Free copying and editing of HD TS files on PC to DVD

[Jonno]

Anyone found free usable editting and re-encoding software to allow advert removal from HDR-Fox-T2 HS TS files for subsequent conversion to DVD5.

I am running the modified firmware which is great (thanks to all who have written and supported this) and wish to simply take out the adverts and leading and trailing dross and burn to DVD so the kids can use it on a portable DVD.

I have tried AVIDEMUX but cannot get it move to the end of the file - I gave up after an hour. I did manage to cut the dross at the start so the program works but too slow for me !

H264TS Cutter brought up and error regarding unable to render and shut down.

Similarly with TS Snipper.

I have confirmed that the file is playable (and hence not encrypted) with Splashlite player.

I realise that there were some threads on this a while ago, but wonderd if new freeware has now made managing H264 files easier or do I need to wait a while ?

 

[oijonesey]

Further to my previous attempts to answer this question on this thread I have been doing some more testing on Freemake Video Convertor (as suggested a while ago by fenlander). I have had better success than the last time I tried it. My limited test was...

An SD file decrypted and copied off the Hummy - I cut out a section from the beginning and another from the end to leave me with a 9 minute chunk. It took 3 1/2 minutes to convert to MPG file (MPEG2 format). Copied it back and Hummy played it but no trick play at all.

Then I tried the same file and saved it as MP4 format - this worked OK. I got trick play (aka transport control) with ff/rw buttons and timeline navigation using the silver button also.

Then I tried an HD file - it was 'laggy' when using the timeslider and waiting for the buttons to become active but it did still let me select and cut out a section from the beginning and another from the end. It converted this to MP4 format also and played with trick play when copied back to the Hummy.

I then copied both files to my DLNA NAS drive and it also played them both and also gave full trick play when streamed from there.

So my conclusion is that yes - there is a free editor out there that can process native files off the hummy (SD and HD) and do simple cut edits - and save them in a usable format which is playable both on the Hummy and served on the network (or on my setup at least).

The downside? Well it was slow compared to my only other successfully tested program which was VideoRedo TV Suite (for SD files) and the H264 version for SD and HD files. That was as fast as it needed to be for me - saving a ten minute file took only a few seconds, the edit selection process intuitive even down to frame by frame selection and the output files fully playable - BUT it does cost a lot which is why I've left off getting it so far but I still intend to purchase it purely for the time it will save me as I end up with a lot of short kids shows to trim lead ins/outs off.

But hey - you pays your money...or maybe not as the case may be.

 

[Ezra Pound]

Anyone found free usable editting and re-encoding software to allow advert removal from HDR-Fox-T2 HS TS files for subsequent conversion to DVD5.

You will lose the HI-Def content of your Hi-Def TS file if you write it to a DVD (Player) format because the DVD VOB structure expects the file to be 720X576 Not the 1920X1080 or 1440X1080 that will be in the original, So if you intend to use DVD5 the re-encoder will need to output 720X576. There are formats such as MKV that will keep the original resolution but they will not play on a DVD player.

 

[Jonno]

Further to my previous attempts to answer this question on this thread I have been doing some more testing on Freemake Video Convertor (as suggested a while ago by fenlander). I have had better success than the last time I tried it. My limited test was...

An SD file decrypted and copied off the Hummy - I cut out a section from the beginning and another from the end to leave me with a 9 minute chunk. It took 3 1/2 minutes to convert to MPG file (MPEG2 format). Copied it back and Hummy played it but no trick play at all.

Then I tried the same file and saved it as MP4 format - this worked OK. I got trick play (aka transport control) with ff/rw buttons and timeline navigation using the silver button also.

Then I tried an HD file - it was 'laggy' when using the timeslider and waiting for the buttons to become active but it did still let me select and cut out a section from the beginning and another from the end. It converted this to MP4 format also and played with trick play when copied back to the Hummy.

I then copied both files to my DLNA NAS drive and it also played them both and also gave full trick play when streamed from there.

So my conclusion is that yes - there is a free editor out there that can process native files off the hummy (SD and HD) and do simple cut edits - and save them in a usable format which is playable both on the Hummy and served on the network (or on my setup at least).

The downside? Well it was slow compared to my only other successfully tested program which was VideoRedo TV Suite (for SD files) and the H264 version for SD and HD files. That was as fast as it needed to be for me - saving a ten minute file took only a few seconds, the edit selection process intuitive even down to frame by frame selection and the output files fully playable - BUT it does cost a lot which is why I've left off getting it so far but I still intend to purchase it purely for the time it will save me as I end up with a lot of short kids shows to trim lead ins/outs off.

But hey - you pays your money...or maybe not as the case may be.

Thanks for this info. I missed the thread on Freemake, so will try it soon. Like you I didn't want to shell out for VideoRedo just for tv programmes for the kids. I am naturally recording HD generally to get the advantage of the better picture quality but maybe i should be more selective and use SD sometimes and make my copying simpler. I like the tip on converting to MP4. This will save me some time in finding this out the hard way. I will give it a go, but if it is too time consuming maybe spending the money on VideoRedo will be money well spent.

 

[Jonno]

You will lose the HI-Def content of your Hi-Def TS file if you write it to a DVD (Player) format because the DVD VOB structure expects the file to be 720X576 Not the 1920X1080 or 1440X1080 that will be in the original, So if you intend to use DVD5 the re-encoder will need to output 720X576. There are formats such as MKV that will keep the original resolution but they will not play on a DVD player.

Thanks for the info Ezra . I will have to be a bit more selective and try to record SD if I want to copy to DVD5, but I think I am right in saying that I should end up with a better DVD copy starting from Hi-Def and re-coding to 720X576 as SD is of a lower standard.

 

[Black Hole]

I have made it my policy to record StDef for anything other than watching directly via the Humax and the connected TV - it's easier (although my policy might change when I see how well my HD-FOX / Qumi combination gets on). However, I do have some HiDef content in deep store and I'm ITCHING to reduce it down to edited highlights and burn at best possible quality to DVD! It's not something I expect to do very often though.

 

[Ezra Pound]

... but I think I am right in saying that I should end up with a better DVD copy starting from Hi-Def and re-coding to 720X576 as SD is of a lower standard.

An SD TS file from the Humax is already 720X576 and in MPEG2 format so it is already in a DVD VOB format, I would say there would be little advantage starting with 1440X1080 h264 video and sound that also needs converting, you can re-name an SD TS file eg. BBC_NEWS.TS to BBC_NEWS.MPG with no conversion and it can then be played / edited as an MPG file

 

[Black Hole]

Ezra, can you tell me about bit rates? Various DVD burning tools I have played with (in the dim and distant past) let you prep the data at various quality levels according to how much there is to fit on a disc. I presume this means there could be a highest quality DVD format which encodes more information than is available from a Freeview StDef grab, and might therefore benefit from starting with the HiDef data.

I did a rough-cut some time ago, with no decrypting etc at the time I used the analogue re-grab of SCART output to get the data into DVD format directly. I then found that the footage I wanted was too long to fit on one disc at highest quality encoding (not that it mattered for a mashed signal,). But there are key scenes and supporting material, and if I were to encode the key scenes at HQ and the supporting material at lesser quality it would fit. I don't know how to go about doing that though - making a DVD that switches bit rate scene by scene.

 

[SiHa]

I did a rough-cut some time ago, with no decrypting etc at the time I used the analogue re-grab of SCART output to get the data into DVD format directly. I then found that the footage I wanted was too long to fit on one disc at highest quality encoding (not that it mattered for a mashed signal,). But there are key scenes and supporting material, and if I were to encode the key scenes at HQ and the supporting material at lesser quality it would fit. I don't know how to go about doing that though - making a DVD that switches bit rate scene by scene.

DVDshrink will allow you to reauthor a DVD, and choose how much compression to apply on track-by-track basis. It does mean that the sections that you want at different bitrates have to be authored as separate VOB's, but it's quite possible to have the VOB's auto-play from one to the other.

You would need to create the DVD structure in one program and just save it as a DVD filesystem (VIDEO_TS & AUDIO_TS etc) or an .ISO, then open that up in DVDshrink and compress bits as required until it will fit onto a single DVD.
I can't recommend anythig for the original DVD authoring, I'm afraid as it's been a long time since I played with this, and I was also using Linux.

 

[Ezra Pound]

Ezra, can you tell me about bit rates?

There is some merit in having a high bit rate and to answer your question I think the Max. for DVD is about 9-10Mbs. But within the bounderies of it having to be 720X576 Max. and MPEG2 I just wonder if starting with 1440X1080 h264 albeit at a higher bit rate would give much visible difference after conversion, it would be worth trying but not worth it if you have to buy the h264 version of VideoRedo TV Suite, It always amazes me that you can reduce an MPEG2 file using DVDshrink by 50% and see little difference in quality

 

[Trevor Jasper]

I was recommended XMediaRecode, and I've used it a few times. It seems pretty good at handling most formats. I don't believe it can trim files but it might be what you need to convert to DVD. It has a lot of options when re-encoding.

I have used it a lot recently to re-encode a mkv file into an mp4 file (direct copy of video and audio) when the humax wouldn't play the mkv but would play the mp4!! Wierd one.

 

[pkb4809]

This thread has become a bit of a recoder/decoder/encoder discussion all of it's own (like so many discussions in this digital video minefield do ) but back to the original question ... I have just had some success with AVStoDVD ... http://sites.google.com/site/avstodvdmain/
I copied the recent series of Outnumbered recorded on my HDR-FOX-T2 (just in StDef and just using the OPT+ button, I still haven't got around to the hacked firmware and I have taken the same approach as Black Hole when he suggests standardising to recording in StDef above in this thread) to a FAT32 USB drive ... I then took the USB drive to the (Win XP) PC ... loaded the .ts files into AVStoDVD ... was able to review them and cut off the lead in/out trailers from the start and end (since this was recordings from the BBC I haven't played with getting rid of ad-breaks yet but I believe that should be possible) ... edited the menu screen entering an overall title, episode titles and selecting frames (from the video) for the thumbnails ... and hit the create DVD button ...

I then had around 15 minutes of windows pooping up all over the place ... doing FFmpeg stuff, QuEnc stuff, multiple Haali Video Splitter icons appearing in my system tray (6 of them at one point!) and MuxMan stuff ... during this I had a few "Reported length 0:00:00 shorter than actual length 0:28:34" type errors pop up but I took the option to ingnore those ... and then it said that it had made the video files ... I really don't remember whether I had chosen for it not to burn to DVD or whether that's the default, but it meant that I was able to review the results in the Cyberlink DVD software on the PC ... this showed that there was an audio sync problem so I went back to AVStoDVD and found that the Auto Sync Audio option was ticked ... this seemed reasonable except looking at the (greyed out) text that was the summary/result of the options ticked in the GUI, this was causing a delay of around 100ms, actually looking across the various titles/episodes this was creating a sort of random number delay of between 90-200ms across the differnent video files ... I un-ticked the Auto Sync option and entered/forced it to use a 0ms audio delay ... I then re-made the DVD files ... burnt the VIDEO_TS and AUDIO_TS files to a DVD+R using Nero ... which then worked fine in my DVD player.

I probably spent a while longer than I expected to but it wasn't too arduous and now that I've been through it once I think it should be OK subsequent times ... and all of that and putting this DVD in the post to my daughter who is studying in Germany at the moment will still be a lot easier than trying to remotely talk her through connecting through a proxy server so she could watch it on the iPlayer .

Hopefully this might be of use to some of you too.
PhilB

 

[pkb4809]

Just realised ... I should have added that AVStoDVD is free ... and as far as I can tell is not in any way related to the AVS Video Editor software as discussed over on the "HDR Fox T2 File ts Editing" thread ... it really is set up for preparing DVDs though and any de-re-trans-encoding that it does do seems just to be it's "working out" towards making VOBs, IFOs and BUPs for burning to DVD, if it can convert to other formats it doesn't make that obvious.

PhilB

 

[borise]

FWIW does anyone else have bad audio sync problems doing (sd) TS to DVD? I had some trouble finding a DVD authoring package I could use and at the time the only remultiplex tools I knew were Project X and PVAstrumento. Often the software would complain about noncompliant features in the video stream. One package (name long forgotten) that I think was shareware contained a very bad reencoder that appeared to consist of playing the video in realtime and screencapturing it.

Excuse the noobishness but are VOBs like seperate "episodes" or are they the bookmarked sections that a movie is typically divided into so you can jump to specific scenes?

 

[jsrobo]

In the past the pc operating system could not handle large files, it had a 2GB limit. So when the dvd structure was devised it was structured with 1GB file sizes. The TOC (table of contents file) point the play back to each vob file in order to get continuous play back. The vob file size is nothing to do with the dvd menu options.

Unsync'd files is a common problem. The free programs tend to suffer the most. You will have to try different programs and see what works for you. I use Easy DVD Creator, but it is not free, there is a trial version at: http://www.divxtodvd.net/dvd-creator.htm

There are plenty of illegal full copies around on the file sharing sites.

 

[borise]

In the past the pc operating system could not handle large files, it had a 2GB limit. So when the dvd structure was devised it was structured with 1GB file sizes.

I guess there are still remnants of that limitation around, I think some PVRs still save multiple TS files in sections if the program is long enough.

I was wondering about the merits of recoding vs simply demultiplexing and remultiplexing? One "purist" view might be that recoding loses some picture quality and is therefore inherently bad, but it appears as if the broadcast video stream contains data that a DVD player might not decode so recoding would be nessecery for proper compatibility? My own experience is that remux (using freeware) appears to be a crapshoot as although PC media players never failed to sync the sound only one test DVD played in sync, and I can't remember what I did differently that time?

 

[jsrobo]

I guess there are still remnants of that limitation around, I think some PVRs still save multiple TS files in sections if the program is long enough.

I was wondering about the merits of recoding vs simply demultiplexing and remultiplexing? One "purist" view might be that recoding loses some picture quality and is therefore inherently bad, but it appears as if the broadcast video stream contains data that a DVD player might not decode so recoding would be nessecery for proper compatibility? My own experience is that remux (using freeware) appears to be a crapshoot as although PC media players never failed to sync the sound only one test DVD played in sync, and I can't remember what I did differently that time?

I think, if you want to finish with a dvd you should find the quickest solution with insync audio. Use the available software, in any case you are losing resolution. So speed and insync should be your priority. If there's anythink I've learnt on this forum, it is that everybody has different objectives, decide what yours are and go for it.

 

[borise]

Oh and back on topic I think if I recall correctly later releases of PVAstrumento seemed to have a powerfull ad-removal tool. I was so hung up on sync issues that I didn't really explore it, but one time I found I'd trimmed off the trailers and run-in without really trying.

 

[print team]

I'm not sure whether I am posting these questions to the correct place in the forum as I am a bit of a newbie plus I'm a little bit thick! Apologies if I have breached protocol!
I have read many happy hours of threads regarding the editing of Humax .ts files but the same two or three questions/problems keep cropping up:
1) When copying .ts files off my auxiliary Humax USB drive, using a Linux type viewing editor (Disk Internals) I either don't seem to manage to transfer the whole recording (especially if it's more than an hour long) or in the case of BBCHD stuff I only get the first minute or so even though it seems to take long enough to do the whole thing. Is there any simnple procedure I can utilise to correct this and what is the correct procedure to get the last 10 minutes off, for example 2 hour long ITV .ts files? Is there any truth in the myth that BBCHD recordings have some sort of encryption on them or not? Can that be got over if that's the case?
2) Once on the PC for editing, I am not sure whether I should just rename the .ts file to .mpeg (which seems to work most of the time) or should I run it through some import routine.
3) Once I have an edited recording (non BBCHD) having topped,tailed and removed the adverts in something like VideoRedo or equivalent, is there a way of saving the finished file back to the USB such that I can successfully play it through the Humax box and t.v.? N.B.: I don't have a problem playing the original files through the auxiliary HDD when it is attached to the humax via USB. The threads I have read all give pointers/hints to these sort of questions but none are explicit (simple) enough for me to understand. Would anyone like to do/has anyone seen a step by step (non-fail) guide for this procedure if it is even possible? I'd be really happy to squander money on some decent software if it would do all I wanted but so far its the basics above rather than the means of doing the job that fail.

 

[Ezra Pound]

some points to remember :-
1) All files on the Humax are encrypted, Both Standard Def. and Hi-def click HERE
2) SD files are decrypted when copied to a USB device
3) Hi-Def can also be decrypted the same as 2) if it is 'Foxyed' first click HERE for details
4) After decrypting, SD TS files can be re-named to MPG files as they are in MPEG2 format
5) Hi Def H.264 files can be played on a P.C. using VLC, Splash Lite etc.
6) Some (not all) AVI, MPG, MKV, TS files copied back onto the humax from USB will play