[ExtractStream] Could we categorize every tool? - right on and a challenge

[Mark Weaver]

Joe,

RIGHT ON:
You are on the right track!!! I have been quietly following this community
for about a month and for me it is not organized well enough for me for it
all to sink in. The active members are doing some very good work but it is
hard for the novice to follow. A little structure would be very cool. I
was thinking along the same lines, trying to piece together the parts (what
leads to what, what parts are peers, etc.) The cookbooks that are out
there only list a single way to accomplish the end game, while I get the
impression that there are some very good alternatives. At least your
numbering scheme gets your mind in the right ballpark. I am optimistic
that this community will follow your lead.


THE CHALLENGE:
For me, I am also looking for a solution that will keep me from voiding my
warranty of my new Series-2 Tivo box.

What I would like to see this community come up with is a configuration
that:
-- Has minimal changes to the Tivo Box:
- so that as new Tivo OS updates are processed they are less likely to
break the hacked configuration.
- ideally can this be done with NO changes to one of the new Series-2
boxes that has a USB port
-- Runs a program on a Windows client (or Linux) box that
-1- offers some level of Tivo box control and content selection
(off-load) via the add-on network card (or USB port in the case of Series
2).
-2- runs a set of converts to go to the selected content (MPEG, DIVX,
etc.) from the client box.
-3- does whatever final prep so that "fair use" CDs could be created or
saved onto the home network.
(maybe all three steps could be combined into one step)

Which solution is the closest to meeting this configuration challenge?

Mark

----- Forwarded by Mark Weaver/Austin/IBM on 05/01/2002 05:50 PM -----

"jemenake" 
<joe@e... To: ExtractStream@yahoogroups.com 
> cc: 
Subject: [ExtractStream] Could we categorize every tool? 
05/01/2002 03:47 
PM 
Please respond to 
ExtractStream 





I just started reading about the extraction process a few days ago,
but I'm still pretty confused. There seem to be several tools that
all do the same (or similar) job. Which one you choose seems to
depend upon what OS you ultimately want the video files to end up on
and what format you want them in. Also, I'm a little unclear as to
where the extraction and/or conversion happens. Some people seem to
use their TiVoNet cards to get the videos over the net, while some
other people speak as though they're just pulling the drive out of
their TiVo on occasion and popping it into another Linux box and
extracting there. So, I'm a little confused.

Now, keep in mind that, in my mind anyway, once you get the TiVo
video files into some "standard" format (AVI, mpeg, divx, whatever),
then we're done. The TiVo video extraction is complete. Conversion
from one of the standard video formats another (VCD, SVCD, quicktime,
whatever) is a problem that is outside of the scope of TiVo video
extraction.

So, with that in mind, I thought of some categories. Each category
has a letter (T, L, or W for whether it happens on the TiVo, a Linux
box, or a Windows box) and a number for what general step it is in
the process. Here's what I came up with:

THINGS THAT CAN HAPPEN ON A TIVO
================================
T0 - "Prepping" it for the rest of the set-up (installations of vim,
tnlited)
T1 - Reading the audio/video from the TiVo hard drive
T2 - Initial converting/transcoding/muxing/demuxing the raw TiVo
video data
T3 - Sending videos over the net (to a Linux or Windows box) (Things
like httpd.tcl and netcat fall in this category, I imagine)

THINGS THAT CAN HAPPEN ON A LINUX BOX
=====================================
L1 - Reading the audio/video from the TiVo hard drive (assuming you
pulled the drive from your TiVo and have it in your Linux box)
L4 - Fetching the videos from the TiVo (lynx? netcat?)
L5 - Final converting/transcoding/muxing/demuxing the video data
(which is either raw or in some intermediate format) to get a
standard format.

THINGS THAT CAN HAPPEN ON A WINDOWS BOX
=======================================
W4 - Fetching the videos from the TiVo
W5 - Final converting/transcoding/muxing/demuxing the video data
(which is either raw or in some intermediate format) to get a
standard format (like the Tmpgenc template that I've seen floating
around).

Now, a few observations:
- Not all steps are necessary. Although there might be some processes
that use steps T2 *and* L5 or W5, but either step could do all of the
conversion, eliminating the need for the other step.
- L1 and L4 are mutually exclusive.

So, what are the various tools out there and what category do they
all fall into. Also, what sequence of steps is everyone using?

(end)