Converting TiVo .ts to H.264/5

[DeepDish1433]

Hi all,

I apologize in advance for the likely rookie-ness of this question.

Is there a good post/guide or general advice anyone could direct me towards on converting TiVo content to H.264/H.265?

I do this currently by:
- export (HD) content from TiVo with kmttg
- Convert .ts file with Handbrake

and it works decently well, though I never feel like I'm getting as good of compression levels as I should, which makes me wonder if there are aspects of the video I'm not properly handling in my encode.

I know the .ts files can have errors in them and kmttg has an option to remove errors which seems to work. I also do realize TiVo video is interlaced and I use the deinterlace options when encoding in Handbrake. But if there are other/better tools or workflows I should be using I'd really appreciate any help you could point me towards.

Thank you in advance.

[tebasuna51]

Welcome to the forum DeepDish1433.

If you want help it's recommended upload a short sample of your .ts to convert.

[DeepDish1433]

Welcome to the forum DeepDish1433.

If you want help it's recommended upload a short sample of your .ts to convert.

I'm happy to do so, but I can't seem to find a way to create a short clip of the file without re-encoding it. Even using ffmpeg and the -c copy option I get errors. Is there a different tool I should be using to create a shorter clip and preserve the same format/encoding?

[tebasuna51]

tsMuxer (https://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=176668), losslessCut (https://github.com/mifi/lossless-cut/releases), AviDemux (http://avidemux.sourceforge.net/), ...

[videoh]

DGSplit

[DeepDish1433]

Thank you for the suggestions - tsMuxer worked great.

I have a brief sample of the video here:
https://s3.amazonaws.com/img.bobpusateri.com/m/TestVideo.ts

As you can see it's good quality HD video, just it always seems that when I go to encode it, compression isn't so great. I realize that's a highly vague statement.

In this case, I'm using Handbrake and converting to H.265 with CQ25, deinterlacing enabled, and the slow preset. My result is about 2GB/hour of encoded video. I know that's not terrible, but generally I can encode video (not from TiVo) to be about half that size with the same settings.

Which is why I'm wondering if there's anything different I need to do to .ts files from TiVo first in my processing pipeline.

[Atak_Snajpera]

I hope you are using Inverse telecine instead of dumb deinterlacing!

[DeepDish1433]

I hope you are using Inverse telecine instead of dumb deinterlacing!

I am not because I didn't know what it was, but I will definitely give that a try and see if it makes any difference. Thanks for the tip!

[tebasuna51]

I can't download the sample.

But if Atak_Snajpera can, I'm sure he can help you.

[kalehrl]

I ran it through Megui's source analysis and it detected it correctly as film.

[Emulgator]

What the others said. Commercials in 23.976 pulldowned to 29.97.
If you need to end with 2Mbps, I suggest IVTC to 23.976, downresize to 1280x720x23.976p, encode using x265.
And: the source is blocky already...

[DeepDish1433]

What the others said. Commercials in 23.976 pulldowned to 29.97.
If you need to end with 2Mbps, I suggest IVTC to 23.976, downresize to 1280x720x23.976p, encode using x265.
And: the source is blocky already...

Dumb question time so I can be less dumb in the future.

How can you tell they were originally at 23.976 and then converted to 29.97?

What does "blocky already" mean? Like the image is made up of larger blocks that (I assume) is not helping the quality?

[Atak_Snajpera]

Dumb question time so I can be less dumb in the future.

How can you tell they were originally at 23.976 and then converted to 29.97?

What does "blocky already" mean? Like the image is made up of larger blocks that (I assume) is not helping the quality?

Look for 3 progressive frames and then 2 interlaced

https://i.postimg.cc/gLy5mY84/0.png (https://postimg.cc/gLy5mY84)

https://i.postimg.cc/Mn3LW3fk/1.png (https://postimg.cc/Mn3LW3fk)

https://i.postimg.cc/yJwrRJTv/2.png (https://postimg.cc/yJwrRJTv)

https://i.postimg.cc/D8FH5X3N/3.png (https://postimg.cc/D8FH5X3N)

https://i.postimg.cc/cvLjGGHM/4.png (https://postimg.cc/cvLjGGHM)

[Emulgator]

Source was 54.012 KiB. Blocky meant: Already damaged, so not worth too many bits.
<if aiming at a bigger display above 42": Deblocking suggested, and give a few more bits...

Or good enough just for mobile phone watching ?
Resize to 1280x720 and you might have the same quality x265@ at 1,5Mbps,

This was my quick and dirty MeGUI .avs, just left it at 1920x1080x23.976,
got video down to 8.664 KiB, was well watchable.

LoadPlugin("C:\_PROG\! Video Encoders\MeGUI\tools\ffms\ffms2.dll")
FFVideoSource("F:\_VID\TestVideo.ts", fpsnum=30000, fpsden=1001, threads=1)
#deinterlace
SeparateFields().SelectEvery(5, 1, 2, 3, 4).Weave() #Decimation: 0 of 5
#SeparateFields().SelectEvery(5, 0, 2, 3, 4).Weave() #Decimation: 1 of 5
#SeparateFields().SelectEvery(5, 0, 1, 3, 4).Weave() #Decimation: 2 of 5
#SeparateFields().SelectEvery(5, 0, 1, 2, 4).Weave() #Decimation: 3 of 5
#SeparateFields().SelectEvery(5, 0, 1, 2, 3).Weave() #Decimation: 4 of 5
#crop
#resize
#denoise