For the last 3 years I've been using a Sony media PC, saving programmes through Windows Media Centre and editing out the ads etc. with VideoReDo. It's become a quick and efficient process - rarely more than 5 minutes to put a file in order and save it as .mpg.
With the arrival of the Humax HDR-Fox T2 and HD Freeview in my area, I've been interested to see whether I can do something similar with HD files. Being Vista, my version of WMC will not handle HD and I'm advised that there are some serious problems ahead if I try to upgrade this particular machine to W7. So I've been trying to find ways of editing files saved on the Hummy. Anyone else trying to do something similar might be interested in how things are going.
Initially, there was no way to get at the Hummy's HD files because they are encrypted. With the arrival of Foxy, it became possible to get an unencrypted file off the machine and on to the PC. At this point the process was horribly clumsy:
1) Use ftp to download the .hmt file, modify it with Foxy, put it back with ftp.
2) Copy the file to an external 2.5" drive with an ext3 partition which had to be created in Linux (the Hummy only seems to be able to format the entire drive). This is SLOOOOW!
3) Copy the downloaded file to the PC by ftp (the Windows PC will not read ext3 directly).
At this point, you have an HD .ts file. What can you do with it? - not much. My old version of VideoRedo wouldn't open it. Nor, it seemed, would anything else, though I could play it with VLC.
Then things got easier. I installed af123's modified firmware, specifically auto-unprotect, virtual-disk and samba. Now the process of extracting a usable file from The Hummy is transformed. Auto-unprotect removes all the Enc flags, replacing Foxy. The virtual disk means that I no longer need an external disk. Samba means that I can use a standard Windows file manager, dispensing with ftp. It still takes a while for the Hummy to do the actual copying, but compared with the old method, getting at the files is dead easy.
So now I have my HD .ts files with much less effort. What can I do with them? - still not much.
I initially had some hopes for a file conversion program called Freemake, which amazingly includes an editor not unlike a first draft of VideoReDo. After trying very hard, I've concluded that, while it works well as a converter, the editor is so flaky that it's not worth considering in its present version. One to keep an eye on for the future, though.
So I returned to VideoReDo and downloaded a free trial of the h264 version. I've always liked VRD and the new version is as slick as ever - in fact it looks exactly the same. The first thing to say is that it handles Hummy SD files flawlessly. Sadly, the same cannot be said of HD files. The current version of VRD is build 610. After experiencing some early difficulties, I went back to the site and installed the latest beta - build 619. The first thing you notice is that this offers more options for h264 output formats. I tried all the obvious ones:
1) output to h264 .mp4 a) crashes and b) has no sound
2) output to h264 .mkv has no sound
3) output to h264 .ts works
4) all other outputs require major recoding, which misses the point of VideoReDo, which cleverly achieves high speed output by NOT recoding.
If you put the HD .ts file produced by option 3 back on the Hummy, it plays perfectly, but without fast fwd/back. Jumps work. It also plays in VLC, but not in Media Player Classic.
Provisional conclusions:
1) Even with the modified firmware on the Hummy, the process of producing an edited HD file is still long-winded, cumbersome and frankly not worth the effort.
2) Applications like VideoReDo, which is the Rolls-Royce workhorse for SD files are not yet up to the job when it comes to Humax HD files. This program is probably the best there is at the moment, but I cannot recommend it until the .mp4 and .mkv outputs work properly. I'm sure they will eventually.
3) If you want a clean HD version of a TV programme you treasure, it's MUCH easier to buy it or download it than to try to make it yourself from a version recorded on your Hummy.
That version won't need you to use telnet at all if you don't want to. It has a simple web interface which allows you to install the full one and from there you can install additional packages.
Just hit the 10,000 character (including tags) limit on post sizes adding major details to Post #1 (and lost it). Next decent opportunity I get I will start a new thread under the same title, and split the "headline post" over about 5 reserved entries.