Getting a new problem with transferred TiVo recordings

[tonyaldr]

I transfer my TiVo recordings on occasion to my PC for editing with MPG2CUT2 and have lately been getting the error - MISSING FIRST KEY-FRAME header on input file.
This causes the program to not be able to stop at a frame so as to do the edit. Has anyone seen this before and if so, know of a fix? Thx!

[netmask56]

Is the format TS ? If so run it through TS-Doctor.

[tonyaldr]

Thx. I didn't know about that product. I downloaded and tried it but it didn't fix the problem. I think I'm going to have to do conversions to another format and work from there. I'm more interested in why this is starting to happen and if anyone else experienced it.

[usually_quiet]

Thx. I didn't know about that product. I downloaded and tried it but it didn't fix the problem. I think I'm going to have to do conversions to another format and work from there. I'm more interested in why this is starting to happen and if anyone else experienced it.

I don't have a TiVo to test with, but while reading the maker's product comparison chart recently, I noticed that an editor that I use, VideoReDo TV Suite V5, is supposed to be able to process files download from a TiVo. The program has a free trial.

[tonyaldr]

Thx. I used it in the past but it doesn't edit without re-rendering which is what I'm looking for with my TS files.

[netmask56]

TS-Doctor doesn't re-render after basic edits like removing commercials etc. Neither should VideRedo or Womble .

[usually_quiet]

Thx. I used it in the past but it doesn't edit without re-rendering which is what I'm looking for with my TS files.

I use VideoReDo TV Suite V5 on a regular basis to edit TS files containing H.264 +AAC/AC3 or MPEG2 + AC3. VideoReDo TV Suite v5 normally only re-encodes the frames in the GOPs adjacent to the cuts. However, if the video streams and/or audio streams contain errors (such as corrupted or missing frames) VideoReDo TV Suite 5 will re-encode more of the video. The only time that I have seen it re-encode everything was with codecs other than H.264 +AAC/AC3 or MPEG2 + AC3.

[tonyaldr]

Thx for the info. I haven't used it in years so I'll download a trial to check it out. Still I wish there was a product that could just refresh the frames on a video and re-assign the Key-frames.

[usually_quiet]

Thx for the info. I haven't used it in years so I'll download a trial to check it out. Still I wish there was a product that could just refresh the frames on a video and re-assign the Key-frames.

Keyframes can't simply be re-assigned. For codecs that use interframe compression, a keyframe is the only frame in the GOP containing complete picture information and is referenced by the other frames in the GOP, which only contain partial picture information. (In some cases, the frames in the GOP which are not keyframes not only reference the keyframe but other frames in the GOP as well.) This means a new keyframe can be created only by re-encoding using picture information from other frames that it originally referenced to build a complete picture, and the rest of the frames in the GOP which follow it must also be re-encoded because they now need to reference the new keyframe rather than the old one.

[tonyaldr]

That explains why by reconverting to MPG via Freemake Video Converter fixes the problem, but it strips out the close captions and doubles the filesize as the MPEG is no longer TS but PS format. I'm working around it by extracting the CC to an SRT, converting the video and then re-multiplexing using MKVToolkit GUI. Seems to work so far. The only downside is the larger filesize and extra time involved.

[usually_quiet]

That explains why by reconverting to MPG via Freemake Video Converter fixes the problem, but it strips out the close captions and doubles the filesize as the MPEG is no longer TS but PS format. I'm working around it by extracting the CC to an SRT, converting the video and then re-multiplexing using MKVToolkit GUI. Seems to work so far. The only downside is the larger filesize and extra time involved.

VideoReDo TV Suite V5 might save you some work if these are N. American closed captions. I can confirm from personal experience that, unlike similar smart encoding editors, the latest version of VideoReDo TV Suite V5 doesn't strip this form of closed captioning from either MPEG-2 or H.264 video files. This type of closed captioning is stored in the GOP user data, and VideoReDo copies the CCs to the edited file.

[tonyaldr]

I finally downloaded VideoReDo as you suggested and it does indeed handle these files pretty well. Thanks for the suggestion. I'm not sure if I'm going to continue using it as it crashes after editing several files and the price is pretty high for software that's not a little more stable. Just thought I'd report back that it does indeed work and can be the answer as a last resort.

[usually_quiet]

I finally downloaded VideoReDo as you suggested and it does indeed handle these files pretty well. Thanks for the suggestion. I'm not sure if I'm going to continue using it as it crashes after editing several files and the price is pretty high for software that's not a little more stable. Just thought I'd report back that it does indeed work and can be the answer as a last resort.

VideoRedo TV Suite v5 hasn't crashed all that often when I have used it. As far as I can recall, it has only crashed when there were an excessive number of errors in the file. As an example, I edited 3 files, one after the other, a few days ago but the last one froze during editing. When I tried using VideoReDo's "QuickStream Fix" to "re-sync" the problem file to deal with any errors that might be present in the stream, the report noted that over 1000 frames had to be removed to keep A/V sync.