.TS file format ?

[drdon]

I have used the old GBPVR for several years without any issues. I actually hadn't been on the forum in a long time (years) and decided to see what was new. Long story short I have downloaded the new program. Everything seems to be OK except the recorded file format. In the past I have used Realplayer to watch the recorded shows. However the new program saves in a .ts format which does not seem to be supported. I have gone through the settings in both the new program and the old and have not found a fix. Any thoughts. I searched this morning and it appears there is a program called VLC which will play hte .ts format, I may try that next. I can play the recording through the new program but the quality/controls do not seem as good Realplayer.

[pcostanza]

There are lots of free .ts file converters that will convert to mpg or other formats but my .02 is why bother converting. VLC is an awesome player that plays just about any format without any codec hassles. It works with subtitiles and is updated regularly. Realplayer has caused problems on my systems in the past and is bloated. And, if you want eye candy, it even has skins available. It just works and has never caused problems on the many, many systems I have it on.
I'd say 'just do it'!

[drdon]

Thanks for the response. I will try it tonight. So I guess there is no way to change the format that the recording is saved in?

[Reddwarf]

Thanks for the response. I will try it tonight. So I guess there is no way to change the format that the recording is saved in?

Nope. Since npvr is build for digital recordings it saves all recordings in the format they are transmitted, TS.

[pcostanza]

I have just renamed files from .ts to .mpg and many times, had no problems viewing them. I'm not sure if that will work for Realplayer. However, I know you can't change the filename from .ts to .ra (or it is .rm?) as that won't work.

[Mark Fordworth]

The .ts format is fine for me, even plays on an LG BD-530 BluRay player attached to my TV. Only issue is that the .ts files grow quickly and so usually cannot be copied to a flash drive (FAT formatted), so I have to use a more cumbersome USB SATA NTFS formatted drive (The LG unfortunately will not access files located on other computers in the network even though it does have a ethernet connection). A setup option to split the .TS file so that it could be copied to FAT drives or other backup medium might be nice. It should definitely be an option though, as I expect most users are better served with one large file.

[Anthony]

I use VideoRedoPlus in combination with comskip to automatically remove commercials from my recordings. Comskip works fine with TS files, and VideoRedoPlus loads the TS and outputs an MPG file. (You could load the TS file into VideoRedoPlus manually and save it as an MPG if you don't need the commercial skipping).

I stream my recorded shows to a TVIX M6600 in the living room to watch them. While the M6600 supports MPG files, I have found many operations (fast forward, rewind, jumping, etc.) work better with MKV files. So, I use MKVMerge to convert the MPG file to an MKV file.

Transcoding the recordings to different formats usually only takes a few minutes per show, since the recordings aren't actually being reencoded. I have batch files to process my daily recordings and defragment my drives overnight so there is no performance hit during the day when I'm working on the computer.

[StanO]

Mind you, with ComSkip you don't edit much. But . . . if there are movies you want to keep long term the .ts is a hassle. There aren't many editors out there (at least free and Pinnacle does not) so that leaves converting then editing which = grief.

I've had to deal with that with GBPVR with HD, no other format would work right, so my HD movies remain as files.

For me I think it will be switching to WMC when I get an HD TV (I know for such a tech geek and no HD!)

[SickBoy]

VideoRedo has a command line interface that you can integrate into your postprocessing.bat script. Seems like it should be fairly simple to use it to write out an mpg file without doing any cutting.

[zvm]

Why is option to automatically transcode to avi gone (or any other format)? I like it on GBPVR. With that option no other transcoding tool is required. And more importantly, none of my time.

Another question, not directly on topic, but about recordings in general: is it possible to schedule manual recording to other steps than 10 minutes? For instance, I would like to have test recording from 21:24 to 21:27. That is possible with GBPVR. Now... I cannot get it.