Want to play nearly ANY video file on your TiVo?

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sorry if it was posted already but there appears to be a new release from tivo to correct some tivotogo bugs.

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=340623

perhaps this will correct some of the issues people are having with tivo.net...

 

i apologize if the answer to this in in this thread somewhere...i've read through most of it and not seen the answer.

I've loaded the latest ver on Tivonet and it works beautifully. The only thing is that the quality of the video isn't that great. I see in older versions that you could choose better video and audio rates but I don't see that in the newest version.

Also, what is the 'remote access' setting for?

Thanks for this program! I've been waiting for something like this for a long time. Expect my donation my friend!

 

There is a small ffmpeg link on the left side of the main admin page. That will take you to the video transcoding settings. I too searched for that when I first ran it. BTW, it is a major difference in the output of Tivo.net when you bump up the quality settings to max. Beware, though, that you may start getting the 'transfer ending too early' error that others are seeing once you change the quality settings. If so, you will need to enter in a larger value for the 'FudgeSize' setting in the registry (see post above for link to instructions). A 1.5 'FudgeSize' worked great for me.

One other thing you will want to do if you are transfering 16:9 videos and your TV is widescreen: in the ffmpeg settings, click the '16:9' radio button, and in your video directory, set the videos to not correct for aspect ratio. It is amazing to be able to watch widescreen video natively through the Tivo without doing a '4:3 zoom 1' on our TV.

 

That sure looks like it would do it. Good eye Jason! Thankyou, I'll try it out as soon as I get a chance.

 

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This lets you access the Admin Interface from a machine other than the one TiVo.Net is running on.

 

Something has changed recently and I'm not sure what ...

Now, when I try to select a recording from the TiVo.Net NPL, my TiVo locks up. I've duplicated this on my TX20 and my S2. Here's what I found in the error log:

Code:

mscorlib  String was not recognized as a valid DateTime. -   at System.DateTime.Parse (System.String s, IFormatProvider fp, DateTimeStyles styles) [0x00000]
  at System.DateTime.Parse (System.String s, IFormatProvider fp) [0x00000]
  at System.DateTime.Parse (System.String s) [0x00000]
  at System.Convert.ToDateTime (System.String value) [0x00000]
  at TiVoDotNetBase.VideoFileItem.BuildEpisodeXML (System.String tagname, System.Xml.XmlNode parent, System.Xml.XmlDocument xmldoc) [0x00000]
  at TiVoDotNetBase.VideoFileItem.OutputDetails () [0x00000]
  at TiVoDotNetBase.TivoDotNet.ParseVideoUrl (System.String url, System.Net.HttpListenerContext con, TiVoDotNetBase.ContainerItem ci) [0x00000]
  at TiVoDotNetBase.TivoDotNet.ContextCallback (IAsyncResult ar) [0x00000]

After selecting a video, you just get stuck on the NPL and the box just "bongs" at every remote press. If I wait 20 minutes it will timeout to Live TV and be fine again (pulling the plug also works ).

 

I've managed to get my TiVo into that state a couple of times with the Windows version of Tivo.Net and not just in the last day or two. Obviously as you stated you can reboot the TiVo. IIRC I got out of it one time by disconnecting my network cable long enough for the TiVo to time out its network interface.

 

Ok....so I finally ran into the size estimation problem.

When transferring a backup of a DVD, Tivo deletes the file at the end of the transfer, because of the file size not being what is expected.

I'm running the mono version of 0.9.5a

I do not have access to the HTTP interface, and have tried adjusting the size estimation in two ways, that both lock the Tivo up until I kill the mono process.

1: mono TivoMono.exe --noterminal --fudge 1.05 --verbose &
2: Adding <SizeFudge>1.05</SizeFudge> to settings.xml

Is this the appropriate way to change the setting? I'd prefer to set it in settings.xml, but not sure if that is supported.

Thanks!

John C.

 

I don't know if putting it in settings.xml is supported either but, I was having the deleted file problem myself for practically every file, maybe because I've got the ffmpeg encoding quality cranked up. Anyway, a couple days ago someone pointed out I can specify the fudge factor on the command line with the mono version so I've been using a command line of

mono TivoMono.exe --fudge 1.8 --verbose

for the past couple days and for me its been working fine, no more files disappearing and haven't experienced the tivo locking up as you describe. (I realize this probably doesn't really help you any, sorry, but just wanted to share that for me it is working)

As far as your not having the web interface, perhaps you don't have <Installpath> set correctly in the settings.xml file? I was doing a lot of experimenting the last week or so and one time I accidentally had the wrong setting for <Installpath> in settings.xml. The end result was that it still ran fine, I could stream stuff to my Tivo, but the the web interface wasn't available.

 

I'll be damned. Trailing slash is needed in the Install Path. That did it.

Used your command line, with a lower fudge factor, and it doesn't lock up anymore. I'm watching the movie, we'll see if it keeps after it's finished transferring.

I was using 1.05 before, earlier in the thread there's a mention of this, and it has a hundreds digit as well. Maybe that is what was making it bonk out.

Thank you very much!

Traffic seems to have dropped off a bit on this thread, there must be a bunch of satisfied customers!

JC

 

Seriously cool!
I've been following this thread, and as soon as I opened the ports I got it to work.
Many thanks.

 

Feature request:

Ability to set the process priority level for the transcoding program ffmpeg (or plugin generally?) from the admin page. ffmpeg sometimes hogs my cpu. If I set the priority level via the Task manager after starting to "Below Normal" it plays "nice". Like to have it launched as a "background" process.

Similar effect to the Windows "start /low program.exe" batch command or the Unix nice command.

Hope everything gets dried out Great program!

 

So, the 1.8 fudge factor didn't seem to work either.

I'm going to try 2.0 next. Has anyone else had to go this high?

JC

 

Thanks so much for this program. It worked like a champ as soon as I installed it. It says my version is out of date, but I hesitate to change it because it works perfectly so far. Now everything is sooooo much easier.

 

So, a couple messages ago you said this was a backup of a DVD. So, I tried transferring over one my backup of a DVD files and guess what, it didn't work, it did the disappearing act. First time I've had a file transfer fail on me since learning how to up the fudge factor.

I suspect that your backup of a DVD is probably like my backup of a DVD in that its in a format Tivo can play natively so Tivo.Net doesn't do any transcoding, it just ships it over byte for byte.

Anyhow, my speculation is that in the case of these no need to transcode, just ship it over byte for byte files, Tivo.Net is under reporting to the Tivo what the transfer size will be regardless of the fudge setting. Really the fudge setting shouldn't teven come into play, a file your going to not transcode and just ship over byte for byte, Tivo.Net would already know exactly how many bytes its going to send over before it even sends the file, its the same amount as the number of bytes in the file. But maybe there's some over head that needs to be accounted for or maybe there's just a bug in Tivo.Net, or maybe I'm entirely off base

There is a --alwaystranscode command line option, we could experiment with.

 

So, I bumped up to 2.0, transferred a 56min DVD that is encoded with DivX, and it disappeared as well. I don't think that DivX is native to Tivo, but I'm pretty new to the Tivo, so I'm not sure.

Well, there's two of us, anyone else?

JC

 

Hey all,

Seriously awsome program. been waiting awhile for something like this. I have looked over the pages and have not seen this problem so far.

I can see the server on the npl. When i transfer anything i lose the server. The file still transfers and completes, however to the the link back to the server i have to stop the service then restart it.

Even more strange is that i can queue up as many transfer as i want and they will all transfer, however once i back out and go to npl, or watch live tv or do anything else, tivo net server goes away from npl.

Any help?

 

Love this program.

I am using Democracy (www.getdemocracy.com) to grab the video podcasts. The new version saves them in to subfolders by show title. The using tivo.net to get them to the Tivo. MAN IS THIS AWSOME!

Could it be better sure - but it does work. Thanks for the great start and I look forward to trying new versions of tivo.net (auto update of the folder would be a great new feature

Thanks again.

Dustin

 

No. DivX isn't native to Tivo, if its a DivX file you are transferring that pretty much kills my theory of an explanation. Maybe you need to go higher than 2.0, I don't know. Maybe 0.9.1a would work, I was using it most of last week and having really good luck with it.

To bad pipakin is still drying out, I imagine if he where here 30 minutes after posting your problem he'd be like "I found the bug and fixed it, and I added 9 more features while I was at it, here's the link."

 

no thoughts on earlier post?