Can't load DirectShow mpg into Timeline

[toonbon]

I have an mpg that was generated by DirectShow when it converted a .tivo file to mpg. The mpg plays and sounds great but now I'd like to edit it with Premier Elements. But there's something strange about the file that Premier Elements doesn't like. First Premier Elements takes about 30 minutes to index and conform the file. Then when I try to drag it to the timeline, instead of seeing the normal video and audio tracks I see what appears in the attached figure, and when I drop it into the timline and try to play it there's no sound track.

Does anyone know what might be going on?

Thanks.

[toonbon]

Didn't see the figure attached in the previous message so will try to attach it again here.

[toonbon]

And here's what the timeline looks like after dropping the DirectShow mpg into it:

[ATR]

toonbon

Never having been there, done that, I did some searching...have you seen this link
http://www.pinwire.com/articles/66/1/Convert-your-TiVo-files-to-MPEG/Page1.html

If I am reading this correctly, the Direct Show Dump only releases a mpg from the Tivo file. Typically you follow with a new mpg from that. So, what are you working with, the mpg unlocked from the Tivo file or the new file from the mpg locked in the Tivo? All of this has not yet given me a description of the mpg format/compression being used in this.

DV AVI is the native format of the Premiere Elements Timeline. And, in many cases, conversion to DV AVI is required.

Please check out the link posted in this thread and see if it all comes together for you. If not, we will rethink the issue.

To be continued, if necessary

ATR

[toonbon]

No I hadn't seen that link. Thanks. I get the TiVo file to my PC using TiVo's Desktop Plus program, which seems to do the job fine.

If I am reading this correctly, the Direct Show Dump only releases a mpg from the Tivo file. Typically you follow with a new mpg from that. So, what are you working with, the mpg unlocked from the Tivo file or the new file from the mpg locked in the Tivo?Here's a description of the .tivo file:

A .tivo PC file is not directly in mpeg format; it's both encrypted
and uses TiVo's private codec. TiVo supplies a filter to decrypt it. Only players/editors that are "DirectShow" enabled will know enough to use the TiVo filter.

So running DirectShow Dump directly produces an mpg file that is no longer encrypted but who knows what codec was used? The mpg file that DirectShow Dump produces is what I'm trying to bring into Premier Elements. This mpg plays fine in GOM and Windows Media Player but won't load into Premier Elements for editing. By the way, Windows Media Player will also play the original .tivo file, so it must be DirectShow enabled. Maybe Premier Elements needs to become DirectShow enabled.

I've tried converting the mpg from DirectShow Dump to WMV with WinMPG Converter but the resulting audio is out of sync with the video so the file is unusable.

If I load the mpg into VirtualDub there's an initial phase where it says "Parsing interleaved MPEG-2 file" and then when the file is finally in VirtualDub there's no sound. VirtualDub's File Information shows the information in the attached figure.

It seems that there needs to be one more conversion on the mpg file from DirectShow Dump to bring it truly into the normal world, where other programs can work on it, and that conversion needs to be able to produce an audio stream that's in sync with the video.


Thanks for looking at this.

[ATR]

toonbon

Have you decided on your next step? Since the author of the link used Virtual Dub successfully, do you want to give his entire workflow another look?

Do you want me to continue thinking about this?

ATR
(You may be well beyond the following links, but just in case I will post them:
http://www.zatznotfunny.com/ttg.htm
http://forums.tivo.com/pe/action/forums/displaythread;jsessionid=566D6C8A01EA41C7D5125302E 427A1E9?postID=10235127&ie=x#e10235127
...)

[toonbon]

Have you decided on your next step? Since the author of the link used Virtual Dub successfully, do you want to give his entire workflow another look?Yes, he did say he was able to remove the commercials with VirtualDub. But he used DirectShow Dump, the same as I did, to get the mpg, so I don't know what more to do to follow his example. I suspect that TiVo encodes different programs differently. I'm working with an HD720 American Idle video, where the audio was no doubt laid down with as much fidelity as possible - probably with variable bit rate encoding - which makes this mpg tricky to deal with.

Since this is a Premier Elements forum, it would be nice if someone here figured out how to get ANY mpg from DirectShow Dump into Premier Elements so it could be edited and rendered back out with the same quality. It seems that that would make the product more useful. Best of all, someone from Adobe needs to contact TiVo and get Premier Elements "DirectShow" enabled.

I hadn't seen any of those links you provided and there is a lot of information there, so let me dig through them and if I come up with anything useful I'll post back.

Thanks again for your help.

[ernmorris]

Was there ever a resolution to this issue? I just purchased Premiere Elements 7 for the sole purpose of editing the shows that I Tivo and was very disappointed to learn that I am having the same issue as the thread originator.

I would love to be able to find a resolution to this if anyone can help.

[ATR]

ernmorris

Do I understand correctly that you have gone through all the links provided and none of the comments in them helped you solve your specific issue?

If so, then I will move forward to update my search for a possible resolution.

Adobe Technical Service offers free technical service related to installation issues for registered, current version, Premiere Elements (namely version 7). You may want to look into that resource (if free for you) as soon as possible. There should be another version released about October/November 2009.

Please let me know what troubleshooting on this matter that you have or have not done so far.

ATR

[ernmorris]

ATR - I admittedly skimmed the links and didn't believe that any could help me, but before I make you do any unnecessary work let me give them a 2nd look and see if that fixes the issue.

In addition, I have checked a Tivo forum that has a few threads on this topic that may be of some help.

I need to finish the honey-do list before I can continue my research, but will let you know (hopefully by end of day today) what the outcome was.

I appreciate the help.

Thanks,
Ern

[ATR]

Ern

Thanks.

Via the Elements Village private message system, I sent a private message to the question's originator, asking about the outcome. So, hopefully our request for outcome information will be seen in that private message and/or in the latest messages here.

Those links that I posted were fairly comprehensive, so I am hoping your answer will be in those. If not, onward to other paths to the answer.

To be continued....

ATR

[ernmorris]

Ok, I've been playing around with this for a few hours now and here's what I've got...

My main focus was on the information found in this link http://www.pinwire.com/articles/66/1/Convert-your-TiVo-files-to-MPEG/Page1.html

I've been using the direct show dump utility for several years so I am very familiar with it. This is what I use to convert the .tivo files to .mpg.

(As a side note, I used to use Pinnacle Studio a few years back - can't recall the version - and was able to use the .mpg file that the direct show utility created without further editing...just thought that was interesting and worth a mention)

I didn't want to purchase additional software (especially after making the investment to buy Premiere Elements 7) so I bypassed the videoredo section.

So I gave the virtual dub utility a shot. I also downloaded the codec recommended (at least I think I did - I couldn't find the download on the site the original author had linked so I did a google search and downloaded this: http://www.xvidmovies.com/codec/). This could be part of the problem - I'm not sure.

Anyway, I opened my file in the virtual dub utility and saved it as an .avi. This is the only option that I could see that I had. This would be fine, but it increased the size of the file exponentially.

Regardless, I gave it a shot in Elements and it opened the file and I was able to edit it. The video was a bit choppy at times and the audio seemed out of sync at times, but hey I've actually made a little more progress than I had previously so that's the good news.

The bad news is that I can't save the files that I plan to edit as an .avi every time due to the size. The file that I used was an 11 minute clip of ESPN College Gameday and it ended up being a 15GB .avi file after the save. I plan to edit 3+ hour football games so that's not going to work.

Which leads me back to the codec that I downloaded. Is this supposed to allow me to save the file in the virtual dub utility as an .mpg? Perhaps I downloaded the wrong thing or simply just don't know how to use it.

At this point, I don't think we need to get Adobe support involved because I feel like I am making some progress, but I'm not 100% sure how to make the codec/virtual dub utility to work as I had hoped.

I'll continue to play around with it, but in the meantime do you have any thoughts or suggestions?

Again, I appreciate the help.

[ATR]

Thanks for your work on this issue.

I will try to give this another look tomorrow.

ATR

[ernmorris]

ATR - I've messed around with this for several days now and I'm just unable to figure out how to save the file as an MPEG through virtualdub.

I assume it has to do with not downloading the correct codec, but I'm honestly not sure.

I know that you had contacted the guy who had originally started this thread - did you hear back or did he ever have any luck?

At this point, I'm not sure what else to do. It sounds like the videoredo product could work for me, but I really don't want to buy something else after purchasing Elements. Especially considering the virtualdub product has worked for some people.

Any thoughts or suggestions before I make another software purchase?

Just to recap...I am able to move the file from my Tivo to my desktop. I am able to convert the file from .tivo to .mpg. The new file won't open in Elements. I have downloaded virtualdub and a codec, but can't save the file as an .mpg, only an .avi which more than tripled the size.

I appreciate any help you can provide. Thanks in advance.

[ATR]

I have not gotten a progress report from the user who started this thread on getting TiVo recordings into Premiere Elements, and I have not gotten around to doing any exploring on my own yet.



I guess that you have seen this link on “Convert your TiVo files to MPEG”?
http://www.pinwire.com/articles/66/1/Convert-your-TiVo-files-to-MPEG/Page1.html

Have you looked at the tryout for VideoReDo for this?
http://www.videoredo.com/en/index.htm
There may be complications if you use 5.1 channel sound, but, if not, this is a possibility for getting tivo recording to mpg which you could bring into Premiere Elements???

ATR