Multimedia: Best way to save TIVO shows to DVD?

Mpeg conversion

Well, dvd players can only understand the _ts file format; but here's the catch -- the _ts format is actually mpeg-2 by another name. So, once you convert a file to the mpeg format, with the appropriate compression for the amount of time/video quality that you want to burn to dvd, the dvd conversion process is simply a file copy/merge/rename one.

That is why I use Pinnacle Studio to do the initial conversion to mpeg & Ulead MovieFactory to do the burn. Moviefactory is savvy enough to just copy & append the smaller mpeg files I make into video_ts files & then quickly burn them. I have done a complete dvd in 29 minutes using 4000 Kbps compression (= 2 hours of video per dvd) Normal Hollywood commercial dvd's use about the same compression on 2 layer discs (4 hrs/disc). You can drop to about 2500 to get 4 hours per disc, with a corresponding loss of quality.

The basic law of PC video conversion (cpu-based) is 4 to 1. That means 4 minutes of processing time to render 1 minute of mpeg video. Now, if you go from mpeg to mpeg, that is a waste. If you go from high quality DV or avi to mpeg, that is a necessity. Using a high-capacity hyper-threaded cpu will help a little, but is mostly useful if you edit video & add special effects, etc. The cpu can then handle the multiple "layers" of video more quickly; but the dv to mpeg conversion is still a slow deal.

Only dedicated conversion hardware can convert on-the-fly in real time. This kind of hardware is readily available in dvr/dvd combo recorders. These are dvd recorders with hard drive storage & limited editing capabilities. I actually opted for one of these instead of TiVo to use with my Directv box. With it, I can record at a preselected compression to edit & then transfer to dvd internally. These units are very limited in the types of disc format they will accept. Basically it is just dvd-r, with maybe a dvd-rw or dvd-ram 2nd option.

If you want to use a PC, however, it will take 16 hours processing time to cram 4 hours of recording on 1 dvd.

I cope with the process by dividing my video into 10 minute chunks, at convenient break points. I can easily wait 40 minutes to process each chunk individually & then assemble them with MovieFactory. My MovieFactory is set to render mpeg to slightly higher quality than I have already rendered using Studio (4500 vs. 4000). Therefore, since it cannot compress upward, it accepts the already rendered mpeg files & just assembles them into video_ts on my hard drive, which takes less than 15 minutes for 4+ Gb, and burns the dvd at 2.4 to 4x, depending on disc type, in my Sony 4-way burner (dvd+-r/rw, external firewire).

The +r discs burn a little faster than the -r. The MovieFactory disc capacity bar gives very good estimates of remaining space & warns me when I cut the fill point too close. Using this method, I practically never have a burn failure or error message. I also have multiple hard drives in my system, both internal & external. I use one as my source & a different one as my temp work space. This is very important in reducing the time needed to render the video from avi to mpeg to video_ts.

Doing it all on a single drive means that one drive controller is both reading & writing at the same time. Transferring the files from drive to drive means that one controller is reading while the other is writing. Since it is impossible for 1 controller to be in 2 places on a drive disk at once to perform the read operation & the write operation together, I save considerable time using 2 disks. My system even has a scsi controller card and a scsi 160 hard drive, which is really fast for internal disk transfers.

It is also very inportant to defrag the drive that will be capturing & processing the video just before every operation. Maximizing free space allows the drive to work at its highest possible speed. Also, never fill the drive to more than 50% capacity to give it working space.

I would have recommended the full version of Pinnacle Studio over the SE edition. You really don't know what was cut out of the software to make the "lite" version and the SE may have been written to support only certain types of hardware.

The full versions of both MovieFactory & Pinnacle Studio offer pre-defined profiles of mpeg video file types. I take the high quality dvd file type and modify the video compression to 4000 Kbps, or 4 Mbits, to create a custom file type. I then capture in dv format, which creates avi files at something like 1 Meg per minute of video. After I edit my video, which is basically to trim the leader & trailer off & cut out commercials, I have Studio make an mpeg file to my specs.

When I create a disc with MovieFactory, I set the same mpeg compression specs, that I used for Pinnacle Studio, in a custom file type. Then I import the Studio-created mpegs directly, watch the disc filler bar at the bottom of the screen until I reach a maximum of 4.1 Gigs, and page through to the last screen where it finally creates a disc. I have played with creating just the file structure on my hard drive, to burn later with Nero, and with creating an iso image, to do the same. But my favorite way is to just let the MovieFactory do the burn itself. The disc image & file folder techniques were mainly used when I was close to overloading the dvd disc's capacity & wanted to see if the final product would fit on the disc before actually trying a burn (cuts down on failures).

Trying to "shrink" a video to force it to fit on a dvd is going to destroy the video quality, because the shrink process is just recompressing the file to a lower bitstream count. Uncompressed video is 10 Mbit/second. 2 hour dvd quality is 4-5 Mbits and 4 hour dvd quality is 2-3 Mbits. At the 4 hour quality, you can already see quite a bit of loss in video quality. Stuffing 6 or more hours of video on a disc will produce unsatisfactory video with pixelation, digital color flattening, & loss of clarity. If you can find a way to split the video into 4 hours maximum time per disc, you will be pleased with the results. Any more than that will be disappointing. Remember, discs take less space than tapes. So it won't hurt to replace 1 6-hr tape with 3 2-hr discs.

Perhaps as disc capacity improves & the technology matures to higher capacity home burners, you may be able to hold more on a disc. For now, we have to respect the limitations of what is available.