TiVo Community Forums Archives - Hauppauge Media MPV

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Hauppauge Media MPV
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Posted by: andrew_katz

Just acquired a Hauppauge Media MPV - but haven't plugged it in yet. I was hoping to get the S-video version rather than the SCART version, as I have a spare s-video socket on the telly but not a spare scart, and I don't want to go back to the switch-box routine again. No joy - it's a scart. Perhaps the scart is also wired for S-video and I can use an adapter. Anyone any experience with these things?

I'm trying to figure out the best way to convert some home video DVDs my father in law made into plain MPEG-2 for this thing - is there any software that will take a VOB file and turn into MPG? I assume I don't need to transcode, as the VOB format is essentially MPEG-2 with multiple streams available. I've had a search on the net, but there seems to be a lot of overcomplicated software none of which seems to do the job I am looking for without re-transcoding via AVI which seems unnecessarily complex (and will result in loss of quality).

Of course, Ideally I'd like my TIVO to be able to do the same job as the Media MPV (all the hardware is there...)

Thanks,

Andrew

Posted by: iankb

quote:
Originally posted by andrew_katz
Of course, Ideally I'd like my TIVO to be able to do the same job as the Media MPV (all the hardware is there...)

Not really. The TiVo has a very low-power CPU, and MP3 decoding does stretch its capacity. It was tried, but I think was abandoned.

Posted by: andrew_katz

Forgive me from being dumb, but since it already decodes MP3s in hardware as part of the video decoding process, surely the hardware MPEG decoder/encoder can already handle this, without having to use a software decoder and overtaxing the already admittedly feeble processor?

- Andrew

Posted by: sanderton

If you can figure out how to make the hardware decoder play something from the hard disk you will I'm sure be annointed to the high table of TiVo hacking gods. :)

I believe TMPGEnc can convert VOB to MPEG, but I've not tried it. can the Hauppage not read VOBs dirctly? The Pinnacle can.

Posted by: andrew_katz

Tivo hacking god - what a thought!

Well, the good news is that it does play VOBs if you change the extension to MPG (not too challenging then). However, the one I have tried so far is missing the sound, so I will have to fiddle with DV Decrypter's settings a bit to make sure I am extracting the correct stream. Thank you for the tip!

Additionally, it seems to work just fine using a SCART to S-VIDEO connector. Interestingly, the menu option in setup only lets me select composite (horrible) or S-video (excellent), and not RGB which the instructions suggest. So either (1) it's just the US model with the SCART bodged on the back; or (2) it's clever enough to detect whether you have an S-Video lead connected to the scart instead of RGB, or (3) by downloading the latest firmware from the website I accidentally downloaded the U.S. version which only lets you select S-Video. Whatever, it works great and I am seriously pleased with it (provided I can get the sound to work on VOBs)

- Andrew

Posted by: andrew_katz

The answer seems to be: it does work, but only with PCM audio. So I have to find an easy way of transcoding the audio stream into PCM from AC3. What a pain.

- Andrew

Posted by: andrew_katz

OK. So it looks like it will decode an MPEG-2 file with the usual layer 2 audio in it (MP2) but not with AC3 or any other streams. The Hauppauge web site FAQ makes it clear that the machine does not support the decoding of AC3 streams (a pity I did not appreciate the significance of this at the time).

Accordingly, I need to figure out an easy way of taking a VOB, transcoding the AC3 to MP2 and simply copying the video stream across without modification. The tools I have looked at so far (e.g. FLASK) all seem to insist on transcoding the video. Any ideas, anyone?

- Andrew

Posted by: JonO

Try the dvdrhelp.com website and specifically the VirtualDubMOD utility:
http://www.dvdrhelp.com/tools?tool=332#comments

I have extracted AC3 from AVI and guess as it deals with VOBs that it may also be able to extract the AC3 from those (not proven).

The guide I used was this one, step 2
http://www.dvdrhelp.com/forum/userguides/186739.php

Posted by: sanderton

I think you can demux the video and audio, process the audio, and remux fairly easily. Gordian Knot has most of the bits in it. I think "BeSweet" is the audio transcoder.

Audio transcoding is also part of some of the extr[cough] utils, so might want to have a look in the Other Place.