# AVI File Copyright ??



## sghogan (Mar 22, 2002)

I decided to pay the $24.95 to upgrade to Desktop Plus so that I can play my "home movies" on my TiVo. Now my .AVI files show up on my Now Playing when I select my PC but when I try and select to move from my PC to my TiVo I get a message that the files are copyright protected.
These are my .AVI files from my digital camcorder. Is there a way to remove the "copyright"?. If there isn't, I plan to convert them to .WMA using Windows Moviemaker.


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## CuriousMark (Jan 13, 2005)

sghogan said:


> I decided to pay the $24.95 to upgrade to Desktop Plus so that I can play my "home movies" on my TiVo. Now my .AVI files show up on my Now Playing when I select my PC but when I try and select to move from my PC to my TiVo I get a message that the files are copyright protected.
> These are my .AVI files from my digital camcorder. Is there a way to remove the "copyright"?. If there isn't, I plan to convert them to .WMA using Windows Moviemaker.


Desktop will not support any file type in an AVI container, only xvid and divx. If you select the video tab in the file sharing portion of TiVo Desktop, you will see a list of what file types are supported.


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## sghogan (Mar 22, 2002)

The Tab says:
DivX or Xvid (.avi, .divx)
Looked to me that .avi files were supported.


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## Jiffylush (Oct 31, 2006)

sghogan said:


> The Tab says:
> DivX or Xvid (.avi, .divx)
> Looked to me that .avi files were supported.


Divx or Xvid files are supported, and their extensions can be either .avi or .divx.

All .avi files are not Divx or Xvid, especially if the source is a digicam.


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## windracer (Jan 3, 2003)

I ran into this same problem and was stumped at first by the copy-protected message ... until I realized my .avi file dumped straight from a DV camera is in DV-AVI format, not Xvid or DivX.  

Once I converted them to a supported format, they transferred just fine.


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## sghogan (Mar 22, 2002)

How did you convert? I tried Super but it just seems to hang. I used Windows Movie Maker, converted to .WMA and it seems to hand on transfer to TiVo.
I would appreciate knowing your conversion process.
Thanks


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## windracer (Jan 3, 2003)

I used DrDivX to convert them into DivX format.

Your conversion to WMV should have worked though ... not sure why the transfer would hang like that.


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## ph7 (Oct 27, 2007)

I upgraded to the Plus version of Desktop 2.5, which allowed Divx .avi files from my PC to show up on my Tivo in the PC folder. However, when I go choose to transfer the files from the Tivo menu, I get an error message telling me the files could not transfer, and to check "To Do" history for the reason.

When I go to the history, Tivo tells me the file could not be transferred from the PC for one of three reasons:

1. The file is an incorrect format.
2. The file is copyprotected.
3. The file has been deleted from the PC.


This message only appears for Divx files. Staight mpg and avi files do not have this problem.

Anyone know if this is the same issue? Although I paid the $25 for the upgrade, it does not appear to recognize the DIVX files.


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## windracer (Jan 3, 2003)

According to the release notes, the DivX files have to be encoded with version 4 or higher. Maybe yours were made with an older version of the codec?

Just guessing ...


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## briankasper (Dec 1, 2004)

sghogan said:


> How did you convert? I tried Super but it just seems to hang. I used Windows Movie Maker, converted to .WMA and it seems to hand on transfer to TiVo.
> I would appreciate knowing your conversion process.
> Thanks


I just ran into this exact problem when I tried to view files created on my Canon digital camera. I agree, TiVo needs to include more information about which AVI files are supported by TTCB.

In any event, I used FFMpeg to convert the AVI file to MPEG2. A Windows version of FFmpeg can be downloaded from

http://arrozcru.no-ip.org/ffmpeg_builds/bin/ffmpeg-r10461-gpl-static-win32.tar.bz2

The file pointed at by the link is a "tar" archive that has been compressed using the "bzip2" program, thus the tar.bz2 extension (this is essentially the same as a "zip" archive). I think recent versions of Winzip know how to uncompress these, but there are other free tools available as well (sorry, it's a bit involved to go into the details about using various tools to extract the necessary files from the archive).

FFmpeg is not packaged neatly as a Windows installer. You have to extract all the files from the .tar.bz2 archive, put them where you want them (for example C:\Program Files\FFmpeg), and then add that directory to your path.

Once you've done that, this command should convert your file to one that can be used with TTCB:

ffmpeg -i name.avi -s 640x480 -vcodec mpeg2video -acodec mp2 -ar 44100 -b 1600000 name.mpg

where "name.avi" should be replaced with the name of your input AVI file and "name.mpg' should be replaced with whatever you want to call the TTCB-compatible file that will be created.

This assumes the pixel resolution of your video is 640x480; if not, change the resolution specification in the command above (and possibly scale the "-b 1600000" accordingly, this is the bitrate at which your output video is created). The "1600000" value is one i chose based upon an example I found somewhere else on the web; I don't know if it's too high or not, but it works.

Once you've created "name.mpg", put that file in your TivoRecordings folder and it should appear in your TTCB share under "Now Playing".

Yes, this process could be much simpler, and I'm sure there are non-free programs out there that make this much more of a point-and-click process, but if you want to get free tools, you sacrifice a bit in ease-of-use.

-B


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