Migrating from Topfield PVR

This article is a stub and requires expansion

Importing video files

Background

The Topfield TF5800 PVR records video files in MPEG format with an extended header.

Transferring the files

Use one of the available Linux utilities for transferring .rec files from your Topfield to /home/public/data/videos or one of your other media storage areas. ftpd-topfield is a good one because you can then use any decent ftp client to (recursively, if necessary) mirror the files across.

File extensions

xine

xine does not currently recognise the format unless you change the extension to something else appropriate like .ts. This can be done en masse with a simple Perl script:

 $ cd /home/public/data/videos/topfield # for example
 $ perl -MFile::Find -we 'find(sub { my $new = $_; if ($new =~ s/\.rec$/.ts/) { rename $_, $new or warn "failed to rename $_ to $new: $!\n" } }, ".")'

mplayer

mplayer does recognise the format regardless of extension, but mplayer is currently only used for a few hardcoded formats such as HD-DVD and Blu-Ray. If that changes in the future so that mplayer can be used to play .rec files directly, the above renaming trick should be not necessary. However, the .rec file extension is not automatically recognised by LinuxMCE - see the Add video file extensions page for how to fix this. Once the extension has been added, LinuxMCE should automatically spot the new media via inotify, but you can check/enforce this by visiting the LinuxMCE Admin Website and going to Files & Media > Media Files Sync.