Need advice for emptying my PVR

suzyhomemaker

Hi, I've been searching for hours now, and all I've learned is that this seems to be extremely difficult.

I need to get things off of my PVR and onto a DVD. What is the easiest and cheapest way to do this? Every time I find a thread, blog, or article that looks like it is going to give me the answer, it just turns into a bunch of gibberish that makes absolutely no sense to me. So if someone could please help me, with jargon-free instructions and advice, I would really appreciate your input.

My specs:
PVR - SA Explorer 8300HD - (found a thread saying that I could plug into firewire on this model, but it uses the same end of the cable as the computer - is there supposed to be something in between?)
Computer - iBook G4 10.3.9

I have a DV camcorder if that is of any use.

I don't care about keeping the HD, but need to be able to playback on the tv, not just the computer. I am not concerned about minor loss of quality, don't want a grainy image or anything but don't care if there are fewer frames per second. This is primarily for the of recording documentaries, news stories, etc. for educational purposes so I am really only concerned about the content and that it is watchable, does not need to be theatre quality.

Hope someone can help. Thank you in advance.

gwillikers

The problem, even when the Firewire ports on the PVR are active, is the type of proprietary file that you have to deal with. Many have found that it's an encrypted or scrambled data file, and impossible to convert. There seems to be some success stories out there, which keeps me hoping that one day we can transfer and edit the files on our PVR hard drives. But really, there's no way that cable companies want us to be able to access and/or share that content.

Here's a couple of places to read more on this subject (in case you haven't seen them yet)... AVS Forum... Digital Home Canada.

Oh, and welcome to ehMac.

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MannyP Design

I think the only way is to get a DVD Recorder and use the "Transfer to VHS" mode.

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teeterboy3

You can take a firewire cable and connect it into your Mac and with a couple of prgrams (the firewire SDK kit that comes in the OSX development tools, and another program that records the file coming in). I think I also needed to purchase a Quicktime plugin that allowed you to decode the files.

But in the end I can tell you that it was way more work and took too long for my liking. But I wanted to let you know it could be done – I found a blog entry that outlined the steps and things you needed to do. If you want it PM me and I'll see if I can dig up that blog.

But for my money (and time), your best, easiest solution is dropping $200 and getting one of those DVD burners and burn them that way.

Mississauga

I use a Canopus ADVC 55 to transfer my ExpressVu PVR recordings to iMovie and then export to QuickTime. Toast handles the burn. Works like a charm!

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suzyhomemaker

Does this mean that I tell the PVR to transfer to VHS, but instead of being connected to a VCR it's really connected to a DVR?
Do I need to buy a particular type of DVD recorder in order to make it work with my PVR, or are they all built to work with anything?
What kind of format will it be once it records? Will I be able to edit it on my Mac afterwards? I need to be able to import it into iMovie so I can isolate specific clips, as well as adding menu features in iDVD.

lucky777s

Suzy,

I have not emptied my PVR recordings yet, but I would think if you use the TV out connections (whether that be coax cable, S-video, etc) direct to a DVD recorder unit that can burn shows as you watch them then that would record in its own format and allow you to use it on any DVD player.

Essentially you just tell the PVR to play the recording and instead of having the cables go out to the tv directly you put a DVD-R unit in between just like you would with a vcr and 'tape' the show again, this time to dvd.

lucky777s

Macified

Sounds to me like you will need a video-in device for your Mac. Play the content from the PVR and run it directly into iMovie. Cut up clips, etc. and then output to iDVD.

If you decide to go the DVD Recorder route you should set it up to record as a standard DVD (2 hours per disc). You end up with a full back-up set of discs of the content. Once on the disc you can use Handbrake to encode the DVD content into the Mac (preferably as mp4) and an inexpensive app like SimpleMovieX to chop up the mp4 into usable bits. Toast could probably chop up the mp4 files and provide chaptering etc.

Easiest would be the video-in device directly to your Mac as it will save steps.

Whichever way you go it will be time consuming as you have to play out the content in real time, chop it up and encode it for DVD output which is sometimes longer than real time and then burn the disc.

I've done what you are attempting using both of the methods and as I say, they are both time consuming.

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a7mc

I've done this before. While most of the suggestions here will work, the easiest, highest quality, and most easily editable solution is to transfer to miniDV.

You mention you have a miniDV camcorder. Most camcorders will allow you to record via Firewire. All you need to do is hook up the camcorder to the PVR via the firewire cable, hit play on the PVR and record on the camcorder (while in VCR mode on the camcorder), and let it run. When you're done, you just transfer the footage like you would any video footage you shot on miniDV.

A7

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gwillikers

And here I thought this was about accessing the files on the PVR HD and transferring them to the Mac HD (via Firewire) for viewing/editing.
Well, that's what I'd really like to be able to do, particularly for HiDef content. Some claim they've succeeded at doing it, but it's hit and miss from what I've read.

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