# Burning TiVo HD files to Blu-ray



## videojanitor (Dec 21, 2001)

I've been looking around for information on this, and while there are a few threads here and there, most of them are out-of-date and don't address my issue.

Here is all I want to do: Transfer HD content (recorded over-the-air) to either a Mac or PC, and then burn the file to a *BLU-RAY* disc WITHOUT re-encoding the material.

I have Toast 9 on the Mac, and it is SUPPOSED to be able to do this on regular DVD media (provided the file is small enough), but I have found that to be hit-and-miss. It usually works with 720p recordings, but falters with 1080i.

There is long thread over in the Series 3 section about burning TiVo HD to regular DVD media, but not much in there about burning to Blu-ray discs. There are mentions of Ulead's Moviefactory 6 Plus, as well as Roxio's Easy Media Creator 10, but I simply cannot find any definitive information about what will do what I want. Seems like there should be an ample number of people out there that are doing this.

If anyone has experience with this, I'd love to hear what you're doing.


----------



## Tiresius (Mar 22, 2004)

I'm looking to do the same thing. I have season one of Terminator Sarah Connors TTG files all sitting on a big HD waiting for a way to do this.

Ideally I'd like to put them onto standard dual-layer DVD media(yes they are small enough) and then watch them on my PS3 - all without reencoding if possible.

Anyone done this?


----------



## Prestond (Feb 4, 2008)

Hi Everyone,

I too have the Sarah Connor Chronicles season 1 recorded in high definition on standard DVDs (I love that show its just sooo cool and now they have a melty metal terminator ...oh boy).

I do use Ulead Movie Factory 6 Plus with the avchd add on to make PS3 compatible DVD disks. However, the encoding to h.264 takes a very long time (overnight), but you can do it with this software, but its about $100 of software. I also burn to HD-DVD for playback on my Toshiba HD-DVD player.

*But* what I found was the easiest way to do this is make a datadisc and play it back on the PS3:

1. Use Tivo Desktop or use Kevin Moye's fantastic program *kmttg* (see website  kmttg) to download the tivo movie. You can convert the .tivo file to .mpg using Kmttg if necessary. Kmttg also can decrypt your tivo file, run commercial skip and delete the commercials. It keeps the high definition aspect of the files, I can totally recommend Kmttg

2. Then use your DVD burning software to burn a dvd datadisc. Now what you must do is place the downloaded .mpg file in a folder titled VIDEO on the DVD when you burn the disk.

3. Then when the burn is complete take the DVD and place it in PS3.

4. Navigate on the PS3 UMB (user interface browser on the PS3) to Video, locate the icon titled Data Disk and click on that.

5. Then use the green triangle button on PS3 remote and open up the VIDEO folder on the datadisc and clcik on the mpg file and play

It seems that the PS3 recognizes the mpg as video file as long as it is under the VIDEO folder on the datadisc. Yes you can convert and burn the mpg file to h.264 file format but the conversion just takes forever. Using this method the burn just takes a few minutes and with a couple of extra steps you can play your recorded shows in this manner and skip the encoding.

I have played back mpg or mp4 or whatever format that PS3 file supports using this manner. You can do this on standard DVD disks, you dont need bluray disk but you are limited to a 4.7 Gig file size and it must be placed under folder titled VIDEO on the datadisc.

I put a label on my disks recorded this way identifying them as ps3 data disk with instructions on the inner label of the dvd box so to differentiate from other dvds.

This works sweet....I dont burn so much in HD-DVD or .mp4 or h.2264 formats...I just do the datadisc thing


----------



## Tiresius (Mar 22, 2004)

Prestond said:


> Hi Everyone,
> 
> I too have the Sarah Connor Chronicles season 1 recorded in high definition on standard DVDs (I love that show its just sooo cool and now they have a melty metal terminator ...oh boy).
> 
> ...


Prestond, This is pretty much what I'm looking for. It would be nice to have it play on any Blu-Ray player, but if this solution works with the PS3 and it doesn't take an overnight recode, that is good enough.

When I can find the time, I'll download Kevin's program and give it all a try. FYI, I know Kevin from an old AVS thread on the Cox Motorola 64xx and he has always provided good information there, so I expect his app works as advertised.

Looks like this solution requires no software to buy. I'll let you all know if/when I can find the cycles to try this.

Cheers,
Ray


----------



## videojanitor (Dec 21, 2001)

Tiresius said:


> I'm looking to do the same thing. I have season one of Terminator Sarah Connors TTG files all sitting on a big HD waiting for a way to do this.
> 
> Ideally I'd like to put them onto standard dual-layer DVD media(yes they are small enough) and then watch them on my PS3 - all without reencoding if possible.
> 
> Anyone done this?


Yes, I do this all the time. After trying a number of different software solutions, I settled on Arcsoft's "Total Media Extreme." It can take a TiVo MPG file (which you will have to first pass through something like TiVo Decoder or Video ReDo) and burn directly to DVD media without re-encoding.

The one trick is, the software WILL attempt to reencode it unless you tell it that you are burning to a Blu-ray disc -- so, I select Blu-ray as my output option, but then in the final step, I burn to my hard drive instead of a disc. Then I use Nero (or any other burning software) to take the files that were written to my drive and burn them to a DVD.

The Arcsoft software is pretty crude (in my opinion), but it does the job.


----------



## Prestond (Feb 4, 2008)

From what I understand this method of creating datadisk also makes it readable in a regular bluray player but I have only tested in PS3.

I am trying to do double layer disk for Monday nites show of Terminator as for some reason the show recorded on TivoHD is about 5.8 gigs, they must have used less compression or something. So due to larger size I couldnt use ISO-0996 format had to use one of the UDF formats. I tried UDF2.5 but that didnt work, the PS3 wouldnt read it. Will try one of the other UDF1.5 formats and see how that goes. PS3 is supposed to read UDF2.5 though.

Videojanitor, I havent tried the Total Media Extreme workaround you posted. That is interesting. I got a version from Aiptek the hidef video camera company of that software for like $4, but I think my version only lets you burn to disk, I didnt explore burning an image.


----------



## Prestond (Feb 4, 2008)

Confirmed that I was able to make new datadisk on DVD+R DL, I reburnt it but used UDF1.5 instead of UDF2.5 and I ensured I closed the session or closed the disk (not sure the language is the same for different burning s/w, - in my case I am using Ulead BurnNow that came with Movie Factory 6 Plus). My UDF2.5 disk is a lovely coaster.

Runs great on the PS3 with DVD+R DL disk burnt with UDF1.5....


----------

