THD to iPod Touch via G4 Mac

[urkel-Os]

I have googled hard on this, and there is so much conflicting info that I am going to go against my usual instinct and start a new thread here. What I want to do is take HD recordings from my TiVo HD, move them to my G4 Mac Mini (running Tiger), and convert them to 640x480 mpeg4 files on the Mac so that I can sync them to my iPod Touch via iTunes. I will gladly pay for software that does this if I know that it will actually work. System requirements for Toast Titanium 9 claim that TT9 requires a G5 processor to encode HD video. So it looks like that's not going to work for me, unless TT9 does not actually enforce this requirement. Anyone know if that's the case? TT8 does not appear to be capable of doing this at all, but I have had some difficulty getting a good set of specs on that older piece of software. Will TT8 work for this? I just can't tell.

At least moving files from the THD to the Mac is easy enough -- I can just use the web interface. The main problem I have is that it's not clear what software will convert the transferred .tivo file to something I can view on the IPT. I've looked at TiVoDecode, and TiVoDecode Manager (which will also do the transfer), and there are conflicting reports on the web as far as compatibility with S3 TiVos. The developer of TiVoDecode Manager states that his software is not compatible with S3 TiVos, but I've read one or two S3 success stories that say otherwise. Not sure whether TiVoDecode can do what I want either.

I don't pretend to be an expert in this area -- even though I have had TiVos for more than four years, the TTG-type stuff has been unimportant to me until now, so I haven't been paying attention all along. For example, is there any difference between S2 and S3 .tivo format? I haven't seen any evidence of this so far, but I could have missed it somehow.

Anyway, thanks in advance for your suggestions!

[urkel-Os]

Originally Posted by sysy

I googled this for one day too, got no useful result. urkel-Os, you and me on the same page. Have you solved?
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Not yet -- you posted just 3.5 hours after I did!

[sysy]

Oh, I say I googled it for one day! That not means i googled it after your post! I have this problem for several days ago! Before I saw your post, I already googled it for one day!

[Rdian06]

Tivodecode works fine on .tivo files downloaded from Tivo HD/Tivo S3 units. I've actually used it before, though all my machines are Intel Macs.

Never used TivoDecode Manager before.

When I was trying to do something similar, I would:

1) Download the .tivo file from the web interface
2) Run tivodecode to convert the .tivo to .mpeg
3) Stream the .mpeg file through VLC to a file as MPEG 2 TS stream .ts file to clean up some inconsistencies in the original Tivo mpeg
4) Feed the .ts file to Handbrake

In my case, I wanted to preserve the full HD resolution so I used Handbrake's AppleTV preset or my own custom one, but I think it has iPod presets you can start with and tweak if needed.

The trouble I ran into is that if I tried to do any type of editting of the .mpeg or .ts to cut out commercials, audio sync would go out of whack after the Handbrake re-encoding step (though the audio was fine before it went into Handbrake.) I did this testing before the summer, so the Handbrake folks might have improved things a bit.

[urkel-Os]

Thanks for the response. I was beginning to think I'd either asked the impossible or such a dumb question that nobody would bother to answer.

Originally Posted by Rdian06

...
When I was trying to do something similar, I would:

1) Download the .tivo file from the web interface

Yup, already doing that.

2) Run tivodecode to convert the .tivo to .mpeg

Ok, for some reason I didn't see the precompiled builds of tivodecode when I first visited Sourceforge. I have no problem building and installing applications on my Linux machine at work, but something about Macs makes me a little nervous, which is why I didn't just try tivodecode until now. Anyway, I downloaded the tarfile containing the v1.0.4 OSX PPC tivodecode executable from Sourceforge, and it appears to work.

BTW, do you know if t2sami (the other program available for download in the tivodecode Sourceforge project) is necessary? I don't use closed captioning, so I'm inclined to skip it if it's not required.

3) Stream the .mpeg file through VLC to a file as MPEG 2 TS stream .ts file to clean up some inconsistencies in the original Tivo mpeg

Never used VLC before, but have heard good things. So forgive me if this sounds stupid, but I'm a little confused by the use of the word "stream." Are you opening the .mpeg file in VLC and saving it out to a .ts file? Or are you piping the standard output of tivodecode directly to the standard input of VLC via command-line interface?

4) Feed the .ts file to Handbrake

The purpose of this step is to reformat the video for viewing on another device, right? I haven't used Handbrake before either. Yes, I'm super new to the whole TTG/video encoding thing.

In my case, I wanted to preserve the full HD resolution so I used Handbrake's AppleTV preset or my own custom one, but I think it has iPod presets you can start with and tweak if needed.

The trouble I ran into is that if I tried to do any type of editting of the .mpeg or .ts to cut out commercials, audio sync would go out of whack after the Handbrake re-encoding step (though the audio was fine before it went into Handbrake.) I did this testing before the summer, so the Handbrake folks might have improved things a bit.

Thanks so much for the helpful post, Rdian06. You've given me the push I need to make this happen, and I won't have to give one nickel to those bozos at Roxio if everything goes right.

I'm glad to see that tivodecode works from the command line. That means I will be easily able to write scripts that will convert multiple .tivo files without any input on my part. Ideally, the same would be possible for VLC and Handbrake, so that I could construct a script that does everything for me while I'm away from my computer (except for the downloading, which I can probably write a script for as well if I put on my coding cap for a few minutes).

[Rdian06]

Originally Posted by urkel-Os

Ok, for some reason I didn't see the precompiled builds of tivodecode when I first visited Sourceforge.

BTW, do you know if t2sami (the other program available for download in the tivodecode Sourceforge project) is necessary? I don't use closed captioning, so I'm inclined to skip it if it's not required.

Compiling it was straightforward on my Intel Mac with a semi recent version of Xcode installed. Though the binary you have should be fine given that you're on a G4 Mac.

Originally Posted by urkel-Os

Never used VLC before, but have heard good things. So forgive me if this sounds stupid, but I'm a little confused by the use of the word "stream." Are you opening the .mpeg file in VLC and saving it out to a .ts file? Or are you piping the standard output of tivodecode directly to the standard input of VLC via command-line interface?

VLC is a great little player. But yes, in this case I'm using it's ability to stream to a file to fix inconsistencies in the original Tivo mpeg. VLC has a command line, but I never got far enough to figure out how to use it.
I'm booted into Windows right now, but this is generally how you do it with the GUI:

1) Launch VLC.

2) From the File menu choose Open File...

3) Under Open:, browse for the original Tivo mpeg file then check the Stream/Save box down at the bottom to Enable the Settings... button.

4) Click the Settings... button.

5) Check the File box and then choose an output file name.

6) Under Encapsulation Method choose MPEG TS.

7) Leave everything else alone and click OK.

8) Then click OK a second time on the Open... window to start the conversion.

If it ends up working, I'm sure you'll figure out the command line. I think VLC even tells you part of the command line in that final dialog window.

Originally Posted by urkel-Os

The purpose of this step is to reformat the video for viewing on another device, right? I haven't used Handbrake before either. Yes, I'm super new to the whole TTG/video encoding thing.

Right, Handbrake will down rez and convert the file from MPEG2 format to MPEG4 format (h264 video and AAC audio) when you choose the iPod profile.

Handbrake also has a command line form, but again I never got far enough to figure it out.