10 replies to this topic

[kathpdx]

Am I just waking up and smelling the coffee here?    I finally went ahead and bought the Toast 8 software to get the TivoToGo. BUT I assumed that I would be able to edit the movies I imported to my Mac from my Tivo.  I can find no such capability.

Do I need to purchase other software?  Toast 9??  Could I have saved myself $100+ by buying only Toast 9 or is this an add on?

OTHER preferred software suggestions?  
(iMovie certainly doesn't like the Tivo format.)

Any help is greatly appreciated!

Kath

[tsantee]

There are some Tivo-to-go tips here: http://www.roxio.com/enu/support/toast/default.html

Are you wanting to make video DVDs from the Tivo content? If yes, keep Toast 8.

Toast doesn't edit. However, you can edit MPEG video transferred from the TiVo using MPEG Streamclip which is free but requires Apple's Quicktime MPEG 2 Playback Component which you download from the Apple Store for $20.

I don't have TiVo but presume that Toast writes the TiVo-transferred MPEGs to the Roxio Converted Items folder. Without quitting Toast (or the transferred videos get erased unless you change Toast's preferences) go to that folder (in your Documents folder by default) and open the MPEG video file with MPEG Streamclip. In its Edit menu you'll see the commands for marking the start and end points of your edits and should figure out how to remove those. Choose Undo if you make a mistake. When done choose Convert to MPEG from the File menu. Put that saved MPEG in the Toast video window and delete the one showing from the TiVo export. You're now ready to proceed with creating your video DVD.

If you aren't wanting to make video DVDs from these transferred TiVo files then you might want to seek a refund for Toast and wait a short time for Roxio to release Popcorn 3 which will have TiVo-to-go for the purpose of converting to other video formats such as those used by AppleTV.

Edited by tsantee, 19 August 2007 - 11:38 AM.

[kathpdx]

Are you wanting to make video DVDs from the Tivo content? If yes, keep Toast 8.

Thanks Tsantee...  I think I want to be able to take cuts and slices from some of the video I download from TiVo and, yes, maybe/probably assemble for video DVDs.  Else just short clips that I have available...

I'll go investigate the Apple download and Streamclip!  Thanks so much!!

kath

[Sluggo042-2]

Tsantee ,

I don't know what results the original poster had, but it didn't work for me.  When I try to open the TIVO file in Streamclip, it doesn't perceive the TIVO files as valid Video files.  When I then choose "All Files" in Streamclip, it allows me to open the file, but it will not then show me any video in the edit interface.  When I press play, the timer runs, but I hear and see nothing.

Since you say you don't have TIVO, I'll tell you one thing that probably explains the problem -  when buring TIVO files to DVD, Toast has to go through a lengthy conversion process (something like an hour-long process on my machine) before it can begin burning the DVD.  But this conversion doesn't begin until you click the Burn button, and there's no pause point between the conversion and the burn sequences.  I suspect that Streamclip could edit that intermediary post-conversion file, but as far as I can see, there's no way to access it other than to burn the whole thing to DVD, and then edit the resulting files, and then reburn the edited files to another DVD.  Its a rather labored process on the whole, and wasteful, having to burn an intermediary DVD.

Of course, I may be missing something obvious, but I think that's the situation.

Doug G.

[tsantee]

Tsantee ,

I don't know what results the original poster had, but it didn't work for me.  When I try to open the TIVO file in Streamclip, it doesn't perceive the TIVO files as valid Video files.  When I then choose "All Files" in Streamclip, it allows me to open the file, but it will not then show me any video in the edit interface.  When I press play, the timer runs, but I hear and see nothing.

Since you say you don't have TIVO, I'll tell you one thing that probably explains the problem -  when buring TIVO files to DVD, Toast has to go through a lengthy conversion process (something like an hour-long process on my machine) before it can begin burning the DVD.  But this conversion doesn't begin until you click the Burn button, and there's no pause point between the conversion and the burn sequences.  I suspect that Streamclip could edit that intermediary post-conversion file, but as far as I can see, there's no way to access it other than to burn the whole thing to DVD, and then edit the resulting files, and then reburn the edited files to another DVD.  Its a rather labored process on the whole, and wasteful, having to burn an intermediary DVD.

Of course, I may be missing something obvious, but I think that's the situation.

Doug G.

Doug,

Here's two ways I would try this:

The first is if Toast extracts MPEGs from the TiVo when they are added to the Toast Video window. If so, they will appear with the extension .mpg in the Roxio Converted Items folder in your Documents folder. You should be able to control-click on that file and choose Open with... MPEG Streamclip. After completing the edits in Streamclip choose Convert to MPEG and add that saved file in the Toast Video window and delete the one copied over from the TiVo.

If this doesn't work then I know this other method will succeed. Set up everything in Toast up to the point where you're ready to start burning the DVD. Instead of clicking the burn button choose Save as Disc Image. When Toast is done writing the disc image file, mount it. You can do this many ways but what I usually do is control-click on the .toast file in the Finder and choose Mount It from the contextual menu.

Now open MPEG Streamclip and choose Open. Select a VOB title set in the mounted disc image's VIDEO_TS folder. An example is to select VTS_01_1.VOB or VTS_02_1.VOB. Streamclip may ask you if you want the entire set or just one VOB. You want the entire set to open. Now do your editing and export using Convert to MPEG. Create a new Toast project with the exported MPEGs and burn your edited DVD. You may need to go into Toast's custom encoder window and choose Never Re-encode if you see Toast start with Encoding instead of Multiplexing.

When you have your new DVD you can trash the disc image.

[Sluggo042-2]

Well, sir, it appears that your instructions will do as advertised - allow one to clip bits from an existing Toast-generated conversion, and then re-encode the resulting edited file back into a DVD format.  Unfortunately, at least on my rig (dual 1.25 GHz G4), it looks like it is going to take even longer than the procedure that it was meant to shortcut!

You were correct that your second procedure (Toast encodes to disc image) is required.  When you command the Tivo-to-Go program to Toast something, only placeholders appear in the Toast session.  The actual encoding conversion to DVD format takes place only after the Burn button has been pushed.  Your procedure does end up with a project.toast file which can then be opened by Streamclip.  Editing can then be performed in a straightforward fashion.  However, when I Export to MPEG-4, I then get yet another Encoding box as the edited file is re-encoded.  This encoding is even slower than the one performed by Toast!  The first ten seconds of video too almost two minutes to encode.  At that rate, an hour of video was going to take something like 10 hours to encode, so I gave up.  And, not to be picky or anything, but doesn't a second re-encoding just mean that I'm going to take another quality hit of conversion degradation?  I'd have thought something as simple as dropping some edits out of an existing encoded stream should be as simple as making a few minor changes to the structure of an existing digitized video file that could be done in a few seconds, but apparently it is more complicated than that.

I hope my complaining doesn't make it sound like I don't appreciate your advice.  I'm just trying to relay my results so that you'll understand what does or doesn't work in the future.  Many thanks for your time!

[tsantee]

Do not export to MPEG 4 with Streamclip. That requires encoding and Toast would need to encode it again back to MPEG 2. When you finish your editing in Streamclip choose Convert to MPEG... from the File menu. This export will go quickly; about as fast as the hard drive can write the data. Then add those MPEGs to Toast.

[Sluggo042-2]

Do not export to MPEG 4 with Streamclip. That requires encoding and Toast would need to encode it again back to MPEG 2. When you finish your editing in Streamclip choose Convert to MPEG... from the File menu. This export will go quickly; about as fast as the hard drive can write the data. Then add those MPEGs to Toast.

Ah, that's the ticket.  That will teach me to pay a little more attention when reading the details of someone's instructions.  I'd seen the word 'encode' in your description, which stuck in my head for some reason, but missed that it was 'Convert' that I was supposed to be looking for in the menu.

Very cool, I've wanted to be able to edit these TIVOed files before burning them to DVD since Toast 8 came out.

Thanks so much for putting up with my thick-headedness.  I greatly appreciate the assistance!

Doug G.

[whatsleft]

Hi, my situation is very similar. I'm trying to burn Tivo files to DVD, but trim them a little bit first. I make the disk image (making sure to set the reencoding option to "never" in the custom encoding window), then mount it. When I import the VOB files in Streamclip and play them, I just get the 5 dots in the middle, no video, although the audio works fine. Any idea what could be going on here?

Thanks,
Tony L

[Sluggo042-2]

Hi, my situation is very similar. I'm trying to burn Tivo files to DVD, but trim them a little bit first. I make the disk image (making sure to set the reencoding option to "never" in the custom encoding window), then mount it. When I import the VOB files in Streamclip and play them, I just get the 5 dots in the middle, no video, although the audio works fine. Any idea what could be going on here?

Thanks,
Tony L

The process has been working for me since the original conversation, so I can say that it works.  I wonder if there's a setting that's messing up your process.

What I'm doing to open the files in Streamclip . . .

1) Use TiVo Transfer to move files to my Mac
2) Click on Toast It to launch the file into Toast
3) From Toast, choose File > Save As Disc Image . . . , and select target location for flie

Long period of processing takes place.  Once it's done . . .

4) Mount Disc Image
5) Launch MPEG Streamclip
6) Select File > Open File . . ., then point to file on Disc Image
        (you use the term 'import', are you using the Open File command?  I made a similar
         mistake when I first followed this process)
7) I then get a dialog box that asks "Would you like to open all the files of the stream together?".  
         I choose the "Open All Files" option.
         I expect that you're not getting this box, because if you click on "Open 1 File", that's the sort of
         situation where you'd only get audio or video, but not both.  It's almost like it is defaulting to this
         choice in your setup.
8) This opens the video in the window, where the video replaces that 5 dot symbol.

I will say that I've had at least one situation where Streamclip couldn't open what otherwise looked like a valid file.  All I would get is a frozen first frame of video, even though the audio would play.  I suspect some sort of corruption in the opening frames of the files.  Have you tried the process with more than one file?

Does that help at all?

Doug G.

[whatsleft]

The process has been working for me since the original conversation, so I can say that it works.  I wonder if there's a setting that's messing up your process.

What I'm doing to open the files in Streamclip . . .

1) Use TiVo Transfer to move files to my Mac
2) Click on Toast It to launch the file into Toast
3) From Toast, choose File > Save As Disc Image . . . , and select target location for flie

Long period of processing takes place.  Once it's done . . .

That's one difference right there. My Save As Disc Image doesn't take so long (a few minutes) because I turned off reencoding. That could be tripping up Streamclip.

4) Mount Disc Image
5) Launch MPEG Streamclip
6) Select File > Open File . . ., then point to file on Disc Image
        (you use the term 'import', are you using the Open File command?  I made a similar
         mistake when I first followed this process)

I'm using File > Open File.

7) I then get a dialog box that asks "Would you like to open all the files of the stream together?".  
         I choose the "Open All Files" option.
         I expect that you're not getting this box, because if you click on "Open 1 File", that's the sort of
         situation where you'd only get audio or video, but not both.  It's almost like it is defaulting to this
         choice in your setup.

I do get to this step, and I choose "open all files."

8) This opens the video in the window, where the video replaces that 5 dot symbol.

I will say that I've had at least one situation where Streamclip couldn't open what otherwise looked like a valid file.  All I would get is a frozen first frame of video, even though the audio would play.  I suspect some sort of corruption in the opening frames of the files.  Have you tried the process with more than one file?

I tried it on all the VOB files in this disk image. The only one that worked was the menu VOB, which is the only one created in Toast. I've got some other disk images saved on disk, I'll try it with those.

Thanks so far for your help,
Tony