iTiVo (TiVo -> mac -> iPhone)

[Yoav]

(turning this into the main questions forum page)

iTiVo 1.7.6 is now available.

iTiVo is a simple user interface for those who wish to download shows from their TiVo onto their Mac.

Easy to run. Easy to install.

Features include:

• 'subscriptions' to your regular shows: downloading them whenever new episodes are available.
• Perform an 'iTunes sync' to your phone when the download is completed.
• Automatically remove commercials from downloaded shows.
• Generate metadata appropriate for use by tools such as pyTivo.
• Create subtitle files (.srt) from the closed caption info.
• Output formats include h.264, mpeg-2, mpeg-1, decrypt-only.
• Target formats include iPhone, iPod, AppleTV, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, PSP, youtube.
• Support for different encoders, including HandBrake, Mencoder, FFmpeg, ElGato H.264 Turbo.
• Full advanced controls over encoder options.
• A download queue for batch processing.
• Automatic discovery of Tivos using Bonjour.
• Automatic updates.
• Reporting on tivo's Hard Drive usage.

You can read up more about it on the homepage (http://code.google.com/p/itivo/) , as well as download it.

It's completely free (GPLv3). And the source code is available on the website.

This is the place to ask questions that are not answered in the FAQ.

[fatespawn]

with mpeg-2 native selected, the commercial skip button is grayed out.

[Yoav]

Originally Posted by fatespawn

with mpeg-2 native selected, the commercial skip button is grayed out.

This is 'as intended'. mpeg-2 native does no conversion of the file.. IT simply reads it off the network and decrypts it inline. This pretty much is a 'as fast as you can download it'. In order to remove commercials, the file has to be processed and re-encoded. Since mpeg-2 native doesn't re-encode, it can't remove commercials.

If you want an mpeg-2 stream without commercials, select one of the DVD mpeg-2 formats, which do re-encode.

[ding]

Comskip working good here. My life is almost complete.

[Yoav]

Originally Posted by ding

Comskip working good here. My life is almost complete.

Ok, just a warning though, comskip has been making really BAD mistakes for low-quality shows (I mean bitrate). So I recommend not using it on those or at least checking the results before using... med-quality to HD has been working fine I think.

[ding]

I have a single tuner s2 with an hard drive upgrade so I record everything in high quality SD and it has worked fine for my tests. I have also tested some med-quality clips with success. It might clip a few frames here and there but nothing too annoying.

[bohbot16]

Originally Posted by Yoav

This is 'as intended'. mpeg-2 native does no conversion of the file.. IT simply reads it off the network and decrypts it inline. This pretty much is a 'as fast as you can download it'. In order to remove commercials, the file has to be processed and re-encoded. Since mpeg-2 native doesn't re-encode, it can't remove commercials.

If you want an mpeg-2 stream without commercials, select one of the DVD mpeg-2 formats, which do re-encode.

Yoav,
Thanks so much for the updates! Unfortunately, your solution only works for SD content, not HD mpeg2. It would be great to have an option that would download the mpeg2, then strip the commercials and output mpeg2 that is the same resolution as the source.

[Yoav]

Originally Posted by bohbot16

Yoav,
Thanks so much for the updates! Unfortunately, your solution only works for SD content, not HD mpeg2. It would be great to have an option that would download the mpeg2, then strip the commercials and output mpeg2 that is the same resolution as the source.

Ok shouldn't be too hard to add that. (Although it will have to be forced to a resolution (either 1920x1080 or 1200x720). In the meanwhile you can make edits to:

/Applications/iTiVo.app/Contents/Resources/re-encoder.pl

using any text editor. Then change DVD NTS to whatever resolution you want (in the scale option).

I plan on adding support for a user-configurable encoding options thing. Hopefully that will solve the many "can you add this mode..." queries..

[Yoav]

Updated to reflect release 1.3.2
(an emergency bugfix release)
There was a pretty nasty bug that caused downloads to loop forever if comskip wasn't selected.

[thenightfly42]

Yoav: thank you for picking up this code and making it work on 10.5. I greatly appreciate it.

[LHMPDX]

First, and most important, a huge thank you for your work on iTiVo. You should have a donation button somewhere.

Also, can you add an audio only conversion, either MP3 or AAC? For many shows, the audio is enough. This saves space and battery life on the iPhone.

Thanks again.

[Yoav]

Originally Posted by LHMPDX

First, and most important, a huge thank you for your work on iTiVo. You should have a donation button somewhere.

Also, can you add an audio only conversion, either MP3 or AAC? For many shows, the audio is enough. This saves space and battery life on the iPhone.

Thanks again.

Sure...
(if you have any ideas on what the flags should be, download the beta and specify the flags under advanced prefs.. Otherwise, I'll try some things myself here and hopefully figure it out).

[Yoav]

Originally Posted by LHMPDX

Also, can you add an audio only conversion, either MP3 or AAC? For many shows, the audio is enough. This saves space and battery life on the iPhone.

Ok check out version 1.4b4. Tell me if it's what you need...

[LHMPDX]

I could only test it a bit this morning, but it seems to work well. I got a much smaller file as an mp3 than for the iPhone, and it sounds fine in iTunes.

When imported into iTunes, an hour show is listed as 3:25:35. When listening on the iPhone, it ends at the one hour mark, so no big deal. This is not a problem at all for me.

I'll test some more in the next day or so.

Thanks again for a great product!!

[Yoav]

1.4 is out.

Check for updates in the program, or download it from the webpage.

(yes, I'll probably slow down code on this soon.. but right now I got too much spare time on my hands

[hdfatboy2003@mac]

I'll recap my problem from another thread and add an update here ...
"I've tried four times now to tansfer a movie\tv show and none of the will open in Quick Time, Final Cut Pro, etc. The last two errors were "The movie could not be opened. An invalid sample description was found in the movie".

I have plenty of free drive space. The setting are AppleTV, no comskip, the TV Show shows up as HD in the selection window, but it's off of the Comedy Channel (at best it's digital not HD). I tried iTivo 1.4 and the latest beta. I'm running Leopard 10.5.5.

Any idea what's going wrong? My ultimate goal is to take some of the shows off of my TivoHD (9.4) and move them over to my AppleTV for storage and longterm watching."

Update: If I select "iPhone" in preferences as the download format it encodes successfully, but "AppleTV" as the format is not successful an returns the error noted above. Is there something wrong with the AppleTV settings?

[Yoav]

Originally Posted by hdfatboy2003@mac

I'll recap my problem from another thread and add an update here ...
"I've tried four times now to tansfer a movie\tv show and none of the will open in Quick Time, Final Cut Pro, etc. The last two errors were "The movie could not be opened. An invalid sample description was found in the movie".

I have plenty of free drive space. The setting are AppleTV, no comskip, the TV Show shows up as HD in the selection window, but it's off of the Comedy Channel (at best it's digital not HD). I tried iTivo 1.4 and the latest beta. I'm running Leopard 10.5.5.

Any idea what's going wrong? My ultimate goal is to take some of the shows off of my TivoHD (9.4) and move them over to my AppleTV for storage and longterm watching."

at it encodes successfully, but "AppleTV" as the format is not successful an returns the error noted above. Is there something wrong with the AppleTV settings?

Multi-part answer (keep in mind I don't have an appletv to test with).

AppleTV setting does a bit-copy of the audio stream. From HD content that's entirely playable in quicktime, but from regular content quicktime doesn't know what to do.
I'll have it re-encode all audio to faac 5.1 irrelevant of the source I suppose.

Soemthing to keep in mind though. for regular TV you probably don't want to use AppleTV as your setting, since that tries to keep data at 1200x720 (which is bigger than your source)

[Yoav]

try the 1.5b2 see if it fixes your problem though.
Don't forget to change download format first to reset the settings (and then change back).

[gbrown]

I just updated from 1.2.1 to 1.4.
It will not connect to my TiVo.
I know the IP and MAC are correct because I can cut and paste into https://IP. Also the "Now Playing" widget works.

Any ideas?

[Fofer]

I'd like to request that iTiVo get some of the super cool "free space" calculations that TiVoPlaylist has:

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb...d.php?t=293241
http://bellsouthpwp.net/d/c/dcahoe/tivo/index.htm?

(It also lets you use List View or Folder View. And there's a neat pie graph to be able to visualize storage space used.)

But it's for Windows only.

I've tried to install it on my Mac using CodeWeavers Crossover with no success. If this capability were to be included with iTiVo, it would be even more fantastic.

[Yoav]

Originally Posted by gbrown

I just updated from 1.2.1 to 1.4.
It will not connect to my TiVo.
I know the IP and MAC are correct because I can cut and paste into https://IP. Also the "Now Playing" widget works.

Any ideas?

Is your MAK setting in iTiVo correct? Turn on logging under prefs/advanced. send the contents of ~/iTiVo.log to me?

[hdfatboy2003@mac]

Originally Posted by Yoav

try the 1.5b2 see if it fixes your problem though.
Don't forget to change download format first to reset the settings (and then change back).

Yoav - Thanks 1.5b does the trick!

[hdfatboy2003@mac]

Originally Posted by hdfatboy2003@mac

Yoav - Thanks 1.5b does the trick!

Yoav - Almost actually. Appears AppleTV doesn't like multi-channel audio. What would be the encoder audio options setting for "stereo". Can I just copy the setting from mpeg2 or the like?

Thanks.

[bohbot16]

From what I understand, the AppleTV can only use AC3 (aka Dolby Digital 5.1) audio when it is the second audio track in the file and the first audio track is a 2 channel AAC.

It might make sense to just force the AppleTV audio to 2 channel AAC.

[Yoav]

Originally Posted by bohbot16

From what I understand, the AppleTV can only use AC3 (aka Dolby Digital 5.1) audio when it is the second audio track in the file and the first audio track is a 2 channel AAC.

It might make sense to just force the AppleTV audio to 2 channel AAC.

If that's the case, then change -channels 6 to -channels 2 in the advanced audio prefs and tell me if that works. (if it does, I'll fix it in the source).

-- yoav

[hdfatboy2003@mac]

Yoav - changing it from -6 to -2 channel didn't work. It imports into iTunes but iTunes won't transfer it to AppleTV indicating "it can not be played on this AppleTV".

I'm not seeing what could be the problem. Apple indicates:

H.264 and protected H.264 (from iTunes Store): Up to 5 Mbps, Progressive Main Profile (CAVLC) with AAC-LC audio up to 160 Kbps (maximum resolution: 1280 by 720 pixels at 24 fps, 960 by 540 pixels at 30 fps) in .m4v, .mp4, and .mov file formats

When I check the video properties in iTunes it shows: MPEG-4, bit rate 245 kbps, Stereo, Total bit rate 3250 kbps, 1195x672, Video codes H.264

An early Comedy Central program that I had trouble with transcoded with the original AppleTV setting just fine. I suspect that is because the original sound track was only 2 channel. When inspecting it's properties it states: MPEG-4, 274 kbps, Stereo, 3316 kbps, 960x720, H.264

Any ideas on what changes I need to make?

Thanks.
Mark.

[Yoav]

Originally Posted by hdfatboy2003@mac

Yoav - changing it from -6 to -2 channel didn't work. It imports into iTunes but iTunes won't transfer it to AppleTV indicating "it can not be played on this AppleTV".

I'm not seeing what could be the problem. Apple indicates:

H.264 and protected H.264 (from iTunes Store): Up to 5 Mbps, Progressive Main Profile (CAVLC) with AAC-LC audio up to 160 Kbps (maximum resolution: 1280 by 720 pixels at 24 fps, 960 by 540 pixels at 30 fps) in .m4v, .mp4, and .mov file formats

When I check the video properties in iTunes it shows: MPEG-4, bit rate 245 kbps, Stereo, Total bit rate 3250 kbps, 1195x672, Video codes H.264

An early Comedy Central program that I had trouble with transcoded with the original AppleTV setting just fine. I suspect that is because the original sound track was only 2 channel. When inspecting it's properties it states: MPEG-4, 274 kbps, Stereo, 3316 kbps, 960x720, H.264

Any ideas on what changes I need to make?

Thanks.
Mark.

I see two potential problems:

1) Your source is a 30 fps movie, and we arent converting it to 24 fps. So I guess we need to lower the max resolution to 960 x 540. Find the dsize=1200:720:0 chunk and change it to dsize=960:540:0 (in the video encoder options).

2) Your audio is probably still at 480 kbps (from the 6-channel encoding). In the audio encoding options, change br=480 to br=160

<crossing fingers and hoping we got it this time>. Again tell me

[kas25]

Originally Posted by hdfatboy2003@mac

I'll recap my problem from another thread and add an update here ...
"I've tried four times now to tansfer a movie\tv show and none of the will open in Quick Time, Final Cut Pro, etc. The last two errors were "The movie could not be opened. An invalid sample description was found in the movie".

I have plenty of free drive space. The setting are AppleTV, no comskip, the TV Show shows up as HD in the selection window, but it's off of the Comedy Channel (at best it's digital not HD). I tried iTivo 1.4 and the latest beta. I'm running Leopard 10.5.5.

Any idea what's going wrong? My ultimate goal is to take some of the shows off of my TivoHD (9.4) and move them over to my AppleTV for storage and longterm watching."

Update: If I select "iPhone" in preferences as the download format it encodes successfully, but "AppleTV" as the format is not successful an returns the error noted above. Is there something wrong with the AppleTV settings?

I just got the same error message last night. Interested to hear what you find as they all transferred flawlessly but couldn't play when i double click the movie in finder. I just picked the Apple TV setting.

[Fofer]

Love the new "Basic TiVo info in drawer" in 1.5b3!

However, this new version isn't listing all the shows on my 750GB Series 3 TiVo. Previous versions, it listed ~260 shows. Now, it lists 113.

I was alarmed at first, since so many items are missing... I only see 1 Primetime (I know I'd been saving 3,) and no Suggestions (I had 6.) But I just fired up the TiVo itself and they are all there.

Needless to say, since it's only an incomplete list, I can't extract everything, and the "basic info" and pie chart are rendered inaccurate.

[hdfatboy2003@mac]

Originally Posted by Yoav

I see two potential problems:

1) Your source is a 30 fps movie, and we arent converting it to 24 fps. So I guess we need to lower the max resolution to 960 x 540. Find the dsize=1200:720:0 chunk and change it to dsize=960:540:0 (in the video encoder options).

2) Your audio is probably still at 480 kbps (from the 6-channel encoding). In the audio encoding options, change br=480 to br=160

<crossing fingers and hoping we got it this time>. Again tell me

Made the changes you suggested but still not luck in Mudville. It'll import into iTunes and play in iTunes and QuickTime but will not transfer over to AppleTV. Same error message "because it can not be played on this AppleTV"