Convert Topfield .Rec Files and Burn to DVD

3 Feb, 2007 | Software TipsTipsTechVfd
  1. First off, you need to get the files off of the machine onto your computer, for this you need a standard USB cable and some software to download with, there are a few options:
  2. This next barrier is that the Topfield saves programmes in a .rec file type. This is actually an MPEG2 transport stream (.ts) file. Digital TV is generally broadcast in MPEG2, the same format as DVDs currently use, and most PVRs save it as a transport stream rather than a full .mpg file. A lot of video editing software will open these types of file, most DVD burning software, won't. In order to make it usable I first demux the file (split it into video and audio), for this I use ProjectX on the PC and MPEG Streamclip on the Mac. You can certainly use ProjectX to edit out commercials, I'm not sure about MPEG Streamclip, but either way if you miss it you can edit the files later on if you need to.
  3. One thing I will point out is that if you're using ProjectX you need to be aware of the audio streams, some channels add subtitle tracks that show up as audio and if you don't remove them you end up with no sound. These are referred to as PIDs, you need to run a preview (Click Open under Process Window, then click the I button, then go back to the main screen) go to the settings tab (right-hand side) and double-click a PID to remove it. Typically audio PIDs run in sequence (e.g. 1, 2, 3) if you see one that jumps (e.g. 1, 2, 4), remove the one that doesn't fit in the sequence (4 in the last example).
    You can convert into an MPEG2 file that will play through most media players (M2P) using both these applications too, but the method above has shown the best results for me.
  4. Once the file has been split, grab a copy of TMPGEnc DVD Author (I've not done this part on a Mac yet, but Sizzle has been recommended for creating DVD images ready for burning). Start a new project and click add file, then select the .m2v file you have just created, it will automatically pick up the audio. Go through the motions of creating a disc, adding chapters, etc, then burn the DVD (it will only allow you to burn to a folder on your HDD initially, but I would recommend this anyhow as it allows you to see if the movie is any good).
    You may find TMPGEnc will not open your file as the resolution is wrong (I've been finding this with ITV2/3 programmes). Use DVDPatcher to change the first header to indicate the proper size, add the file in TMPGEnc, then repatch it back to the original size and it should work no problem (ignore the huge amount of green down the right in the previews).
  5. Once this is done, open your favourite DVD player and point it at the directory you saved the DVD files to make sure they're all okay, pay attention to the sound to make sure it's still in sync all the way through.
  6. Now you can either use the inbuilt burning facilities of TMPGEnc or any other DVD burning software to burn it to a disc.

Once that's done, you should have a perfectly working DVD.

There are other ways to accomplish this process, as described on the Toppy forums, but none of them have worked as quickly or reliably as the above. Nero Vision was looking good but I found that if I simply converted the files into .m2p format, both Nero and TMPGEnc would produce DVDs where the sound ran out of sync. This could probably be solved by disabling Nero's smart transcoder, but the problem is that it then tries to recode the whole thing which took hours (average of 2.5 hrs, way too long). I also liked TMPGEnc's add chapter function which means you can set it to add a chapter every x minutes, the auto chapter function in Nero and Easy Media Creator was useless, which meant putting chapters in by hand, a real bore.