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Does Film4 have copy protection?
I've been having immense trouble burning DVDs from recordings of films on Film4. It has been suggested that this might be due to some form of copy protection on the channel. Does anyone know whether Film4 does anything like that?
The technical details of the problem are as follows. I am recording the programmes using EyeTV 1.8.5 on an iMac, and attempting to burn them to DVD using Roxio Toast 7 Titanium. With Toast 7.0.1 the DVDs seem to end up with zero-length programmes - you can select the programme from the menu, but it just drops you straight back to the menu again. With Toast 7.1 it refuses to burn the DVD, returning a -50 error; Elgato say they have seen this with zero-length recordings. The recording is most definitely not zero length - it plays fine from the EyeTV playlist!
So far I have only tried burning the recordings on my iMac. I also have a DVD recorder; when I have time I plan to test whether I can record a recorded Film 4 programme on to DVD using that.
The technical details of the problem are as follows. I am recording the programmes using EyeTV 1.8.5 on an iMac, and attempting to burn them to DVD using Roxio Toast 7 Titanium. With Toast 7.0.1 the DVDs seem to end up with zero-length programmes - you can select the programme from the menu, but it just drops you straight back to the menu again. With Toast 7.1 it refuses to burn the DVD, returning a -50 error; Elgato say they have seen this with zero-length recordings. The recording is most definitely not zero length - it plays fine from the EyeTV playlist!
So far I have only tried burning the recordings on my iMac. I also have a DVD recorder; when I have time I plan to test whether I can record a recorded Film 4 programme on to DVD using that.
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Bozz
The first, and hopefully only, thing you need to do is upgrade your eyeTV to version 2, if at all possible. It's a much better interface, probably the best available anywhere, and more reliable. It might cost you an upgrade fee but it'll be worth it.
Update Toast to the newest version too (7.1 currently) to make sure that's not your problem, this shouldn't cost you anything just log onto Roxio's website with your details.
GOP is group of pictures.
Basically becuase film4 has a non-standard gop size (it is often over 40) this could be causing problems with your DVD authering software.
Someone on the Roxio forums has already noted that they were able to burn Film 4 recordings after exporting them from EyeTV in another format. At a wild guess this worked because Toast had to re-encode the video stream and this brought it within the DVD GOP limit.
This would also explain why people have been able to record Film 4 on DVD recorders, because in those cases the recorder will have re-encoded the MPEG video from the uncompressed video stream received via the SCART socket.
That still leaves the question: why does Film 4 use such a high GOP? Could it actually be a sneaky way of making it difficult to burn DVDs from the raw data stream, or is there a good technical reason for it?
I have no reliability problems with EyeTV 1.8.5 and I'm quite happy with the user interface as it is. I looked at EyeTV 2 when it was announced but I can't see the point in spending the money to upgrade at the moment.
It was 7.1 that gave the -50 error.
Using a high GOP is a way of retaining a reasonable picture quality, whilst using a low bitrate.
Since the bitrate allocated to Film 4 is apparently quite low, they are probably trying to make the most of what they've got, by increasing the GOP.
The downside is that latency is increased.
If they were to reduce the GOP size, the quality would be even worse if bandwidth was kept constant.
This may or may not be the reason why they are using a high GOP, but it is a valid technical reason.
Thanks to all who have provided technical responses. It's comforting to know that there may be a good reason for my expensive software not working and it's not just the world being out to get me!
I do not understand any of that and it only seems to be a possibility but thought it might be worth mentioning.
Richard
There's a list here: http://varied.myby.co.uk/dtt/
or demux your video using ProjectX and look in the log file for something like this:
That means a maximum GOP size of 12 frames (a frame is made up of two fields).
ProjectX is a witten in Java so I'm assuming that if you install a Java VM on your Mac you'll be able to run it. Download it from Doom9 (not the offical website unless you want to compile it yourself!):
http://www.doom9.org/index.html?/software.htm
A google for Freeview long GOP or GOP length will lists all kinds of software (not Mac IIRC) and problems, but from DS itself I found this webpage...
http://varied.myby.co.uk/dtt/
...which may be of interest.
Cheers,
David.
I note that the channels with the highest GOP tend to be on Muxes C and D, of which only Film 4 is likely to be a significant issue, fortunately. Gutted to see that bid tv and price-drop tv are both up in the 40s, though. That means I can't save to DVD my recording of the famous nail-biting finish to see who would get the very last deluxe cordless trouser press with integral nasal hair remover. (Surely you remember that one, from October 2004?)
You did it in the Sky one too asking about the analogue switch off...!