I can't remember what it's called at the moment, but I believ it was SeriesID.

[ebf]

... When sharing these videos, the Tivo Desktop software creates a ".properties" text file for each MPEG being shared. ...

Where is this file? I've turned on show hidden files on my PC and see no .properties file in my TiVo recordings folder or in the TiVo Desktop app folder. :confused:

[bedelman]

Where is this file? I've turned on show hidden files on my PC and see no .properties file in my TiVo recordings folder or in the TiVo Desktop app folder. :confused:
This happens when you're using MPEG-2 files on a Macintosh. This doesn't happen under Windows.

[Fofer]

Great info in this thread. I came searching for the same answers. Special thanks to Dennis Wilkinson and Dan2003. Dan, I look forward to seeing what you come up with, with regards to that TiVo data modifier program.

[Tarik]

Just thought to revive this thread and find out if there are any updates on this :rolleyes:

[Dennis Wilkinson]

Nope. MPEG-2 files get title and description, that's it. .TiVo files get full metadata if the server can parse the files, which it can't for files that were recorded on a TiVo running 9.x.

[dcpmark]

Forgive me if I'm not understanding the process, but has anything changed since Mac Desktop 1.9.4 supports sending .tivo files from the Mac to the TiVO?

I just caught up to the trick of sending ripped TV show DVDs to my Series 3 from my Mac after converting them to mpeg-2 using Visual Hub, and I couldn't be happier, except for one thing: no folder groupings. Everything I've seen here indicates that we can only input title and description into the metadata (.properties) file, not SeriesID.

Now that we can send .tivo files over (right?), 1) is there a way to rip DVDs to .tivo format, and 2) is there now a way to include SeriesID in the newly-minted .tivo file so that the Tivo will put them in Groups?

I know this can all be done right now with pyTivo, but I'd like to know if we can also do this now without using pyTivo.

[wxraywinelover]

I too am in search of an easy way to group similar files.

As for the DVD ripping, you'll need something like Mac the ripper or Handbrake to rip the DVD and then use Visual Hub to convert the .TS file to a .tivo file for viewing.

[MagnumJoe]

I too am in search of an easy way to group similar files.

As for the DVD ripping, you'll need something like Mac the ripper or Handbrake to rip the DVD and then use Visual Hub to convert the .TS file to a .tivo file for viewing.

I'm using Visual Hub also to convert to tivo. I like pyTivo and works great on my PC, but would installing it on my Mac is a little more complicated.

Does anyone know of a simplified way to installed other than these instructions?
http://pytivo.armooo.net/wiki/OSXInstall

Visual Hub works well, but when I fast forward or rewind after its been uploaded to my Tivo, the time is in seconds versus minutes. Is there a setting I need to change to show minutes?

[designbot]

Does anyone know of a simplified way to installed other than these instructions?
http://pytivo.armooo.net/wiki/OSXInstall


PyTiVoX (http://code.google.com/p/pytivox/) is your new best friend.

[Fofer]

Visual Hub works well, but when I fast forward or rewind after its been uploaded to my Tivo, the time is in seconds versus minutes. Is there a setting I need to change to show minutes?

This used to happen to me awhile back, but was fixed with a TiVo service update... to 9.0 perhaps? Are you running the latest TiVo software?