I've now discovered a better way. It dawned on me that I can use a single application, kmttg, to do it all.
kmttg is a so-called "TiVoToGo" app that knows how to download recordings from a TiVo to a Mac or a PC over a home computer network. It's also a Swiss army knife of useful tools for decrypting and re-encoding the downloaded recordings for other uses.
In the above screenshot, kmttg is set to download and decrypt "The Picture of Dorian Gray," which my TiVo Premiere has already recorded from TCM HD. After the decryption takes place, I'll have a The Picture of Dorian Gray (03_12_2011).mpg file on my Mac, in whose name the (03_12_2011) reflects the date the movie was recorded by the TiVo. The .mpg filename extension reflects the format of the video that results from kmttg's "decrypt" stage ... a format that will not work on an Apple TV.
The checkmark by kmttg's "metadata" stage — next to the "Start Jobs" button, near the top of the kmttg window — tells kmttg to make a copy of this information:
title : The Picture of Dorian Gray
seriesTitle : The Picture of Dorian Gray
description : Corrupted by a lord, Oscar Wilde's London aristocrat stays young, but his portrait begins to age.
time : 2011-03-12T13:30:00Z
mpaaRating : N8
movieYear : 1945
isEpisode : true
isEpisodic : false
showingBits : 1
starRating : x5
displayMajorNumber : 890
callsign : TCMHD
seriesId : MV006454
vActor : Sanders|George
vActor : Hatfield|Hurd
vActor : Lansbury|Angela
vActor : Reed|Donna
vActor : Gilmore|Lowell
vActor : Lawford|Peter
vActor : Fraser|Richard
vActor : Owen|Reginald
vActor : Bilbrook|Lydia
vActor : Lowry|Morton
vActor : Walton|Douglas
vActor : Forbes|Mary
vActor : Greig|Robert
vActor : Carpenter|Lisa
vActor : MacGill|Moyna
vActor : Bevan|Billy
vActor : Mander|Miles
vDirector : Lewin|Albert
vProducer : Berman|Pandro S.
vProgramGenre : Horror
vSeriesGenre : Horror
vSeriesGenre : Movies
That metadata information accompanied the movie itself when the TiVo recorded it. In certain situations, it's nice to save the original metadata information somewhere.
The checkmark next to the "decrypt" stage in the screenshot tells kmttg to not only download the movie file but also decode the downloaded file, removing TiVo's copy protection from it. This is perfectly legal to do, as long as you don't share the decrypted recording with other people.
I put a checkmark by the "encode" stage in the screenshot to tell kmttg to convert the downloaded movie file so it will be usable by an Apple TV. It learns what kind of conversion to do from the encoding profile I've selected just below the "Start Jobs" button: hb_my_appletv.
hb_my_appletv is an encoding profile I defined myself. In the ~/Desktop/kmttg_v0p7t/encode folder which came with kmttg are several files with an .enc extension, among them hb_appletv.enc. These are actually text files. After quitting kmttg, I duplicated hb_appletv.enc in Finder, changed the duplicated file's name to hb_my_appletv.enc, and opened it in TextEdit, seeing:
# Description (single line, keep short)
Handbrake AppleTV: m4v container, AppleTV preset (h.264 video, aac & ac3 audio)
# Encode command or script (single line)
# Known keywords: FFMPEG, MENCODER, HANDBRAKE, PERL, INPUT, OUTPUT, PWD, CPU_CORES, SRTFILE
HANDBRAKE -i INPUT --cpu CPU_CORES --preset AppleTV -f m4v -D 1,1 -A "Stereo","AC3" --rate 29.97 -v -o OUTPUT
# Encoded output file extension
m4v
The line beginning with HANDBRAKE is the important one. It tells kmttg how to invoke the popular video re-formatter HandBrake to encode my "The Picture of Dorian Gray" file for Apple TV as a file using the .m4v filename extension.
This HANDBRAKE ... line in the original hb_appletv.enc file doesn't, however, tell HandBrake to capture the closed captions that are embedded in the input .mpg file.
To do that, I need (I'm still in TextEdit) to change the line that begins with HANDBRAKE to include:
--subtitle 1
That gives, as the full contents of the modified hb_my_appletv.enc file:
# Description (single line, keep short)
Handbrake AppleTV: m4v container, AppleTV preset (h.264 video, aac & ac3 audio)
# Encode command or script (single line)
# Known keywords: FFMPEG, MENCODER, HANDBRAKE, PERL, INPUT, OUTPUT, PWD, CPU_CORES, SRTFILE
HANDBRAKE -i INPUT --cpu CPU_CORES --preset AppleTV --subtitle 1 -f m4v -D 1,1 -A "Stereo","AC3" --rate 29.97 -v -o OUTPUT
# Encoded output file extension
m4v
This insertion of --subtitle 1 simply says that HandBrake should include as optionally displayed "soft" subtitles in the output .m4v file the closed captions, embedded in the input .mpg file, whose "track number" is 1.
The line beginning with HANDBRAKE and ending with OUTPUT is a single line of text. In the TextEdit window it wraps around. I need to be sure, when I'm editing the line, not to accidentally hit the Return key, which would divide the one line into two and make the encoding profile fail to work properly in kmttg later on.
I can then save the edited hb_my_appletv.enc file and quit TextEdit. The next time I launch kmttg, I will be able to choose the encoding profile hb_my_appletv, as seen in the screenshot above.
Tips and pointers:
1. In iTunes Preferences: Advanced ...
... "Copy files to iTunes Media folder when adding to library," if checked, will cause iTunes to make a brand new copy of your (big) .m4v file when it is added to your iTunes Movies library, so to prevent that from happening, make sure "Copy files ... " is unchecked.
2. kmttg wants to run AtomicParsely at the end of its "encode" stage. AtomicParsely inserts the metadata information I mentioned earlier in this post into the encoded .m4v file. I find, unfortunately, that using AtomicParsely causes problems later on, when the .m4v file has been added to the iTunes Movies library. So, prior to downloading and decrypting The Picture of Dorian Gray.mpg and then encoding The Picture of Dorian Gray.m4v, I disabled AtomicParsely in the kmttg configuration:
Under the Programs tab I cleared the box next to AtomicParsely, and clicked OK. (To bring up kmttg's configuration window, just choose "Configure ... " from kmttg's File menu.)
3. Instead of using AtomicParsely, after kmttg is done with its "encode" stage and the (in this example) The Picture of Dorian Gray (03_12_2011).m4v file has been generated, I use the freeware application MetaX to specify its metadata tags. In Finder, I delete the date information in the filename to obtain The Picture of Dorian Gray.m4v. I drag the file's icon to the MetaX icon on my Dock ... or else, I launch MetaX and use its Open icon to locate The Picture of Dorian Gray.m4v. When I do so, I'm asked whether the file is a Movie, a TV Show, or a Music Video, and I choose Movie. MetaX finds the movie in an online database and fills in its metadata tags automatically:
Notice that it has found poster art for the movie. I can change it or any of the other metadata tags it has filled in for me. Once I am satisfied, I click on the Write & Share icon. MetaX takes a few minutes to rewrite my The Picture of Dorian Gray.m4v file with the new metadata tags filled in, and then the file is automatically added by MetaX to my iTunes Movies library.
5. When you download kmttg and run it for the first time, it automatically downloads various pieces of software that it wants to have in its arsenal, HandBrake included. However, the "command line interface" (CLI) version of HandBrake that kmttg downloads is currently an obsolete one, version 0.9.4. Not only does 0.9.4 have some bugs in it that can impair its use for kmttg encodes, the latest official version (0.9.5) of HandBrake CLI can run a whole lot faster on newer Macs that support so-called "64-bit" code.
You are well advised to go to this page and click on the "Download (64 bit Intel)" link under Mac OS. If you have an older Mac, click on the "Download (32 bit Intel)" link instead. You'll receive a disk image file called HandBrake-0.9.5-MacOSX.5_CLI_x86_64.dmg. (The final "_64" will be missing for the 32-bit version.)
Open that .dmg file and you will obtain a virtual disk on your desktop with the same name as the .dmg file. Open the virtual disk and you'll see a window containing a HandBrakeCLI app and a doc folder. Create a HandBrake 0.9.5 CLI folder somewhere (say, on your Desktop or in your Applications folder) and drag both of those items to it, thereby making copies of the two items. (You can then Trash the .dmg file and eject the virtual disk.)
I actually put my HandBrake 0.9.5 CLI folder in a subfolder of my Applications folder. Then I launched kmttg and, under its File menu, selected Configure ... . A kmttg configuration window opened, and I clicked on the Programs tab. Then I double-clicked in the handbrake box and navigated to my HandBrake 0.9.5 CLI folder, and within that to my HandBrakeCLI app. I clicked on Choose File to see:
I clicked on OK and the kmttg configuration window went away. From that point on, my HandBrake encodes in kmttg used the 0.9.5 version.
Tips and pointers:
1. In iTunes Preferences: Advanced ...
... "Copy files to iTunes Media folder when adding to library," if checked, will cause iTunes to make a brand new copy of your (big) .m4v file when it is added to your iTunes Movies library, so to prevent that from happening, make sure "Copy files ... " is unchecked.
2. kmttg wants to run AtomicParsely at the end of its "encode" stage. AtomicParsely inserts the metadata information I mentioned earlier in this post into the encoded .m4v file. I find, unfortunately, that using AtomicParsely causes problems later on, when the .m4v file has been added to the iTunes Movies library. So, prior to downloading and decrypting The Picture of Dorian Gray.mpg and then encoding The Picture of Dorian Gray.m4v, I disabled AtomicParsely in the kmttg configuration:
Under the Programs tab I cleared the box next to AtomicParsely, and clicked OK. (To bring up kmttg's configuration window, just choose "Configure ... " from kmttg's File menu.)
3. Instead of using AtomicParsely, after kmttg is done with its "encode" stage and the (in this example) The Picture of Dorian Gray (03_12_2011).m4v file has been generated, I use the freeware application MetaX to specify its metadata tags. In Finder, I delete the date information in the filename to obtain The Picture of Dorian Gray.m4v. I drag the file's icon to the MetaX icon on my Dock ... or else, I launch MetaX and use its Open icon to locate The Picture of Dorian Gray.m4v. When I do so, I'm asked whether the file is a Movie, a TV Show, or a Music Video, and I choose Movie. MetaX finds the movie in an online database and fills in its metadata tags automatically:
Notice that it has found poster art for the movie. I can change it or any of the other metadata tags it has filled in for me. Once I am satisfied, I click on the Write & Share icon. MetaX takes a few minutes to rewrite my The Picture of Dorian Gray.m4v file with the new metadata tags filled in, and then the file is automatically added by MetaX to my iTunes Movies library.
5. When you download kmttg and run it for the first time, it automatically downloads various pieces of software that it wants to have in its arsenal, HandBrake included. However, the "command line interface" (CLI) version of HandBrake that kmttg downloads is currently an obsolete one, version 0.9.4. Not only does 0.9.4 have some bugs in it that can impair its use for kmttg encodes, the latest official version (0.9.5) of HandBrake CLI can run a whole lot faster on newer Macs that support so-called "64-bit" code.
You are well advised to go to this page and click on the "Download (64 bit Intel)" link under Mac OS. If you have an older Mac, click on the "Download (32 bit Intel)" link instead. You'll receive a disk image file called HandBrake-0.9.5-MacOSX.5_CLI_x86_64.dmg. (The final "_64" will be missing for the 32-bit version.)
Open that .dmg file and you will obtain a virtual disk on your desktop with the same name as the .dmg file. Open the virtual disk and you'll see a window containing a HandBrakeCLI app and a doc folder. Create a HandBrake 0.9.5 CLI folder somewhere (say, on your Desktop or in your Applications folder) and drag both of those items to it, thereby making copies of the two items. (You can then Trash the .dmg file and eject the virtual disk.)
I actually put my HandBrake 0.9.5 CLI folder in a subfolder of my Applications folder. Then I launched kmttg and, under its File menu, selected Configure ... . A kmttg configuration window opened, and I clicked on the Programs tab. Then I double-clicked in the handbrake box and navigated to my HandBrake 0.9.5 CLI folder, and within that to my HandBrakeCLI app. I clicked on Choose File to see:
I clicked on OK and the kmttg configuration window went away. From that point on, my HandBrake encodes in kmttg used the 0.9.5 version.
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