Corrupt? .TS files copied from PVR

Sovereign

New Member
Hope someone can help, I've copied a few batches of .TS files to an external USB drive via the Humax's built in copy facility, they were all radio shows. Stupidly to save space I deleted all the information files and just kept the .TS files thinking that's all I'd need to convert the files on the PC.

I've been able to convert a few batches to mp3 using VLC media player, but there are a couple of batches I'd copied that VLC won't play or convert, Videoredo doesn't like them, and I tried fixing them with ProjectX and Mpeg2Repair all to no avail.

The only thing I can come up with is that for some reason when I copied these batches to the USB drive the Humax didn't decrypt them. I tried copying the .TS files back to the Humax thinking I could use the brilliant WebIF I've just installed to force them to decrypt, but without the information files it doesn't offer the decrypt option on (OPT+) and the Humax itself sees them as AVIs and won't play them.

I'd love to save them, but am running out of ideas, any advice would be appreciated...
 
If they really are encrypted (and there's no certainty of that), what you need to do is create a dummy .hmt with the enc flag set. I believe there are tools for that, but you will have to wait for the relevant knowledge to chip in, or search the forum. Try google "site:hummy.tv/forum recreate hmt".
 
To add to the above posts, Raydon has since updated the Sidecar package so that if the ts file is encrypted, the package will create a dummy hmt to allow the file to be decrypted. The procedure is as follows:
Use Sidecar to create the dummy hmt file only,
Once indexed by the DLNA server the recording will be decrypted automatically if your system is set up to do this, if not you will be able to manually decrypt ('opt' in Web-If),
Once decrypted, delete the hmt file (and run Sidecar again to create hmt and nts files for full transport controls on the HDR-FOX: not needed if you just want to copy them back to your PC).
 
Once decrypted, delete the hmt file (and run Sidecar again to create hmt and nts files for full transport controls on the HDR-FOX.
Please note that this statement only applies to video recordings. A dummy hmt file created by the sidecar utility will enable decryption of radio recordings, but any attempt to then recreate a valid nts file from the decrypted radio recording will fail.
 
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Another thing to add, to correct my above post, is that sidecar also creates a blank nts file for an encrypted ts file by default (only tested on video ts). This is required to access the decrypt option from the option menu. The blank nts is also needed for auto-decryption. To download the ts file using a DLNA client only requires the dummy hmt file.
 
Please note that this only applies to video recordings. A dummy hmt file created by the sidecar utility will enable decryption of radio recordings, but any attempt to then recreate a valid nts file from the decrypted radio recording will fail.
UPDATE: Latest version of sidecar (v2.2) now supports re-creation of hmt and nts files for both TV and Radio recordings.
 
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I just wanted to say thanks to all who replied to my post above asking for advice, realise this is very late, but I won't bore you with the reasons.

I put all the dodgy files to one side in folder and it looks like I now have a few things to try. I will post an update as to how I get on...
 
Sidecar did the job perfectly, great utility without which I'd have been stuffed. The only thing that would be nice is the ability to run sidecard on the content of an entire folder as an automated batch process as it took a good half hour clicking on the individual files and processing them - not that I'm complaining :)

Strange how the PVR didn't decrypt these files when I initialy copied them to USB, but was able to run autodecrypt in situ and then copy them back to the PC and use VLC to batch process them to mp3's - perfect!

So my grateful thanks for the advice and to all responsible for creating the WebIF and all these amazing utilities.
 
Sidecar did the job perfectly, great utility without which I'd have been stuffed. The only thing that would be nice is the ability to run sidecard on the content of an entire folder as an automated batch process as it took a good half hour clicking on the individual files and processing them - not that I'm complaining :)
sidecar can be run from the command line and, as such, it would not be difficult to include it in a script to process an entire folder.
 
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