I bought the Roxio Toast Titianium Software so I could transfer programs from my Tivo to my mac and then convert them to my iPod touch. A 2 hour show takes about 45min - 1 hour 15 min to transfer. Not great but not bad. However, it takes several hours (4-8) to convert the 2 hour show to iPod format. Is anyone getting the same issues? Is there a way to speed up the conversion process?

I'm moving your post to the TiVo for Mac forum because it is more likely to be seen by other TiVo users. The only way I know to speed up the encoding to H.264 format is with ElGato's Turbo.264 or Turbo.264HD.

Bruce,

First off give us some "Speeds and Feeds," don't know what that means just heard some
Apple engineer use it when describing Mac specifications. What Mac do you have? What Tivo
do you have? How big are the files you are trying to convert to get onto your iPod?

There is a big difference in compression speed from a G4 to a G5 to an Intel Core 2 Duo.

And the Tivo has quality settings that can change the file size of the recordings you make.
That is, if the recording is headed for your iPod, maybe record the program at a lower
quality setting. When a media conversion program converts a video file from one format to
another format, it essentially has to open each frame and decide how to compress it into
the new format. So bigger frame sizes, aka bigger recordings can take longer to open and
compress.

Yesterday I took a Best Quality movie, that was 2hours and 11minutes, 3.6GB in size and
converted it to 480x360 H.264 iPod compatible movie and with VisualHub it took a 128
minutes to recompress on 2.2GHz Core 2 Duo MacBook with 4GB of RAM. From the Apple
System Profiler:



The application MediaInfo reports different frame and file sizes depending on the quality
setting in your Tivo.

Best Quality:



Basic Quality:



So the Basic Quality is almost 2 1/2 times smaller than the Best Quality and has about 65%
of the vertical resolution, but still enough for an iPod screen once converted.

Now this is from a Series 2 Tivo which is recording standard Def TV. Maybe somebody else
can chime in on HD Tivo's. Does an HD Tivo just record the HD stream without redigitizing
or what. The file size for a 720p stream could be huge.

So if you have a HD Tivo recording at Highest quality making huge recording files. Which take
forever to transfer over the network and then convert them to iPod format. That's like trying
to squish an elephant into a carry on suitcase. Just something to ponder.

Cheers!

I can't speak highly enough of how much the Turbo.264 improved the speed of MP4 conversions on my systems. It's the best $70 I've spent in quite a while

- Bob

Here are the answers to the questions.

My mac - powerbook g4 15" ; 1.5 GHz PowerPC G4; 1.25 GB DDR SDRAM
My Tivo - Series 3HD


I'm transferring a normal 2 hour sports show (approx 4 GB) to my Mac. From the Mac I am converting it using the Roxio 10 Titanium. The transfer is about 1 hour to 1 hour 15 min. The conversion however is 8-12 hours.

Bruce,

Here's more examples in a more methodical format.

From the Quality Screen on a Series 2 Tivo.



I recorded four 5-minute sections of the same program using the Record by Time & Channel
option. Each 5-minute section had a different quality setting as per the above screen.

After using Tivo Transfer to get the recordings on to my Mac I used Tivo Decoder to get
to the MPEG videos encapsulated in the .Tivo files, then using the application MediaInfo
I got the resulting movie and file sizes . . .









So we see 3 different file sizes and 4 different bitrates with each step-down about 25% until
the last step which seems about 40%.

Plus the ability of only one stream to catch the closed captioning information, strange.

Best 33MB/min 544x480
High 24.4MB/min 480x480
Medium 19.3MB/min 352x480
Basic 12MB/min 352x480

So I ran the collection of .Tivo files through Toast 10 video converter. I had to peruse the
manual to figure out how to export without burning, push the red button, huh, that's an
interface inconsistency. So with .Tivo files, no options are available, just Standard. Okay,
here it goes.

It took 12 minutes and 31 seconds to convert the .Tivo files to iPod playable MPEG4/H.264
video files.

After reading your post about your set-up:

"My mac - powerbook g4 15" ; 1.5 GHz PowerPC G4; 1.25 GB DDR SDRAM"
"My Tivo - Series 3HD"

I converted the file captured at Best Quality which would work out to about 3.96 GB for a
two hour program. (165MB * (120/5min))=3.96GB With Toast 10 it took 4 minutes and 20
seconds, which would come to about 52 minutes to encode an hour of video. That is on a
MacBook Intel Core 2 Duo 2.2GHz and 4GB RAM.

So I tried out the video with VisualHub with the settings from the video converted by
Toast 10, 480x360 900Kbps 29.97 fps, 128Kbps, 48KHz, stereo and it took 5 min 8 sec on
the Mac with the above specs.

Then I tried the same Best Quality file on an iMac G5 1.8GHz and 2GB RAM in VisualHub
with the same settings above and it took 39 min 37 sec, or what would be just short of 8
hours to encode an hour of video. I remember encoding video for DVD on that G5 and taking
several days to finish, because I would pause it during the day and resume it overnight.

So the answer to your questions is that you don't have enough ponies in your Mac to get the
job done in a timely fashion.

I'm surprised that your G4 PowerBook is keeping up with a G5 with what looks like
similar file sizes, anyway it looks like there might be a new Mac or an Elgato Turbo H264 in
your future.



Elgato Online Store

The Turbo seems to be on sale 2009/07/20 at the Elgato online store. BTW the Turbo.264 HD
will not work on your G4, it requires an Intel Mac.

Hope this helped.

Cheers!