TIVO to DVD archiving

Roadkyng wrote on 12/14/2005, 8:34 PM
Christmas (aka Holiday) Greetings:

I have recorded several football games on a SA2 TIVO and want to archive them to DVD. I did a test of one game as follows:
The TIVO is connected to an Adaptec hardware mpeg2 encoder via component cables then to the computer via USB2.0. I used WinDVR3 to capture to my hard drive then used Screenblast MovieStudio 3.0 to cut out all the commercials. I then rendered the video in MPEG2 and it came out at almost 8Gb. The game was a bit over 3 hours long. Now I am stuck. I have a single layer drive so I am space limited. My questions are:

1. Is there an easier way?

2. How can I compress or fit the file to a single DVD?

3. Is the file size about right or did I do something wrong to cause it to be so large?

thanks

gavin

Comments

gogiants wrote on 12/15/2005, 11:51 AM
One way you can do this is to re-encode to MPEG-2 using a lower bit rate. I think MovieSudio does not allow you to control the bitrate. If you have DVD Architect you can import your commercial-free MPEG file and then use "Optimize DVD" to set the bit rate so that it will fit on your DVD.

Alternately, you could use some other MPEG conversion tool to convert the bitrate. There are tons out there, maybe including any video editing program that came with your Adaptec card.
rondi wrote on 12/15/2005, 1:53 PM
consider splitting your game onto 2 dvd's. you'll have to get up at half time to get another beer and refill pretzel bowl anyway. As gogiants mentioned, you can use DVDAS to reduce the bit bit rate, but that comes at the price of lower quality video. you'll have to decide which you can live with. my choice would be 2 dvd's.

hrh, ron
PumiceT wrote on 1/24/2006, 7:32 AM
Probably pretty late to the game on this one, but why not network your TiVo, and use TiVoToGo to transfer the .tivo file to your PC? You can then use DirectShowDump (not authorized by TiVo) to strip the .mpg file out of its .tivo shell. The resulting .mpg can be used as you please.

TiVo captures video at 480x480, so that's how it holds many more hours of video than seems logical. DVDs can be recorded at 480x480, as far as I know.

If you have more questions, I might be able to help. I'm a Vegas Pro (Vegas 6 + DVD) user, so I'm not sure how well my experiences will flow over to Movie Studio / Video Factory. You can email me if you'd like: info@resolutionart.com.
HaroldC wrote on 1/24/2006, 3:17 PM
I'm a newby. This is my first post. I'm using Screenblaster Movie Studio 3. Though I've just downloaded the updates and will install them shortly. If you are willing to take the image degradation, if you convert the file into mpeg1, you should be able to put over five hours on a single layer dvd. That has been my experience. A normal 1 1/2 hour movie recorded onto my computer from the tv by the tuner card is about 1.1 gigs as a mpeg1 file. The video quality is roughly comparable to a vhs recording is lp mode.

Harold