Tivo file is HUGE

[feerlessleadr]

i downloaded a hockey game from my tivo and the file is almost 5 gigs...does anyone know of a program that will allow me to convert this mpg (i already ran it through DSD) to a smaller file such as avi?

[WayneCarter]

Typically, AVI files are larger than MPEG. Video files are huge - they have a lot of information. You can get smaller .Tivo files by capturing at a reduced quality - ie "Basic" is much smaller than "Best". Be aware that low data rate MPEG compression degrades rapidly as the amount of movement (actually frame-to-frame change) increases - so your hockey game may not fare well at "Basic"..

[windracer]

If you've already converted the .tivo file to a plain MPEG with DSD, maybe Dr. DivX (http://labs.divx.com/DrDivX) would create a smaller .AVI file for you while still retaining some quality?

[feerlessleadr]

yea i really wanted to avoid having to record at basic quality, oh well thanks alot

[Dan203]

You can use VideoReDo to remove the commercials. That will probably cut a couple of GB out of the file size. After that you could use Dr. DivX or XMpeg to convert the file to an MPEG4 compression scheme, which will allow you to shrink the file even more.

Dan

[feerlessleadr]

thanks guys im doing dr divx right now, ill let you now how everything turns out

[jcnipper]

I use AVS Video Tools from AVS Media (I can't post links, just gogle it). After running through DSD, I cut out the commercials. You can then convert to/from just about any video format, including avi, divx, mov for ipods, wmv, DVD, etc. You can always downsample to reduce the filesize.

[feerlessleadr]

thanks for all of your help, i used dr divx and got the file down to 500MB which is what i wanted...the quality isnt that bad so ill live. i also was WAY to lazy to edit out all the commercials so its as good as its going to get.

[windracer]

5gb to 500mb isn't too shabby! :up:

[Dan203]

i also was WAY to lazy to edit out all the commercials so its as good as its going to get.

Just for future reference VideoReDo has an automatic commercial scan feature. So you can actually set it to run, come back in 10 minutes and all the commercials will be cut out for you. All you have to do is quickly scan through the blocks where it found the commercials and make sure it didn't get a false positive for some reason (rare, but it happens) and you're good to go. The whole process would have taken a lot less time then converting to DivX.

Dan

[CuriousMark]

All you have to do is quickly scan through the blocks where it found the commercials and make sure it didn't get a false positive for some reason (rare, but it happens) and you're good to go.
I seem to get false positives in every episode of Heroes that I scan. All the fades to all black confuse it sometimes. If the fade isn't close to a commercial block it doesn't mark it, but if the fade is too close, VideoRedo thinks it is a commercial start or end and includes that scene for removal. Even so, it is the fastest and easiest way to remove commercials I have ever used. Even correcting the scan mistakes is easy and quick.

CuriousMark

[windracer]

I don't use the auto-commercial-edit feature in VRD either. I find I'm faster at manually cutting out the breaks than double-checking its work.

[Dan203]

I use both methods, depending on how much of a hurry I'm in. If I have time to let it do the scan I do that, but if I'm feeling impatient then I just scrub through and manually find them. Although a few times I've done the manual scrub and then when I was watching the show later I realize I missed a commercial break. So neither solution is perfect.

Dan

[hyachts]

I've only used the auto feature once, and I found the same thing as windracer. It took me longer to go back through and tweak the mistakes it made than to do it manually - something I've gotten pretty snappy at.

I guess it relies heavily on the type of program you're watching, as it works reliably for some of you.

[Dan203]

There are some settings you can play with that make it more accurate. There is also a feature you can turn on that will automatically cut what it believes the commercials are. So all I do when i uses it is run it, then turn on the preview mode, then use the little jump button to jump to each transition and make sure they're right. It's actually really fast. the only part that takes time is the actual scan.

Dan

[windracer]

It's been a few minor releases since I've tried it, so you've convinced me to give it another shot next time. ;)