Converting to .dv

I have no experience with a Toppy (and in fact had to just Google it to find out what it was), but that won't stop me from making a suggestion. Try converting to MPEG4 or even QuickTime .mov. You'll end up with a smaller file (not sure how important it is to have full image information in your situation), but more importantly, it's a chance to throw something else at iMovie to see what can be imported. Make sure you've got the latest version of QuickTime, too.

Hope that helps. Jeff

On 9 Jan 2007, at 6.05 am, Jeff Carlson wrote:

> I have no experience with a Toppy (and in fact had to just Google
> it to find out what it was),

Well, 'Toppy' is just the nickname, after all. :-)

On 4 Jan 2007, at 1.00 am, Paul Atroshenko wrote:

> I'm using MPEG Streamclip to convert the .rec file on my Toppy to
> a .dv
> file.
>
> The .rec file on my Toppy is 2.5 Gig, after the conversion to .dv
> it's a
> huge 11.36 Gig.

That's completely normal. The '.rec' files used on the PVR are just
MPEG-2 (transport stream) files with a small amount of header
information added. MPEG-2 files are more compressed than DV files, so
they are significantly smaller.

> Any way the problem is it won't import into imovie I get a
> "unknown error".

I've just tried this with a recording I had, and it exported and
imported without problems -- so, in general, it should work; there
must be something specific about your friend's recording or computer
set-up.

First off, make sure you're using the latest version of MPEG
Streamclip -- 1.8 came out just over a week ago (though I've tried it
with 1.7 and that works for me too).

<http://www.squared5.com/svideo/mpeg-streamclip-mac.html>

As Jeff mentioned, you could use the 'Export to QuickTime' option in
MPEG Streamclip to try a different format that iMovie might like more.

Alternatively, you could save the recording as a 'standard' MPEG-2
file, using the 'Convert to MPEG with MP2 audio' command. Once you
have that file, lots of other software will know how to play, open
and convert it. For example, you could try using ffmpegX to convert
the MPEG-2 file to a DV file, which I believe uses a different method
from the one used by MPEG Streamclip.

<http://www.ffmpegx.com>

It might also be worth asking the knowledgeable and helpful people at
one of the Topfield user forum sites:

<http://www.toppy.org.uk>
and
<http://www.topfield-australia.com.au/phpbb2/>

...are the two I know.

David