# Garbled top line of Video



## tim321 (Apr 2, 2007)

Looking for some help on and issue I have when I download from my Tivo. The top line of the video is all garbled. Does anyone have any ideas on how to adjust for that?

I am using and Intel Mac and using TivoDecoder Manager.

Thanks


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## steve614 (May 1, 2006)

What you're seeing is the VBI, which is the info for closed caption, etc.


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## ocntscha (Oct 22, 2003)

steve614 said:


> What you're seeing is the VBI, which is the info for closed caption, etc.


His garbled line, is your VBI, is my vertical blanking interval. Any idea why he's seeing it or what he can do about it?


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## dlfl (Jul 6, 2006)

ocntscha said:


> His garbled line, is your VBI, is my vertical blanking interval. Any idea why he's seeing it or what he can do about it?


See this post. Do an advanced search with key words "top", "line", and "noise" in this (Home Media Features) forum. Apparently only some models produce this line and apparently the Desktop Plus codec filters it out (in some cases at least). I believe the VBI is always there in the TV signal but it doesn't show on normal TV's because of vertical overscan.

If it's there in your files, I think the only way to get rid of it is to process them with a program that will crop them (e.g., gui4ffmpeg, aviSynth, etc.) This will take some time and may degrade quality -- is it worth it?


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## WayneCarter (Mar 16, 2003)

When the (analog) TV signal was being defined, an amount of time was allowed to account for the set-to-set differences in the time required for the scan to return (the scan generators were just analog oscillators adjusted by _manually_ set reactors). As TV circuitry has improved (ie scan is now generated digitally based on a precise clock), the need for the "slop" (aka "Overscan") has largely gone away - and some of the overscan zone has been preempted by datalinks as mentioned in the earlier posts to this thread.

If the "Static" didn't show on the TV, it will most likely not appear on the TV when the edited video is shown on a TV. If the video is being prepared for a digital display device, such as a computer, the "static" should be removed or masked.


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## tim321 (Apr 2, 2007)

I am putting this on my iPod and and I do see the VBI Line on the top. Any way I can get rid of it with out loosing video quality?

Thanks - Tim


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

If you upgrade to TiVo Desktop Plus it contains an extra plug-in which will actually trip off the top few lines of the video to eliminate this line. Alternatively there are some 3rd party media players out there that have an overscan mode which can eliminate this line as well.

Dan


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## tim321 (Apr 2, 2007)

Do the offer TiVo Desktop Plus for Mac users?


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## steve614 (May 1, 2006)

I don't know about the 'plus' version.

Check here.


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## ocntscha (Oct 22, 2003)

Sigh, I see this question come up every so often, somebody says they are getting static at the top, a hoard of people pop out of the woodwork to say its the vbi, its the vbi, its the vbi, just move along folks. Like seeing the VBI in your downloaded videos is as normal as breathing. And thats it, its dropped for another month or two until someone else asks the same question.

What I've never seen answered is why do only some people see that static in their downloads? I'm making an assumption here, I'm assuming the vast majority of people never run into this problem, I never have and I figure if it was a normal occurence I'd see FAR more chatter about it on these forums than I do. But everytime it comes up, everyone responds like it is normal. I get the whole VBI explanation but to me its not much of an explanation. Ok fine, we have the technical term for what the static is, but does anyone have a credible reason why only some people see it? To me it seems something must be wrong. The TV broadcast is out of specification, their cable company is screwing up the signal, maybe these peoples Tivos are defective, or maybe its just certain video codecs that are problematic. 

Or, maybe you guys do all routinely see that static and just by some dumb luck I've never run into it?


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## jmemmott (Jul 12, 2003)

ocntscha said:


> Sigh, I see this question come up every so often, somebody says they are getting static at the top, a hoard of people pop out of the woodwork to say its the vbi, its the vbi, its the vbi, just move along folks. Like seeing the VBI in your downloaded videos is as normal as breathing. And thats it, its dropped for another month or two until someone else asks the same question.
> 
> ...
> 
> Or, maybe you guys do all routinely see that static and just by some dumb luck I've never run into it?


If you did dig deeply into those posts, you would find that attempts have been made to answer your questions as well but the VBI idea seems simpler and resonates in this forum so it survives. Is it VBI, I suspect that it is not  or at least not what people think of when they traditionally talk about VBI. Most of the VBI data such as closed captioning is stored elsewhere in the MPEG stream and the information content of the static line is a little to limited to account for all of the information needed to reproduce the VBI content. My own speculation leads to information needed for Tivo popup ads and similar content.

I would also label it an artifact. The content of the static line is handled at the hardware level in the Tivo. The older 240 Tivos with a different Mpeg encoder do not create it. The series twos starting with the 540s which use a newer Broadcom chip set all seem to create it.

There is no such thing as overscan in an mpeg file and all video stored on your tivo is a type of mpeg file. When the analog signal is encoded to mpeg, this information is intentionally added as the first scanline of every mpeg picture. When the Tivo plays the video back, it strips off this scan line and uses the information for some thing else.

When the series 2 was first designed, no one was expected to take the video off the box so the existence of this noise in the first scan line didnt matter. With the release of TivoToGo it showed up as an annoyance that Tivo has tried to address in the plus version of the Windows software. It cant be resolved in other versions because it is burned into every picture by the hardware. The only choices are to use a decoder and/or player that mimics the hardware and strips the first scan line ( plus version, et. al. ), re-encode or touch up every picture ( DVD software ) or live with it.

You are also right that every so often someone new rediscovers all of this and the discussion reoccurs until everyone realize these are still the only options and chooses their own most acceptable solution...


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## rambler (Dec 3, 2005)

Tivo should give away the Plus version of TTG to owners of the 540 models (like me). How about it Tivo? That line is annoying!!


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## ocntscha (Oct 22, 2003)

Thanks for the informative response jmemmott. Wow. The only Tivo I have is a 240 Series which apparently explains why I've never seen any static line, ever, Plus version of Tivo To Go or not.

I had absolutely no idea the static line actually is par for the course with the 540s which is why I was so incredulous about the "normal as breathing" sentiment I see expressed every time the topic comes up. 

Hmm, well then out of the possible explanations I offered in my previous post it sounds like "these peoples Tivos are defective" is likely the correct answer. I had no idea "these people" was all 540 owners.

The older Series 2s transfer to a PC fast and without static, the newer Series 2s transfer slow and with static, the Series 3s don't transfer at all. :down: :down:


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## steve614 (May 1, 2006)

Yeah, 540 owner here. I've always accepted the VBI was "the static" I see.
Most of the time, I don't even notice it, unless the show I'm watching doesn't catch my interest.
What I see when I really concentrate: The top line looks like a squished version of timecode information like you see at the bottom of some DVD movie deleted scenes.


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## greg_burns (May 22, 2004)

My 240 has the line in downloads last time I checked, IIRC.


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## ocntscha (Oct 22, 2003)

greg_burns said:


> IIRC.


If there's a point in telling us you don't know whether your 240 exhibits the line problem or not, I'm missing it.


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## Hash (Apr 7, 2006)

ocntscha said:


> Sigh, I see this question come up every so often, somebody says they are getting static at the top, a hoard of people pop out of the woodwork to say its the vbi, its the vbi, its the vbi, just move along folks. Like seeing the VBI in your downloaded videos is as normal as breathing. And thats it, its dropped for another month or two until someone else asks the same question.
> 
> What I've never seen answered is why do only some people see that static in their downloads? I'm making an assumption here, I'm assuming the vast majority of people never run into this problem, I never have and I figure if it was a normal occurence I'd see FAR more chatter about it on these forums than I do. But everytime it comes up, everyone responds like it is normal. I get the whole VBI explanation but to me its not much of an explanation. Ok fine, we have the technical term for what the static is, but does anyone have a credible reason why only some people see it? To me it seems something must be wrong. The TV broadcast is out of specification, their cable company is screwing up the signal, maybe these peoples Tivos are defective, or maybe its just certain video codecs that are problematic.
> 
> Or, maybe you guys do all routinely see that static and just by some dumb luck I've never run into it?


I have done video capture and editing for a number of years now. This "static" is not unique to TiVo video files. EVERY capture card or tuner card that I have ever used produced this embedded information. The fact that the older TiVos did not produce a video file with this is not an indication that they were better - but, that they were worse. Those units produced a file that was less faithful to the original broadcast. If anything, a TiVo that doesn't produce this would be "defective".
​


tim321 said:


> I am putting this on my iPod and and I do see the VBI Line on the top. Any way I can get rid of it with out loosing video quality?
> 
> Thanks - Tim


Well, as for getting rid of it - if you are encoding to an AVI file, any "decent" video editing program (I use the free VirtualDub) will have a 'crop' feature. That will do it. If you are staying with MPEG, you will most likely see a significant hit in video quality if you try to edit it out, as decent MPEG2 editing / encoding programs are still hard to find.

Hash​


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## ocntscha (Oct 22, 2003)

Hash said:


> EVERY capture card or tuner card that I have ever used produced this embedded information.


Do you have a way of interpreting the embedded information in a .tivo file? Assuming for the sake of argument that the static actually is embedded information, if there's no way to interpret the meaning of that information then its really nothing more than useless static.


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## greg_burns (May 22, 2004)

ocntscha said:


> If there's a point in telling us you don't know whether your 240 exhibits the line problem or not, I'm missing it.


My point was that people were stating this was only a 540 problem. It is not.


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## ocntscha (Oct 22, 2003)

greg_burns said:


> My 240 has the line in downloads last time I checked, *IIRC.*





greg_burns said:


> My point was that people were stating this was only a 540 problem. It is not.


Says the man who yesterday doubted his recollection. Which is it, your memory suddenly improved overnight or you've gone and verified the 240/static problem first hand?


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## greg_burns (May 22, 2004)

ocntscha said:


> Says the man who yesterday doubted his recollection. Which is it, your memory suddenly improved overnight or you've gone and verified the 240/static problem first hand?


Take it easy. 

I hedged my statement because everyone in this thread is saying only the 540s do it as if it were gospel. I was half expecting somebody to jump in and say there were wrong. That hasn't happened. 

I only record from my 240, period. I have tons of transferred videos with the dancing line at the top.

Now, I just started a transfer from my old 240 when I posted earlier this morning. No dancing line. 

But before I concede, I gotta mention I switched from Dish to cable when I got my S3. Perhaps that has something to do with it.


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## jmemmott (Jul 12, 2003)

greg_burns said:


> My point was that people were stating this was only a 540 problem. It is not.


It would be foolish for anyone to claim that static can/will never appear on a 240 or that the mechanism I described earlier is the only one that can create noise in the final image. One of the other posts indicates that similar noise can even be found in video from other capture sources. However, I think it is generally closer to the truth than the VBI explanation. In the end, I accept your observation about your 240 at face value.

I will also note that my earlier description comes from observing the static line in video from several dozen different Tivos and models while I was trying to work out a means for extracting the closed captioning information from Tivo files. Originally, I was unable to extract the captioning on the 540 and wrote a utility to extract and play back the signal content of the static lines frame by frame in pursuite of the "VBI" therein. It is from that exploration that my version is derived.

In any case, it doesnt change the salient feature. As long as the noise is contained in the first scan line of every frame, there are only a limited number of ways of removing it. For simple play back : trim it; for conversion to a different format, re-encode it; Otherwise, ignore it.


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## tim321 (Apr 2, 2007)

Does anyone know how TiVo Desktop Plus gets rid of it?

Thanks - Tim


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

TiVo Desktop Plus includes a collection of DirectShow filters which are used for playback of .tivo files. One of these filters takes the video stream after it has been decoded and crops off the top 4 pixels before passing it along to the display filter. This same filter is also responsible for correcting the aspect of the video, so it also eliminates the squished effect seen when playing some .tivo files without the Plus upgrade.

Most analog TVs have about a 5% overscan, so this line as well as some of the black and fuzzy egdes of the video you see, are cropped off by the simple mechanics of the TV. Modern digital TVs attempt to simulate this effect by cropping the picture similar to the TiVo provided DirectShow filter. Although to a more severe effect.

Dan


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## tim321 (Apr 2, 2007)

Dan,

Do you offer Desktop Plus for Mac users? If not do you know if the Toast 8 product you teamed up with will fix this. 

Also if you don't already do you have any plans to release Desktop Plus for Mac? 

Thanks - Tim


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

First off I don't actually work for TiVo. This is an enthusiast run site, not an official TiVo site. I'm just a regular user like you. I just happen to like to tinker, so I know a bit about how the Windows software works.

As far as I know Toast is the only way to play .tivo files on the Mac. Although there is a program called TiVoDecode Manager that can convert the .tivo files to standard MPEGs then play them back in any media player app you choose. I'm not a Mac user so I don't know if there are any that have overscan simulation or not, but the TiVoDecode Manager software is free, so you might give it a try with some of the freeware players like VLC or mplayer and see what they do.

Dan


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## suomynona (Apr 11, 2007)

Other than Desktop Plus, is there any other software for PC that anyone can recommend to remedy this? (Desktop Plus is not compatible with Vista.) Thank you.


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

Actually for playback TiVo Dektop 2.3a works just fine on Vista. It's the transfer stuff that is broken. 

I don't know of any other video players out there that do this, but I'm sure there are some.

Dan


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## suomynona (Apr 11, 2007)

Dan203 said:


> Actually for playback TiVo Dektop 2.3a works just fine on Vista. It's the transfer stuff that is broken.
> 
> I don't know of any other video players out there that do this, but I'm sure there are some.
> 
> Dan


Agreed. 2.3a plays the files (through Windows Media Player on Vista), but the file being viewed still has the VBI.

When you say "transfer stuff that is broken," what exactly do you mean? I'm terribly confused. Thanks Dan


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

In Vista the transfer functions of TiVo Desktop are boken. Specifically the Beacon service does not run.

Dan


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## suomynona (Apr 11, 2007)

Dan203 said:


> In Vista the transfer functions of TiVo Desktop are boken. Specifically the Beacon service does not run.
> 
> Dan


I'm able to transfer files from my Tivo to my Vista machines with TivoToGo 2.3a installed on my Vista machines.

I don't know what Beacon is...

I am assuming that TivoToGo is nothing more than a tool to transfer the files from the Tivo player to a PC.

But something is telling me that what you're trying to say is that since Beacon doesn't work, the encoding that occurs (which means that TivoToGo does more than transfer files) doesn't remove the VBI... even on XP.

Again, none of this makes sense to me. IT SHOULD BE EASIER THAN THIS.

I am now using my old XP machine to transfer the files from my Tivo to the XP machine. Should be interesting to see if once the file has been transferred if the VBI is still there. So far it is (preliminary viewings of the file while it's transferring.) Even after using Direct Show Dump, the VBI is still there on the new file.

Infuriating.


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

OK let me explain a little better....

First off no encoding is going on when you transfer a file from your TiVo to your PC. TiVoToGo transfers an exact digital copy of what is stored on your TiVo to your PC. The only processing that occurs is that on the TiVo itself the audio and video are stores as two separate streams, before they're transfered to the PC they are multiplexed into a single PC friendly file. However the data does not change, just the packaging. So the black bars and white speckles you're seeing are in the original TiVo recording and NOT being added by any extra processing. The only reason you don't see them on your TV is because TVs have something called an overscan area which crops off about 5% of the width and height of the picture. So all that trash is hidden when you play it back on your TV. On a PC the video is displayed in it's entirety so you get to see all that stuff that's normally hidden by the overscan. I've heard that there are some media players which can simulate overscan to hide the trash, but I'm not familiar with exactly which ones have this feature. Also TiVo Desktop Plus includes a filter which will crop off the white trash at the top in all media players. It doesn't however get rid of the black bar trash around the other 3 sides so it's not a perfect solution.

As for Vista... Most people who complain that Vista does not work with TiVo Desktop do so because the TiVoBeacon service does not run on Vista. The TiVoBeacon service is used for all of the networking features of TiVo Desktop, so if it doesn't work then you can't transfer videos to or from your TiVo, or listen to music or view photos. Which means TiVo Desktop is basically useless. You appear to have been one of the luck few to get it to work correctly on Vista, so if that is the case then be happy about it.

Anyway I hope that explains what's going on a little better.

Dan


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## suomynona (Apr 11, 2007)

Dan203 said:


> OK let me explain a little better....
> 
> First off no encoding is going on when you transfer a file from your TiVo to your PC. TiVoToGo transfers an exact digital copy of what is stored on your TiVo to your PC. The only processing that occurs is that on the TiVo itself the audio and video are stores as two separate streams, before they're transfered to the PC they are multiplexed into a single PC friendly file. However the data does not change, just the packaging. So the black bars and white speckles you're seeing are in the original TiVo recording and NOT being added by any extra processing. The only reason you don't see them on your TV is because TVs have something called an overscan area which crops off about 5% of the width and height of the picture. So all that trash is hidden when you play it back on your TV. On a PC the video is displayed in it's entirety so you get to see all that stuff that's normally hidden by the overscan. I've heard that there are some media players which can simulate overscan to hide the trash, but I'm not familiar with exactly which ones have this feature. Also TiVo Desktop Plus includes a filter which will crop off the white trash at the top in all media players. It doesn't however get rid of the black bar trash around the other 3 sides so it's not a perfect solution.
> 
> ...


Thanks for taking the time to answer that, because even the tech support at Tivo couldn't answer it today. In fact, the person I spoke with seemed as clueless as I am (or was) about all of this.

Thanks again 

Now if I can just find a player that automatically hides the overscan...


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

Someone in another thread said that Media Player Classic can do this. I've never tried it myself, but you might want to give it a try.

Dan


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## greg_burns (May 22, 2004)

Does the latest version of Media Player Classic still have issues?

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=306097


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## Hash (Apr 7, 2006)

ocntscha said:


> Hash said:
> 
> 
> > EVERY capture card or tuner card that I have ever used produced this embedded information.
> ...


My undertanding is that it is mainly for closed captioning... I would _guess_ that if you remodulated the signal and fed it back to a TV tuner, the captioning would still be there. My interest has always been in getting rid of it, as I have no use for CC, _yet_...

Hash


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## suomynona (Apr 11, 2007)

It's a dos program and I'm totally clueless on how to use things like that. I tried though (on xp).

Thanks again Dan


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

Nah, it's not a DOS program you just have to download the right version. Here is the direct link...

http://downloads.sourceforge.net/guliverkli/mpc2kxp6490.zip?modtime=1142869788&big_mirror=0

It's a zip file, so you'll need to open the zip and then run the program inside.

Dan


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## suomynona (Apr 11, 2007)

I got that one confused with MPlayer/MEncoder. I believe those 2, along with ffmpeg, are for more experienced users...

Thanks again for your help Dan


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## wampachow (Mar 11, 2007)

Dan203 said:


> TiVo Desktop Plus includes a collection of DirectShow filters which are used for playback of .tivo files. One of these filters takes the video stream after it has been decoded and crops off the top 4 pixels before passing it along to the display filter. This same filter is also responsible for correcting the aspect of the video, so it also eliminates the squished effect seen when playing some .tivo files without the Plus upgrade.
> 
> Most analog TVs have about a 5% overscan, so this line as well as some of the black and fuzzy egdes of the video you see, are cropped off by the simple mechanics of the TV. Modern digital TVs attempt to simulate this effect by cropping the picture similar to the TiVo provided DirectShow filter. Although to a more severe effect.
> 
> Dan


Is there anyway to adjust those DirectShow filters to crop off another line or 2 off the top? While it's working ok for most channels, recordings from Turner Classic Movies seem to extend a little farther. I was hoping the setting would be in TivoTrans.dll, but I didn't see anything.

I'm creating files for my iPhone, so I tried adding an Alpha in Quicktime to crop out the top lines. It worked in Quicktime and iTunes, but the iPhone ignores the Alpha.

Thanks for your help!


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