Half a Page of Scribbled Linux

One of the movies I wanted to transfer from TiVo to DVD was too long to fit. In order to reduce its size, the bitrate must be reduced (see section 2b):

maximum-bitrate (bits/second) = 4,500,000,000 (bytes) * 8 (bits/byte) / video-length (seconds)

You can get the duration from the output of ffmpeg:

ffmpeg -i movie.mpg delete-me.vob -fs 1

This maximum bitrate gets split between audio and video. Use 256,000 for the audio and the rest for video. The new ffmpeg command is:

ffmpeg -i movie.mpg -target ntsc-dvd -b <video bitrate> -ab <audio bitrate> movie.vob

Here’s the full procedure for making a DVD from something on your TiVo:

1. Browse to https://your TiVo’s IP address

Log in with user=tivo and password=Your TiVo’s MAK

2. Download the show. We’ll call it tvshow.TiVo
3. Convert to MPEG

tivodecode -m MAK -o tvshow-orig.mpg tvshow.TiVo

4. Optional: Edit with Gopdit

gopdit tvshow-orig.mpg

Save to tvshow.mpg

5. Transcode for NTSC DVD

ffmpeg -i tvshow.mpg -target ntsc-dvd tvshow.vob

6. Create DVD Author file

Make a file called tvshow-dvdauthor.xml that contains this:

<dvdauthor>
  <vmgm />
    <titleset>
      <titles>
        <pgc>
          <vob file="tvshow.vob" chapters="0,10:00,20:00,30:00,40:00,50:00" />
        </pgc>
      </titles>
    </titleset>
</dvdauthor>

(This chapters list assumes a 1-hour show with chapters every ten minutes.)

7. Create the DVD structure

dvdauthor -o dvd -x tvshow-dvdauthor.xml

8. Check the DVD

mplayer dvd:// -dvd-device ./dvd

9. Burn the DVD

growisofs -dvd-compat -Z /dev/dvdrw -dvd-video ./dvd