Gary this is absolutely brilliant.

One short question:
I can now get valid mpeg2 files from the tivo. I use ExtractStream-0.2, ConvertStream-0.1, and the mplex that comes with ExtractStream-0.2. When I play the stream however, I find the Audio and Video out of sync.
In fact after about 15mins it becomes unbearably out of sync, it gets worse as I skip through the stream.
Video is ahead of Audio.

Now I don't know where the problem is. It could be ExtractStream, ConvertStream, mplex, or even the playback software.

I'm running ConvertStream and mplex on Solaris 8 on x86, and finally play on WindozeNT using a demo version of PowerDVD (haven't got vlc working properly on either Solaris x86 or SPARC).

If anyone has experienced similar problems or even has a solution, I would very much like to hear from you. (I have looked on the forum and on google but haven't found anything relevant, which is not to say that I overlooked it.)

Thanks a lot.
Eric

Hi Gary.

Thanks for your help.
At the moment I'm having slight disagreements with mplayer as to what a PC running Solaris looks like (from what my programming skills allow me to deduce).

I shall try compiling it on SPARC Solaris, or indeed try to install Linux on a spare PC. Unfortunately both these things will have to be done at home (as opposed to while I'm bored at work), so I will take a bit longer to complete them.
I will work on it though.

Thanks again.
Eric

Update on my progress and a cry for help (again!).

Following a hint from Doug and then reading about it on the forum ( http://www.ptvupgrade.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=2&t=000097 ) I got the CVS version of ExtractStream.

This version is a big improvement for me. I can now extract from the TiVo straight to two files (*.m2v and *.m2a) without going via the raw stream (This didn't work for ExtractStream-0.2, the video stream wasn't valid).
If I use this method and then run mplex (from mjpegtools-1.4.1) with mplex -f 3 -m 2 I find the audio/video sync problem greatly reduced. Unfortunately not completely. I still have a couple of seconds sync problems.
If I use the new ExtractStream and extract a raw stream and then use Gary's ConverStream, the audio/video sync problem is back to the old greater difference.
I'd much rather extract the raw stream from the tivo and then do all the processing intensive stuff on my unix box, really.

I have also tried different players (on Windoze only: PowerDVD and EMpgPlay_130). The player does not make a difference.
I'm still struggling with MPlayer ( http://mplayer.sourceforge.net/ ) and vlc ( http://www.videolan.org/ ).
MPlayer compiles under Solaris SPARC and also runs. The video is half width though, and there is no audio.
VLC compiles and runs under Solaris SPARC, but the sound is a constant white noise, nothing else. It compiles under a quickly installed RedHat 7.0, too, but it doesn't run, but I haven't invested too much effort into this at the moment, as my first priority will be to extract the streams properly and without sync problems.

I think I have my problem down now pretty much to a precise location in the process.
The way I see it at the moment is this (and I'm not 100% on it):
* Raw stream extraction works.
* Raw stream to m2v and m2a appears to be buggy.
* conversion from m2v and m2a to a complete mpeg2 movie works.

If I'm right, what I'd like to find out is what changes were made to the raw -> m2[av] conversion routine in ExtractStream and can we drill that sync problem down further in there, and also: Gary, from looking at this, do you see an obvious problem/difference in your ConvertStream software (which I'd rather be using)?

I guess I'm handing this all over back to you guys/girls, as you can probably tell that my programming skills are not all that fabulous.

Anyone got any more ideas?
All help will be greatly appreciated.
Eric

P.S. Tomorrow (bored at work) I will take a look myself at the differences between ExtractStream-0.2 and the CVS version I downloaded today, but my hopes are pretty slim that I'll even understand the code... :-(

Originally posted by Eric Bautsch:

If I use this method and then run mplex (from mjpegtools-1.4.1) with mplex -f 3 -m 2 I find the audio/video sync problem greatly reduced. Unfortunately not completely. I still have a couple of seconds sync problems.
If I use the new ExtractStream and extract a raw stream and then use Gary's ConverStream, the audio/video sync problem is back to the old greater difference.

I have also tried different players (on Windoze only: PowerDVD and EMpgPlay_130). The player does not make a difference.

Success (partially, but usably)!

Marc:
I played again with the -O option. 100 msec didn't seem to make a great deal of difference, so I tried 500 msec (a lot, I know) but that to my surprise gave me a very adequate result with a 1hr show. In the very beginning it would appear as though I'm just slightly out of sync now, the other way round, audio before video, but bearly noticable.
In the middle though I'm absolutely spot on. And in the end the video is again slightly ahead of audio.
The whole thing still moves through the show, but I definetly have a result that I can watch without going grazy with the sync problem.
I have only tried one programme so far, but will obviously continue.
Thanks again for your help. Great.

topset:
I tried netmplex, too. Compiled on Solaris x86 as above.
First I tried with the TiVo as a client, running netmplex with -l -o <file>, but that came straigt back with:

# /var/tmp/netmplex/netmplex -l -o papermoon-cvs-netmplex.mpeg
accept: Resource temporarily unavailable
#

I then tried the other way 'round with:
netmplex -a [TiVo's IP address] -o myfile.mpeg2
That worked. I got a stream from the tivo. Complete and all. But I still have the same sync problem that I had running mplex after letting ExtractStream extract to <file>.m2[av]. Note: This is better than when extracting raw and then running through ConvertStream (but I'd still prefer to use ConvertStream, as I would very much like to keep processing on the TiVo to a minimum).

After downloading the stream, I shut down the PC side of things (CTRL-c). This prompted the TiVo to reboot. I suppose I should have shut down the TiVo side first. Just don't know if this is expected behaviour?

I haven't had another look at vlc yet...

Originally posted by foundation:
Is the version in the tar file compiled for x86 or Tivo?

Somebody mentioned using ExtractStream with -s for raw mode. Do you pipe the output to a file and then run convertstream on that file or do you run convertstream directly on the MFS media partition?

Originally posted by daler:
Has anyone had any luck with this an 2.01?