Increasingly, recently, I’ve been unable to successfully extract video from my TiVo using the TyStudio tools. I first installed them over two years ago, and back then they worked flawlessly - ripping video to MPEG2 files which I then converted to DiVX, or latterly, burned to DVD. For some reason though TyStudio is either crashing the TiVo (something to do with the TyIndex process) or just failing half way through an extraction. Sometimes the process just hangs, and timesout, other times it complains that it can’t read enough chunks and falls over. I had thought that this was just a quirk of some of the program stream I had on my TiVo, and I’d not really investigated it any further. Until today.
Turns out there’s a fair few others who had the same problems with TyStudio, and instead of giving up they developed and fixed their own extraction tools. I’ve now dispensed with TyStudio and am using a combination of other tools. So far these appear to be faster and more stable than TyStudio ever was (if not quite as quick to use.)
I’ve got mfs_ftp installed on the TiVo itself. This is a genius bit of software which runs as an FTP server on the TiVo, but can also compress the .ty file (TiVo’s video format) before sending it across the network. It now takes about 50 minutes to transfer a 90 minute program - instead of nearer 120! Once that file is safely on my laptop’s hard drive, I can use the TyTools suite to convert to something I can write to DVD. I’m going to use DVDLab for the DVD creation. If you ever need to create DVDs, I really rate this - instead of the noddy hand holding of the usual freebie DVD creation tools, it actually gives you real control over the menus and navigation structure. I liken it to Paint Shop Pro for DVDs.
Thanks go to Scott Presnell for writing up his experiences with various tools, and inspiring me to actually get my extraction woes sorted out! Oh, and it was Sue’s request for a DVD of The Grid that prompted me to try it in the first place.
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