Thanks to forum members I can now successfuly copy fims to a mobile HDD. However the resulting film on my laptop is made up of three files
[LIST][*]Film.hmt - 5.0kb[*]Film.nts - 5.4 Mb[*]Film.ts - 2.7 Gb[/LIST]
I can't view any of these files so am I now supposed to convert them to an avi or mpeg or something and if so how? Thanks in anticipation.

get yourself a free copy of VLC Player from www.videolan.org and play the .ts file

Thanks GC - I've done that and am now able to view the film on my PC. What about burning the film to a DVD though?

Using free utilities

http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/forums/s...66&postcount=7

ProjectX has a steep learning curve--there may be gentler ts editors out there!

But depending on how often you might go from ts to dvd, I'd strongly recommend Videoredo TV Suite:

http://www.videoredo.com/en/index.htm

A rock solid one stop shop, as long as you don't want fancy menus, with excellent support. The process is really fast. HD editing coming soon--not that you'll need it with a freesat box. There's a free trial so you have nothing to lose by having a go.

Or you may have got some sort of editing and authoring software with your DVD burner--usually Nero. Good luck with that.

A .ts file is the raw "transport stream" which can be re-encoded or converted to dvd format.

Mine are taken from freeview broadcasts. I assume .ts files obtained from other sources are the same. BUT IT WOULD BE USEFUL TO KNOW NOW IF THEY ARE NOT.

I'm studying this process now (making good progress with all free s/w) and hope to start a thread on it soon, as there doesn't seem much here - at least not recently.

In the meantime, there is plenty of info out there, but it is broadly scattered and many of the guides are out of date.

I would recommend DVR-Studio from Haenlein-Software.com. It will transcode to MPEG either muxed or as separate audio and video files.
There is now also from them DVR-Studio HD which will handle HD files (though not non H-264) which will also handle .DVR files as well as .ts ones. It converts to either .ts or .m2ts, the latter outputted files can then be written to DVD or bluRay as appropriate.

I think this has been asked before but maybe others have learnt since then? What I'd like to be able to do is edit the .ts files (remove adverts/padding) then put the files back on the Humax HDR and watch them. Primarily to allow me to create a kids folder with all their stuff in it. Has anyone had success with this?

TIA

Mark.

Thanks for the help - I have Nero9 so I'll try that route first. If that doesnt work then yoiur suggestions will be handy.

off the top of my head I don't think it can be done as for the .ts file to playback in the HDR any editing that has been carried out on the original file needs the sidecar files (.hmt and .nts) to substantiate its authenticity and no-one has yet been able to modify these other files to trick the box that the .ts can be played.

I have had limited success converting .ts file from the HDR to DVD in HD using Handbrake.

I converted the file to use on a PS3 that worked but with my computer being 4 years old, running Windows XP, 1G of RAM and a old processor it took about 2 hours to convert a 2 minute clip of Sea Sick Steve from BBC HD Jools Holland.

I thought about doing a movie but with the time it takes (would have to leave the computer on for a least a day and night) and the limited space on DVD discs even using DL disks and the thought of having the disc fail in it’s last minute of completion just put me of.

If you got a high flying computer it’s worth giving it ago if you have the patients, remembering the limited space if using DVD. I have not got the settings for Handbrake for the conversion but I originally got them from another forum so a little bit of Googling should turn something up.

Another piece of software I was going to give a try but gave up after the above adventure was “TSSplitter” which is supposed to split ts files but looking at the interface and my old computers speed I though I would give it a rest unit a future update in computer, software and hopefully blue-ray.

My previously recommended software of DVD Studio will permit basic editing such as removing padding and advert breaks and permits choice of audio used. It is not free but not too expensive and it is easy to use. You can get a full function 30 day trial. I don't benefit from 'plugging' it, I just know it works as expected. Bear in mind you get nothin' for nothin' usually, it either doesn't work or it's is an awful lot of work involved.
If you need more editing facilities you need to process the file further with another program.

It may be closer than you think.

Some limited success here from Raydon.

Rgds.

Les

An interesting read !! shame son_t still feels it necessary to insult members of DS after, I believe, being offered a 'DS Holiday' for insulting another member.


If he's so clever how come he hasn't sorted it out himself yet. And if memory serves me correctly some of the stuff on his wikispaces pages were the product of regular posters from DS.

Welcome to the wonderful world of viewing formats. What finally pushed me to getting Sky HD was that I was fed up running the output from my tuner card through two utilities before it would reliably play.

It's great fun if your geek and like messing about but if all you want to do is watch stuff it gets tedious :-/

FWIW I found that TSDoctor did the best allround job. On the rare cases where it failed (oddly it would sometimes just go mad) the simple HDFixer that DVBViewer users have did the trick.

Don't give up too easily! Tssplitter doesn't encode, it just copies, so its speed is probably more limited by your hard disk than the cpu. A relatively cheap upgrade to two modest (500 gig?) drives, with input and output on different disks, would probably make a world of difference. You can't lose anything by trying with your existing setup to get a sense of what it can do, though I agree the interface is clunky. I found getting timings for cuts in another player was easier.

I used Tssplitter successfully for some time for topping and tailing BBC HD files (it's too fiddly for removing adverts, and it's not frame accurate) and ran the output through TsRemux to produce a 'blu ray' folder to burn to an AVCHD DVD. It was fast. An hour's worth of programme would be cut in a few minutes (maybe 5 or 7?) and blu ray foldered in about a minute. The longest process by far was burning to DL disk.

(*I think* you do have to pre-process the file with BBC HD fixer as mentioned by Andrue, which adds a bit to the overall time. I'm not certain about this though. To fill in the background: BBC HD is broadcast with non-standard audio flags, which upsets many players. They say they will correct it one day, but for now it's a pain. HD fixer corrects the start codes.)

Admittedly my machine is much newer than yours (3 gig core2 duo, 2 gigs ram, 2 1Tb drives), but again none of this is processor intensive because there is no encoding. It would be interesting to see what an older machine could do.

Thanks to all your help I have cracked it. This is the procedure I used

1 Clean the TS file using TSDoctor

2 Used Nero Vision to create a DVD Video.

3 It gives you the options to cut out ads etc and insert titles, chapters as per usual.

4 The conversion took about 1 hour for a 1.55 movie and works.

I am well pleased and thanks again for your help particularly to the member who suggested using Vision Express ( can't find his post).

I'm not sure if that's fast or slow because it of course depends on your setup. The main thing is Nero should be 'smart encoding' (= no encoding) nearly all of the time, except for brief slowdowns around cut points and chapter points. Nero 6 used to be *very* flakey about this, and would force a needless complete reencode if the last frame of the edited file was one it didn't like. The processing then took ages and always filled the dvd completely regardless of original file size.

I don't recall exactly what triggered it, it may have been if the last frame was the second of two B frames but I'm not sure. I'm pretty sure if it was a P frame you were OK.

So if you aren't getting mostly smart encoding it may be worth changing the final frame to output slightly, in case later versions of Nero have the same quirk.

I don't have shares in Videoredo, honest, , but for comparison it will generate a DVD folder in a few minutes--say 10 for a 3 gig file-- and most of the speed is because it has its own version of 'smart encoding'. This with a 3 gig core2 duo and twin 1TB drives, reading from one and writing to the other. Nero should be similar I'd think.

Another quirk of Nero 6 was it set the output volume level to 33%, which would force audio reencoding, and you had to adjust it EVERY BLASTED TIME to 100% to avoid this. Not as processing intensive as video, but it still slowed things down for no good reason. Another thing to check hasn't been inherited by the latest version.

HTH.

I have to second this, I bought mine (video redo plus) when the dollar was 50p (it cost about £25.00). Customer support is second to none and it's incredibly easy and fast to use

Thanks for that recomendation Mwardy I was using Nero 9, whether that makes any difference. I am not as technically minded (TV/Video) as most members on this forum and I tend to use the maxim "if it works then that's OK for me"