Alternate TV listing options

[logictrap]

--- In ExtractStream@y..., Mark Jeffcoat <jeffcoat@a...> wrote:
> I don't think I even got as far as getting GOPchop to build
> correctly before getting irritated and realizing that most
> of what I'm archiving is on commercial-free PBS anyway. 
It needs a bit of help to build, especially if you're trying to
build against the MJPEG mpeg2dec, but otherwise I haven't had many
problems. Should probably do the right autoconf magic and forward
on my fixes...

> I'm kindof surprised, though, that GOPchop doesn't work--
> have you got any more information? (Like, what exactly goes
> wrong, and what error/warning messages do you get; and
> how are you getting from tystream to MPEG2?) I'm trying 
> to figure out how close GOPchop is to being really useful tool.
It's pretty close. As far as I can tell, it seems to mangle the
program stream headers in some way that make the various other
Linux tools (demuxers, vcd tools, etc) unhappy with it. I've got a
program I've written which dissects MPEG1 files that I'm going to
(eventually) use to figure out what exactly is wrong with the
generated MPEG2 files, but work etc has been keeping me from
finishing it (actually, I'm a lazy bum, but I feel the need to
make excuses :) ). I think when I end up sitting down and
spending a few hours on it, it'll probably be pretty easy to
figure out what exactly is going wrong and either write a tool
to tweak the output or let the author know so he can fix GOPchop
(he tends to be pretty responsive to questions/bugs).

It also *kindof* feels like there's something slightly goofy to the
MPEG2 files that comes out of the TiVo as well but I'm not
entirely sure - I've got one stream I've extracted right now
which crashes the mpeg2dec stuff which sits underneath GOPchop.

> On a not-quite-related subject, what bitrates are you
> (and anybody else interested) using? Right now, I've
> got my Tivo set up to record at 480x480 with 1325000 bps
> when I want to fit an hour on an SVCD, and 2500000 when
> I'm trying to get close to the limit of SVCD quality, but
> those numbers are still are pretty arbitrary. Anybody got 
> any good reasons for picking particular values? 
I'm mostly interested in using the TiVo to make SVCDs of shows
which I can't get (American Gothic) or am unwilling to pay for
on DVD (Farscape). I've found that setting the TiVo through
TiVoweb to about 2400000 seems to work pretty well for an hour
long show which then gets editted down to 40-45 minutes. I
think generally you simply want the highest bitrate you can
get which is usable by you...I think I've seen 27600000 as
the maximum for "SVCD" video and I do know that my player
goes a little crazy sometimes up around that rate.