I finally got around to burning all of the Christmas shows that I recorded and transferred last year to DVD using MyDVD. The process was time consuming but I had to do something. The recordings were taking a decent amount of space on my hard drive (23.3 Gigs) and I had to create some space for all the darn pics and videos I’ve taken (eat up a lot of disc space when you have a 21 month old).
Now that I’ve recorded eleven holiday specials, I need to find some time to edit the recordings using MyDVD. As you can imagine this is going to be a tedious process.
Needless to say, I don’t think I will have it done before Christmas. In the past I never had to edit out commercials because all of the content that I’ve wanted to put on a DVD didn’t have commercials. In the past, all I really needed to do was adjust the start and end times. Now that I have eleven recordings all with commercials I need to come up with an efficient way to edit out the content that I don’t want. I think I may use the “find scenes” feature in MyDVD however, I’m not sure how this works.
Does anybody have any experience editing TiVo recordings in MyDVD? Are there any recommendations for editing a large number of recordings like I need to do?
Ever since I was a kid I’ve enjoyed watching many of the holiday specials that are on this time of the year. I remember as a kid looking in the TV guide for when Rudolph The Red Nose Reindeer was going to be on. My entire family would gather around the TV and watch Rudolph as if it was the first time we had ever seen it.
Now that I have a TiVo, I no longer need to schedule my life and make sure that I am around for these wonderful shows. So, in the spirit of being a geek, I’ve setup several Wishlists to record my most favorite holiday specials. As a matter of fact, I am currently transferring How The Grinch Stole Christmas to my computer so that I can burn it to a DVD using MyDVD and TiVoToGo. If you’re a kid at heart like me, you may want to get your Wishlists established. I was a little surprised to find out that some of these specials are already being shown.
Updated 06/19/2005: Here’s parts 1 & 2 of this post.
Wow! My new computer only took two hours to transcode and record four Thomas & Friends shows (two hours worth of programming) using MyDVD. This same task use to take six hours with my old 800MHz Pentium III. I guess that a fast computer really makes a difference!
On another note, I spent a little bit of time working with MyDVD’s ability to remove sections of a TiVo recording. Fortunately for me, Thomas & Friends does not have any commercials during the show. Even though there are no commercials, I still wanted to remove some of the junk at the beginning of each show as well as some nonsense at the end. Removing content was extremely easy. All I had to do was drag the little scissors to indicate what I wanted to cut out. As a number of people have said, the scissors were not very accurate. It was somewhat tough to be exact. Fortunately, this problem was solved by clicking on the scissors and using the left or right arrow keys to fine tune the cropping. By using the arrow keys, I was able to adjust the cropping down to the second.
All and all, I’ve been extremely happy with MyDVD. Editing and recording TiVo programs is very easy using this program. If it weren’t for the problems I had early on, I would probably give this application 9 stars. One thing to keep in mind is that I really don’t have much experience when it comes to creating DVDs. To be perfectly honest, MyDVD is really the first DVD creation app I have ever used. That being said, I think that I am going to spend more time investigating other apps. I’ll let you know if I come up with any useful information.
Updated 06/19/2005: Here’s parts 1 & 3 of this post.
I finally found some time over the weekend to create my first Thomas the Tank DVD using MyDVD. My son slept for 1 & ½ hours so I had plenty of time to play around with MyDVD and customize it to my liking. To start, I imported four Thomas and Friends episodes into MyDVD (this is where I ran into problems before). The import process created a thumbnail for each episode that it places on the menu. From this point, I could have just burned the movie to DVD. Instead, I decided to customize the menu so that it was a little more kid friendly.
Customization of the menu was extremely easy. I gave the menu a different background and I also used the Thomas and Friends theme song. Finally I added some text to the menu so that each episode had a title that was more meaningful. After customizing the menu, I began the LONG process of transcoding and burning the DVD.
(Click for larger image)
Before I get any further, let me start of by giving you some details on my computer. The computer I used to create the DVD is rather old. I’ve had it since college! It has a 800mhz Pentium 3 with 512mb ram. Needless to say, this machine is somewhat slow by today’s standards. As a matter of fact, my computer doesn’t even meet the minimum requirement for a machine running MyDVD. Even though it doesn’t meet the minimum requirements, the burn process still worked! All and all, it took my computer about 6 hours to transcode the DVD and record it to disc! During this time, MyDVD consumed 100% of my computer. Needless to say, I should have performed this task over night. From what I understand, this process takes a long time no matter what kind of computer you have. I wonder how long it would have taken if I had a 3 GHz machine? If anybody has experience with a better machine let me know. I’d be interested to find out how long it takes with a better computer.
In terms of the quality, I’m extremely happy with how well it looks on my TV as well as my computer. At first, I was a little concerned about the quality since I burned it using the “fit to DVD” feature in MyDVD. From what I understand, the “fit to DVD” feature changes the DVD quality so that it can fit the content onto a DVD. I used “fit to DVD” because I wanted to try to place at least four shows on one disc. The DVD has worked in every device that I’ve tried thus far!
Other then the hiccups I had with my initial installation, I am extremely happy with MyDVD thus far. The burning/transcoding process took rather long however, this is to be expected considering the fact that I have a somewhat slow computer. Next, I want to try editing a movie so that I can remove commercials. I didn’t have to do this with my Thomas DVD because Thomas and Friends does not have any commercials.
To sum it up, I would recommend MyDVD to anybody who wants to burn TiVo recordings to DVD. Even though I ran into installation problems, I am glad that I purchased this software. I only hope that I don’t run into this problem the next time I try and reinstall. Because of how long it took me to create this DVD, I am considering getting a new computer. Please let me know if you have any experience with how long it takes to transcode a DVD using a better pc.
Updated 06/19/2005: I recently posted part 2 & 3 of this post.
Ever since the birth of my son, I thought it would be neat for me to create a collection of Thomas The Tank shows. In my area, Thomas the Tank is only aired twice a week. Therefore, I thought it would be nice to have a collection so that we can pop the show in whenever WE want him to watch it. I emphasized we because I don’t want you to think that I just plan on planting my son in front of the TV.
That being said, I’ve setup a season pass for Thomas & Friends. Now that I have four shows recorded and transferred to my PC using TiVoToGo, I went ahead and purchased a copy of Sonic MyDVD. The software only cost $49.99, which I consider a fair price.
Could not make a thumbnail. Make sure you have the appropriate decoder installed. -47010
Any experienced Windows user knows that whenever they get the feeling that something isn’t right, the next steps to take is stop what you are doing and uninstall, reboot and reinstall. Sure enough, that’s what I did and everything just started to work :o. Don’t ask me why, I’m just happy that it works now. I hope that I won’t run into the same problem in the future. If I were a betting man, I would bet that it will happen again however; for the time being I don’t want to think about it :). I’ve been around computers long enough to know that sometimes you just say “screw it” and accept the fact that you don’t know why something didn’t work. This is definitely a case where I am going to throw in the towel and hope that it doesn’t happen again.
Ok, now that I have everything working I might as well talk about what I do like in MyDVD. Once I imported my TiVo files I was rather impressed by how MyDVD automagically generates a menu with each show as a thumbnail. I’ve some what customized the menu to include my own text including a better description of each show. As of right now, I haven’t gotten much farther then that. I was about to try and edit the actual scenes in the DVD however; my son started to cry. I hope to actual finish editing the DVD and eventually burn it to disc in the near future. I’ve read on a number of sites that transcoding the DVD takes a long time. I’m sure that it will be especially slow on my 800mhz pc.
Check back in the near future for my complete review of MyDVD including my analysis of the editing process. Hopefully I will have something up in the near future!
Updated 06/19/2005: I recently posted part 2 & 3 of this post.
Although TiVoToGo is a great feature of the TiVo service, up until now I haven’t had a real use for it. I don’t travel much and I am not that addicted to TV where I have to be able to put my shows on a portable device so I don’t miss episode 457 of Seinfeld (believe it or not). Until recently, TiVoToGo has pretty much been a cool feature that I like to showoff to my family and friends. Being the big geek that I am, I tend to enjoy technology to the extreme. That is probably part of the reason why I am addicted to TiVo!
That has all changed with the birth of my son. If my son is at all like most 1-2 year old boys then he will probably love the show “Thomas The Tank”. That being said, I’ve decided to use TiVoToGo to create a library of Thomas the Tank shows for my son. I’ve setup a season pass so that I get all of the episodes. What I plan on doing is using Galleon to automatically transfer each show once it has been recorded and them record them to DVD using Sonic’s MyDVD. I’ll let you know how it goes. I hope that my son ends up liking Thomas The Tank. If he doesn’t then I guess I’ll have a stack of useless DVDs ;).
Sonic has announced that they will launch their much anticipated TiVo enabled DVD creation software late in Q1 2005. The software will allow TiVoToGo users to burn their TiVo programs to a DVD. Several people expected this software to be available around the same time that TiVoToGo was however; like most things, it appears to have slipped. TiVo users will be able to purchase the software for $49.99 ($20 off MSRP). This will definitely be a nice feature for anybody who wants to archive some of their shows. I already know what I’ll be archiving…Smurfs!
A number of sites (Obvious Diversion, StarJewel) have informed me that TiVoToGo is finally here! As mentioned in TiVoCommunity, TiVo is releasing the software on a user-by-user basis. If you want to get it, you should probably put yourself on the priority list.
This much anticipated software release should be a great selling point for TiVo. Inevitably, one of the questions that TiVo newbies ask me is how do I transfer my TiVo recordings to my PC. Now with TiVoToGo you will be able to do that.
While there are some limitations to TiVoToGo (no Mac version), the overall idea is great. I only hope that TiVo continues to add features to TiVoToGo including the release of a Mac version and the long awaited DVD burning software partnership. One of the best things about TiVo is that the device is extremely easy to use. Many of the people that use TiVo don’t want to screw around with difficult software packages or complex user interfaces. I hope that TiVo keeps this in mind and continues to provide a wonderful product.
For now just sit back and wait for TiVoToGo to be deployed to your DVR. Hopefully it doesn’t take as long as TiVo is saying…
Please note: Due to the large number of customers who are eligible for this software release, it will take several weeks for you to receive the software after you put in your request. Your patience is appreciated.
More news here:
Other Useful Links:
Be Notified When SonicDVD is available
Download TiVo Desktop 2.0
TiVoToGo FAQ
TiVoBill’s Official Announcement
