It's a 2GB workaround - not a fix
Okay, large recording could now be successfully exported once the upgrade was in place but what you ended up with on drives formatted as FAT32 or NTFS wasn't one big file but a series of linked and numbered files each 1.85GB in size or smaller.
The number given to each file appears in brackets directly before its .mp2 tail, and takes this sort of form:
Sun 7 Jan
17.45-18.30 - BBC HD1 - Robin Hood (1).mp2
Sun 7 Jan 17.45-18.30 - BBC HD1 - Robin Hood (2).mp2
Sun 7 Jan 17.45-18.30 - BBC HD1 - Robin Hood (3).mp2
Sun 7 Jan 17.45-18.30 - BBC HD1 - Robin Hood (4).mp2
Sun 7 Jan 17.45-18.30 - BBC HD1 - Robin Hood (2).mp2
Sun 7 Jan 17.45-18.30 - BBC HD1 - Robin Hood (3).mp2
Sun 7 Jan 17.45-18.30 - BBC HD1 - Robin Hood (4).mp2
In the above example, of a 45-minute HD programme, the first three files were each 1.85GB in size, the last was 835MB and the total size on the hard disk was 6.37GB.
Having multiple files for each recording means playback is a bit messier - you have to make sure to pick the first file in the series if you want the programme to play from its beginning. Happily, though, subsequent files in the linked series do seamlessly play automagically via the iplayer without any user intervention, so the problem is far from dire.
But what this arrangement of multiple sub-2GB files does - and deliberately we're pretty sure - is make things a good bit harder for anyone who wants to repurpose their exported programmes.
And that applies whether you want to turn them into DVDs or compress them further to save space on a hard disk and leave them there for playback via the iplayer or just on the PC itself.
Our preference has been for turning iplayer-recorded standard-def movies into DVDs but we'd not been able conveniently to do that with any of the BBC's HD broadcasts.
These HD recordings are copy-protected while they remain in their original digital form and we found that the only way to repurpose them was to play them out from the iplayer via Scart, then capture that output either to tape using a VCR (we didn't have a set-top DVD recorder to hand) or to a computer via an analogue-to-digital converter box.
These re-recordings made via analogue are only in 4:3 standard definition, rather than 16:9 high def, and, since there wasn't really a great deal that was broadcast in HD that we wanted to keep permanently in standard definition, we weren't prepared to go to all the additional messing around needed to repurpose them. We did check that such re-recordings were possible but left it at that.
For the record, the
analogue-to-digital converter box we used was a
venerable
Canopus ADVC-55, paired with Pinnacle's Studio 10.7 video-editing
software. That same combination was also used to capture and
edit
this review's iplayer set-up video and acquire many
of the
shots of the iplayer's menus.
None of the SD broadcasts that we recorded was copy-protected so it was quite easy to do what we wanted with them once they were on a PC. That began with our getting rid of the commercials before, after and during the programmes and outputting the cleaned up video as DVD-compliant MPEG-2 files - all courtesy of VideoReDo Plus.
This program is pretty much a one-trick pony but still a minor work of art. The program is easy to use and has some of the best timeline access controls we've ever seen. We'd recommend it strongly to anyone who needs what it does and we think that the price for the downloadable version, US$50 (£27.49), is well worth paying.
There's a free try-before-you-buy version, too, if you don't want to take our word on it, and this is a relatively minor download - 10.5MB.
We've used dozens of video editing apps over the years but
VideoReDo Plus has the best timeline
controls of any we've seen - and it outputs very speedily, too
But exports of longer broadcasts that resulted in multiple files, made the process of creating DVDs a bit trickier and not just because it meant dealing with multiple files for some broadcasts, rather than just one.
We found that in the penultimate stage of this process - where we wanted to use Ulead's DVDMovieFactory 4 software to create an .iso DVD image - a chapter point was automatically added for the start of the second and subsequent files - something we didn't want and that we discovered could create glitches in the finished DVD at those unwanted chapter points.
It would have been possible to bring the files into a video editing app, such as Pinnacle Studio or Ulead VideoStudio, exported them as a single MPEG file and then taken that file into Ulead DVD Workshop.
However, certainly with Pinnacle Studio, that further stage would have added a lot of time to the whole process - the Pinnacle app takes an age to export DVD-compliant MPEG-2 files on our Athlon 64 3200+ test PC - and that was something we wished to avoid. So we just lived with the glitches in the hope - still not fulfilled - of finding a more elegant solution.
We're pretty sure there are programs - free or low-cost - that can speedily stitch together multiple MPEG-2 files but simply didn't have the time to research this - so would welcome suggestions.
Update - February 26
Turns out that we had such an
MPEG-stitching program available to us all along - VideoReDo Plus!
Over on Radio and Telly, forum member 7andY said that, contrary to our review, VideoReDo Plus can in fact handle multiple files, not just one at a time.
Well, we've double-checked and, of course, we were wrong!
Indeed, we've realised that it's ultra easy to bring multiple files into VideoReDo Plus, which handles them very nicely as long as they have the same settings as one another - as the files we wanted to rejoin did.
So, that's yet another reason to consider lashing out for VideoReDo Plus.
Thanks to 7andY and apologies to readers for any confusion - we must have been half-asleep when we tried and failed originally to bring multiple files into Video ReDo Plus and that's the excuse we're sticking with!
Over on Radio and Telly, forum member 7andY said that, contrary to our review, VideoReDo Plus can in fact handle multiple files, not just one at a time.
Well, we've double-checked and, of course, we were wrong!
Indeed, we've realised that it's ultra easy to bring multiple files into VideoReDo Plus, which handles them very nicely as long as they have the same settings as one another - as the files we wanted to rejoin did.
So, that's yet another reason to consider lashing out for VideoReDo Plus.
Thanks to 7andY and apologies to readers for any confusion - we must have been half-asleep when we tried and failed originally to bring multiple files into Video ReDo Plus and that's the excuse we're sticking with!
However, quite early on in our wait for Netgem to come up with a workaround to the Evesham's 2GB file-export limit, we'd been told in the HEXUS.lifestyle.news forum about ext2 as a solution that was immediately available and, in effect, did away completely with any file-size limitations with USB-attached drives - and we used that for a good few weeks before the official fix arrived.
To find out more, keep on going...
