Best Camcorder compatible with tivo

[mulscully]

I am looking to get a new Camcorder and want to easily move the video files from the camcorder to a share on my computer that serves my tivo using pyTivo. I was looking for some suggestions for either a flash based or Hard drive based one that I would be able to hook up and copy files to the computer easily WITHOUT converting them for the tivo..

Any suggestions??

Cannon hf10,HF100,HF200????

Thanks for the help

Lou

[dlfl]

Just to get the ball rolling, please post the TiVo model. The answer can depend on that. Also, you could save OP some time by posting the video formats produced by the various CamCorder models you listed.

There is a wide variety of formats supported without transcoding by pyTiVo.

Edit: Arrgh! I need to look at signatures - sorry about that!

[sgip2000]

I have a JVC hard drive model that uses a .MOD extension. The .MOD extension can simply be changed to a .MPG extension for great compatibility.

[westside_guy]

The streambaby wiki has a list of Tivo-compatible video formats (http://code.google.com/p/streambaby/wiki/video_compatibility). If a camera generates one of them, you're good to go. (I assume you're asking about a Tivo HD, based on your sig)

Basically it looks like any camera that can generate Quicktime mp4/m4v video would work.

But an additional note: If you end up with a camera that doesn't generate a Tivo-compatible video file, pyTivo will still take care of that without any additional intervention from you. So you'll be able to stream your videos to the Tivo, regardless.

[mikek2]

Regarding the Canon camcorders you have listed, I have the HF100 and have been unable to get them to play properly on the Tivo using Streambaby (with Tivo Desktop it just says incompatible format). The files the camera produces are AVCHD which are H.264 encoded video in MPEG 2 Transport Stream. The problem is that the sound and video come out in slow motion.

The problem seems to be with ffmpeg and not with streambaby or Tivo. If I transcode the file in ffmpeg (at least the one that is downloaded with Streambaby) at the command line, playing the resulting file on the computer is exactly like it appears on the TV through Streambaby.

From doing heaps of reading on the Internet, it seems that there is a bug in ffmpeg where its sees the 50i (or 60i) files that the camcorder produces as 50interlaced frames rather than fields.

So it seems that until ffmpeg is fixed we're stuck to transcoding first when it comes to the Canon HF cameras and no doubt any of the other AVCHD cameras.

I've posted here in the hope someone has fixed this problem and would like to share their solution.

[Doug G]

I recently also picked up a Canon HF100 and spent pretty much the entire day last Friday trying to figure out how to get my pyTivo to serve the AVCHD coded files to my two HD Tivos so I could view them on my HD displays. No luck. I have a well established archiving/playback system for all my MPEG-2 encoded miniDV videos and so I was really hoping to be able to get my new HD videos working in the same manner but no joy.

I found it particularly frustrating that it took me more than a few hours to understand all the coders and standards involved here, but I think I finally have it figured out.

All AVCHD camcorders encode their video using the H.264/AVC codec the same as is specified in the MPEG-4 standard. Last year the folks at Tivo announced support for H.264 MPEG-4 video content in S3 and HD units. Since the video encoding standard is the same, I couldn't understand why any transcoding (which I desperately want to avoid on my old PC!) was necessary. That's when I learned that while AVCHD uses the same video encoder as standard MPEG-4, it actually uses an MPEG-2 transport container for the program stream. Blu-Ray is also loosely based on AVCHD and both use MPEG-2 transport streams as a wrapper for H.264/AVC video and AC-3/PCM audio (no PCM in the case of AVCHD on camcorders, though.) So this is apparently where the compatibility issue arises on the S3/HD Tivo since it requires a MP4 transport container. To make things worse, until recently MPEG-4 disallowed the AC-3 (DD) audio encoding standard and required AAC instead. I guess MPEG-4 did add support for AC-3 recently but its doubtful the Tivo supports this since its such a late addition.

Armed with this knowledge I made several attempts using freeware tools to demux my AVCHD video into elementary streams, convert the AC-3 audio to AAC, and remux it into a MP4 transport so the Tivo would be happy but again no luck. I can rename the .m2ts extension on my files and the HD Tivo will play the first few seconds but then it stops, and even those are pretty jerky. It looks like ffmpeg is attempting to transcode the stream until it dies. If anyone knows how I can accomplish this, I'd sure appreciate any details. I have no intention of spending days transcoding video and storing it in (much bigger) MPEG-2 format just to enable HME video transfers.

I've read in another thread that owners of PS3's have been able to successfully stream these native AVCHD files so hopefully Tivo will do something eventually to enable receiving H.264/AC3 inside an MPEG-2 transport. I really love how I've been able to integrate my large MP3 music collection, HD photos, internet/HME connectivity and regular video-based DVR applications using this one box so I'm really disappointed that AVCHD is currently a crash and burn.