[ExtractStream] convert to divx?

[Mike Schoenborn]

My needs are similar to yours; casual one-time viewing rather than
creating ultra-quality archives of shows. The tivo does the
time-shifting, and divx on the laptop allows location-shifting.

This approach isn't too painful...

TyTool to extract to .m2v/.m2a, letting it split while extracting.

AVI2MPG2 (bbMPEG) to do a simple multiplex to .mpg (MPEG-2 layout,
but VCD & SVCD layouts are available). Skip the front panel "Add"
button and go straight to "Start Encoding", then "Settings", and fill
in the output, .m2v, and .m2a file names. (Thanks VCDHelp.com)

FlasKMPEG the .mpg to .divx. A 1 hr, 760MB, tivo-Basic, PBS, talking
heads-type show reduces down to a reasonably viewable 220MB or so.

I use XviD, rather than DivX, simply because it's open source. Rather
than tweak color/brightness/contrast adjustments while encoding, I use
ZoomPlayer for display, which provides (video adapter permitting)
overlay controls at runtime to get a nice, bright picture. The
multiplexing is quick, but the divx conversion (1-pass, constant
quality) is only a little quicker than realtime on a 1.6MHz Athlon. I
never touch the audio, and it seems to sync to video just fine.

The aggravating part of all this is all the damn button pushing... mouse
selecting files from dialog boxes, mousing for codecs, pushing buttons
to configure things, ugh! I wish Windows programmers would wake up and
realize the power of command line tools, piping, and batch operations. 
Frame serving is a nice start, but it's still way too manual. I'm tired
of "interacting" with my computer, that novelty wore off years ago; I
just want it to do the damn job, according to my scripted instructions,
and be done with it! I'm hoping AVISynth will be the answer to my
prayers, but I haven't had time to work with it yet.

(Thanks all for letting me rant. I feel much better now.)

Mike


At 01:23 AM 7/29/2002 -0000, you wrote:
>All of the tivo to vcd guides have been a tremedous help. But does
>anyone have a tivo to divx guide? I usually rip a few shows straight
>into MPEG2 to watch on the train in WinDVD. But the laptop harddrive
>I have is only 6 megs and fills up quickly, so I'd like to squeeze a
>little more there and figure this would be the best way. I realize I
>could do all the same steps but then just encode to Divx in Virtual
>Dub but I was hoping for something with less steps like going from .ty
>-> .mpg -> divx rather than splitting the file.
>
>Dave