# Mac "TiVoizer" Converter on VersionTracker



## half.italian (Mar 11, 2006)

New converter app posted on VersionTracker:

TiVoizer

If the main download button doesn't work, check the feedback posts for a few different mirrors.

This is a first beta release, so please let me know any successes or failures you may have.


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## TydalForce (Feb 9, 2006)

I'm testing out some conversions to play around, see how it goes... so far, I like what you've done with the interface.

Another suggestion - now that you're using version numbers, might be time to add an About box ;-)

I'm mirroring at:
http://www.tydalforce.net/TiVoizer/


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## mckingsley (Dec 29, 2002)

Thats great you got it up on versiontracker. 

Has anyone tested this out with .VOB files from a DVD?
Also does anyone know how to combine those files so that it is one file for the whole movie?

Thanks


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## half.italian (Mar 11, 2006)

Not sure if it will work with vob files, but I don't see why not.

If you are trying to get a high quality 4:3 DVD onto your tivo I suggest using mplayer.

Download mplayer and then in terminal type

```
/path/to/mplayer dvd:// -dumpstream -dumpfile /Users/george/Desktop/filename.mpg
```
It worked great for me with near perfect quality and real-time. The files are comparable in size to DVD's though. I also couldn't get it to work on 16:9 DVDs.

If the vob file you already have is a size handled by tivo, try renaming the extension to .mpg and putting it in your GoBack dir. Worked for me a few times.


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## mckingsley (Dec 29, 2002)

half.italian said:


> Not sure if it will work with vob files, but I don't see why not.
> 
> If you are trying to get a high quality 4:3 DVD onto your tivo I suggest using mplayer.
> 
> ...


What does mplayer do with the DVD? Does it take the whole movie and put it into one file? Because as I understand it, there are multiple .VOB files on the DVD.

You say it does not work with 16:9, for a fast learning newbie is 16:9 the widescreen DVD's?

Is there a way to combine the .vob files?

Do you or anyone else have a good recommended way to get a whole DVD movie onto the Tivo, high quality or not?


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## half.italian (Mar 11, 2006)

> Do you or anyone else have a good recommended way to get a whole DVD movie onto the Tivo, high quality or not?


The mplayer command should do just that. It finds the longest track on the DVD, assumes it is the movie, and converts it to one mpeg file that Tivo can read. I messed around a bit using mencoder to encode and downsample a DVD on the fly, but the results were sketchy in places. If you are feeling adventurous...try this... maybe you'll have better luck. I am on an ibook after all.


```
/path/to/mencoder dvd:// -oac lavc -ovc lavc -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg2video:vrc_buf_size=1835:vrc_maxrate=8000:vbitrate=5000:keyint=18:acodec=mp2 -ofps 30/1.001 -of mpeg -mpegopts format=dvd -vf scale=640:480 -o filename.mpg
```
16:9 is widescreen.

Good luck


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## mckingsley (Dec 29, 2002)

Thanks, all this is helpfull. I guess the reason why I am confused is because, for example, one dvd I am trying to work with has 4 seperate 1gb .vob files that make up the main feature, so I was wondering how to combine.


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## half.italian (Mar 11, 2006)

I think, but am not positive, that the multiple vob files are parts of the menu and extra features, etc. One of them, usually the biggest is the full movie. I don't think you should need to combine anything unless the movie is split on two DVDs.

If you still need to combine vobs , check out ffmpegX under the "Tools" tab


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## mckingsley (Dec 29, 2002)

half.italian said:


> I think, but am not positive, that the multiple vob files are parts of the menu and extra features, etc. One of them, usually the biggest is the full movie. I don't think you should need to combine anything unless the movie is split on two DVDs.
> 
> If you still need to combine vobs , check out ffmpegX under the "Tools" tab


Yeah FWIW, I put in two different DVD's and they both had about 4 or 5 - 1 GB VOB files that made up the whole movie. I also did some basic searching and was not able to verify but someone somewhere said something about vob files can't be bigger that 1 GB.

Anyway I did find a good way to combine them - using MPEG Streamclip like some others had mentioned. It does a good job of combining them and outputting to mpeg as long as you click into the prefernces to fix timebreaks. Works good at full quality, and I can always downsample using your program or ffmpegx.


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## turnipsun (Jan 14, 2006)

Before I start I must state I am a newbie... So take this lightly..

I got a chance to quickly test tivoizer.
I must say its great.
Its simple and clean, and nice it is meant for tivo and there is no guess work.

I only did some quick testing, but so far so good.
I even tested goback on a file that was still being encoded, and it worked great!! Especially with the new Tivo Desktop MAC HACK...

I do have a questions though...
Clicking the 16:9 box, does that transform 16:9 content to 4:3?
I have a pioneer 810 and I am able to play 16:9 mpegs on my tivo (or so I think), and I was wondering if tivoizer changes the aspect ration?

If it does I would love to see a option to preserve 16:9 content for pioneer tivos.(Once again I think pioneer 810 are able to play 16:9, I remember reading it somewhere but can't remember where, also belive they are the only tivos that are able to do this?)

I do have some suggestions for the next release...

Batch encoding ( A MUST)

And some automatic ability to encode videos on the fly when they are selected threw the tivo. (I would love to see all my .avi videos on my tivo, and when selected, tivoizer would start up and start encoding to .mpg)

This is just a thought, but a HME app. that would allow the selection of files to be encoded by tivoizer. (It would be great to access tivoizer threw TIVO using HME, you would just be controlling the program remotely from your tivo, kind of like Audio faucet does with music..)

So like I said I still have a lot of testing to do, but I thought I would put my 2 cents in.
And again I am NEWBIE.. so if I state anything wrong PLEASE PLEASE CORRECT ME..
thanks,
Chris


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## half.italian (Mar 11, 2006)

Glad you tried it out and it worked. Hope it's making the process easier. The 16:9 box pads an image on top and bottom to fit within the normal 4:3 TV screen. I didn't know there were Tivo's with the GoBack functionality that could play 16:9 videos. That's cool!

I'm getting rid of the 16:9 box in the app altogether, and replacing it with an "auto-size" checkbox. It will take any size of video and output it at 4:3 whatever the dimensions. If you want to keep your video at it's original size, you can just leave that box unchecked. I will definitely include batch funcionality, and I will eventually set it up to run in a "watch" mode where it watches a specific folder, and converts any video added to it. Probably either as they are added, or at a certain time every day. That probably won't come till the third version.

The HME idea is cool, but I'm not sure how usefull it would really be if you had a folder that was automatically converted. Once I get the program to where I'm happy with it, I'll look into it.

Thanks for the input!

~half.italian


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## Dennis Wilkinson (Sep 24, 2001)

half.italian said:


> Glad you tried it out and it worked. Hope it's making the process easier. The 16:9 box pads an image on top and bottom to fit within the normal 4:3 TV screen. I didn't know there were Tivo's with the GoBack functionality that could play 16:9 videos. That's cool!


16:9 and 4:3 video signals are exactly the same, and all TiVos can play them back. All the "magic" with 16:9 happens when the video is made (a widescreen image is scaled only on the horizontal to fit into the 4:3 frame) and when it is played back (it's scaled again on the horizontal, this time getting wider.) So if you already have a 16:9 video, the thing that determines whether you can view it properly isn't your TiVo, it's your television.

The big difference between 16:9 video on a TiVo and 16:9 video on a DVD is that DVD players can all letterbox the 16:9 video in a 4:3 frame to be played on a 4:3 television, while TiVos can't.


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## half.italian (Mar 11, 2006)

Good to know. I don't have a widescreen so I can't try it out. I checked the Tivo specs for playing back videos awhile back, and widescreen formats were not listed. I just assumed anything other than those listed couldn't be played back on a tivo. They show up as a black screen on my TV.

~half.italian


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## turnipsun (Jan 14, 2006)

I just tested tivoizer with a 16:9 video and it encoded perfect to 16:9 and plays perfect on my tivo., Like before I said I had the pioneer 810 tivo. 

I used to have a Humax along side my Pioneer, and the Humax would not play transferred 16:9 videos,( well it would paly but there were video problems and was unwatchable). 

After researching the reasons for this, I some how found information that, only the pioneer would play 16:9 transferred videos. 

I am not sure why this is possible but from my experience the pioneer is the only tivo unit that will play transferred 16:9 content. 

As for tivoizer, its working great for my 16:9 shows and looks great.. 
thanks again..


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## Dennis Wilkinson (Sep 24, 2001)

turnipsun said:


> I am not sure why this is possible but from my experience the pioneer is the only tivo unit that will play transferred 16:9 content.


I play 16:9 transferred content all the time on both my TiVos (a 240 Series 2 and a Toshiba RS-TX20). The underlying video is exactly the same. For example, on NTSC DVD, 16:9 and 4:3 are both 720x480 at 29.97fps, plus a minor flag to let the DVD player do letterboxing to "convert" the video to something that looks correct on a 4:3 display.

The most likely problem would be bit rate. 16:9 content may be encoded at a higher video bit rate, and if you go over 8Mbps some TiVos _may_ have problems.

The only difference in the formats supported by the DVD models and the non-DVD models is whether or not AC-3 audio is supported in the stream: DVD players support it, the others don't.

See:

http://customersupport.tivo.com/knowbase/root/public/tv251080.htm?


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## Unix_Beard (Dec 22, 2003)

I can't get this to work on my test file. I downloaded the show "IT Crowd" (I believe its a BBC show which is freely downloadable) which is a 16:9 file measuring 640x352. The file is an xvid AVI. I run it through Tivoizer with 16:9 checked and get a jumbled 4x3 show with excellent audio.


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## turnipsun (Jan 14, 2006)

just wanted to send a thanks out to dennis, for taking the time to explain to a newbie.

thanks again,
chris


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## half.italian (Mar 11, 2006)

Unix beard - try this one with "autosize" unchecked. It shouldnt change the size at all


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## Rosincrans (May 4, 2006)

I love this app, definately simpler than FFMPEG. 

My only suggestion would be the ability to drop a file onto the window, instead of browsing to it. Don't know how hard that would be. 

Thanks


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## turnipsun (Jan 14, 2006)

--Rosincrans

The drag and drop idea is great and I second that idea,

Especiall if you could drag multiple files, and have it batch enocode.

that would be awsome..

Chris


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## James M. Duff (Nov 7, 2003)

I'm unable to successfully transfer a "tivoizer" converted file from my mac to my tivo. The transfers begin, but do not complete. The failure occurs in two ways. If I initiate the xfer from mac to tivo, and begin to watch during the xfer, it will download only the first 7 minutes of the show, then stop. A 7 minute show then remains in the Now Playing list. If i do not watch during the xfer, the xfer fails, and does not leave a partial file in the now playing list. In both cases, the To Do list recording history shows "not transferred" with the following message:

"filename.mpg from [computer name] (transfer attempted on {date} at {time}) This program was not transferred onto this DVR because the file was larger than expected or because the file was corrupted."

I've tried this with several different sized source files, with and without the Autosize box checked. None of the source files, nor the .mpg files created by the tivoizer conversion were excessively large (all less than 1G). I previously deleted numerous recordings on my tivo and am reasonably sure that this is not an issue of insufficient tivo hard drive space. (deleted files were also removed from the "recently deleted" folder)

To test the basic Tivo Comeback functionality I downloaded a .tivo file from my tivo to my mac using safari, deleted it on the tivo, then re-uploaded it from the mac to the tivo using Tivo Comeback. This test was completely successful. The size of this .tivo file on my mac was approx. 1Gb, which is larger than any of the tivoizer converted files I attempted to xfer.

Since a tivo created .tivo file was successfully uploaded, it appears that the problem exists only with the tivoizer/ffmpegx created files. I've made attempts with the Tivoizer Autosize box checked and unchecked.

Supporting Info

2 different macs, both with:
Mac PBG4, OS 10.4.6, 
Tivoizer v0.2b

tivo connected to mac network via ethernet

I would appreciate any suggestions anyone may have to help get this working. Thanks.


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## mckingsley (Dec 29, 2002)

I am having similar issues myself. I hadn't posted yet because I wasen't sure if it was something custom with my Tivo. I have reverted back to just using FFmpegx for now with the script to give the correct output.


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## Banzai (Oct 19, 2004)

Ditto the two comments above. The good news is, we're at least getting warmer!


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## James M. Duff (Nov 7, 2003)

mckingsley said:


> I am having similar issues myself. I hadn't posted yet because I wasen't sure if it was something custom with my Tivo. I have reverted back to just using FFmpegx for now with the script to give the correct output.


 can you tell me where i can get a download of the ffmpegx script you are referring to? thanks.


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## mckingsley (Dec 29, 2002)

James M. Duff said:


> can you tell me where i can get a download of the ffmpegx script you are referring to? thanks.


I don't have a place to upload it to, but if you want to give me your email address I can give it to you or IM me at:

aim: mkingsley8
msn: [email protected]
Yahoo: mkingsley8


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## half.italian (Mar 11, 2006)

Haven't had much time to work on tivoizer, hopefully I'll get some time this weekend. The batch functionality is almost there. There have been a few posts of problems converting videos thru Tivoizer. If you have a problem, please copy and past the entire log file from console and send it to me at [email protected]. I'm curious to know what's causing the problems.

The only movies I have found that wont convert are wmv's and rm's. Could be that some obscure codecs are not supported through ffmpeg without additional libraries.

If it works thru ffmpegx, it should work thru tivoizer as it is the same backend. I parse the output to get the size etc, so it's possible that certain videos are giving back info in a format the Tivoizer cant read. If that is the case, it wouldn't fill out the fields for size, codec, duration, etc. One more thing to check...it writes a zero length movie to /tmp/TIVOIZER.mpg If after trying to convert a video, you don't see that file, make sure the directory exists, and verify the permissions. Can't imagine that either of those would be off, but who knows.

In regards to the transfering problem...try Galleon. Not sure if it will make a difference, but it's worth a shot. Also try a wired connection straight to your tivo. Too slow a transfer speed could be freaking out the box.


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## SnakeEyes (Dec 26, 2000)

Does anyone still have b2 of this app? Or is there anything else that easily converts video files for TiVo and handles changing ARs?


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## Thunderclap (Nov 28, 2005)

I've never used Tivoizer but a program that I do use, and it is updated frequently, is VisualHub. Not to steer business away from Tivoizer, but if you're having problems with it or want an updated program check out the other software.


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## half.italian (Mar 11, 2006)

If anyone is still interested, I posted the 2 old PPC build versions, and a partially done version with a queue as source on sourceforge. I'd love to see someone build it as a universal app with an updated ffmpeg binary.

https://sourceforge.net/projects/tivoizer/

~Sean


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## tubbo (Nov 3, 2008)

Thanks very much for posting this, now I can watch all my cult movies on my TV finally!


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## kmess (Aug 16, 2002)

There's an updated build of TiVoizer for Intel processors available from Sourceforge:

sourceforge.net / projects / tivoizer

Kevin


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