.rec file conversion

[toby....@adelaide.edu.au]

Hi Jaffaman,

Thanks for making and maintaining Filemaker - a great utility. I
recently purchased a 7100 to replace my 5000. I have a large
(~500GB) .rec collection of stored files which I have transferred to
an EXT2 formatted external USB drive. As the itopfield forum is still
MIA, I have a couple of questions on how to use Filemaker to get the
best results:

1. Are there any advantages to removing the .rec header from the main
data file information from before generating the .nav and.info files,
and subsequently renaming to .mpg? It seems to add significant time
to the larger files, and you have an option for cancelling this step -
for a reason, I assume?

2. Is there any way to automate a bulk selection and conversion of
files - I have hundreds to do?

3. I would like to retain the 5000 directory structure for my files -
is it simply a question of copying the structure from the 5000's
'Datafiles' to the 7100's 'videos'?

Thanks for your time,

Toby.

[jaffaman]

Hi Toby,

1. I was recently contacted by someone who said that the header was
causing issues with fast forwarding - hence I started work on removing
this. The version 1.3 that does this is really experimental at this
stage (though it works fine). I am intending when I can get around to
it to see if I can build it into the .nav generation and not as a
different step and this may speed it up. At the moment to remove the
header it basically copies the entire file less the first 1.8kb or so,
and this is what takes the time. Without doing this the files should
still play fine on the 7100 - its only if you are having fast forward
or play issues that I would bother. Note, if you don't want to skip or
fast forward, and simply want to press play, you can generate the file
without the .nav and this will be super fast.

2. On the wish list. As you are the second in recent times that has
asked for it, I might try and motivate myself a bit more. 8-)

3. If by copy you mean creating new folders on your 7100 with the same
name, yes. I don't have a 7100 so I'm, not sure if you can simply copy
the structure by drag and drop.

Cheers.

[toby....@adelaide.edu.au]

Thanks very much for your quick response. I'll let you know how i go.

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[Film_Cleaner]

Thanks also for the app, looking forward to the improvements - batch
conversion would be nice too.

As the 7x00 machines don't use .rec files, are they just doing a
straight dump of the transport stream received? I used to use
ProjectX to convert .rec files to .ts. Is that all ProjectX would
have done - remove the first 1.8kb or so? If the 7x00 machine is
expecting to see a basic file having nothing more than the original
transport stream, I can understand why a .rec file might cause issues
despite having correctly generated .info and .nav files.

c.

[jaffaman]

Yes, the 7x00 just does a straight dump of the ts received - the .mpg
is exactly what is received for the streams selected (which are the
streams set by the service for the video and the audio selected by the
user). They always seem to start at the same place in the GOP (group
of pictures). I would think yes, projectx is just removing the non-
standard ts packets. The 5000 .rec adds a few dummy ts packets to the
start of the file which contains the info like program name etc which
the 7x00 puts into the .info file - otherwise the .rec is also a
straight .ts file - many ts players would play it if they ignore the
"invalid" ts packets.

Having said that, the 7000 will play a renamed .rec fine - it is only
in skipping etc that the .nav gets mucked up a bit by the extra
packets.