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Motorola DCT6412: moving recorded files?

post #1 of 91
2/21/06 at 4:54pm
Thread Starter 
Is it possible, through firewire (or through the NIC if it works), to move recorded files off the hard drive of my Motorola DCT6412 Phase III I am renting through my local cable company? I would like to backup recordings so I dont have to worry about deleting certain ones when it fills up (record a lot of series episodes...).

i realize this question has probably been asked quite a bit. i have glanced through many a page of a 77page thread here about the motorola dvr and firewire recording, and a few other threads regarding the dct6412. But I am not interested in recording episodes I have already recorded. Thats why I ditched the cable box I had set up next to my computer that was doing that very thing: recording directly to the computer. It looked horrid compared to the broadcast itself, even after many many man hours of configuring different settings and hacking the registry. It improved but not enough. After a crash recently, I decided to quit and just get a dedicated PVR. But now I am stuck to the limited recording space.

any help would be appreciated. thanks.
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post #2 of 91
2/25/06 at 4:27pm
Thread Starter 
bump
any ideas?
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post #3 of 91
2/26/06 at 8:07am
I am in the same boat. I was hoping that the PC would see the DVR HD as a removable drive or something similar and I could copy them to the PC. I have not found any FAQs covering this yet but I have only been searching for a couple of days.
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post #4 of 91
3/3/06 at 10:15am
Any luck with this research? I just got the Motorola DC76416 III yesterday and I'm in the same boat (limited space for HD recording)...
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post #5 of 91
3/3/06 at 10:31am
There are threads on this forum that cover this already.
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...5&page=1&pp=30
Here's another link:
http://replayguide.sourceforge.net/dct6412/
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post #6 of 91
3/6/06 at 11:17am
Thread Starter 
um... those links are to things I've already read, and cover recapturing the video. I already recorded the video once, the time doesn't really exist to recapture it again through firewire, not to mention a 50ft firewire cable would be expensive as hell.
thanks for the idea, but if you read my post you would see I read quite a bit of that 70+ page thread and nothing other than re-capturing the video is mentioned.
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post #7 of 91
3/16/06 at 5:58am
Has anyone gathered up the courage to remove the hard drive and plug it into a regular computer to see what can be seen? I rent mine, so I really can't do it without knowing exactly what gotchas might be encountered.
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post #8 of 91
3/16/06 at 7:12am
Thread Starter 
yea that is a great question.... i wonder if there are any hidden things that prove that we ever opened the box. i rent mine too, my cable company doesn't allow purchases... not to mention the box is filling up fast on the 120gb hard drive, showing 55% with only around 20 hours on it, and its all standard/digital cable, no high def. so if i can get recordings off with hooking the drive up to a computer, that'd be awesome. gotta dig up facts and see if my cable company could tell whenever we get rid of the box. hmmm
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post #9 of 91
3/18/06 at 2:34pm
I also have the Motorola DCT6412. I read through many posts over the past year and never saw any reasonable way of moving recorded files. For a short 5 min segment that I wanted to show my brother, I connected it to my digital camcorder and recorded it on there, then played it through firewire to my PC and sent it as Window Media file. Worked out fine for my purposes. For full length shows, unfortunately the only solution I've found so far is to play it and record on VHS - better than nothing I figure. It must be a deliberate way to avoid digital copying?
Randy
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post #10 of 91
3/21/06 at 10:59pm
Anybody has any news on this?

I'm interested in recording to DVD (through my laptop) the programs I have stored in the DVR...
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post #11 of 91
3/27/06 at 9:42pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by dodgechargerfan View Post

Has anyone gathered up the courage to remove the hard drive and plug it into a regular computer to see what can be seen? I rent mine, so I really can't do it without knowing exactly what gotchas might be encountered.

Yup. I did it about 6 months ago on a XP machine. It didn't recognize the partitions though. I'll try it on a linux box next. If I find anything I'll start a thread about my findings. I rent my box as well.

Nick
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post #12 of 91
4/5/06 at 12:05pm
I hooked up the hard drive from my motorola DVR to a pc running Linux. At first it appears to be unformatted, but if you use partition magic or the like, you find 3 partitions. The first 2 seem to hold guide and programming information, but the last is filled with recorded programming. The programs are .tsp files, i think, and work well in linux for viewing. I have found no way to convert them into something windows will understand and I have no DVD burner on my Linux machine. This is where we are until the cable companies allow us to pull the files off over the useless firewire or even more useless USB. It all has to do with copy protction and "lossless" transfers. If space is truely your only concern, you can attach a mac harddrive (like one meant to increase the size of the mac mini) to the firewire port and you will have more space. Also an iPod will increase your DVR's harddrive capacity by whatever free space you have on it when you plug it into the firewire port.
Good luck all!
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post #13 of 91
4/9/06 at 1:09pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Linux4Ever View Post

I hooked up the hard drive from my motorola DVR to a pc running Linux. At first it appears to be unformatted, but if you use partition magic or the like, you find 3 partitions. The first 2 seem to hold guide and programming information, but the last is filled with recorded programming. The programs are .tsp files, i think, and work well in linux for viewing. I have found no way to convert them into something windows will understand and I have no DVD burner on my Linux machine. This is where we are until the cable companies allow us to pull the files off over the useless firewire or even more useless USB. It all has to do with copy protction and "lossless" transfers. If space is truely your only concern, you can attach a mac harddrive (like one meant to increase the size of the mac mini) to the firewire port and you will have more space. Also an iPod will increase your DVR's harddrive capacity by whatever free space you have on it when you plug it into the firewire port.
Good luck all!

Linux4Ever have you actually used an external Firewire hard drive and increased the recording capacity of the 6412? I thought that this was not possible because the Firewire port is "output" only. Does the hard drive have to have anything special intalled on it to utilize it in this manner?
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post #14 of 91
4/10/06 at 2:39pm
I'm not sure what you are asking ? I guess you don't mean simply connecting the firewire out of the 6412 to a DVHS deck correct ?


Art
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post #15 of 91
4/20/06 at 4:36pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by randyman8 View Post

I also have the Motorola DCT6412. I read through many posts over the past year and never saw any reasonable way of moving recorded files. For a short 5 min segment that I wanted to show my brother, I connected it to my digital camcorder and recorded it on there, then played it through firewire to my PC and sent it as Window Media file. Worked out fine for my purposes. For full length shows, unfortunately the only solution I've found so far is to play it and record on VHS - better than nothing I figure. It must be a deliberate way to avoid digital copying?
Randy

I record numerous programs through the 6412III to my DMR-E80H to it's hard drive and to DVD_R,s with no problems. It will not record HiDef unfortunately. The DVD,s play on every dvd player that I have encountered. Hope this helps.
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post #16 of 91
4/22/06 at 11:09pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Linux4Ever View Post

I hooked up the hard drive from my motorola DVR to a pc running Linux. At first it appears to be unformatted, but if you use partition magic or the like, you find 3 partitions. The first 2 seem to hold guide and programming information, but the last is filled with recorded programming. The programs are .tsp files, i think, and work well in linux for viewing. I have found no way to convert them into something windows will understand and I have no DVD burner on my Linux machine.!

If the files are .ts files, they are MPEG-2 Transport Stream files. These are part of the MPEG-2 standard but they have a different structure than MPEG-2 elementary streams used for DVDs.

You can use ProjectX to demux them into the elementary streams (audio, video, etc) and then author your dvd files.

My question: Is there anyway to access the video files under windows or is Linux the only way?
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post #17 of 91
8/14/06 at 5:21am
Has anyone come up w/ anything new on this? I would really like to know before I give Comcast an extra $50/month for HD DVR and a measly 5 or 6 encrypted HD channels.

Question: Through firewire all you can do is record what's playing at the present time? You cannot stream archived (saved) video from box to PC? If that's the case then what makes this process any better than just getting a QAM capture card?
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post #18 of 91
8/29/06 at 5:57am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Linux4Ever View Post

I hooked up the hard drive from my motorola DVR to a pc running Linux. At first it appears to be unformatted, but if you use partition magic or the like, you find 3 partitions. The first 2 seem to hold guide and programming information, but the last is filled with recorded programming. The programs are .tsp files, i think, and work well in linux for viewing. I have found no way to convert them into something windows will understand and I have no DVD burner on my Linux machine. This is where we are until the cable companies allow us to pull the files off over the useless firewire or even more useless USB. It all has to do with copy protction and "lossless" transfers. If space is truely your only concern, you can attach a mac harddrive (like one meant to increase the size of the mac mini) to the firewire port and you will have more space. Also an iPod will increase your DVR's harddrive capacity by whatever free space you have on it when you plug it into the firewire port.
Good luck all!

Linux4Ever
You wrote: "If space is truely your only concern, you can attach a mac harddrive (like one meant to increase the size of the mac mini) to the firewire port and you will have more space. Also an iPod will increase your DVR's harddrive capacity by whatever free space you have on it when you plug it into the firewire port."
Can you say more about how you made that work? I just tried plugging in a Iomega Firewire External Hard Drive to the firewire port port on the back of my DCT6400 Series III. Then, using the List button my remote, I viewed my storage area and don't see any changes. It still tells me I am at 83% full. Same as before connecting the external drive. What else did you do to make this work?
Thanks
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post #19 of 91
9/21/06 at 4:46pm
how did you transfer from dvr to your camcorder?
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post #20 of 91
12/25/06 at 10:43pm
I own a DCT412 III too, and has used 96% of the space already. I saw that the last post was in September... Has anyone found a way to move a previously recorded program to a computer to be burned as DVD or add additional storage through the means of a firewire attached external hard drive yet? Thanks in advance!
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post #21 of 91
12/25/06 at 10:56pm
Would something like this hooked up via firewire add more recording space?

http://www.lacie.com/products/product.htm?pid=10476

Also, I think I have a DCT6416 III. Is that different from the 6412?
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post #22 of 91
12/26/06 at 1:37am
Also, is there a way to adjust recording quality to prolong recording time?
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post #23 of 91
12/27/06 at 9:38am
So is it possible with a HD with the HFS+ volumes for use with Apple Mac mini computers like the LaCie mini 250GB work? Connecting it directly to the Firewire port to give you the added space of that drive for recording storage..
I've seen so many posts on this and similar posts but have yet to see a diffenet YES or no... or is something else needed.. I would like to be able to extract the recorded materail, but if not then the added space will be a great help...

Thanks.. if anyone has the answer !
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post #24 of 91
12/27/06 at 10:43am
I'm also looking into getting recorded file off my Motorola DCT6416 III. Havn't found anything yet...
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post #25 of 91
1/13/07 at 10:01pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by noodlehead View Post

Linux4Ever
You wrote: "If space is truely your only concern, you can attach a mac harddrive (like one meant to increase the size of the mac mini) to the firewire port and you will have more space. Also an iPod will increase your DVR's harddrive capacity by whatever free space you have on it when you plug it into the firewire port."
Can you say more about how you made that work? I just tried plugging in a Iomega Firewire External Hard Drive to the firewire port port on the back of my DCT6400 Series III. Then, using the List button my remote, I viewed my storage area and don't see any changes. It still tells me I am at 83% full. Same as before connecting the external drive. What else did you do to make this work?
Thanks

bump...
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post #26 of 91
2/21/07 at 5:31pm
does anyone have anything at this point for the Moto 6416?????????????
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post #27 of 91
2/22/07 at 8:38am
Simply put, it cannot be done.

The Motorola STBs do not support external Firewire storage. They never have and they never will. Motorola is working on a firmware update to allow encrypted storage to an external SATA drive -- that capability is coming in the second half of 2007. The recordings will be encrypted, and only playable from the DVR where they were recorded.

Motorola has no plans to ever support PC/Mac file transfer. They have no plans to ever support transfer to an external device of any kind.

You will never be able to copy recordings from the hard drive to a PC. The only thing you can do is copy content marked "copy freely" (i.e. the local channels) at 1:1 speed, by pressing play on the DVR and record on your PC with a Firewire input. You cannot do the same thing for most cable channels, which are marked "copy once." Nor can you do this any faster than realtime (1:1) speed.

If you want to record digital cable channels to your PC, you need to buy a Vista PC with OCUR. Windows Vista is the only CableLabs certified platform, so it is the only platform that can record digital cable channels. You cannot record digital cable channels with Linux, Windows XP, or OSX. With Windows Vista and OCUR, all channels are recorded at 100% original quality, but they are encrypted so you cannot copy or transfer them to others.

http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.aspx?i=2662&p=2
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post #28 of 91
2/22/07 at 3:00pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Dragan View Post

bump...

what is bump... mean???
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post #29 of 91
2/22/07 at 6:36pm
To destrekor:
I have had the same frustration with the 6412 box and have found 2 solutions: one is a Pioneer PVR with DVD burn capability. It does a great job for non HD and reformats HD on a readable scale for replay on normal DVD players.
For real HD recording, I have been using the JVC HD recorders with decent success. The older 40000 model has been fabulous. The new one "-5U" that I recently got was fine but died after a few hours. It is going back under warranty. It's recordings were also fabulous and crossplayed with the other machine. It's not perfect HD but boy is it awesome.
GalileoHD1
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post #30 of 91
2/23/07 at 8:38pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by bfdtv View Post

Simply put, it cannot be done.

The Motorola STBs do not support external Firewire storage. They never have and they never will. Motorola is working on a firmware update to allow encrypted storage to an external SATA drive -- that capability is coming in the second half of 2007. The recordings will be encrypted, and only playable from the DVR where they were recorded.

Motorola has no plans to ever support PC/Mac file transfer. They have no plans to ever support transfer to an external device of any kind.

You will never be able to copy recordings from the hard drive to a PC. The only thing you can do is copy content marked "copy freely" (i.e. the local channels) at 1:1 speed, by pressing play on the DVR and record on your PC with a Firewire input. You cannot do the same thing for most cable channels, which are marked "copy once." Nor can you do this any faster than realtime (1:1) speed.

If you want to record digital cable channels to your PC, you need to buy a Vista PC with OCUR. Windows Vista is the only CableLabs certified platform, so it is the only platform that can record digital cable channels. You cannot record digital cable channels with Linux, Windows XP, or OSX. With Windows Vista and OCUR, all channels are recorded at 100% original quality, but they are encrypted so you cannot copy or transfer them to others.



Sorry, but you are wrong. I have worked for 3 cable companies and Charter's DCT's support external expandable hdd storage via firewire. It's all about whether the system that you are serviced by has requested the feature in the STB firmware from Motorola. And as a previous poster stated, the video is easily separated to video / audio / time and reencoded in your format of choice.
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