Can you recommend a transport stream -> MPEG2 splitter?

[KeeterJ]

Summary: Can somebody please recommend a program to demux BTV4 transport stream files into distinct MPEG2 files?

Details: I'm trying to use the VideoWave 7 program that is bundled with Sonic's Roxio Media 8 to split .TP transport stream files into separate MPEG2 files so I can edit them. I capture the files from BTV4 using my ATI HDTV card. BTV4 plays them okay, but currently it has really lame support for .TP files -- no SmartSkip, no SmartSqueeze, etc.

My local PBS station simulcasts different HDTV programming on channels 10-1 and 10-2. If I record 10-2, both 10-1 and 10-2 streams are embedded in the file. That's okay, but the files are BIG (9GB/hour). When I play the .TP files on Windows Media Player, it can only seem to play the first stream (10-1 in my case) but not the second stream 10-2. I get different results from different players -- some play stream 0 and some play stream 1. (It's weird to play the same file on different players and get entirely different, but nice looking, output!)

If I use VideoWave 7 to extract the first stream the output is great: Nice 16:9 1080i MPEG2 (or SD or 720 if that's what was broadcast). Most of my authoring/playback tools work surprisingly well with these 1080i MPEG2 files. The problem is that the VideoWave program goes into a tailspin if I try to extract the second stream (10-2). It never ends and never fully writes out the MPEG2 file. It just sits there waiting from something that never happens.

So, can you recommend a different transport stream demux program?

[not_Shorty]

I've no .TP files to test with, no HD here, but I seem to recall seeing transport streams mentioned in the save dialog in mpeg-vcr. I know you can save them, but I am not sure if this actually means you can also open a transport stream and manipulate it.

[gsinpei]

Try VideoReDo and let us know if it works out.

http://www.videoredo.com/

[me2]

I tried VideoReDo. I burn recorded TV shows to DVD all the time, and I must say that it's the best tool I've used so far to trim MPEG files. Other tools don't work with HD streams, or sometimes corrupt the file stream such that my DVD authoring program chokes.

I recorded an OTA HD stream from my local NBC affiliate into a .tp file. VideoReDo opened that .tp file fine, and let you select which stream you wanted to work with. My station has one HD stream, and another SD stream of 24 hour weather. I selected a 3 min 6 sec segment of the HD stream and saved it as a 247 MB (253,213 kB) .mpg. By default I kept the bitrate unchanged. The resulting saved file plays fine in every other windows player but NOT in BTV4. Even my DVD authoring program imports the file OK. I get "The file is corrupt or the path... no longer exists" error in BTV4.

Then I tried exporting the same stream from VideoReDo as a .ts file, which was 256,978 kB. I renamed the file .tp, and then BTV4 played it fine.

Conclusion: VideoReDo works at demuxing and cropping HD streams, though it's pricey at $50. However, BTV4 won't play the streams if they are exported as MPEGs even though other players will. Files can be made to work with BTV4 through the .ts -> .tp workaround.

[KeeterJ]

Thanks to those who replied so far. I ended up using HDTVtoMPEG2 (H2M) v1.11.77. From reading avsforum.com I gather H2M has some known problems editing MPEG files, but in my case it split my multi-channel transport stream .TP files into separate stream MPEG2 files just fine. Now I can discard the data for the channel I don't need. If the discarded stream is 1080i, that really saves a bunch of disk space (about 5GB per hour)

I made no attempt to cut/edit the file in H2M -- I just selected the stream I wanted and ran it. It was quicker than VideoReDo, and it's free. It also shows me some PSID channel name info that VideoReDo does not show (that I noticed). BTV4 refuses to read the resulting MPEG2 output files from H2M, but Beyond Media and all other players will. If I use H2M to split to .TP instead of .MPEG BTV4 can read them okay.

I did try the trial version of VideoReDo. It's definitely a more rounded utility, but the price is steep. I just bought BTV4 and it irks me to have to pay another $50 to a 3rd party for features that should have been included.

As a side note, I was not very impressed with my ATI HDTV card until I started using BTV4 to grab the transport stream. When BTV4 plays the transport files (or live ATSC) it looks and acts better than the ATI software. In fact I just uninstalled all the annoying ATI software except the drivers for the card. To me that's a big plus to BTV4!