Lots of trouble getting comercials out of TiVo recordings...

[mogbert]

OK, I have been working on this for a while, and there are two marathons coming on starting tonight where I will need to clear off some TiVo space.
It sounds simple I want to remove the commercials from a TiVo movie. Here are the steps and programs I have been using.
Extract from Tivo using TivoDesktop (leaves it in proprietory format)
Convert to MPG with DirectShow Dump (Still has comercials, somewhat unstandard format)
Remove comercials with MPG2Cut (Audio Stream still unstandard, timestamp errors due to cut without reencode)

This causes a problem when I try and play it back (I use Zoom Player, but encountered the same problem in MediaPlayer). When I try and jump, the movie freezes for about 20 seconds or so, the counter continues, eventually the movie comes back on. I have chalked that up to MPG2Cut leaving the timestamps from the cuts alone, causing large timestamp gaps where the commercials were.

Well then, I tried to re-encode with TMPGEnc... but the audio stream isn't compatible. I figure if I go back to the original TiVo file it might work... but TMPGEnc will not even try a TiVo file. So I try it on the MPG I got from DirectShow Dump, still incompatible audio stream.

OK, so I pull it up in VirtualDub and strip out the audio stream as an MP3, load the video in TMPGEnc and the audio track. The encoding goes fine, but then the audio is out of sync. (not to mention this is taking a LONG time for one movie, and I have some others right after it...)

It should be noted that I have MPG2 support on both VirtualDub and TMPGEnc.

It would be ideal to be able to load the original movie from DirectShow Dump into TMPGEnc and do the editing in the program during the reencode, but I always get "can not open, or unsupported" error.

According to VirtualDub, the audio stream is 48KHz stereo, 192Kbps, layer II. I have tried moving different VFAPI plugins to higher and lower priority, but to no avail...

In GSpot, the only Codec solution that works for the audio stream is:
(Src)-->>--(A)-->[MainConcept MPEG Demultiplexer ]>--(B)-->[ffdshow Audio Decoder ]>--(C)-->[Default DirectSound Device]

As a last ditch effort, I try to convert to a Divx or Xvid AVI, it looks terrible (MPG2 to XVid has a tone of artifacts) and the resolution is 480x480 (which is correct, but with a SVCD MPG2 it overrides the aspect ratio and makes it look good).

So far, the only way that I've gotten to work (and it looks bad) is to take the DirectShow Dump mpg, load it into VirtualDub, and save as an AVI (full processing), then load it into TMPGEnc and reencode it back to SVCD format.


Trying to get around some of this by using a frameserver didn't work either...

What I really need is either a way to load the original audio stream into TMPGEnc, and reencode and edit it in one step, or to be able to save the VirtualDub output as an MPG.

I don't know if this should go in Newbie conversion, advanced conversion, or elsewhere. Right now, I feel like a newbie...

[mogbert]

Dang it, as soon as I write all that up, I get FrameServing to work... lets see if that fixes part of the problem. I'm going to try and load the movie into virtualdub, remove the commercials, then frameserve it to TMPGEnc, and reencode it... it still seems to look worse on the 5 second clip I'm testing with, I know you can't get rid of artifacts once they exist in the picture, but I was hoping that reencoding from MPG2 to MPG2 would keep the artifacts at a minimum...
Is there a trick like matching the bit rate exactly or something?