WizMac source code released

[prl]

I was hoping that I could transfer via USB external hard drive (from memory this is what I did with wiztv and my PC).

don't know where WizTV comes up in this. It's for content download from the WizTV server and for information.

I think Greg meant to say WizFX.....

Ah, yes. That'd be right. I was thrown by it being referred to in the same sentence as using the USB HDD, but, of course, using WizFX is perfectly sensible in that context, too.

[gregandkate]

I was hoping that I could transfer via USB external hard drive (from memory this is what I did with wiztv and my PC).

don't know where WizTV comes up in this. It's for content download from the WizTV server and for information.

I think Greg meant to say WizFX.....

Ah, yes. That'd be right. I was thrown by it being referred to in the same sentence as using the USB HDD, but, of course, using WizFX is perfectly sensible in that context, too.

Sorry I did mean WizFX. Let me just preface this by saying that I am a novice and most of the time I fly by the seat of my pants when it comes to this sort of thing!!. The main issue I am having is that having swapped over to Mac from PC I am now lost in terms of what to do in getting the movies downloaded and converted to DVD format. With the PC I was able to convert it with out many issues by following the BW posts but with the Mac I have come unstuck.(

I do have the DP-P2 and the External HD is FAT32 formatted. I have looked at posts on converting files but to be honest as a novice it is a bit beyond my knowledge. (The details around ProjectX confused the hell out of me) I can play the movie files directly from the HDD on the mac without performing any conversion using VLC but can not open the files on Wizmac (i have adjusted the oreference settings in wizmac to download from the HDD but to no effect. Is wizmac for converting the files?? or for viewing them??

Do you have any suggestions/other posts/websites for programs/help that a novice should/can use? Many Thanks and apologies in advance.

Thanks

(a very confused) Greg

[tonymy01]

I am not sure Wizmac was setup for anything else but downloading over the LAN. I don't think Eric put the option in to allow you to choose a local Wiz recording file to convert to TS. So your easiest option is to pull up a Mac command line, and type

Code: Select all

cat 0* >/localharddrive/fullrecording.ts
will end up in a directory on your PC called /localharddrive
or do 
cat 0* >~/fullrecording.ts 
will end up in your home folder

which will append all the little 0000 0001 0002 32meg files together into one big ts file, but any edits you may have done on the Wiz will creep back in a little (just small chunks either side of your edit points). You would have to of course do a "cd wizrecordingdirectory.tvwiz" where this is the directory name of the wiz recording you wish to turn to a TS file before you typed the cat command above (I think it is the channel and time by default unless you renamed the file). You can type "pwd" and also "ls" to check where you are in your filesystem and what files are there, and you can type "mount" and/or "df -h" or "df -k" to see where the USB disk is mounted to find it via the command line. Peter may be able to give you much more specific advice here as he has a Mac, I am giving you generic linux/unix commands that work on any unix based operating system.

So this assumes that your little files don't go over 0999 in their filenames, up to 0999 is is a 32G sized recording file, so I would suspect this would be rare. Also where I wrote "localharddrive", you would put the path of your local Mac HDD somewhere where you want the fullrecording.ts file to end up. You will not be able to create this file on the FAT32 HDD, as once it gets to >2G in size, you will have issues (and it can be no more than 4G in size on a FAT32 formatted HDD).

Regards

[prl]

WizMac is for downloading recordings from the Beyonwiz over the LAN using WizPnP. In doing so, it can either copy the recordings in Beyonwiz's native format (each recording is a folder containing three header files and a bunch of numbered recording data files, all in MPEG2 Transport Stream format, usually called tvwiz format on the forum, or into a single MPEG2 Transport Stream format, usually called ts format on the forum. MPEG2 Transport Stream is what is broadcast in digital TV. MPEG Program Stream format is what's on DVDs.

Unlike WizFX on Windows, WizMac can't convert from tvwiz to ts format when copying disk to disk.

There are two alternatives:

• getWizPnP, but it's a command-line program that you can run from an OS X Terminal window, and it's a bit cumbersome to install and use. The documentation is reasonably good, but there are lots of command options.
• Combine the recording data files in a media editor (and edit out ads at the same time if you like. This works best if the recording hasn't been edited on the Beyonwiz, or if it has no edits internal to the recording (i.e. you can cut off any pre- and/or any post-padding on the Beyonwiz, but don't edit out ads on the BW if you want to use this alternative).

I use MPEG Streamclip (freeware) + QuickTime MPEG-2 Playback Component for Mac OS X ($29.95) to combine the recording data files, edit the recording and save it as MPEG2 Program Stream that conversion is quite fast (~1 minute for an hours program). It can also save in other formats like MPEG4 and AVI, but the conversion is more time-consuming.

I use Roxio Toast Titanium (commercial software, $179.00) to burn stuff to DVD. It will take the MPEG2 Program Stream exported by MPEG Streamclip to burn to DVD.

To convert a tvwiz recording to MPEG2 PS, start MPEG2 Program Stream, go to File>Open Files..., select All Files in the format selector at the bottom, navigate to the .tvwiz folder, select all the numbered files (0000, 0001, etc, they may not start with 0000 if the recording has been edited or created by saving the timeshift buffer), and click Open. When the popup complains about an unsupported file type, click Open Anyway. Do any editing, and then save to Program Stream format with File>Convert to MPEG.

[prl]

...

Code: Select all

cat 0* >/localharddrive/fullrecording.ts
will end up in a directory on your PC called /localharddrive
or do 
cat 0* >~/fullrecording.ts 
will end up in your home folder

...

So this assumes that your little files don't go over 0999 in their filenames, up to 0999 is is a 32G sized recording file, so I would suspect this would be rare. ...

Using [0-9]* will get all the numbered files, no matter what digit they start with.

[gregandkate]

Thanks Guys, I'll digest this and give it a try.

[baobab68]

Hi all, hope I'm not hijacking this thread (but it's certainly an old one!).

Is WizMac being actively developed still? Would there be any chance of an updated version that will run on OS X 10.8 (Mountain Lion)?

[Luke]

According to the subversion log file, WizMac hasn't been updated since March 2009. Have you tried YARDWiz? It's been tested on OSX 10.6.7, but I haven't (yet) got an OSX 10.8 testing environment set up.

[baobab68]

Hi Luke, I didn't realise there was a Mac version, I will definitely give that a try.

I transferred the recordings that I wanted last night by initiating the copy process from the BW to my NAS, but it has created folders for each one containing TVWIZ files.

Is there a way to convert those to TS?

[Luke]

YARDWiz can download in TS or TVWIZ. As you've already got them as TVWIZ, in YARDWiz, use "Tools->Convert TVWIZ to TS...".

[baobab68]

Awesome Luke, thank you. I will post feedback for you as to whether YARDWiz works on Mountain Lion as well.

I note that earlier in this thread it was posted that the files can just be concatenated and then renamed to TS so will try that too.

[Luke]

I note that earlier in this thread it was posted that the files can just be concatenated and then renamed to TS so will try that too.

Don't do that if you edited them on the PVR as simple concatenation doesn't take into account edit info in the trunc file.

[baobab68]

I did edit them on the BW but only top and tail, in hopes of making the transfers smaller. No worries I will try YARDWiz first and give you feedback.

[baobab68]

FYI, YARDWiz Mac works just fine on Mountain Lion. I've downloaded a test file, done a few conversions from TVWiz format to TS, seems ok.

Well done Luke and thanks for the heads up!

[Luke]

Good stuff! Thanks for letting me know.