Converting TiVo to DVD with Nero

For Christmas I got a new external HP DVD burner and was immediately excited about the prospect of backing up shows from our TiVo Series2 box to DVD so we can watch them later or away from our home. The process wasn’t as easy as I first thought it would be but after going through a stack of DVDs and lots of time testing I finally developed a process that I am happy with. Being that I couldn’t find much help for how to do this on the web, I figured I would document my process here and hopefully save someone the hassle of figuring it out on their own. In a nutshell, here is what I do to convert a TiVo show to DVD in Nero.

1. Record TV shows to our TiVo box using the “High” quality setting
   
2. Transfer the TiVo show to my computer using TiVoToGo
   
3. Convert the TiVo file to an MPG using Direct Show Dump
   *note: after some more testing I no longer need to do this step to convert the files to MPG as Nero will import and work with the TiVo files
   
4. Import the MPG file into Nero Vision Express 3
   
5. Edit out commercials create menu’s etc
   
6. Burn to DVD using the following DVD-Video settings:
   a. Aspect ratio = Automatic
   b. Quality setting = Standard play
   c. Sample format = Progressive
   d. Encoding mode = High Quality (2Pass VBR)
   e. Audio format = Automatic

Of these settings, setting the sample format to “Progressive” is what I found to be most important. Any other setting would produce a DVD with jerky motion especially when the camera pans or there is a lot of quick motion. As I trouble shot this problem I quickly found that that it wasn’t the players I was trying it in. So I tried a different brand of disks and reduced the burn speed which didn’t make any difference. Next I tried defragmenting my hard drive, closing all my background processes, and even burning an iso image. When none of that worked I updated Nero and checked my drives firmware (which was already current). Updating Nero actually added a new problem as my video not only stuttered but also was compressed into a square dimension so I went back to the version that came with my drive. Finally I figured out that the problem was that it was trying use an Interlacing sample format. Now my DVDs are turning out with nearly the same quality of the original TiVo file which is good enough for me.

I just want to mention a couple of other smaller things that may be helpful:

1. Don’t use animated buttons for Nero’s menu. I tried this and though it looked cool, it made the menu usable as it took forever to navigate from one button to the next when viewed in all of my DVD players. From what I read on line this is a known problem so it’s best to avoid it altogether.
   
2. Don’t use the compress video to fit to DVD option as compressing it more will add noticeable pixelization in many higher motion scenes. If the video’s too long, simply split it into two halves.