TiVo to DVD/MP4 Roadmap wanted

[enrico]

Hello all...I'm new to ffmpegX and this forum, so I apologize in advance if this should be in the general Mac Video forum.

I have a SA TiVo with all the networking, etc. enabled and get .ty files to my Mac. I wish Macs had the equiv of TyStudio or the like to clip out commercials, etc. but we don't. I have several options to convert/demux the .ty file to "normal" mpeg2 video and audio files. There is another program that works sort-of for me to leave it muxed in MPEG2, but it's not as stable.

Anyway, given this, what are my options to make DVDs from this setup using ffmpegX? I have the latest upgrade to Toast Titanium 6, iMovie/DVD, and Quicktime Pro w/MPEG2 plugin. For portability's sake, I also like having little .mp4 (QT or *vix) to stay avail. on my laptop for easy viewing w/QT player, VLC or the like.

I a good deal of knowledge on how to do several of the little steps, but no real clear picture how to get from my starting to ending point w/o doing something really out-of-the way and inefficient (such as converting the mp2v file to dv, importing into iMovie, adding audio after converting to .aiff, etc, then using iDVD or export to MP4...horrible). I was hoping ffmpegX would give me enough tools in my arsenal to avoid this and stay in "compressed" land w/o having to constantly re-convert/re-encode, etc.

Thanks in advance!

[major]

If you have a .MPG DVD-compliant mpeg-2 file, you can load it in the "Tools" tab and click AUTHOR with the "Author as DVD" option checked to make a DVD out of it.

[enrico]

Thanks for the response...it's been a while since I've been able to revisit the problem, but better late than never.

This definitely does work for me, but I looking more towards a way to have several files on a DVD. As I said above, the MPEG2 files are coming from my TiVo (transcoded .ty files to MPEG2 w/MPEG2 or AC3 audio). However, natively from the device the video is often 480x480 (i think) rather than the standard 720x480, which makes Toast, Sizzle, etc. want to re-encode them entirely even though they are in the right format. Is there a way for ffmpegX to do this quickly, seeing how it's the same format?

Even if I take this step myself manually w/ffmpegX I am not sure how to get 4 of these files onto a single dvd where each MPEG2 file would be a chapter (or title).

Hope this clarifies where I'm going further. Thanks for any help!
--ec

[major]

With ffmpegX 0.0.9s, you may consider using the following process which will not re-encode at all your .ty streams:

- use the "Author as DVD" tool on your .ty files to convert them into .mpg files without re-encoding (and make a DVD out of a single .ty file)
- to make a DVD with multiple files, put all these .mpg files into one folder and run the S/VCD>DVD tool on the folder (audio must be mp2)