Notes
- Download and install VLC. Make sure it works. Instructions and
files can be found at the VLC website. Be aware that VLC will only load
modules which have the exact same version as the main executable. Our
pre-compiled binaries are for VLC version 0.8.1.
- If you can use a pre-compiled binary, download one from the
project's downloads page.
- If you can't or don't want to use a pre-compiled binary, you can
get the source from the same
place. Since the source for vstream
hasn't been officially released yet, you can get it from
the CVS repository.
Note that building the module from source requires the entire VLC source
tree as well. There are further build notes within
the source releases.
- Put the modules (.dll or .so or .dylib or whatever) into your VLC
modules directory. On Unix machines, this is usually something like
/usr/lib/vlc/demux
for the libty module and
/usr/lib/vlc/access for the libvstream module. On windows,
this is the "plugins" directory located wherever you unzipped the VLC
package.
- Run VLC. The modules should be loaded. You can now type things like
this:
- vlc tivo://my-tivo-address/plist and
after a few seconds VLC's playlist will be filled with all available
shows on your TiVo. Double-click on an entry and it starts playing!
(Requires vserver running on your TiVo.)
- vlc tivo://my-tivo-address/12345 where
12345 is the FSID of a program on your TiVo. The FSID can be obtained
through many methods, including
looking at the "properties" of an entry in your VLC playlist after
issuing the "plist" command above. (Requires vserver running on your TiVo.)
- vlc some-ty-file.ty to play a TY file
- vlc some-ty-file.ty ':sout=#transcode{vcodec=mp4v,vb=512,acodec=mp3,ab=192}:
std{access=file,mux=ps,url=outfile.mpg}' (all
on one line) and your TY file will be transcoded into MPEG-4 video,
MP3 audio, with the bitrates stated. There are dozens of combinations
and other options. Check out VLC's documentation for more.
On Unix systems and cygwin, you can specify -vvv on the command
line and when VLC starts, it will tell you which modules have been loaded.
- Some strange transcoding issues when streaming and transcoding at the same
time. That is, when pulling a program from the TiVo via vstream and
transcoding it to some other format to be saved to a file. After a
some minutes (anywhere from 15-45), the audio will drop out or VLC
will freeze, utilizing 100% CPU.
- No others
- Support for newer model TiVos, including HiDef
- Calculation of program length. Right now VLC just
shows "00:00:00" for ending program time. This is difficult
to do because some programs switch time encoding in the middle of
the file. Best
thing to do is read the last PART header from the TY file and find
the last
TiVo timestamp.
- Load & parse TiVo's GOP table in the PART headers. This will allow
accurate 10 second jump-ahead and jump-back via VLC's hotkeys.
