Issue 32: only transfers the first 86 minutes of movie
Status:  Fixed
Owner:
Closed:  Nov 2008
Reported by paulm...@roadrunner.com, Nov 12, 2008
What steps will reproduce the problem?
1. pick an HD movie that's 2 to 2 1/2 hours long
2. select hi-res
3. transfer

What is the expected output? What do you see instead?
I expect to see the entire movie. Instead it is only 1 hour and 26 minutes long
Happened with 4 movies so far.

What version of the product are you using? On what operating system?
I'm using 1.3.2 but it also happened with the last version I used (1.2.1??)

Please provide any additional information below.
ALSO - What happened to the iphone Med-res option? I used that all the time?


Nov 12, 2008
#1 paulm...@roadrunner.com
btw, I'm using OSX 10.5.5 and a Tivo3 HD
Nov 12, 2008
Project Member #2 yoav.yer...@gmail.com
To answer the question about med-res:
  the options got renamed.  High res is no super-res (it's 640x480 1500kbps)
which is the maximum that an iphone can play (although it can't really show it unless
it's hooked up to an external display).

  med-res got renamed to iphone (480x320 500kbps), which is generally all you want
for an iphone.

  low-res got renamed to ipod (320x200 256kbps) which is appropriate for a video ipod.


  Going to look into the movie download thing (will need to record something that
long on my tivo).  Does it complete 'successfully' at 1:30, or does it quit at 1:26
and then retry over and over?  You're sure the recorded data isn't 1:26 only? (and do
you have commercial skip turned on?)
Status: Accepted
Owner: yoav.yerushalmi
Nov 12, 2008
#3 paulm...@roadrunner.com
Commercial skip is turned off.  Movies are definitely longer than 1:26 (Gladiator 2:40, Stripes 1:45, Breach 2:00), 
I checked the originals on my tivo.  I have had the "retrying over and over problem" with the previous version, 
but in this case today, with 1.3.2 it would finish and move on to the next movie. I was hoping the 1:26 problem 
would be gone with this latest version but unfortunately not.    Also, it looks like the med-res used to output at 
around 900 kbps, but I can still do that if I want by selecting the "Quicktime mpeg-4(custom)" option, correct? 
Thanks again for writing, (or rewriting) this program. btw, is this shareware? Donationware? 
Nov 13, 2008
Project Member #4 yoav.yer...@gmail.com
I'm hoping to have something that's 2 hours long to try with soon  :)

  The program is GPL freeware.

  Yeah I lowered the bitrate a bit (seemed like the quality didn't change much so
figured smaller is better).  If you want to manually change it in 1.4, just open the
advanced prefs and look for the vbitrate= in the video options.   Just keep in mind
that any change you make will be lost if you change to a different pre-defined format.

  I wonder if there's some sort of timeout on the http fetch that's killing it off
(or else, maybe it's hitting some max filesize on the OS..  guess I'll know soon enough).
Nov 13, 2008
#5 paulm...@roadrunner.com
>>maybe it's hitting some max filesize on the OS
I did notice that all of the files that I downloaded at super-res all ended up at around 1.04 to 1.06 GB in size. 
I wish I hadn't trashed all those files. Here are some new facts - one movie that it transferred in its entirety 
was actually 1:32 and 1.04gb. Another one I just found that I thought had transferred completely but 
apparently ended early at 1:33:34 was 1.06gb. Also, Shrek the Third transferred completely and was 1:30:32 
and 1.04gb. On the other hand, I just noticed that I set iTivo to transfer 3 long shows last night at native 
MPEG-2 and it had apparently looped the first one around and restarted it.  I guess I'll have to go back to 
downloading long shows with Tivo Transfer. The reason I hate that is because I can't do anything with those 
files except play them back with the Toast Player or convert them with the Tivo Decoder applescript and play 
them with VLC or MPlayer. But I don't know of any way to edit mp2 or down-convert them. Those files 
transfer completely and will be as much as 22gb in size.
Nov 13, 2008
Project Member #6 yoav.yer...@gmail.com
Ok, so I'm trying to download a 3 hour show now  (unfortunately, on this computer,
that's a 4 hour download  :(.

  Anyways, in the meanwhile, can you do me a favor and check that you have enough
hard drive space to hold both the unencoded show and the encoded show?  I can't seem
to think of any good reason why it would quit at 1gb.. but if you DO have enough
space, can you try turning on 'download THEN encode'?  I'm wondering if maybe there's
some issue with it trying to seek into the file 1gb in or somesuch.. (yes, I'm
reaching in the dark right now).

  Keep in mind there's a LOT of space needed on your main hard drive (even if you're
ripping to an external one).  It uses a lot of temporary data in there in /tmp/ 
Nov 13, 2008
#7 paulmeni...@gmail.com
I'm at work right now but I know for sure there was at least 36gb available. Tonight I can try the 'download then 
encode' option. Wish I had thought of that before.  Really appreciate your help.  I'll keep you posted.
Nov 13, 2008
Project Member #8 yoav.yer...@gmail.com
Ok not much useful yet but I'm sitting watching this download of a 3 hour program. 
It's already passed the 1.1G size and has encoded about 1.5 hours of it.  So, I think
there's more to the bug than just long shows or large shows  :(

  Is it possible that your mac is going to sleep halfway through the download (if the
hard drive and network stop functioning when it's asleep, then the download will
halt, and after a while just completely time out)?

  Anyways, not yet sure what is going on, but I've failed to reproduce it.  Do you
have logging turned on in advanced?  Can you look or mail me ~/iTiVo.log  ?
Nov 13, 2008
Project Member #9 yoav.yer...@gmail.com
Ok, definitely check your Energy Saver Preferences please.

  Make sure the computer doesn't go to sleep when inactive for a LONG time.  (feel
free to put the display to sleep).

  Tell me if it works that way...

Nov 14, 2008
#10 paulm...@roadrunner.com
computer definitely is set to not go to sleep. But here's a new twist. I tried downloading a couple long shows 
last night. this morning the first show was still downloading and there was a message that "The application 
tivodecode has unexpectedly quit."  The show was currently only half way through downloading and then 30 
minutes later the same message came up and I noticed it had started transferring all over again from 0 MB.
Here's a question that would help me with a workaround. I don't seem to have any trouble downloading long 
movies using the roxio tivo transfer. Is there a mac program out there that can take those files and 
downconvert them to mp4, after the fact? I tried doing it this way - dropping them on the Tivo Decoder 
applescript which converts them to a regular .mp2  I can play in VLC, and then running them through  
PSPWare to downconvert them. The problem is that 9 out of 10 files end up with a blank grey screen. If there 
was a reliable way of downconverting .tivo files that would solve my problem and I could still use iTivo for all 
my other shows, because iTivo is much easier to deal with.
Nov 14, 2008
#11 paulm...@roadrunner.com
I had turned on "download first then encode" and I just turned on the logging option
Nov 14, 2008
Project Member #12 yoav.yer...@gmail.com
There are programs that can convert for you, notably 'mencoder' which is the tool
iTiVo uses (although if iTiVo is failing, I don't see why running mencoder manually
would work).

  If you want to try it though, you can take out the mencoder program out of the
iTiVo package (open up Terminal.app, and run

   /Applications/iTiVo.app/Contents/Resources/mencoder -of lavf -lavfopts format=ipod
-ovc x264 -x264encopts
nocabac:level_idc=30:bitrate=384:threads=auto:bframes=0:global_header -vf
pp=lb,dsize=480:320:0,scale=-8:-8,harddup -af volume=13:1 -oac faac -faacopts
mpeg=4:object=2:raw:br=128 -o movie.mp4 input.mpg

(that was all one line).

  Oddly enough, I can tell you for sure that I've encoded long H

  These are the options passed into mencoder for the iphone setting by iTiVo (you can
actually see them by looking at the advanced options).  Maybe you can learn more
about why it is failing...  (tivodecode failing there's nothing I can do about...). 
The fact that other tools are having problems converting them might be a clue as to
why though..  I dont know.

Nov 14, 2008
#13 paulm...@roadrunner.com
hmm, don't know what that means. I copied and pasted 
"/Applications/iTiVo.app/Contents/Resources....<snip>... raw:br=128 -o movie.mp4 input.mpg" into the 
terminal and nothing happened. But I don't really know what was supposed to happen. I tried taking the 
mencoder app out of the program but the mac thinks it's a classic app.  
I came home and there was nothing transferred or converted. The message that tivodecode had crashed was up 
and itivo had apparently just started to retransfer the same show for the umpteenth time. I had the log turned on 
so I'll attach it here.


iTiVo.log
7.0 MB   Download
Nov 15, 2008
Project Member #14 yoav.yer...@gmail.com
ooh!  There *is* something interesting in that log..
  It looks like after it downloads 10Gigs of data off the tivo, the curl report of
how much has been downloaded resets back to zero.  So there is something going on
that could explain this.

  I'm going to need to find a way to record more than 10 gigs of stuff here. 
Hopefully I'll have something interesting to report to you soon.

Nov 15, 2008
Project Member #15 yoav.yer...@gmail.com
Alright, it was DEFINITELY broken for files bigger than 10G.
  Hopefully that was the root of the problem.  I fixed it and put the fix in 1.5b1.
<crossing fingers>  tell me if the beta is working right for you?
Nov 15, 2008
#16 paulm...@roadrunner.com
so far so good!! It finally transferred an entire 2-hour movie. Now it's encoding. Looks like the encoding is 
almost in real-time. 57 minutes done, 52 minutes left.  I'm on a dual guad 2.8.xeon with 10gb ram. I don't know 
why it took so long to download, especially given that it wasn't even encoding at the same time. It took about 
five hours, and kept saying "waiting for tivo". The tivo itself was idle half the time though. I'll let you know when 
it finishes.
Nov 15, 2008
#17 paulm...@roadrunner.com
Success!
Thanks!
Where do I send the check? :)
Now I just have to figure out how to make it all go faster.


Nov 15, 2008
#18 paulm...@roadrunner.com
Sorry, but now you're kind of my guru. I have a lot of .tivo files, some of which I would like to convert down to 
the super-res setting. Is there any way I can do this after the fact? thanks
Nov 15, 2008
Project Member #19 yoav.yer...@gmail.com
Check should be made to your favorite charitable cause (or to yourself  :).

  It sounds like the network connection to your tivo might be slow.. (are you using
wireless?).  Keep in mind that the tivo intentionally uses a slow data rate on its
network interfaces.  I think if you use wired on a series 3 you should be seeing a
data rate of around 8Mbps or so (that's about 1 meg/sec). That will ignore encoding
or anything else. TivoHD and series 2 are slower.  You can look around the forums for
more info.

  As for converting .tivo files.  I don't know of any gui tools that will do that.
However, this *should* convert it for you (you will need to do a bunch of crap in a
Terminal.app window):

  (first, copy the movie to your Desktop, and install iTiVo into Applications
    rename your file to "mymovie.tivo" just so you can mostly cut/paste here
    I've tried to break the line up and add backslashes so the terminal likes you.
    When you're done, rename the movie back to whatever it was called)

cd ~/Desktop

/Applications/iTiVo.app/Contents/Resources/tivodecode \
-m 0786962438 -o "mymovie.mpg" "mymovie.tivo"

/Applications/iTiVo.app/Contents/Resources/mencoder -of lavf \
 -lavfopts format=ipod -ovc x264 -x264encopts \
nocabac:level_idc=30:bitrate=384:threads=auto:bframes=0:global_header \
-vf pp=lb,dsize=480:320:0,scale=-8:-8,harddup \
-af volume=13:1 -oac faac -faacopts \
mpeg=4:object=2:raw:br=128 \
-o "mymovie.mp4" "mymovie.mpg"


  (Ok now you should have a mymovie.mp4  Check that it plays correctly, and then
delete the .tivo and .mpg files, and rename the .mp4 file to whatever).

  Marking as *fixed*
Status: Fixed