[ExtractStream] New to the group, general questions

[Roger Merchberger]

--- celledge2 <celledge2@y...> wrote:
> I am new to the group. I have a stand alone Tivo running 2.5 
> software and 2 X 40GB drives. I have installed Tivonet and played 
> around for a few days now. I have tried several tools to extract 
> video with only partial success. As a small test, I extracted the 
> Tivo demo and it converted flawlessly.

Cool... what's the FSIDs for that? My daughter (3 years old) loves
it... ;-)

> However, when I try to 
> convert ty streams of my recordings, I either get video only or 
> nothing at all (all bad). I also get a green bar down the left
> side.

Dunno about the other problems -- there are many things that can go
awry with the extraction / splitting process - but the green bar is
normal.

Are you in the UK? UK PAL streams are different than the NTSC ones...

The more info you can provide us with, the easier it'll be to find
out the problem.

> My questions:
> 
> Is it required to record at best quality? (dumb question I know, I
> always do..just asking)

Not a dumb question, but methinks you're assuming the wrong reason...
If you're looking to archive to DVD, you want best quality because
it's a higher resolution than any other setting (544x480, IIRC), but
if you're looking to archive to SVCD, you want to record at High
Quality, as that's the same resolution as the SVCD spec, 480x480.
Otherwise, you'll be transcoding down to that resolution anyway,
that's a lot of extra download time & CPU time for essentially no
better picture.

> Do others have problems with only some recordings converting 
> successfully?
>
> With so many tools out there now, what is the best combination of 
> extraction/conversion utilities? I have been using Tytool to
> extract 
> the ty streams because it is very easy to use. Then I have tried 
> several different conversion tools including Tytool and
> splitstream. 
> I just don't end up with good audio and video files.

Have you seen my page at http://tivo.30below.com/zmerch ?
Other than not mentioning TyTool yet, it's a pretty up-to-date
walkthru of the methods I use to extract & archive my shows...
HTH,
Roger "Merch" Merchberger

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