SOLID ANSWER: .Tivo to .MPG or MOV

[DarkPhoenix77]

So I have been seraching for over an hour and haven't been able to find a solid post on this: How do I convert .Tivo files to something I can edit on my Mac? I have tried Tivo Decoder, VisualHub, iTivo, and ffMpegX all with not so good results. So is there any program or a method for conversion?

[freebird73717]

Kmttg

it will download the .tivo file from your tivo unit and give you an mpg. It's platform independent and will work on a mac.

[DarkPhoenix77]

Kmttg

it will download the .tivo file from your tivo unit and give you an mpg. It's platform independent and will work on a mac.

Seemed like a cool program but all the file types I have tried have come out at unrecognizable formats.

[freebird73717]

Okay I don't have a mac but according to the tools website kmttg is supposed to work just fine on macs. I've used it on windows and linux so maybe I can help you figure out what's going on. Can you give me a little more information on how it fails for you?

Here is a guide I found that someone wrote for using kmttg on a mac
http://whatsonhdtv.blogspot.com/2010/05/save-hd-recordings-on-your-mac-stream.html

[DarkPhoenix77]

Well I followed the guide and did exactly as it said. But when I play the mpg in Quicktime, there is no video nor sound. I then tried to play it in a program called MPEG Streamclip and there IS sound, but no video.
MPEG Streamclip is pretty much a standard for Mac MPEG editing. Any advice on this issue?

[freebird73717]

Sounds like a codec issue to me. Could be wrong of course. I know nada about macs. Try playing the converted vid that kmttg gave you in vlc. It has it's own codecs. If it plays in that then you know it's codec related.

Hopefully some mac users will chime in and offer other suggestions.

[DarkPhoenix77]

Update: So VLC DID play it BUT there was an error message saying it was in an unrecognizable format.

[freebird73717]

Okay. Well It's good that it played it. Making some progress.
Can you open the the file in mediainfo and tell me what it says or post a screenshot?
http://mediainfo.massanti.com/

Also you might try posting this same problem/question at www.tivocommunity.com forums. A forum dedicated to tivo like that might give better answers/suggestions than I have.

edit
I was just thinking. The error message that vlc is giving is probably related to the tivo metadata text file that kmttg produces. Look in the directory that of your mpg and see if there is a text file with the same name as your video file.

i.e.
my_video_filename.mpg
my_video_filename.TiVo.txt

[DarkPhoenix77]

Ok so I attached a mediainfo screen shot. Hopefully i can provide some clarity. Also, there IS a txt file in the same folder in the following format: MYVIDEO.mpg and MYVIDEO.mpg.txt

[freebird73717]

Okay that's a normal mpeg file with ac3 audio. If you delete that text file vlc will not give you that error.

Don't know why mpegstreamclip wouldn't work with the file correctly because that's a normal looking file.
Avidemux should open the mpeg though.

[DarkPhoenix77]

..ok so bad news is that I used Avidemux2 and it was unable to open the file (for someone not working on a mac, you're doing really well). GOOD news is that I deleted the text file and it works perfectly in VLC. So... now the question is how do I get it to work in Quicktime, MPEGStremclip, etc?

[usually_quiet]

If I remember correctly, there is no native MPEG-2 support on a Mac. If someone wants to work with MPEG-2 using MPEG Streamclip, the missing Quicktime component must be purchased.

[DarkPhoenix77]

If I remember correctly, there is no native MPEG-2 support on a Mac. If someone wants to work with MPEG-2 using MPEG Streamclip, the missing Quicktime component must be purchased.

sorry I probably should have mentioned I have the component and can play MPEGs via Quicktime. Well, I can play any except those I convert with kmttg

[Case]

Have you tried TiVo Decode Manager to process .tivo files into regular MPEG-2 files?

[freebird73717]

Hey Phoenix now you got another Mac user here. Case is a really helpful guy. I'll keep following this thread and offer any other suggestions I can think of. I still think it's a codec issue though since vlc can play it using it's own internal codecs.

[DarkPhoenix77]

Have you tried TiVo Decode Manager to process .tivo files into regular MPEG-2 files?

TiVo Decode Manager is very unstable and glitchy for me and it's always an error when i attempt to download and decode. I don't know if it's because I have an intel mac or whatever reason but never seems to work out (it was the first program I ever used)

[freebird73717]

do you have the ac3 codec for your mac?

http://fplanque.com/dev/mac/ac3_codec_intel_mac_universal_a52_codec

http://trac.cod3r.com/a52codec/

[DarkPhoenix77]

I believe those codecs are included in Perian. if so, then yes I have those. the version of Perian I have installed is 1.2.1

[freebird73717]

According to the perian website it only supports ac3 in an avi file

here are the audio files supported by perian

Audio types: Windows Media Audio v1 & v2, Flash ADPCM, Xiph Vorbis (in Matroska), and MPEG Layer I & II Audio, True Audio, DTS Coherent Acoustics, Nellymoser ASAO

AVI support for AAC, AC3 Audio, H.264, MPEG4, VBR MP3 and more

http://www.perian.org/#detail

Try installing the ac3 codec I linked to earlier and then see if mpegstreamclip or quicktime can open your file.

[Case]

Try installing the ac3 codec I linked to earlier.

trac.cod3r.com/a52codec/ :
"A52Codec is now included in Perian. I'm no longer maintaining a separate download."

They're the same for AC3.

[freebird73717]

Ah. Ok.

[freebird73717]

Hey let's try an experiment. Download this small clip (about one minutes worth of an HD mpeg file 1280*720 mpeg video with 2channel ac3) that I downloaded from my tivohd using kmttg. The only difference is I used videoredo (unavailable for mac) to decrypt the .tivo file instead of tivodecode which is the default in kmttg.

http://www.mediafire.com/?9i7r0fhnqefkv0y
The file is about 86mb

If you can edit this file with mpegstreamclip then that narrows it down to tivodecode which kmttg uses to strip the mpeg from the .tivo file.

[freebird73717]

Another possible solution could be to use ffmpegx to convert the mpg that you got from kmttg to a DV file. Then edit that DV file with mpegstreamclip or avidemux.

Just throwing ideas out there.

[Case]

The clip worked for me in QuickTime Player, MPEG Streamclip and ffmpegX.
I seem to recall this movie being widescreen when I rented it, though.

[freebird73717]

Yeah my local fox station crops all their afternoon movies to a 4:3 format. Primetime shows and the evening news they air widescreen but for some reason they crop all the movies they air. Stupid I know. Why broadcast in HD resolution if you are just gonna crop it to a 4:3 screen.

It almost makes me think there is something wrong with the output that tivodecode gives since I used the exact same process with the exception of using videoredo to decode the .tivo file. Something to do with the way tivodecode muxes the file.

I think that phoenix out to try and run the mpg that got from kmttg through ffmpegx and output a dv file.