[debitcardmayhem]

Originally Posted by fgking

That software only allows you to access your ext formatted files. It does not let you play videos recorded on humax unfortunately.

The easiest way is to use either FTP or Samba on your Humax then you can transfer the files to either Windows or Linux over your networklook at this thread Media & File Server Bundle for the Foxsat HDR

[raydawson]

I have managed to copy Freesat HD files to an attached USB Ext3 hard drive. I didn't need to go through the non-Freesat route - I just copied them from Freesat. I can play the file on my Windows 7 PC using Windows Media Player, but although I can see the video, I can't hear the sound.

MediaInfo gives the following information:
------------------------------------
General
ID : 2050 (0x802)
Complete name : K:\Heir Hunters_20110309_0954.ts
Format : BDAV
Format/Info : Blu-ray Video
File size : 148 MiB
Duration : 2mn 22s
Overall bit rate : 8 701 Kbps

Video
ID : 5400 (0x1518)
Menu ID : 6941 (0x1B1D)
Format : AVC
Format/Info : Advanced Video Codec
Format profile : High@L4.0
Format settings, CABAC : Yes
Format settings, ReFrames : 4 frames
Codec ID : 27
Duration : 2mn 22s
Bit rate : 7 896 Kbps
Width : 1 440 pixels
Height : 1 080 pixels
Display aspect ratio : 16:9
Frame rate : 25.000 fps
Color space : YUV
Chroma subsampling : 4:2:0
Bit depth : 8 bits
Scan type : MBAFF
Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 0.203
Stream size : 134 MiB (91%)
Color primaries : BT.709-5, BT.1361, IEC 61966-2-4, SMPTE RP177
Transfer characteristics : BT.709-5, BT.1361
Matrix coefficients : BT.709-5, BT.1361, IEC 61966-2-4 709, SMPTE RP177

Audio #1
ID : 5401 (0x1519)
Menu ID : 6941 (0x1B1D)
Format : AC-3
Format/Info : Audio Coding 3
Mode extension : CM (complete main)
Codec ID : 6
Duration : 2mn 22s
Bit rate mode : Constant
Bit rate : 192 Kbps
Channel(s) : 2 channels
Channel positions : Front: L R
Sampling rate : 48.0 KHz
Bit depth : 16 bits
Compression mode : Lossy
Delay relative to video : -1s 27ms
Stream size : 3.26 MiB (2%)
Language : English
------------------------------

Any ideas on how to get the sound working on the PC? I notice it is AC-3 rather than the MPEG Audio of the SD files - which do play properly on the PC.

I dropped the HD file into Corel VideoStudio and saved it out as an AVC HD file and that does play the sound as well as the video. The converted file is also AC-3 - so why won't the origonal sound play?

My experiments were done with small recorded files, which were easy to transfer. I did try transfering an episode of Eastenders in HD and, although it did copy, the Faxsat crashed and rebooted after about 26 mins were copied - 1.54GB. The incomplete HD file does play, but no sound again, as before.

Any suggestions welcomed.

Ray D

[savvy249]

Originally Posted by raydawson

Any ideas on how to get the sound working on the PC? I notice it is AC-3 rather than the MPEG Audio of the SD files - which do play properly on the PC.

Any suggestions welcomed.

Ray D

The HDR doesn't write headers properly in its .ts files (or something like that), which doesn't matter for playback on the HDR itself.

I sometimes get this lack of sound on playback in Win7, and the solution is to run the file thru tsMuxer, a small free utility - works for me.

[raydawson]

What settings do you use in TsMuxer? I tried it with the default settings and it produces a video file which isn't recognised by either WMP or MediaInfo.

Cheers,

Ray D

[savvy249]

Originally Posted by raydawson

What settings do you use in TsMuxer? I tried it with the default settings and it produces a video file which isn't recognised by either WMP or MediaInfo.

Cheers,

Ray D

I just use the defaults, it tells me the file doesn't have any frame rate set (I presume this is one of the "missing" bits not written by the HDR), inserts 25fps, and very quickly muxes it, and is then playable in WMP, and VLC.

I'm not at home, so I can't tell you the exact settings, but as I said, I didn't change any.

[raydawson]

I've just tried passing the HD files through VideoReDo version 4 and remuxxing. Works a treat and they can be edited at the same time :-)

Cheers,

Ray D

[Ysgubormadoc]

As a novice Forum User, I think I should probably start a new thread. BUT I don't know how to do that, and some of the posts on this thread seem relevant.

I have had the Foxsat HDR since they were first available, our area having been an early switch over to digital, and am very happy with it.

Except, I keep stuff a while and generally run with the drive 90% full, which occasionally means that I lose a recording (cos it has got to 100% full) and cannot keep stuff long term as I would like to.

Reading posts on this thread, it looks as though I might be able to connect a USB Hard Drive - I have just looked and there is 1 USB socket at the back of the box.

Can I connect a hard drive this way, and record to it and play from it?

If not, someone refers to copying to USB storage. Could I copy to an external HDD and then copy back to play?

And does this work from standard Foxsat features, or do you have to use software add ons? If the latter, that would likely be beyond me, so is there any other solution for overcoming my shortage of long term storage space?

THanks for any help.

[REPASSAC]

Originally Posted by Ysgubormadoc

As a novice Forum User, I think I should probably start a new thread. BUT I don't know how to do that, and some of the posts on this thread seem relevant.

I have had the Foxsat HDR since they were first available, our area having been an early switch over to digital, and am very happy with it.

Except, I keep stuff a while and generally run with the drive 90% full, which occasionally means that I lose a recording (cos it has got to 100% full) and cannot keep stuff long term as I would like to.

Reading posts on this thread, it looks as though I might be able to connect a USB Hard Drive - I have just looked and there is 1 USB socket at the back of the box.

Can I connect a hard drive this way, and record to it and play from it?

If not, someone refers to copying to USB storage. Could I copy to an external HDD and then copy back to play?

And does this work from standard Foxsat features, or do you have to use software add ons? If the latter, that would likely be beyond me, so is there any other solution for overcoming my shortage of long term storage space?

THanks for any help.

You can connect a USB device which can be a hard disk in a USB caddy - this is a standard feature. This also allows you to copy files from the HDR to the caddy but not to record directly to it - at the end of the copy process (not quick) you will be asked if you want to delete the original. You can play files that are on a USB device - you do not have to copy them back to the internal HDR drive.
If you have a esata connection on you PC finding a caddy with one also will also allow viewing from your PC.
There is also a setup option to delete files automatically when the hard disk is full.
If the filesystem on the CADDY disk is FAT32 (Normal) then there is a 4GB limit that the filing system will not let you exceed (Some HD recordings may exceed this).

[lebesset]

having gratefully read this thread I have made some progress....if I put in a usb stick the green button is not greyed out , so I presume I can record ok [ the only usb stick I have is too small ]

but what I want to use is a small HDD ; I have formatted it and turned it into FAT 32 , set all to 0's , no partitions , plugged in , recognised

no green button like with usb stick , can't download

what have I done wrong

[REPASSAC]

Originally Posted by lebesset

having gratefully read this thread I have made some progress....if I put in a usb stick the green button is not greyed out , so I presume I can record ok [ the only usb stick I have is too small ]

but what I want to use is a small HDD ; I have formatted it and turned it into FAT 32 , set all to 0's , no partitions , plugged in , recognised

no green button like with usb stick , can't download

what have I done wrong

You have to have one device selected in both panes e.g. hard disk on left, USB on right.

[lebesset]

that's what I had been doing ..hence the green button for the usb stick !!

however , in desperation , although the HDD was freshly formatted in FAT 32 , I did it again ...and the green button appeared and I could download !!!

so problem over???

not that easy , tried to play back on my vista and XP computers , wouldn't play !!!
tried installing a couple of players that are supposed to play these files ts/nts files eg media player classic , but still no luck ...however , in the process seem to have converted one of them to mpeg !!!

still scratching head therefore

[debitcardmayhem]

Originally Posted by lebesset

that's what I had been doing ..hence the green button for the usb stick !!

however , in desperation , although the HDD was freshly formatted in FAT 32 , I did it again ...and the green button appeared and I could download !!!

so problem over???

not that easy , tried to play back on my vista and XP computers , wouldn't play !!!
tried installing a couple of players that are supposed to play these files ts/nts files eg media player classic , but still no luck ...however , in the process seem to have converted one of them to mpeg !!!

still scratching head therefore

Try vlc from videolan.org it's free and it works for me.

[lebesset]

thanks for that , on that basis re-formatted the usb HDD , re-downloaded , et voila , played just fine on both

media player classic
total video player

HOWEVER , on the usb disk are 3 files

2.33Gb .ts which is the video

3.47Gb NTS

5.06KB HMT

which means nearly 6Gb to get a 2.33 Gb video ....is there any way around this , disk would soon be full at that rate !!!

[savvy249]

Originally Posted by lebesset

thanks for that , on that basis re-formatted the usb HDD , re-downloaded , et voila , played just fine on both

media player classic
total video player

HOWEVER , on the usb disk are 3 files

2.33Gb .ts which is the video

3.47Gb NTS

5.06KB HMT

which means nearly 6Gb to get a 2.33 Gb video ....is there any way around this , disk would soon be full at that rate !!!

The .nts file should only be 3.47 meg not gig.

[lebesset]

thanks , looked again , you are correct

doh ! getting punchdrunk with all this

[wheeles]

I have an OCZ Rally2 16GB USB stick which I use to move programmes from my Humax Foxsat HDR to my Mac. As I use the stick for other purposes as well, I sometimes end up having to reformat it as a different file system.

A few days ago my Humax stopped recognising the USB stick, so I reformatted it as FAT 32 using the Mac Disk Utility. This was not recognised either. So, I tried using GParted on a linux boot CD to format it to ext3. This also was not recognised by the Humax.

After much head scratching, I tried the following on my Mac, and this resulted in a USB Stick that was recognised as FAT 32 by my Humax. This is for use on a Mac, not Windows.

Please Note: Using fdisk can completely screw your system if you input the wrong disk number. It will not warn you if you are about to do something stupid! I take no responsibility if you inadvertently wipe your computer.

1. Open Disk Utility. Find the disk in the list that you want to format, control-click and select "Information". You're looking for the "Disk Identifier," which should be something like disk1, disk2, disk3 etc. You can also use the following command in the Terminal: diskutil list to get this information.

2. Create the DOS partition table. Open Terminal and type fdisk -e /dev/rdisk#, where # is the disk number you got from step one. Now type auto dos to create one big FAT32 partition. Finally, type write and then quit to save the new partition table.

3. Format the FAT32 partition. Type newfs_msdos -F 32 -v "MyVolumeName" /dev/rdisk#s1, where # is the disk number you got in step one. This will format the drive as FAT32.

4. Check if the volume is mounted. If it isn't, close and reopen Disk Utility, select "MyVolumeName" and choose File -> Mount."
Here's a transcript (line breaks added for narrower display) to show the commands. In my case the disk number was 4.

[~] % fdisk -e /dev/rdisk4
fdisk: could not open MBR file /usr/standalone/i386/boot0:
No such file or directory
Enter 'help' for information
fdisk: 1> auto dos
fdisk:*1> write
Writing MBR at offset 0.
fdisk: 1> quit
[~] % newfs_msdos -F 32 -v "STICK" /dev/rdisk4s1

I am not entirely sure why the Humax didn't like the USB stick. I notice elsewhere that others have had similar issues with people speculating it might be something to do with the chipset in the USB stick. However, I am inclined to think it is related to the Master Boot Record, which people often recreate, especially if they have formatted the stick with a different partition table. Quite why Disk Utility does not have the same effect as the steps above, or why GParted didn't work properly either, I do not know. It may have something to do with the MBR offset, or a creation date, but that's speculation.

There might be a similar process using fdisk on Windows, but as I haven't used that in anger in quite some time (yes, Windows has that effect on me), I am unable to say what that might be.

[MalcolmXPHummy]

Hi from a new member, now on his third Humax (9200T, 9300T and now Foxsat HDR). Obviously I have a number of questions...

1) I formatted a USB 1TB drive to ext3 using Easeus Partition Master on XP (so I wouldn't be limited to 4GB files), and upon finishing it proclaimed it was half full already. Changing the cluster size to 2Kb and reformatting gave me almost an empty drive, which is what I want. Will this cause any problems apart from a tiny bit of unused cluster padding at the end of each file, or will I still end up with just 500GB usability on the disk?

2) Is there anywhere which details the logos used in the Humax file manager? There's nothing about Ox and ENC in the manual and it's all so different from their PVRs!

3) HD recordings don't want to copy over to the external drive (something to do with the above logos I think?). Does this mean that all HD recordings have to stay on the internal drive after all, and only SD can be transferred to the big external archive drive? (apart from hopping in and out of Freesat mode, which I don't understand yet).

[brenjames]

I'm having no problems copying onto USB. However I can't play the copied files on either my laptop or PS3. Admittedly I have only copied HD recordings so far (I record everything I can in HD - that's the point of having the machine) - from what I'm reading here - it seems that HD copies can't be played at all? Is that actually the case and there is no way round it?

That seems bizarre - why is it ok with SD, but not HD? When are manufacturers and broadcasters going to give us the right and ability to watch things that we have legally recorded on other devices?! Utterly bizarre and annoying!

All of a sudden I find myself hankering for the days of VHS cassettes!!!

Is there any way around this? I'm off to try copying and playing an SD recording now. Back later.

[REPASSAC]

HD files are usually encrypred (Look for "Enc" in the Media listing). They will only play on the origional HDR.

[kevkbuk]

Originally Posted by brenjames

it seems that HD copies can't be played at all? Is that actually the case and there is no way round it?

Some channels 'encrypt' their HD broadcasts so they can only be played back on the device that recorded them. The only way around this is to record in non Freesat mode. VLC plays SD and unencrypted HD recordings just fine.

[grahamlthompson]

Originally Posted by MalcolmXPHummy

Hi from a new member, now on his third Humax (9200T, 9300T and now Foxsat HDR). Obviously I have a number of questions...

1) I formatted a USB 1TB drive to ext3 using Easeus Partition Master on XP (so I wouldn't be limited to 4GB files), and upon finishing it proclaimed it was half full already. Changing the cluster size to 2Kb and reformatting gave me almost an empty drive, which is what I want. Will this cause any problems apart from a tiny bit of unused cluster padding at the end of each file, or will I still end up with just 500GB usability on the disk?

2) Is there anywhere which details the logos used in the Humax file manager? There's nothing about Ox and ENC in the manual and it's all so different from their PVRs!

3) HD recordings don't want to copy over to the external drive (something to do with the above logos I think?). Does this mean that all HD recordings have to stay on the internal drive after all, and only SD can be transferred to the big external archive drive? (apart from hopping in and out of Freesat mode, which I don't understand yet).

ENC means encrypted, currently all HD channels invoke encryption, the other one means that the file has a copy restriction. Usually copy once. Once copied to usb you can't copy it again, but you can replay from usb on the hdr that recorded it. It's possible to reset the copy flags using Raydon's AV2HDR. If you start to copy a HD file and abort the copy you still invoke the copy once protection.

[deezel]

Thanks for this thread.

I had trouble trying to format a 16gb cruzer usb stick to ext3 using slax and the instructions linked in earlier posts but have managed to format a samsung story station 2tb today using the pmagic software.

Have copied all hd channels ( bbc1 hd, bbc hd, itv hd, and channel 4 hd) freesat encrypted files successfully to the samsung and am able to play them back fine.

No need now to delete stuff anymore which I never got a chance to see but wanted to keep, so well pleased with this thread

Many thanks again especially to graham

Incidently, on itv hd recordings on the foxsat's media gui what does the 'G' denote in Enc.G.HD ?

[GaseousClay]

Originally Posted by deezel

Incidently, on itv hd recordings on the foxsat's media gui what does the 'G' denote in Enc.G.HD ?

G stands for guidance, if you press the info button it should display the programme info with the reason for guidance in red text.

[grahamlthompson]

G stands for recordings your teenage kids would rather watch while mum, dad, grandad and grandmother aren't around

Sometimes the most inoccous content is flagged G (may be in error )

[deezel]

Thanks for those replies.

I've made and named a new folder in the usb hard drive.

How do I move an existing file on the same usb hard drive into that new folder?

[grahamlthompson]

Originally Posted by deezel

Thanks for those replies.

I've made and named a new folder in the usb hard drive.

How do I move an existing file on the same usb hard drive into that new folder ?

You can't directly unless you do it on a PC, you will have to copy it back to the internal hdd. Then open the folder and copy it back again. For future reference create the folder first, open and copy in the content afterwards.

The File manager won't let you open two panes on the same drive apart from the internal drive.

[REPASSAC]

deezel - Don't copy it on a PC because it will not play on the Humax as the path in the HMT file will no longer be correct.
Copied on the HDR to and then from the hard drive will update the path.

[lebesset]

I keep reading about how to format external usb devices using such things as linux
most of us are simple windoze folks , why not use that ?

HP offer a tiny piece of software which you can use to format any usb device into a single huge FAT32 [ or other if you want ]



Download HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool 2.2.3 Free - Windows-based Format Utility for HP Drive Key or DiskOnKey USB Device - Softpedia

[kevkbuk]

Originally Posted by lebesset

I keep reading about how to format external usb devices using such things as linux
most of us are simple windoze folks , why not use that ?

FAT32 only supports upto 4GB files. The HDR only supports FAT32 or Ext2/3. Ext2/3 are native to Linux but you can get software for Windows to format and read it.

[lebesset]

Originally Posted by kevkbuk

FAT32 only supports upto 4GB files. The HDR only supports FAT32 or Ext2/3. Ext2/3 are native to Linux but you can get software for Windows to format and read it.

not so ...FAT32 supports any size partition you like

the limit is put in by microsoft to try to force you on to NTFS , their proprietary system

all my sticks / usb HDD's are formatted as single partition FAT32 using the HP software