Complete idiot needs help with mpegs from ReplayTV to DVD

[djagger]

I have tried until I'm blue in the face to understand how to use MacReplay TV and my mpeg files I downloaded from my ReplayTV. I'm about to go NUTS trying to figure out what to do first.

Can someone PLEASE give me a quick and concise step-by-step method of getting these movies to DVD-R? I have a G4/933 with a Superdrive and QT Pro with the mpeg-2 decoder. I've also d/l'd a ton of DVD tools ie:
-bbDemux
-extractor
-ffmpegX
-Mediapipe
-Missingmpegedit
-Sizzle
-transcoder
and of course MacReplayTV

NOW what do I do?

One movie is 2:20+ minutes (will it fit on a DVD-R?) and the others are around 90 minutes or so.

For the love of God SOMEONE help me!

Thanks in advance....
Dave J.

[galactica]

I have tried until I'm blue in the face to understand how to use MacReplay TV and my mpeg files I downloaded from my ReplayTV. I'm about to go NUTS trying to figure out what to do first..

Can you tell me what type of mpeg files these are? mpeg1 mpeg2. use MPEG INFO which you can get form versiontracker.com Just drag the mpeg files to the app and it will launch and give you some results. Paste those here.

Can someone PLEASE give me a quick and concise step-by-step method of getting these movies to DVD-R? I have a G4/933 with a Superdrive and QT Pro with the mpeg-2 decoder. I've also d/l'd a ton of DVD tools ie:
-bbDemux
-extractor
-ffmpegX
-Mediapipe
-Missingmpegedit
-Sizzle
-transcoder
and of course MacReplayTV

Good. you have pretty much what you need. For the most part. It depends on which way you want to go!

NOW what do I do?

One movie is 2:20+ minutes (will it fit on a DVD-R?) and the others are around 90 minutes or so.

These will most likely fit. you can always nibble off the opening and ending credits of the 2:20+ movie. If memory is correct a dvd is 120min of video!?! i cant remember to be honest!

For the love of God SOMEONE help me!

Thanks in advance....
Dave J.

Im sure we can get this to work. There is a great how to for svcd to dvd and if your mpeg files are mpeg2 you can just follow that. I also think it will work for mpeg1, but you could always convert it to mpeg2 and then follow.

heres the link:
https://www.videohelp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=155591&highlight=wizeman

you would just not do step 1 because you already have it in .mpeg format.

but please do post your mpeg info results.

[yexplorer]

Please read Ross's reply on this thread...
https://www.videohelp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=479562

[djagger]

WOW!

Thanks for the quick response!

Here's the info from mpeg info:

Mpeg 2 Program Stream File [Video/Audio]
Muxrate : 1.66 Mbps
Estimated Duration: 01:29:13.44s
Aspect ratio 4/3 (TV)
Interlaced, chroma format: 4:2:0
Video Format: NTSC
Display Size [360 x 480]
Size [352 x 480] 29.97 fps 1.73 Mbps
Audio : Mpeg 1 layer 2
192 kbps 48000 Hz
Stereo, No emphasis


Do I still follow the SVCD guide?

Thanks!
(man..I hate being a newbie!)

Dave J.

[galactica]

Yes.

Your file is mpeg2 NTSC 360x480 1730k/sec (which is more like a XVCD but its still ok)
Audio is at good setting for DVD so yea, just follow the guide. From step 2 nothing that you already have some of the requred format settings (audio is already at 48KHZ and your resolution is ok!)

Most svcd wouldnt be at these settings, typically 480x480 and 44KHZ.

If it doesnt work, you can always look at ROSS's post on the subject.

[djagger]

Whew! At least I feel there's light at the end of the tunnel....

Thank you SOOOOO much.

You da man!

...and I promise to post the results here too!

Dave J.

[galactica]

Sounds good! Your will be easy I think, since your files are more in the dvd format (sort of) than a standard SVCD.

Best of luck!

[MichaelLAX]

What level of quality do you set your ReplayTV to when "recording" these programs: Standard, Medium or High?

Also, the link to Ross' reply is not exactly on point. There he was responding to a question about EYE TV, which creates MPEG-1 files. The files on ReplayTV are MPEG-2 and already at 48MHz.

You need Ross' file: MacReplayTV, as well as DVArchive, and then some authoring software.

DVArchive will make the ReplayTV think that your Mac is another ReplayTV and it will allow for file transfers lickety split to the Mac.

MacReplayTV will allow for transcoding and some editing (I am new to MacReplayTV, and I am still on the learning curve myself).

[djagger]

I forgot to list MacReplay TV as one of the DVD tools I have....which is what prompted my question in the first place. I have no problem getting the files to the mac at all. MacReplay TV really does a nice job at that along with the DVArchive sever app.

I ran out of disk space while trying to do all the coversions and such so I'm still inside thelearning curve myself.

Thanks for the hints, though!

Dave J.

[MichaelLAX]

I just posted the following message on the MacReplayTV board, in response to the question "Has anyone burned a DVD from a ReplayTV file?":

http://www.designwork.net/discus/messages/18/104.html?1053800772

Posted on Saturday, May 24, 2003 - 03:54 am: **
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Yep: I finally did it....

I xfered "All That Jazz" that I had my ReplayTV record at High Quality over to my 12" Powerbook G4 (5.8 Gigs). I used my OS9 Apple Menu Accessory DiskTop to change the filetype to "MPEG" and then imported it into PixeDV to trim out the extraneously recorded info before and after the film and split it into two separate files.

I then used CaptyDVD to author and compile both files into DVDs. They burned and play beautifully.

I discovered the "bottom half black" problem that I have been having with Capty only on the new Powerbook G4 only applies to MPEG-1 files or MPEG-2 files recorded by the ReplayTV on "Standard" (352X480) mode. Once I started recording in Medium or High quality, the problem went away.

This is exactly what I hoped for when I purchased the ReplayTV:

1) xfer over the file

2) trim it if necessary

3) author, compile and burn.

No intermediate steps of mux/demuxing.

[djagger]

Whoa!

Sounds GREAT. I'll have to start recoring in MEDIUM or HIGH quality and give this a go.

Thanks for the response and solution. I'll post my results here too.

Dave J.

[MichaelLAX]

The next step is a source for the software: PixeDV and CaptyDVD. They came bundled with the ADS USB Instant DVD for Mac that I purchased to digitize my analog sources (home movies; laserdiscs of movies not available on DVD and programming off of my DirecTiVo -- DirecTiVo, before I got impatient with the process and purchased a ReplayTV).

I believe that you can purchase CaptyDVD from LaCie, but I doubt that they include PixeDV.

I have heard that if you are diligent you can go to pixela's website ( www.pixela.co.jp ) and find workable copies of both for download (one source told me that he downloaded v2.5 of PixeDV in Japanese and converted it to English). All I have done is downloaded their v1.14 update of CaptyDVD off their English side of the website.

I find the "Standard" mode quality is about that of a VCD, even though it is MPEG2; Medium quality seems to be the best bang for the buck. High quality takes up about 50% as much hard disk space as Medium, but for not so much added quality. I will do some more testing to see the ratio of hard disk space to time.

As I mentioned the 2hr 15min version of All That Jazz took up about 5.6 Gig in High quality after trimming the HBO stuff that I had recorded before and after; requiring a conversion to 2 DVDs. I would like to see if 2 hours at Medium will fit on one DVD.

Unfortunately CaptyDVD will not accept a source file that will compile at too large a VIDEO_TS for one DVD; otherwise I could use DVD2ONEX to bring a High Quality copy down to one disk. More research needs to be done on this point.

I also have to learn how to install Media Pipe, so that I can get MacReplayTV to work. There are times I would like to convert the MPEG2 files off of ReplayTV to MPEG1, so that I can burn them as VCDs. In this case I could use Standard quality mode.

VCDs work especially well for 1 hour series programming that I like to share with my friends, and VCDs copy much faster than do DVDs and given the high quality of the source (DirecTV), the VCDs are very good quality themselves.

Interestingly enough, some friend's DVD players require me to make VCDs on CD-RWs for them to play.

[djagger]

Whew!

Lots to digest.

Thanks!