Making DVD from TiVo recordings

[mjl]

I have TiVo hooked up via wireless network adap[ter to my computer and it connects fine, and I am able to back up a show to my computer easily. Once on my computer, I tried to burn a movie to DVD via Sonic My DVD. It was chugging along for over an hour and seemed to be about half done. I left, but when I returned it appeared to have crashed. I'll try it again.. but meantime here are my questions:
1. Should burning a .tivo file to dvd take about as long as a real-time analog dub would? I have Compaq PC with Sempron 3100 , 1GB RAM, 100 Gig hard drive.
2. When I do this process, am I reencoding the whole movie and thus losing quality through decompression and recompression? If so, would I get better quality just playing the TiVo back, connecting it (analog/s-video) to a stand-alone settop DVD burner, and backing up the movie that way? Or am I getting a better (digital) quality copy by using the computer/sonic mydvd approach.
3. If Sonic MyDVD is buggy (I have read other posts saying it is) are there other alternatives? TiVo only mentions Sonic as the program that will accept .TiVo files. Is there a way to take a .TiVo file and "extract the mpeg out of it," so to speak, so that I can make a DVD without using Sonic???

[lumis]

i believe tivo records at 512x384 w/ 256kbps mp2 audio.. which isnt exactly dvd spec.. when you feed that in to your program it's probably trying to re-encode it, and at some point during that it fails & crashes..

your best bet would probably be to try and either use the tivo file (if it isnt wrapped up in drm) as an mpeg-2 file, or extract it to an mpeg-2 file.. which shouldnt take too long, a few minutes at most.. once you have it ready you should use dvd patcher, and patch the resolution to something dvd compatible (512x384, NOT the entire file) and the bitrate too (3.5mbps)..

then try dropping it in to a dvd authoring program, such as TDA..

even though you do all of these things, it still may not working correctly on a dvd player.. i definetly wouldnt suggest giving them out to friends..

your only real option may be to record from the tivo to a standalone dvd recorder, thats what i've found is the simplest way.. unless my intention is to encode from the out-of-spec mpeg2 file to another format (wmv, xvid).

[Denvers Dawgs]

Unfortunately Sonics MyDvd with the "TiVo" branded on it just doesn't work for a majority of the people who bought it. Sonics product is junk. I have spent countless hours editing, and creating menus with Mydvd, just to have it freeze up and have to start all over again. you could try using Say TMPEGEnc Dvd Author to edit the tivo files. In order to do this you must unlock the Mpeg from tivo drm. Download dvdpatcher for this. Then do the following:

1. Download show from tivo
2. Convert with Directshow Dump
3. Use DVDpatcher to change 1st header only horizontal to 720
4. Author with TMPGEnc Dvd Author
5. Use DVDpatcher to change 1st VOB horizontal back to 480
6. Burn with copytodvd (or what ever burning software that you use).

This process is extremely fast compared to sonic what took me over 30mins to edit with sonic, took about 10mins (no lie with TMPGEnc, it doesn't freeze or lag what so ever). The only problem I had with the outcome from this process is that one of my dvd players would not play the disc correctly (the video was uncentered) because tivo files are not in dvd compliant (mpeg-2 file) form, so when you burn these files to dvd try a rw disc first, if the video plays fine in your dvd players, then there you, go. Other wise you could use an mpeg encoder to create the now edit tivo file into dvd compliant form.

Also, I have recently read that VideoReDo now supports tivo files. No need to unlock the video, just input the video into VideoReDo, and then burn output with burning software.