TiVo Fall 2007 Update Apparently Breaks TivoToGo/Toast on the Mac

I'm reposting something here that I've already posted to the Tivo and Roxio support forums. But since this community seems to have a much bigger audience than either of those places, I thought I'd restate it here in the hopes of raising the visibility of this problem.

I received the Tivo Fall 2007 Update several days ago. Since that time, I have not been able to create DVDs from shows transferred to my Mac via the TiVo Transfer component of Roxio Toast. Program files still transfer to the Mac, although when viewed in the TiVo Transfer Library Window, the Title is garbled (the Title column shows what I believe is the unparsed file name rather than the actual show title), and no information appears in the Episode, Duration, and Channel columns.

When the "Toast It" command is invoked, Toast launches, and shows the Encoding window, but the process stalls at that point, and the progress bar shows no further progress. It sticks at 0% or 1% progress.

Nothing has changed in my Roxio installation. This problem began the day I received notice that my TiVo has been updated. I strongly suspect that TiVo has modified the file format in some fashion that Toast no longer can decode. Other posts I've read indicate that TiVo is preparing some sort of new TivoToGo service for Series 3 boxes which required a change to the format of the file metadata associated with program files. I sounds to me like this metadata change is not being handled gracefully by TivoToGo or Toast.

I do not believe this to be an isolated incident - there are others on the Roxio boards reporting this problem.

Tivo Series 2 via wireless network
Macintosh running OS X 10.4.9, and Toast 8.0.1

Doug G.

 

It is happening to *any* recording *transferred* after the update, with no regard to when the recording was made.

The transfer TiVo-to-Mac works, and the video data is still there - the file size is as big as one would expect it to be, and you can view the video with the Roxio Toast Video Player tool with no apparent problems. In fact, a fellow on one of the other boards I posted on this problem demonstrated that you could still use Toast to generate an MPEG-4 version of the file (though this coinversion loses a bit of quality) using custom settings. So, all the A/V information is still there.

However, as displayed in the TiVo Transfer (TT) library pane, TT is not reading the file metadata properly. The Title Column shows the filename, rather than the parsed show title it displayed prior to the Update. Several columns (Episode, Duration, and Channel) show no information at all.

This suggests to me that the video file is packaged in some sort of a wrapper containing the show metadata, and that the structure of this wrapper has changed, and that the data TT expects is no longer where it used to be. When you then try to actually burn the file to DVD via Roxio Toast, it tries to encode the file, but stalls out barely into the process. Again, presumably, the wrapper change is interfering with Toast's ability to access the video data payload of the file.

 

Not to my knowledge. Though I started this thread, and its companions on the Roxio and Tivo board, late Friday hoping to consolodate the complaints about the problem. So, there's been no business hours since I threw the complaint out there. I'm kinda hoping Monday business hours will bring some sort of a response. Yeah, I'm a dreamer.

I have had one scary thought though . . . what if Roxio was aware of this problem beforehand, but needs to wait until the Tiger OS release from Apple hits the street before they'll be able to come out with a fix to Toast? Then we'll be stuck with this for another month or so? Yeouch! I hasten to say this is purely me speaking, I have no evidence this is the case.

Doug G.

 

Thank you for addressing my fears Re: Tiger. If you need more examples of people encountering this bug, you may want to check out the thread on this subject on the Roxio Support board, as there are several people there reporting this problem.

(Whoops, I tried to put a link for you to the Roxio thread, but this site won't let me post links because I'm a new member with insufficient posts. You'll have to get to the Roxio Support Forum on your own, and then look up showtopic=28792. Sorry about that!)

Yes, saving to disc image fails in the same fashion. In fact, that's where I encountered this bug, as I usually create images rather than burning so that I can later edit the resulting video files.

Once you hit the Burn button, Toast begins the encoding process, the burn setup window shrinks to the Encoding Progress window. The process then hangs indefinitely at 0% or 1% with no further progress. Though others have reported that the process is working sporadically for them, I've not had it work once since the TiVo Fall 2007 Update. Of course, once I discovered it was broken, I've not tried it many times since.

Doug G.

 

Patrick,

Many, many thanks for responding. Half the frustration of hitting a bug like this is not knowing if it is going to be addressed, or when. Knowing that Roxio is on the case helps a great deal.

I would be very happy to test any beta versions Roxio comes up with to see if they fix the bug. I'm a hardware test engineer, so I've some familiarity with systematic testing.

To test your question, I selected a show on my TiVo recorded in July, transferred it to my Mac via TTG, and then tried to burn it in Toast. Same symptoms - the conversion hangs at 1%.

Doug G.

 

Understood, I have shows like that myself. Though, sadly, it will be months before I'll have that concern with BSG.

I'm sure everyone will be happy to hear any updates on progress you might be able to let us in on. Thanks!

Doug G.